If was fifty years ago next week that Shig Mura, a clerk at San Francisco's City Lights bookshop was arrested for selling a copy of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" which led to the trial of Mura and Lawrence Ferlinghetti on charges of obscenity. The prosecution failed after the judge ruled that the work was protected free speech under the First Amendment. This was a not insignificant victory and is something we should remember and treasure in these times where our rights to speech, artistic and political, are once again under threat by the forces of darkness and reaction.
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