CBLDF is delighted to congratulate Christopher M. Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and friend of the Fund, for winning the 2011 Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) Roll of Honor Award!
As president of ABFFE, Finan helps defend the First Amendment rights of booksellers and their customers. His activism on behalf of Free Speech is further solidified by his longtime involvement with the Media Coalition, which defends the right to produce, sell, and have access to print and digital entertainment, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Like CBLDF, targets of Finan’s activism include the “harmful to minors” statutes that would curtail creative free expression.
“Chris is one of the true happy warriors in the fight for free expression,” says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. “His organizational work with the Booksellers for Free Expression and the Media Coalition has helped knock out generations of bad laws that would have harmed the freedom to read, and his work on behalf of reader privacy has kept the government from looking over our shoulders since the notion was first contemplated with the passing of the PATRIOT Act. Chris is a terrific leader and well deserving of this honor.”
About the award:
The Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor was established in 1987 to recognize and honor those individuals who have contributed substantially to FTRF through adherence to its principles and/or substantial monetary support. FTRF was founded in 1969 to promote and defend the right of individuals to freely express ideas and to access information in libraries and elsewhere. FTRF fulfills its mission through the disbursement of grants to individuals and groups, primarily for the purpose of aiding them in litigation dealing with freedom of speech and of the press.
You can find out more about Finan and the award here.