Home » ACLU

Baton Rouge Selects CRAZY To Read

by

I have exciting news! The City of Baton Rouge has chosen, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, as its One Book, One Community  selection this summer.

In 2006, Baton Rouge joined more than 400 American cities that participate in this national reading program. In a letter informing me that CRAZY had been chosen,  Abby Hannie, a member of the Baton Rouge’s program  steering committee, explained:

The One Book, One Community initiative was formed to promote a common city-wide reading experience to increase intellectual and cultural dialogue among readers and to exchange ideas for the purpose of raising awareness and visibility with regard to a particular community issue.

The idea is to get everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book. Two of the most popular selections chosen since the first program was launched in 1998 in Seattle have been  To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

That’s pretty heady company.

Click to continue…

Police Shootings Stir Local Activist

by
Not long after a still unnamed Fairfax County Police officer fatally shot an unarmed motorist named David Masters last November at a traffic light in the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.,  I received a telephone call and letter from Nicholas Beltrante, an 82 year-old, former D.C. police officer, longtime private investigator, World War Two veteran, and frequent appointee to various criminal justice advisory boards in our area.
Beltrante had read a piece that I’d written in the Washington Post about the shooting of Masters, whose family said he had a mental illness, and Beltrante felt the Fairfax Police Department needed someone to begin looking over its shoulder.