Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Free Speech for Fred

25. July 2004 • Ari Paul
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Fredric Allen Maxwell, the Ann Arbor resident who was booted from the Ann Arbor Public Library for using the f-word (the one that rhymes with duck), finally has his say:

I mistakenly thought that Ann Arbor would be appalled, as the library called three armed police officers into the adult reading room and had me removed because, in their words, “Subject swore and refused to leave.” They banned me from the library for a year because of this without notifying me, they prevented me from arguing my case in front of the Library Board, and the library director circulated a memo to her staff stating that I used obscene language when, in fact, the words I chose were, at worst, vulgar, and that I lived in a homeless shelter when, in fact, I didn’t and don’t. Land of the free, home of the brave.

And I guess the library’s $400 an hour lawyer, forgetting one’s right to petition our government, is correct to have ordered me to cease and desist from writing the library director or staff. Such actions have the library in such a pickle that, to cover their, well, selves, they’ve hired two more attorneys, a pair in East Lansing – East Lansing! Any port in a storm.