First Arizona introduced the anti-immigrant law SB1070 then the Mexican-American studies program was banned at Tucson Unified School District and now Mexican-studies programs at the university level might be next.
Rodolfo Francisco Acuña has been called the “father of Chicano Studies.” It’s a topic he knows well. Acuña is a historian, professor emeritus, and the author of Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, which tells the history of the Southwestern United States that includes Mexican Americans.
The book has been reprinted five times since its 1972 debut. The sixth edition was published Dec. 1, 2006 but today Acuña finds his book banned in Arizona and accused by the current attorney general, and former state superintendent of Arizona’s public instruction, of fostering “ethnic chauvinism.”
A longtime immigrant rights activist, Acuña shares his feelings about his book being banned and his thoughts as to why it’s important to fight the censorship of his book and the dismantling of the ethnic studies program in Arizona schools.
It’s frightening how uninformed some of the people who are responsible for making education policy in the U.S. appear to be. Take Tucson Unified School District Governing Board member Michael Hicks.
Latino activists calling themselves the librotraficantes are marching their caravan of books through Texas and New Mexico to Arizona in protest of the discontinuation of the Mexican-American Studies course in Tucson.
A request filed last month by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund on behalf of Latino plaintiffs to reinstate the MAS programs at TUSD has been denied this week.
Award-winning Mexican-American documentary filmmaker, Eren McGinnis dedicated the last three years to help her son and his colleagues in the cause to save ethnic studies classes by making a documentary, entitled "Precious Knowledge."
A caravan of cars, full of activists and writers will be heading soon from Houston, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona. It's cargo: books that were allegedly banned from the Tucson Unified School District.
Public schools in Tucson, Arizona, face millions of dollars in penalties after a ruling that the district's Mexican-American studies program violates state law.
Could Ethnic Studies be the key to closing the achievement gap?
In the battle over Tucson’s ethnic studies program, opponents of the program have been able to more or less hide their political agenda behind vague worries about the district’s Mexican American studies program. Not so now, say supporters of the ethnic studies program after an independent audit found that the programs are perfectly legal.
Things have degenerated so much under the current TUSD administration that civil discourse is no longer an option.
Arizona’s attempt to dismantle Tucson’s ethnic studies program was dealt a blow Tuesday when students rose up and took over a school board meeting where a resolution to determine the fate of the program was up for discussion. Fifteen minutes before the board meeting was set to start, nine students stormed the stage and chained themselves to the board members’ chairs as protesters filled the room and chanted: “Our education is under attack, what do we do? Fight back!”