Mission Statement

For more than 25 years NCAC has been on the front lines of the censorship wars, working on both the local and national level. We have assisted thousands of artists, authors, teachers, students, librarians, readers, museum-goers, and others around the country in opposing censorship, and we have nurtured a coalition of religious, labor, professional, educational and civil rights organizations united in their commitment to protecting the First Amendment. We:

• - educate the public and policy makers about threats to free expression,
• - mobilize them to take action to oppose censorship, and assist in those efforts,
• - facilitate communications between local activists and national organizations,
• - devise new educational, advocacy, and media strategies to create a more hospitable environment for free speech and artistic freedom.

As a diverse coalition of national organizations, we bring some "unlikely suspects" into censorship debates. We collaborate with coalition partners to produce educational materials and events to meet the needs of their members. For example, a collaboration with the National Education Association will produce materials for parents and teachers about the First Amendment and its role in education. Our Committee on Sex and Censorship is working with the ProChoice Resource Center and the Sexuality Education and Information Center of the U.S. to educate the public about censorship of sex education curricula in our schools. With the College Art Association, we co-sponsored a conference at Cooper Union on the significance of the Supreme Court decision in NEA v. Finley and the future of funding for the arts and arts advocacy.  We also coordinate the Free Expression Network, an alliance of free speech advocacy organizations.

NCAC promotes grass roots activism by providing assistance, advice, and information to individuals and community groups around the country. Our quarterly newsletter, Censorship News, reaches 25,000 readers. We provide information packs on a wide range of free expression issues, as well as assistance responding to censorship. In the recent past, we assisted a teacher in Rhode Island whose principal demanded rationales for teaching "controversial" books; artists in Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, Alabama, and Florida whose works featuring nudes were targeted; a sculptor in California who battled with the zoning board over an outdoor installation that some didn't like; cultural groups in Texas and Alaska targeted for de-funding because of their sponsorship of works with gay and lesbian themes; teens on Long Island whose school library canceled a subscription to Seventeen after a parent complained about the frank advice on sex in its health and body columns; and the playwright Terrence McNally and the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, who have been attacked by religious groups because of McNally's portrayal of a gay Christ-like character.