ARIZONA book burning and more nazi-like behavior

A new immigration debate is burning in Arizona this week after the state’s attorney general declared a Tucson school district’s Mexican-American program illegal — while similar class programs for blacks, Asians and American Indians were left standing.
“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, the new attorney general said earlier this week referring to the Latino program. He ruled it violated a new state law that went into effect on Jan. 1, the New York Times reported Saturday.
When he was the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Horne wrote the bill challenging the program. The legislature passed it last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May at a time when Arizona was mired in protests against its new anti-illegal immigration law.

The state has since been caught in a fierce immigration dispute that has cost it tourism, business with other states, and the cancellation of conventions and other gatherings by national groups. Conversely, some states mostly in the Southwest and West, support the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law and plan to establish similar measures.
Still, Arizona’s law set off fiery protests in the state and in California, Washington and elsewhere. Core portions of the statute were held back and suspended by a federal court pending review in appellate courts.
Now, adding to an already combustible racial and ethnic climate in the heavily Hispanic state, 11 teachers have filed suit in federal courts challenging the new ethnic-studies law, the one that is backed by Horne.
In the Tucson school case, the state claims that the Latino program is more about creating future activists and less about education.
Horne’s fight with Tucson goes back to 2007, the Times reported, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers, told high school students in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. And Horne is a Republican.
Arizona school districts may lose 10 percent of their state funds if their ethnic studies programs fail to meet new state standards. Programs that support the overthrow of the United States government are banned. Also prohibited are classes that encourage hatred or resentment toward a race, or that focus on one race, or that support ethnic solidarity instead of individuality.
Horne said that Tucson’s Latino program violated all those provisions. The district has 60 days to comply with the new law, although Horne indicated that the program would be ended anyway. He said that other districts ethnic-studies programs could continue, absent any complaints.
At Tucson High Magnet School where nearly all the students enrolled in Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class were Mexican-American, students expressed anger, asking how they could protest Horne’s decision.
“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” Acosta told the New York Times. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”
On the other side, Horne was asked if he felt he was being compared to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner whose violence against blacks and other freedom fighters became the image of bigotry in the 1960s. Horne said he had joined the March on Washington in 1963, and lashed out at his critics, saying, “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones re-segregating.”
Bad things are happening in Arizona … again. Good things too!
The extremist Arizona legislature enacted a law that just recently caused the banning of nearly 100 books from Tucson public schools. The list includes prominent Latino authors, plus Shakespeare, Thoreau, and James Baldwin. They even banned Zorro!
The real goal was to totally dismantle the Tucson school district’s Mexican American Studies program. Mission accomplished. The program is gone. Not a class survived.
The enabling act, Arizona House Bill 2281, contains some lofty language. It requires that school districts teach students to “value each other as individuals.” They cannot be instructed to “hate other races” or “overthrow the United States government.” Promoting “resentment toward a race or class of people” or “ethnic solidarity” is forbidden. A bit overdone but it has some potential, right?
The law was just a smokescreen to cover ethnically based attacks on Latinos students in Tucson schools. Neither the banned books nor the dismantled Mexican American Studies program violated any of the provisions listed yet the law banned the books and ended the program.
Wake up call
Preoccupied with other issues, I’d missed this critical event until this weekend. A close friend since college, Michael Sedano, sent me this cryptic message: check out my latest adventures. My friend is part of the Librotraficante Caravan, or “book smugglers caravan,” as Mike calls it. Latinos authors and others opened underground libraries in Arizona and environs. These enclaves of literacy offer the banned books to Latino students, no special permits required.
I first met Sedano in college back in the day. Aside from his many other fine qualities, I enjoyed a special benefit from hanging out with him. His literary taste was (and is) impeccable. He introduced me to Joyce, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, even Edgar Rice Burroughs. A few years ago, he helped start La Bloga, an online salon for leading Latino authors. Before that, he launched Read! Raza — a program and web site that promotes reading and oral readings of Latino literature for K-12 students.
It makes perfect sense that my good friend hit the road with a stash of contraband literature headed for underground libraries. He’s serving fellow Latinos and, in doing so, he and his literary comrades defend the rights of all of us to freely read, discuss, and think about our culture, history, and future.
But what’s wrong with Arizona legislature and the state superintendent of schools who implemented this dreadful edict?
They shoot judges, don’t they?
Federal judge John Roll of Arizona was shot dead in Tucson, Arizona at the same 2011 shooting that targeted Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Roll, a Bush appointee, became the target of anti-Latino racism when he simply allowed a lawsuit to go forward brought by undocumented workers against a prominent rancher. After the ruling, Roll was subject to filthy invective and death threats day after day by phone and email. In one afternoon, his office received 200 hostile calls
The attack on Judge Roll reflect the constituency behind the Arizona law that bans books and axes academic programs that serve a community (Tucson schools are 60% Latino). It never occurred to them that their acts caused harm and directly opposed to a long legal tradition against the formal censorship of ideas and books (with the exception of sexual “obscenity”). This applies to schools as well. In the landmark decision on the issue, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled:
“First Amendment rights are available to teachers and students, subject to application in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.
“A prohibition against expression of opinion, without any evidence that the rule is necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others, is not permissible under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Tinker v. Des Moines Sch. Dist., November 12, 1968
Arizona’s political rulers not only failed to read the Constitution, they ignored an independent curriculum audit of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program. The Cambrium Learning, Inc. audit found “no evidence” that the Tucson Mexican American Studies program violated any provisions of the Arizona law.
Fighting for the right to read, think, and speak freely
Latinos from California to Texas are fighting back. They formed Librotraficante (book trafficker) and established underground libraries that stock the banned books. The effort, called “operation wetbook,” is up and running in Tucson, Albuquerque, San Antonio, and Houston. Novelist and entrepreneur Tony Diaz, founder of Librotraficante summed up the resistance to Arizona’s latest attack on Latinos:
“When Arizona decided to rewrite history, we decided to make more … by banning, by prohibiting Latino studies [the Arizona legislature] created what they feared the most. We’re not the sleeping giant. We’re the working giant and reporting for work right now and from now on.
Writing off this nascent Latino mobilization would be a major mistake for the craven class of racist right wingers and their patrons. In 2006, Congress tried to pass some blatantly anti-Latino legislation. The Latino community responded with millions in the streets and crushed the effort in record time.
Ultimately, knowledge is power. Reading, talking, sharing thoughts, and debate provide the path to knowledge. Who would stand in the way? Who would stop such an effort?
As Michael Sedano said on day five of his travels for Libro Traficantes:
“Los Libro Traficantes, acting as a living, flesh-and-blood prosthesis for the United States cultural mind, liberated the banned books by leaving a trail of banned book libraries in their wake as they caravanned from Houston to San Antonio to El Paso to Mesilla to Albuquerque to Tucson.” Michael Sedano, On the Road for Banned Books, March 17

(CNN) – Nearly two weeks since Tucson, Arizona’s, Mexican-American studies classes were suspended, some books have been removed from classes, teachers are uncertain about what curriculum to use and some students said they’d like to give district and state school administrators some homework: Listen to the students affected by the decision.
“I just want to talk to them,” said Nicolas Dominguez, a senior at Tucson Magnet High School, where administrators removed several seminal Mexican-American studies texts last week. “I want to talk to them about all of this, and I want to get to know them, because you have to get to know people before you can change them. I think it’s essential to become friends with the state superintendent and work together.”
The Governing Board of the Tucson Unified School District voted January 10 to suspended its Mexican-American studies program after an administrative law judge ruled it violated a new state law and the state said the local district was going to lose $15 million in annual aid. In a district where 60% of the 53,000 students are Latino, some said they felt like Chicano or Mexican-American perspectives on history have become unacceptable.
This week, seven textbooks associated with the Mexican-American studies program were removed from classrooms, provoking claims of censorship. District leaders said they aren’t banning the books, but have removed them from classrooms while their content is evaluated.
The district’s Governing Board President, Mark Stegeman, said that copies of some of the books were still available in school libraries. But a search of the Tucson district’s school library online catalog, only a handful of copies of each book were available in any of the 11 high school libraries searchable online.
“I feel really disheartened,” said Maria Therese Mejia, a senior at Tucson Magnet High School. “Those are our history, you know? It’s ridiculous for them to be taking away our education. They’re taking (the books) to storage where no one can use them.”
Opponents of the book removals say district leaders cut off access to books that give an account of American history from the perspective of Latinos and indigenous people who lived in the Southwest long before Arizona was a state. The books were removed from classrooms on Friday, in at least one instance during class as students looked on.
The Tucson Unified School District issued a statement late Tuesday calling reports of book banning “completely false and misleading.”
Contrary to earlier reports which indicated that dozens of books listed as class materials had been taken away, the statement said only seven titles were affected:
“Critical Race Theory,” by Richard Delgado
“500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures,” edited by Elizabeth Martinez
“Message to AZTLAN,” by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
“Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement,” by Arturo Rosales
“OccupiedAmerica: A History of Chicanos,” by Rodolfo Acuna
“Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” by Paulo Freire
“Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson
“Each book has been boxed and stored as part of the process of suspending the classes,” the statement read. “The books listed above were cited in the ruling that found the classes out of compliance with state law.”
Arizona State Superintendent John Huppenthal ordered on January 6 that about 10% of the district’s state funding, about $15 million over the course of a year, be withheld, retroactive to August 15, 2011, if it did not dismantle its Mexican-American studies courses.
That order followed a December administrative law ruling that the program was teaching “in a biased, political and emotionally charged manner,” and upheld a state finding that it violated a 2010 law that bans ethnic studies classes which “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” In Tucson, only Mexican-American studies classes were affected.
An education company’s independent audit of Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program done concluded in May that none of the courses were in violation of that law, that they benefited students and contributed to a climate of acceptance in the schools. The audit suggested a review of two books for curriculum and age-appropriateness: “Message to AZTLAN,” a book of speeches and other writings by Chicano civil rights activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, and “500 Years or Chicano History in Pictures.”
“I think in most cases these books never went through a proper review process in the beginning, and they are now being removed, not in a specific review process but in that the state has decided these courses not be taught,” Stegeman said.
Stegeman said it’s possible some books could be reapproved for the classroom after a review. He said the review might take place before the summer break.
But in the meantime, the district’s decisions suspended classes called Latino literature, American history/Mexican-American perspectives, Chicano art and an American government/social justice education project course. With the curriculum dismissed and books removed, teachers say they haven’t received clear guidance on how to proceed with teaching their classes for the rest of the school year. They’ve been told that the district will issue a new curriculum that includes “a balanced presentation of diverse viewpoints on controversial issues,” but it hasn’t come yet. Teachers said their old curriculum already complied with those standards.
Curtis Acosta, a Tucson High teacher who has been with the district for 17 years, half of them as a teacher of Latino and Chicano literature, said he’s frustrated to be without a plan to move forward.
“Now we’re told we can talk about race, but it has to be through a multicultural perspective. And if you looked at our (old) curriculum, it was from a multicultural perspective,” said Acosta, who said he used the writing of Sherman Alexie, Martin Luther King Jr., William Shakespeare, Ronald Takaki and Jonathan Kozol in his classes.
“I’m not confident one bit to move forward with any writer that has that social justice streak in them,” Acosta said. “I have already built something that’s multicultural, centered around empowerment of youth and liberates them to make decisions critically and find their own academic integrity.”
Students said they’re learning a hard but practical lesson about politics.
“For me, what I’ve learned through all this is that students and youth have a lot of voices that we don’t get to express,” Mejia said. “We’re the ones who will be changed by this situation. We will be the ones who speak out and do marches, and we will be the ones making the future. And no matter what, we have the power to stand up for what we believe.”
Students have already staged several marches and a class walkout since the state law was passed in 2010, and another walkout is planned for January 24; students said they will attend a teach-in about Chicano history by University of Arizona professors.
A group of students and teachers, including Dominguez and Acosta, have filed a suit in federal district court to overturn the state law barring ethnic studies.
Outside organizations might get involved, too.
Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said the removal of the books was a big topic of discussion at the association’s 2012 midwinter meeting, which began last Thursday in Dallas. Groups including REFORMA, the Latino librarians’ group, the American Indian Librarians’ Association and the Intellectual Freedom Committee planned to respond and a coalition of civil liberties groups were researching possible legal action and expecting to release a statement this week, Jones said.
Regardless of the words the district used, Jones said, it’s actions restricted access to books, which leads to censorship.
“We’re gathering facts. Right now it looks like it’s just the curriculum that’s affected and not school libraries,” Jones said. “But we know from experience this will eventually affect books in the library.”
Jones said there have been similar moves in Texas and other states to censor materials reflecting ethnic points of view. Such actions rob students of opportunities to form their own opinions, Jones said.
“If (school officials are) listening to their communities, they should understand that to take ethnic diversity out of curriculum in the 21st century is damaging and hateful,” Jones said. “It stifles the conversations we desperately need to have in this country about inclusion, about preparing all people in this country to go in the workforce, to go to college, to be successful in life. And to ban discussion about these types of issues is very damaging to our country and our democracy.”
HOW CAN SUCH A PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL STATE HOST SUCH A BUNCH OF RIGHT WING FANATIC, BIGOTS???

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at 12:56 PM and filed under 1st Amendment (speech), Articles, Civil Rights, Education, Extremism, Immigration, Race. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.

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