Unmute yourself with cartoons! Join Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and award-winning editorial cartoonists Ruben Bolling, Clay Jones, and Shannon Wheeler for "Editorial Cartooning: A Workshop for Students" on February 23, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. PST. The artists will describe their process for making editorial cartoons, provide tips for effective editorial cartoons, and discuss working with editors and pitching ideas. We'll also talk about censorship, including self-censorship, and give students a chance to ask their own questions.
CBLDF is offering "Editorial Cartooning: A Workshop for Students" in conjunction with Student Press Freedom Day on February 24, 2022. Sponsored by the Student Press Law Center, Student Press Freedom Day is a national day of action during which we celebrate the contributions of student journalists and the need to support their independence without censorship or threat to their advisers. The theme for Student Press Freedom Day 2022 is "Unmute Yourself!" It calls attention to student journalists' right to publish truthfully without inhibition and to tell the stories most important to their communities, free from censorship – and from self-censorship. Learn more here.
Register for "Editorial Cartooning: A Workshop for Students" on February 23, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. PST:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nDJEHahVRhS4OimUonPlCw
About Ruben Bolling
© Ruben BollingRuben Bolling is the author of the weekly comic strip "Tom the Dancing Bug," distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication to newspapers across North America. The comic strip has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and hundreds of other newspapers.
"Tom the Dancing Bug" is featured every week on BoingBoing.net, one of the most linked-to websites in the world; DailyKos.com, the premier online political community website; and GoComics.com, the largest comics website.
"Tom the Dancing Bug" has won awards (for example, the 2017 Herblock Prize, the 2018 RFK Journalism Award, and the 2021 Berryman Award), and has lost awards (it was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019 and 2021).
In 2020, Clover Press launched The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug series of books, starting with Volume 7 Into the Trumpverse: The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug, 2016-2019. In 2021, Volume 6 was released, Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens: The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug, 2012-2015. Volume 5, Eat the Poor, The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug, 2007-2011, will be released in 2022.
https://linktr.ee/tomthedancingbug
About Clay Jones
© Clay JonesClay Jones was often sent to the principal's office as a child for making fun of his classmates and teachers with his drawings. He discovered at a young age he had a knack for making fun of people and he decided later to make it a career and focus on those more deserving of his sarcastic rage: politicians (mostly Republicans). He went from drawing simple Crayola caricatures of his friends in elementary school to full-sized comic books by the time he was in high school to being in the pages of Newsweek in his 20s.
Jones' cartoons have entertained readers in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA Today and Newsweek magazine.
He has also created commissioned cartoons and covers for Orlando Weekly, the City Pulse (Lansing, Michigan), The Seattle Times, The Daily Dot, The Independent (St. George, Utah), the Longview News Journal in Texas, The Herald Dispatch in Huntington (West Virginia), the News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown (Kentucky), the Dorchester Reporter (Massachusetts), and the Emmitsburg News-Journal (Maryland). He's also done special projects for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the New Labor Forum. His work has also been seen on the Rachel Maddow Show and Velshi and Ruhle on MSNBC.
Jones is currently drawing one cartoon each week for the CNN Opinion Newsletter.
Jones was a finalist for the Herblock Prize in 2019 and a finalist for the National Headliner Award in 2020. Sometimes, he wins, too. He has been the recipient of numerous awards in Hawaii and Virginia and three consecutive first-place awards from the Mississippi Press Association. In 2018, a cartoon drawn for The Highlands Current in New York placed in the New York Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest, and won Best Cartoon in the National Newspaper Association's Better Newspaper Contest.
https://claytoonz.com/
About Shannon Wheeler
© Shannon WheelerShannon Wheeler is an award-winning cartoonist best known as the creator of the satirical superhero Too Much Coffee Man, who has appeared around the world in comic books, newspapers, magazines, books, and even his very own opera. He has also created the strip "Postage Stamp Funnies" for The Onion and illustrated several books, including I Thought You Would Be Funnier, Grandpa Won't Wake Up, and Oil & Water. Wheeler frequently contributes cartoons to The New Yorker. With writer Mark Russell, he co-created the acclaimed book God Is Disappointed in You (a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Bible) and its sequel Apocrypha Now.
Wheeler is the recipient of the 1995 Eisner Award for Best New Series (Too Much Coffee Man), the 2011 Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication (I Thought You Would Be Funnier), and the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic (Harvey Kurtzman's Marley's Ghost, by Harvey Kurtzman, Josh O'Neill, Shannon Wheeler, and Gideo Kendall).
https://www.shannonleowheeler.com/
About Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit organization protecting the freedom to read comics! Our work protects readers, creators, librarians, retailers, publishers, and educators who face the threat of censorship. We monitor legislation and challenge laws that would limit the First Amendment. We create resources that promote understanding of comics and the rights our community is guaranteed. We publish news and information about censorship events as they happen. We are partners in the Kids' Right to Read Project and Banned Books Week. Our expert legal team is available to respond to First Amendment emergencies at a moment's notice. CBLDF is a lean organization that works hard to protect the rights on which our community depends. For more information, visit www.cbldf.org
