One week a year not too much to ask

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is also National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. National Women’s Small Business Month, Fire Prevention Month, German American Heritage Month, Italian American Heritage Month and Pizza Month, among others, also fall in October.

It’s a busy month.

Tucked within that hectic 31-day period are two weeks that happen to share the same seven days this year: Banned Books Week and National Newspaper Week. Seems apropos.

History relates that Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick was the first newspaper in the United States by plucky publisher Benjamin Harris in 1690. (If one were to quibble one could argue that newspapers existed long before Publick but those typically were one-page pamphlets, unlike Harris’ multi-page offering.)

The Boston, Massachusetts newspaper lasted one issue. Not liking war coverage, the local government shut it down for not having prior operating approval.

Even before Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick came along Thomas Morton’s book “New English Canaan” was banned in 1637 by the government. The book, the Puritan leaders contended, was too critical of their methods and customs.

Aside from the underlying and obvious thread of government censorship, the unifying bond between these two historical events is the suppression of ideas in service of oppression of people: if you can control information you can control what people think. If you can control what people think you can control people. Once you control people, the influence and power and riches are yours for the taking.

Newspapers and books have a long history of working in service of freedom, longer than their brethren radio, television, the internet and now social media. They have functioned to capture and convey the ideas, the events and the hopes that shape people’s lives. By calling for accountability newspapers and books can strengthen communities and weaken the grasp of the powerful on the powerless.

That is something worth celebrating, even if only one week a year.