SALMAN RUSHDIE AND LIBRARY SOLIDARITY:

Salman Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York. He has wounds to his neck, stomach, and liver; severed nerves in one of his arms; and, according to his literary agent, Andrew Wylie, will probably lose an eye. This singular symbol of daring artistic ambition has become, suddenly, a flesh-and-blood person in grave suffering.

The Stratford Public Library

is aggrieved by the assault on Salman Rushdie, an internationally celebrated author, and is firmly committed to freedom of speech without the threat of censorship. The attack perpetrated on Mr. Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institute is an attack on all our 1st Amendment Rights and cannot be tolerated. Libraries must maintain themselves as bastions of freedom and camaraderie regardless of the intolerance of some portions of the public.