Judge Tashima (WW2 ethnic Japanese internment camp victim) upholds Arizona ban on Chicana/o studies

The history of US racial oppression is exposed and challenged by ethnic studies in schools. Such critical studies are now illegal in Arizona

Arizona on our minds — Racism Legalized

by Rodolfo F. Acuña,  March 18, 2013

U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima has made his decision to uphold disparate treatment of Mexican Americans, and the constitutionality of HB 2281. The purpose of this law was to destroy Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program. In doing so, Tashima returned us to the times of Joseph McCarty.

The Arizona law broadly banned courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, were designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocated ethnic solidarity.

The penalty if Tucson did not comply was that the district would lose 10 percent of its annual funding — some $14 million over a fiscal year.

Tashima ruled that the plaintiffs “failed to show the law was too vague, broad or discriminatory, or that it violated students’ first amendment rights.” On the positive side, he held that courses made-to-serve students of a particular ethnic group were not unconstitutional, which seems to imply that it is alright to ban ethnic studies programs.

The ruling raised more questions than it answered. The judge’s legal reasoning and wording was not consistent with his previous decisions, and it left me with the feeling that it had been written by law clerks and that the decision was not properly vetted by Tashima who has been more precise in previous rulings. A survivor of the Japanese internment camps, he had been expected to be sensitive to the rampant racism in Arizona.

Tashima noted that Attorney General Tom Horne’s anti-Mexican American Studies ardor bordered on discriminatory conduct, saying that Horne’s “single-minded focus on terminating the MAS (Mexican-American Studies) program” raised concerns.

Then Tashima engaged in mental gymnastics: “Although some aspects of the record may be viewed to spark suspicion that the Latino population has been improperly targeted, on the whole, the evidence indicates that Defendants targeted the MAS program, not Latino students, teachers or community members who participated in the program.” This conclusion is mind boggling.

This wrongheaded logic would condone the bombing of a village as long as the villagers were not targeted.

Arizona: In the Shadow of the Klan

The burning of "outlawed books" in Nazi Germany

THE BURNING Of THE BOOKS,  by Bertolt Brecht

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power ,
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me! Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth ? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you!
Burn me!

———————————————-

The list of books banned from Tucscon, Arizona schools this week:

People involved in the Mexican American Studies struggle in Tucson, Arizona recently compiled a list of the banned books from the district, as well as released a letter signed by many organizations expressing concern over First Amendment rights, given the Tucson Unified School District’s removal of these texts. Here is the letter and here is the list, also reproduced below.

Debbie Reese has compiled this list from the May 2, 2011 Cambium Report.

High School Course Texts and Reading Lists Table 20: American Government/Social Justice Education Project 1, 2 – Texts and Reading Lists

• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson
• The Latino Condition: A Critical Reader (1998) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic
• Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) by P. Freire
• United States Government: Democracy in Action (2007) by R. C. Remy
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales
• Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990) by H. Zinn

Table 21: American History/Mexican American Perspectives, 1, 2 – Texts and Reading Lists

• Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (2004) by R. Acuña
• The Anaya Reader (1995) by R. Anaya
• The American Vision (2008) by J. Appleby et el.
• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson
• Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992) by J. A. Burciaga
• Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings (1997) by R. Gonzales
• De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views Multi-Colored Century (1998) by E. S. Martínez
• 500 Años Del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990) by E. S. Martínez
• Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human (1998) by R. Rodríguez
• The X in La Raza II (1996) by R. Rodríguez
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales
• A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (2003) by H. Zinn

Course: English/Latino Literature 7, 8

• Ten Little Indians (2004) by S. Alexie
• The Fire Next Time (1990) by J. Baldwin

Houston: Writers caravan smuggling banned books into Arizona

Thursday, February 2, 2012

CONTACT:
Tony Diaz, Nuestra Palabra Director
713-867-8943
AztecMuse@aol.com

Houston writers and activists organize a caravan of Librotraficantes to smuggle contraband books back into Arizona!

HOUSTON, TEXAS – Local literary nonprofit Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say is organizing The Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan from Houston, Texas to Tucson, Arizona leaving Houston on Monday, March 12 and culminating in Tucson, Arizona Saturday, March 17.

The caravan will be filled with authors and activists who will be taking banned books back into Arizona, to give to students. The bus will include banned authors, new authors, as well as concerned advocates of First Amendment rights of Equal Protection and Freedom of Speech.

The Caravan will be making stops in Texas, New Mexico, and, of course, Arizona.

Banned writers have embraced the caravan and will participate along the route, including Mac Arthur Genius recipient Sandra Cisneros, who kicked off our fundraising efforts by making a generous donation; Guggenheim Fellow Dagoberto Gilb, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker and Harpers; and best selling author Luis Alberto Urrea, who was the first to enthusiastically support the project through Twitter.

The caravan is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the suspension of the Mexican-American Studies Program and the removal of banned books.
2. Promotion of banned authors and their contributions to American Literature, Non-Fiction and Poetry.
3. Celebrate diversity: Children of the American Dream must unite to preserve the civil rights of all Americans.

After Oakland eviction, Occupy UC Berkeley Steps Up

November 14, 2011

by Tracey Taylor , Berkeleyside.com

Peaceful demonstrations at Occupy Cal on November 9th. Photo: Tracey Taylor

With the dismantling by police of the Occupy Oakland camp early this morning, the Occupy focus has shifted to UC Berkeley where students are preparing to hold a general strike on Tuesday. Reports suggest that Occupy Oakland protesters may march to Berkeley to join Occupy Cal demonstrations tomorrow too.

But plans by protesters to demonstrate at a Regents’ meeting scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday this week at Mission Bay have been foiled, as the meeting has been rescheduled at the advice of law enforcement officials.

Meanwhile, the violence used by police on November 9th continues to draw comment. Writing in the Huffington Post, cultural commentator Jesse Kornbluth points to reports that say several UC Berkeley faculty were assaulted in the clashes, as well as students. They included 70-year-old former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Haas, and English Professors Celeste Langan and Geoffrey O’Brien.

Cal professor Robert Reich, who is delivering the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture tomorrow, has agreed to move its venue from the Pauley Ballroom to the Mario Savio Steps in Sproul Plaza at the request of the Occupy Cal General Assembly.

FBI’s racial profiling of targeted communities in the name of “national security”

ACLU in NY accuses FBI of racial profiling

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press, October 20, 2011

NEW YORK (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union accused the FBI on Thursday of abusing increased powers it was given after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by collecting and analyzing racial and ethnic demographic information across the country based on widespread stereotypes.

The civil rights group based findings in its report on documents obtained from the FBI through Freedom Of Information Act requests made last year through 34 ACLU affiliates. It said the partially redacted documents put on its website show the FBI crossed the line in its assessment of Arab Americans in Michigan, blacks in Georgia, Chinese and Russian-Americans in California and large groups of Hispanic communities in Michigan.

“The FBI’s own documents confirm our worst fears about how it is using its overly expansive surveillance and racial profiling authority,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The FBI has targeted minority American communities around the country for investigation based not on suspicion of actual wrongdoing but on the crudest stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes.”