Thank you, Tampa ACLU. The intervention of Patrick Manteiga of La Gaceta fixed the problem.

I believe he told one Orme of the HCC technology overloads that the college made the mistake of leaving the email address cluster on the web and was punishing me for its incompetence because I used it.

Besides, he told the fellow that I am a wild woman who will not give up until I get my email opened again and that the administration would be better off to open my email and save itself the grief of my open-my-email campaign. So my email is open now.

I have since learned that a group of people who opposed adding non-Christian holidays to the school calendar has filed a suit against the County school system on the same issue. The schools shut down the email access of this group to the school emails. I am in the process of discovering whether this were a Board decision or whether the administration--fully as ignorant as that at HCC--shut it down itself without consulting the School Board. ACLU might want to follow this case and to add a whatchamacallit support-of-free-speech endorsement (friend of the court?) to the people's case who are suing the School Board.

I don't agree with the antis who wanted only Christian holidays recognized by the school system, but its benighted members have a right to air their views, especially to a tax-supported institution. I hope I do not need to be back to the ACLU about this issue, but with the hip-deep ignorance of the Bay Area, a possibility exists that I will be.

Lee Drury De Cesare ACLU member --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: TampaFL ACLUFL [mailto:aclufl_tampa@yahoo.com] Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 1:54 AM To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com Subject: Hills Community College Email Acct. Free Speech - ACLU help requested Subject: Hills Community College Email Acct. Free Speech - ACLU help requested

We are not certain about this issue. Please complete the ACLU of Florida request for assistance web form at http://www.aclufl.org/forms/?action=complaintForm to get your request formally into our systems.

By blind copy of this communication, we are providing your information to the Greater Tampa Chapter of the ACLU of Florida legal panel staff coordinator for consideration of the legal panel.

Lee De Cesare wrote: I introduced myself to the local ACLU chapter chair Paul (I believe) and the young woman who spoke against parental notification at the Hillsborough County School Board meeting. I am a member of the ACLU and always relieved when the organization is on the scene to protect civil liberties--especially as was this case of the County's young gay students.

I need ACLU help myself. I am a retired professor of Hillsborough Community College (28 years). I lived in Beach Park in Tampa before moving to the beach when I retired. I got an address list off the HCC Web to send email, which turned out to be the system-wide addresses. I was delighted to learn that the email went system wide to faculty and staff because in it I criticized the administration, which I fought constantly while I was still teaching for various administration skullduggeries.

I was especially active against its fascist conduct when I was faculty union president. I was widely hated at the Gordon Keller administration building, the members of which celebrated, I am sure when I retired.

Subsequent to the email sent round, I got a snail mail from a administration anonymous Deep Throat, who informed me that the administration had shut my email out so that I could email no one at HCC.

The administration had not informed me of this fact: it just shut me down. I did a blog to put this email on since the Deepthroat wanted the information about current administration put on the Web: www.HCCDeepThroat.blogspot.com.

I have since got another snail mail drop from Deepthroat and mounted that too. When Patrick Manteiga, my old boss when I wrote a column for La Gaceta, called the HCC tech department and spoke to a guy named Orme, who is in charge of the mainframe (he ran against Ronda Storms for the Florida Senate and lost).

Orme said that all I had to do was call him and that he would restore my email. I called, and Orme told me that if I signed a statement that I was a spammer and subject to the spammer law, the college would consider reinstating my email. I refused.

He said that they had fixed the problem my email detected by removing that system-wide address page from the Web that I had used when I distributed the email. They just want to shut up my criticism of the administration.

Question: can you help me get my email reopened into the college? This is a free-speech issue if ever there was one. I am going to the January Board meeting to protest, and it would help if ACLU could go with me or that I could say that ACLU is concerned with the situation.

Sincerely, Lee Drury De Cesare 15316 Gulf Boulevard 802 Madeira Beach, FL 33708 727-398-4142

Communications Committee Board Member (a volunteer and probably not an attorney) The Greater Tampa Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida (FL) Website: http://www.ACLUFL.org/Tampa, Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACLUTampa/ Greater Tampa ACLU Board Voice Mail Telephone: 813-227-9877 ACLU of Florida (http://www.ACLUFL.org); ACLU of Florida Phone Number: (786) 363-2700 ACLU of Florida Mailing Address: 4500 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 340, Miami, FL 33137-3227 Requests for ACLU of Florida legal assistance: http://www.ACLUFL.org/get_help/ ACLU National (http://www.ACLU.org) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com