mexmigration: History and Politics of Mexican Immigration

THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART III: Jeff Biggers

2012-01-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Moderator’s note: Continuing with our series on the Ethnic Studies Crisis in Arizona, we present the award-winning author and blogger, Jeff Bigger. This is an interview with Curtis Acosta, one of the school teachers involved with the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District that was just abolished by district officials in response to a ruling by the State Superintendent of Education. The interview was originally posted to AlterNet June 17 at 8:15am (ET).

“The Madness” of the Tucson Book Ban: Interview with Mexican American Studies Teacher Curtis Acosta on “The Tempest”

Returning to the classroom after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, students and teachers will be greeted by a tremendous amount of confusion and potentially traumatizing fallout from last week’s extraordinary ban on books in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), as part of the suspension of the nationally acclaimed Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies program.

Nowhere has that confusion been greater than at Tucson High School, a historic battleground in the city’s long-time struggle to end discrimination and segregationist practices. Tucson’s largest school district, in fact, with over 60 percent of its students from Mexican American families, remains under an embarrassing federal desegregation order.

With nearly two decades of teaching experience, Tucson High School teacher Curtis Acosta was praised on CNN for his critical role in bringing together students in the aftermath of the Giffords shooting in Tucson. In a similar fashion, Acosta has joined other teachers and community in numerous attempts to bring together Tucson’s faltering school administrators and board members in community forums and meetings. Featured in the acclaimed film documentary, Precious Knowledge, Acosta has been forced to defend wild accusations by the troublingly erratic TUSD school board president Mark Stegemen last summer that his use of literature and hand clapping, in the tradition of celebrated United Farm Work leader and native Arizona Cesar Chavez, was “cult-like.”

As I reported in the past, in an audit commissioned by Arizona’s state superintendent of public instruction, the MAS program was not only in full compliance with Arizona laws, but students in the MAS high school program “graduate in the very least at a rate of 5 percent more than their counterparts in 2005, and at the most, a rate of 11 percent more in 2010.” Scholars and educators from across the country have hailed Tucson’s MAS program as “the nation’s most innovative and successful academic and instructional program in Ethnic Studies at the secondary school level.

Here’s an interview with Acosta on the crisis in Tucson’s schools.

Jeff Biggers: What do MAS courses do you teach and how long have you been teaching?

Curtis Acosta: I designed the curriculum and pedagogy for both Latino Literature at the junior and senior levels at Tucson High Magnet School. I have taught both courses since their inception at our school. My first opportunity was to teach and design the junior class starting in 2003-04, followed closely by the senior level class which began in 2005-06. The senior component at Tucson High was granted due to the work of our students of the graduating class of 2006 who desperately wanted to continue the rigorous study in our classes because it reflected their lives and cultura, as well as serving as a window to the experiences of others. They embraced the human elements of the class we use as a foundation to academic study and petitioned the site based decision making committee, as well as a presentation focusing on the transformation that our classes had in their lives, their self-esteem, and scholarly goals.

This is my seventeenth year teaching for TUSD, all but two of those years at Tucson High. My colleagues and I have all been dedicated to our students in TUSD for years through innovation and hard work. We have quantitative academic results and brilliant graduates who are outstanding young people dedicated to their community. That is why the lack of support from our own district has been so frustrating and tragic. We have worked tirelessly for the students and families in the district for decades and the same cannot be said by the politicians and officials that ended our program on January 10th

JB: How did TUSD administrators prepare you in advance for any changes in your courses?

CA: We received absolutely no practical preparation for how our classes would be altered. My local site administrator at THS spoke to all our classes before the Governing Board meeting, but he had little insight pertaining to the Board’s intentions. He wanted to communicate to the students that changes may happen and walked them through a few possibilities. However, he really could not provide any details since he said he was not sure which direction the Board would choose to proceed.

JB: How did the school present the changes to the students, and assist in the transition?

CA: As of today, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, my students have yet to hear from their administration. My two MAS colleagues and I have had one 90-minute meeting last Wednesday the 11th, in which we were told that TUSD expects immediate changes. At that meeting, no one was certain what those changes included and the guidelines were non-existent for how to be sure we are in compliance with the law. What was clear is that our curriculum and pedagogy must be entirely overhauled. Which means the alterations are not only what we teach, but how we teach. No further support has been given to this point, and I believe my site administrators are equally confused about the vagueness of the direction and policy, which is why we have received little direction.

JB: Explain how you use “The Tempest” and why administrators objected?

CA: I am glad you asked this question since it gives me a chance to clear up many of the nuances that did not go viral. First and foremost, I believe our local site administrators at THS had my colleagues and my best interests at heart during our discussion of curriculum. This is a situation that was painful for everyone in our room at THS – administrators, department chairs, and teachers. This is all due to the direction of the Governing Board and the decision to comply with a bad law. It was clear that TUSD administrators gave little practical guidance to our site administrators. Thus, we were all trying to figure this out together.

I recorded the meeting with permission of all in the room, and listened to it again last night. What is very clear is that “The Tempest” is problematic for our administrators due to the content of the play and the pedagogical choices I have made. In other words, Shakespeare wrote a play that is clearly about colonization of “the new world” and there are strong themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power that permeate the play, along with themes of love and redemption. We study this work by Shakespeare using the work of renowned historian Ronald Takaki and the chapter “The Tempest in the Wilderness” from his a book A Different Mirror where he uses the play to explore the early English settlements on this continent and English imperialism. From there, we immerse ourselves in the play and discuss the beauty of the language, Shakespeare’s multiple perspectives on colonization, and the brilliant and courageous attention he gives to such important issues.

However, TUSD is basing our compliance upon their appeal and Mr. Kowall’s ruling. Thus, I believe our administrators advised me properly when they said to avoid texts, units, or lessons with race and oppression as a central focus. If we are asked to follow a bad law than absurdities such as advising I stay away from teaching “The Tempest” not only seems prudent, but intelligent. We also have not received confirmation that the ideas, dialogue, and class work of our students will be protected. In clearer words, if I avoid discussing such themes in class, yet the students see the themes and decide to write, discuss or ask questions in class, we may also be found to be in violation. The stakes are far too high since a violation of the law could cost the district millions, our employment, and personal penalties from the state for breaking the law.

At the end of the meeting it became clear to all of us that I need to avoid such literature and it was directly stated. Due to the madness of this situation and our fragile positions as instructors who will be frequently observed for compliance, and be asked to produce examples of student work as proof of our compliance, I cannot disagree with their advice. Now we are in the position of having to rule out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, etc. for the exact same reasons.

Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award-winning author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (Nation/Basic Books), among other books. Visit his website: www.jeffbiggers.com

THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART II

2012-01-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

Moderator’s Note: We are sharing this update prepared by our colleague Salomón Baldenegro on the situation in Arizona surrounding the struggle to reverse HB2281, the draconian law that bans Ethnic Studies in Arizona, in violation of a previous federal court desegregation order for the Tucson Unified School District.

Updates on the TUSD Board and Federal Judge Tashima’s Rulings

Salomón Baldenegro

Estimadas/os:

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, our efforts to save Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District was dealt a double whammy. These items are already on the Web, so you may already be apprised of what I report below.

1. By a 4-1 vote, the TUSD Governing Board voted to dismantle the MAS curriculum-department, effective immediately (as in starting today). Only board member Adelita Grijalva opposed the motion and stood up for our community.

Several hundred people attended, and approximately 12 speakers spoke in favor of MAS, asking the board to appeal John Huppenthal’s decision that teaching Mexican American history and literature and reading books by Mexican American authors in TUSD schools is
illegal (the time allotted for public comment didn’t allow for more speakers).

Michael Hicks, the Tea Party board member read a prepared motion calling for the immediate dismantling of MAS.

Newly-appointed board member, Alexandre Sugiyama enthusiastically seconded the motion. This was not a total surprise, given that Sugiyama was sponsored for the board appointment by virulent racist Tea Party state senator Frank Antenori (Tucson’s wannabe Russell Pearce).

Board president Mark Stegeman, who has been trying to dismantle MAS for a year now, was the picture of smugness, knowing he finally had the votes to dismantle MAS.

The saddest, embarrassingly pathetic, and most disgraceful spectacle of the evening was when Mexican American board member Miguel Cuevas joined the Mexican haters and voted for the motion to dismantle MAS, using the same rhetoric to justify his vote as Hicks,
Sugiyama, and Stegeman.

Making the Cuevas vote even more pathetic is the fact that Hicks, Stegeman, and Sugiyama hate him as much as they hate us and our students.

Just two weeks ago, when Sugiyama was sworn in as a board member, Cuevas was the board president. Within a couple of minutes of Sugiyama’s being sworn in, he seconded a motion by Hicks to remove Cuevas as board president and replace him with Stegeman. It was a raw power move—the Mexican haters weren’t about to have no stinkin’ Meskin [sic] be the boss.

The depth of hate these people and their allies have for us, our community, and our students is truly mind boggling.

2. Earlier in the day, Federal Judge Atsushi Wallace Tashima, who is presiding over the “Save Ethnic Studies” lawsuit brought by the 11 MAS teachers and two students, issued a ruling regarding the motion by the SES plaintiffs in which they sought a Preliminary
Injunction that would halt the implementation of HB 2281 and any sanctions (e.g., loss of state funding for TUSD) associated with HB 2281.

Judge Tashima:

· Refused to grant the Injunction.

· Threw out the teachers from the lawsuit, saying that they had no standing to sue.

· Ruled that the First Amendment issues the teachers raised were not valid.

Tashima did allow the lawsuit to proceed to trial with the two students as plaintiffs. While this is obviously a good thing in that Huppenthal had asked Tashima to dismiss the lawsuit, lawsuits move very slowly, so by the time the SES case goes to trial, the MAS curriculum will have been dismantled for a long time (years?).

Be that as it may, the SES movement—including having fundraisers to raise money to fund the lawsuit—will continue. We need to continue supporting the SES movement by contributing money to it, attending SES events (rallies, fundraisers, press conferences,
court hearings), etc.

This matter is not over. As I told the TUSD board, we are going to win. Every time in our history that the Mexican haters have sought to marginalize us or otherwise hurt our community and our people, we have stood tall and resisted—and we have won! Sometimes
it takes a while and we experience some setbacks along the way, but we always win.

The struggle has entered another phase, besides the upcoming legal battles. As strategies develop, I will inform you and ask you to—actively!!!—help us.

Here are links to three good articles on Tuesday’s meeting—one by Dylan Smith in the Tucson Sentinel that contains an array of photos that capture the dynamics at the meeting; another in the Huffington Post by award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers; and another by David Abie Morales, aka “The Three Sonorans.” Here are the links:

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/011012_tusd_ethnic_studies/tusd-axes-ethnic-studies/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/tucson-mexican-american-studies_b_1199794.html

http://tucsoncitizen.com/three-sonorans/2012/01/11/update-on-mexican-american-studies-in-tusd-after-last-nights-vote /#comments

Salomón Baldenegro

THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART I - Rodolfo Acuña on Tucson's School Board

2012-01-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Moderator’s Note: This past week (January 10), the School Board of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) voted to dismantle the district’s phenomenally successful Mexican American Studies Program in response to a decision by a conservative judge that the program violated Arizona's draconian and clearly unconstitutional law banning ethnic studies programs in the state's public schools. We are presenting an important series of blog contributions by various colleagues on the significance, context, and politics surrounding this tragic and misguided policy shift by public educators in Arizona. We will also shortly be posting our own analysis and critique of the unfolding struggle to defend ethnic studies in Arizona and beyond. This first post is prepared by our colleague, Rodolfo Acuña, Professor of Chicana/o Studies at Cal State-Northridge and one of the founders of this remarkable field of interdisciplinary study and research.

Tucson’s Sin of Scandal

Failing Students

Rodolfo F. Acuña

What is missing in the media’s coverage of the elimination of the Tucson Unified School District Mexican American Studies program is that students were learning and they wanted to go to school. I take this travesty as a personal matter. One of the reasons I have stayed in education for over fifty-five years is that I wanted to do something about the dropout problem. I always heeded John Dewey’s dicta that student failure was the consequence of teacher failure. If students drop out then there is something wrong with the educational system.

Arizona education has many problems: Taxpayers do not want to pay for schools and it is dead last in student per capita spending. White parents don’t want their children going to school with Latinos and blacks as well as other working class people, so charter schools have multiplied to “balance” student ethnicity by making these schools more segregated with whites going to the privileged charter schools.

Arizona has blatantly avoided federal court orders to desegregate: More than fifty years after Brown v. the Board of Education (1954), the TUSD is still under a federal court mandate to “balance” the schools. The federal government, meanwhile, has poured millions of dollars into Arizona to help pay for integration purposes.

The truth be told, there has been no improvement: For Latina/os, the dropout rate remains at over fifty percent. As part of an effort to correct imbalances, the federal court in its desegregation plan, included the MAS program, which the federal government paid for.

Because I have been a highly successful educator, I have seen that building student identity ameliorates an inferiority complex ingrained by the educational process. Innumerable studies prove that an increased sense of self motivates students to improve their skills and allows them to succeed in school.

The reason that I want to improve education is personal. I am not religious, but I always remember the nuns telling me when I saw a person less fortunate to say, “There for the grace of God go I.”

Although I could not myself do it, I appreciate the work of Fr. Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries. It hurts me every time I see a gang kid because I realize that as a member of society I bear a responsibility for the outcome. My vocation differs from Greg’s and I work with students by giving them an alternative to gangs when they are young. My view is that every student that goes to college does not end up in a gang.

The TUSD MAS program was contributing toward that end. Despite the racist lies of Arizona politicos, the program is a model proven to motivate students. And, despite the actions of the TUSD school board, other districts will emulate and study it.

My feelings about the people behind the destruction of the MAS program are that they will have no redemption. They are no better than the members of the mafia who do not care about the outcome or hardships they cause as long as they make a profit.

Democracy has been dealt a serious blow. The actions of these racists have contributed to disillusionment among many students, teachers, and parents. These racist policies have brought about a loss of faith, which is always difficult whether it be in religion or politics. This loss leads to a sense of emptiness and hopelessness. For instance, I know people who as a result of the pedophile scandals in the Catholic Church have not returned to mass.

In ending the MAS program, the state of Arizona has been complicit in condemning many Latina/o students to failure. Thomas de Aquinas defined scandal as a word or action that is intrinsically evil, and leads to the spiritual ruin of another person. You don’t necessarily have to physically cause someone’s sin, but only be the moral cause of the sin. The sin of scandal is not accidental but premeditated as in the case of the policies perpetrated by Arizona elites.

From the top on down, Arizona officials know that their actions are causing many Latina/os to be stigmatized. They know that they are contributing to higher dropout rates and they don’t care.

Mark Stegeman, Michael Hicks, Miguel Cuevas and the newly appointed Alexandre Sugiyama all know it. They are bought men who don’t care about the consequences as long as it fills their pockets.

For them, education is business and it doesn’t much matter if Mexican Americans get an education. As long as white people hate Mexicans, it will be easier to cash-in on their lack of educational opportunity.

It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party is not a populist movement. It is racist and driven by right- wing funding by elites that includes the Koch brothers, who Mitt Romney states are the “financial engine of the Tea Party.”

Most Arizonans know the role of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). People for the American Way and Common Cause have published a report that documents the fact that ALEC has inspired and written most of the anti- Latina/o and anti-worker legislation in the state of Arizona. ALEC is at the forefront of anti-labor, anti-healthcare and anti-environmental attacks and is behind the privatization of schools and prisons.

Major corporations including Coca-Cola, Kraft, ExxonMobil and GlaxoSmithKline are key players in Arizona politics. Two dozen major corporations have seats on ALEC’s board which is insidiously called the “Private Enterprise Board.”

Well aware of the growing Latina/o population, it is to ALEC’s advantage to keep the state white and Mexicans disenfranchised. Thus, it has sponsored voter suppression bills that potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of Arizonans.

The report identifies fifty Arizona state legislators who are current ALEC members. These sold-out politicos wrote and sponsored SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law. It is no accident that privatized prisons are flush with immigrant detainees. Uneducated Mexican Americans also insure future inmate growth. Aside from money to run the prisons, prison labor is competing with free labor.

In Tucson, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council is an ALEC mini-me; an all-white country club whose members overlap with other heavy hitters locally, regionally and statewide. The TUSD superintendent of schools is a former SALC vice-president.

Recently, when Judy Burns, a supporter of the MAS program died, SALC engineered the appointment of Alexandre Sugiyama, a lecturer in Economics at the University of Arizona, to fill her seat. It accomplished its ends by stacking the selection committee.

Sugiyama was obviously selected because he is half Brazilian and half Japanese. He has no ties to the community; he is a lecturer with no publications, or knowledge or interest in education.

His student evaluations are low: “AVOID (reasons): 1. Resents his own job such that he’s consistently 15 mins late to 1hr class…” Another “if you choose to take this class with this teacher you are in for a real treat. TORTURE. Sugiyama is such a horrid teacher it is unreal. Do yourself a favor and just say NO.”

As soon as Sugiyama was appointed, he voted with Stegeman and Hicks to replace Cuevas as chair and then with a 4-1 majority abolished MAS. This is their scandalous version of democracy in action.

Thus far, what is lost in this conflict is that the Latino students are the ones who will suffer and no one making these decisions gives a damn. The elitist and racist politicos do not care if our youth end up in gangs, as long as this makes more profit for establishment types and their corporations; that is what counts. The fear white parents have of their own children ending up in a class with a Mexican will generate more charter schools and more dropouts, which will insure larger Latina/o prison populations. Everyone in power gets to make more money.

The broad-based and growing disillusionment of our communities is not limited to disappointment with Arizona politicos but includes the federal government. The federal courts have not enforced federal laws. The Obama administration acts like it is paralyzed, furthering the feeling of abandonment and encouraging the TUSD Tea Party Board member, Hicks, to go around saying that state law trumps federal law.

My mother would say about the gaggle in Tucson, no tienen madre. They are disrespectful; they don’t care about the law, or how many people are hurt by their actions.

I am not as nice as my mother was. I feel much like the people in the Boyle Heights area when the Night Stalker, Richard Ramírez, was terrorizing Los Angeles. They put out signs daring him to come East of the River, and then took care of him when he did.

Hopefully the Tea Party will come to L.A. and the campaign to save ethnic studies in Arizona will prevail.

Guest Blog: Manuel de J. Hernández G. Update on HB2281

2011-12-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

Moderator´s Note: We are posting this timely report from Professor Manuel de Jesus Hernández G. of Arizona State University on the December 27 decision issued by Judge Lewis Kowal in the Tucson Unified School District appeal on findings by the State of Arizona Superintendent of Education alleging that the Mexican American Studies Program at TUSD violates HB2281, the legislation seeking to ban the teaching of Chicana/o Studies and other Ethnic Studies programs in Arizona public schools.

Expected and Rigged Decision against TUSD´s Appeal in Defense of Ethnic Studies: Horne´s Invisible and Racially Prejudiced Hand Involved

Dr. Manual de J. Hernández G.

Dec. 28, 2011 12:15 PMEquality and Justice Press ©

Yesterday´s decision against the Tucson Unified School District´s appeal on the findings issued in June by Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, where he found Mexican American Studies in violation of HB 2281, was expected and rigged.

Firstly, administrative judge Lewis Kowal is a Jan Brewer appointee.

Secondly, if Kowal had ruled in favor of TUSD, Huppenthal would have unilaterally over-ruled the decision. To an extent, the appointed judge was politically motivated and acting under the influence of Arizona´s current one-party rule, which has always been a destructive element in American politics. Including Brewer, the top five elected positions in the state are held by extremists Republicans who rode an anti-immigrant wave and are Anti-Mexican, including those who are United States citizens.

Ironically, such migration wave has now decreased by 40 per cent. Last year Mexico´s economy grew by two to three percent. Our U.S. economy did only around one percent.

Kowal´s Decision: Another Direct Attack against Americans of Mexican and Latino Descent

Unfortunately, as has been the case since the early 2000s, direct attacks against Americans of Mexican and Latino descent continue with judge Kowal´s decision. Apparently, the judge has misread or, knowing that Huppenthal dislikes it, has not read the Cambium Report.

At this time, Save Ethnic Studies is reading and studying the politically influenced decision by judge Kowal. In this written decision, one can identify the rhetorical discourse used by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who has, since the 1990s, a long history of putting obstacles on access to education for Mexican Americans and Latinos in Arizona.

TUSD´s program in Mexican American Studies has an 80 per cent success rate in channeling students into college and the university.

Tom Horne: A Canadian Foreigner who Considers Mexican Americans Foreigners

Ironically, Horne was born in Canada, and he has demonstrated, time after time, that he considers Americans of Mexican descent foreigners in their own land and that their culture should be ignored by fellow Americans. He does so despite the fact that Mexican American soldiers fought in Europe during World War II to put an end to the Holocaust.

In fact, in WW II, Mexican Americans were the ethnic group that received the most medals for valor, bravery, and self-sacrifice. A visit to American Legion Post 41 in downtown Phoenix will attest to such citizenship heritage.

By seeking to label TUSD´s Mexican American Studies program, radical Tom Horne is projecting and reapplying, as many argue, a historical racism identified in the 1990s as damaging against the welfare and citizen rights of the Arizona Latino community.

Please contribute to fund: http://saveethnicstudies.org/

Guest Blog: Farm workers, hunger, and anti-immigrant hysteria

2011-12-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

Farm Workers: Fuel the U.S food system while going hungry

Teresa Bailey

The backbone of United States food production is the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, many of whom are not U.S. citizens. The agricultural labor force is estimated to consist of 75 percent people born in Mexico; some estimates are that at least 53 percent of farm workers are undocumented.1 Undocumented and documented immigrants from Mexico are undoubtedly an integral part of the U.S. agricultural labor force.

When discussing immigration I must emphasize the structural violence perpetuated by the United States government that has devastated the Mexican economy, resulting in the high rates of immigration from Mexico. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enabled the dumping of U.S. subsidized corn and other crops on the Mexican market and at the same time the Mexican government discontinued land subsidies for campesinos. Local farmers, unable to compete with U.S. subsidized imports, went out of business. Thus, many former farmers were left with few to no options other than to travel to the U.S in hopes of making a livelihood to support their families.

Increasing violence associated with the drug cartels also contributes to the migratory flow and the inability of many to return to Mexico. United States residents are the number one consumers of the illicit products of the Mexican drug industry; this is another way in which the U.S. creates the conditions, which force many people in Mexico to risk crossing the border into the U.S. Finally, the increased militarization of the border has put an end to the revolving door policy in which Mexicans could work in the U.S. and then return to their families seasonally. As border crossing becomes more costly and dangerous, immigrants increasingly must remain in the U.S once they have crossed, and thus many are separated from their families for longer periods than was traditionally the case.

Mexican farm workers are filling a labor need that Americans are unwilling to fill, and are thus vital contributors to the U.S. economy. Despite this, as unemployment rates in America reach record highs, Mexican immigrants are scapegoated as villains stealing American jobs. Consequently, this has given rise to a wave of anti-immigrant legislation in many states across the U.S. The first being the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070), signed into law by the Governor of Arizona on April 23, 2010. The law requires immigrants to carry documentations at all times and allows law enforcement to ask for such documentation without a crime being committed. This is widely seen as racial profiling.

Many states have followed Arizona’s lead as extremist right wing groups in the country fuel anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation including laws passed in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama. In Alabama, HB 56 is the most extreme of this state-level anti-immigrant legislation to date; it was passed in June 2011. This law requires public schools to check for documentation of school children, electronic verification of citizenship status by employers, and legalized racial profiling of Latinos. The law has been devastating to Alabama’s agricultural economy, as farm workers have left the inhospitable state causing a huge shortage in agricultural labor and billion dollar losses in the sector. This situation in Alabama is just one example of how important undocumented farm workers are to food production in this country.

These states, with their overtly racist and anti-immigrant agenda, do not reflect the only strategy adopted ort pursued by state legislators to make their states inhospitable for immigrants. In Washington state the 2011 legislative session witnessed numerous legislative proposals that used budget cuts to target legal and undocumented immigrants. The budget cut proposals included eliminating the State Food Assistance Program and cutting 26,000 undocumented immigrant children from access to health care through reductions to Apple Health for Kids.2 As far as passing anti-immigrant laws in Washington State, numerous proposals have been introduced including efforts to ban undocumented immigrants from acquiring driver’s licenses. What we saw in Washington was a covert attack on the undocumented immigrant community. Washington state may not require immigrants to carry documentation at all times or legally condone the racial profiling of Latinos, however it will cut health care for immigrant children and get rid of food assistance for immigrant families.

The Washington State Food Assistance Program was created under the governorship of Garry Locke in response to the Congressional decision in 1997 to bar immigrants from the receiving federal food stamps until they can provide documentation of five years of legal residence. The State Food Assistance program perfectly mimics federal food stamps, yet directly fills the gap felt by the immigrant community.

However, during the 2011 legislative session Governor Gregoire, with a 2 billion dollar budget deficit, proposed to eliminate the program entirely. To be fair, cuts were being made to many different government services and departments, however a heavy burden was on social safety net programs. But to eliminate a program completely rather than reduce its funding is a drastic step because there is a very small chance of the program being re-instated. This would have had a devastating blow, with 31,000 people losing their food stamps.2 The legislature decided to save the program, but cut the funding in half.

As the 2012 Washington State legislative session is set to begin, the state faces a fourth year in a row with a major budget shortfall and Governor Gregoire is proposing an additional round of 2 billion dollars in cuts. What is left of the State Food Assistance program, saved last year, is once again on the chopping block for complete elimination.3

The audacity of barring people from food assistance because of their citizenship status is disgusting. The bitter irony of such a decision is intensified when considering that the very same farm workers who put the food on everyone’s table have extremely high rates of food insecurity. In Washington State and across the nation, farm workers go hungry at rates several times higher than the national average, estimates show that 86 percent of farm workers experience food insecurity.4 , 5

Farm workers have very low incomes, averaging $11,000 nationwide.1 The nation’s food security depends on Mexican farm workers, yet these same farm workers struggle to put food on their own tables because they are paid so poorly and are barred from food assistance programs that other people with the same low incomes have access to. The Governor should not be eliminating the last remnants of food assistance to immigrant families, but should instead expand the program by not requiring any identification so that undocumented immigrants will have the option to support themselves and their families with food assistance. There needs to be a shift in the rhetoric that recognizes the important role undocumented immigrants have in our community.

1 U.S. Department of Labor, National Agricultural Workers Survey (2005).

2 Children’s Alliance, The Facts about the State Food Assistance Program (2010).

3 Office of the Governor, State of Washington, Proposed 2012 Supplemental Budget (2011).

4 Washington State Department of Health, Hunger in Washington (2008)

5 Weigel M M, Armijos R X, Hall Y P, Ramirez Y, Orozco R. The household food insecurity and health outcomes of U.S.-Mexico border migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 9:157-69 (2007).

Guest Blog: Raúl Fernández on 'Free Trade'

2011-12-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: We present this guest blog by Raúl Fernández, a Professor at the University of California-Irvine and a lifelong critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. This essay was originally prepared for Mingas-TLC and the Alianza Social Continental (Hemispheric Social Alliance).

This is What Free Trade Looks Like

Raúl Fernández

The great increase in immigration from Mexico, Central America and South America coincides with the imposition of “free trade” policies and agreements – a euphemism for what should be called investor rights agreements – beginning in the early 1990s. The U.S. government, banks, and corporations exerted pressure on pliable Latin American governments ruling over poor and heavily indebted countries.

These policies require the elimination of protective tariffs and measures in Latin America while the U.S. continues its protective policies, especially in agriculture. This so-called “free trade” has meant no restriction of goods entering into Mexico and now Central America and Peru.

NAFTA allowed the entry of US agricultural products into Mexico without tariffs or other kinds of barriers. The heavily protected US agro complex could do this while NAFTA required Mexico to dismantle agricultural supports and protection.

At the time of the passage of NAFTA, some economists predicted that millions of agricultural jobs would be lost in Mexico, as poor farmers could not compete with the heavily subsidized imports dumped into Mexico.

By 2006 Mexico had lost over two million agricultural jobs including as many as 1.7 million small farmers who were forced off their land and into the migratory stream. All because of cheap corn, milk, chicken, pork, beans, rice, all entering from the United States. There are about 600 people leaving the Mexican countryside everyday.

There is little employment in local urban industry because there too, “free trade” means the import of cheap U.S. manufactured products. The choices are: working in maquilas on the border, already saturated and losing employment to even cheaper China, or migrating to the United States.

Before NAFTA Mexican wages were 23 percent of U.S. wages; now they are about 12 percent.

Of the millions of Mexican nationals currently living in the United States two-thirds came to the U.S. after the passage of NAFTA in 1994 seeking relief from the disastrous economic conditions in Mexico.

In 2005, at least 582,000 Mexican economic refugees immigrated north to the U.S.; the number was 559,000 in 2006. Among US responses to the increased migration: militarization of the border, chasing of undocumented workers as if they were criminals, and the rise of demagoguery a la Lou Dobbs.

At least 562 immigrants died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007. The average of the last ten years is one death per day. Deaths have increased as the militarization of the border has pushed economic refugees to cross over the more deserted and desolate areas.

Hundreds of thousands of people from other countries that have been enduring these free trade policies have also become displaced and migrated out of their countries. Tens of thousands have left Colombia, which “opened” its economy to “free trade” in 1991. In El Salvador hundreds of thousands have migrated, about one-third of the entire population, mostly to the United States.

Many Americans are angry at the presence of about 12 million Mexican, Central American, and South American undocumented migrants in the U.S. but they have only to blame policies like NAFTA and other US-backed “free trade” policies put into effect in Mexico and other Latin American countries beginning in the early 1990s.

Other treaties like CAFTA, the recently approved Free Trade Agreement with Peru, and the proposed Free Trade Agreement with Colombia will have similar results. In the words of Teamsters President Hoffa: Subsistence farmers will be forced off their land because cheap U.S. food produced by agribusiness will undercut their prices. The same thing happened with the North American Free Trade Agreement which resulted in millions of poor Mexicans leaving their farms.”

The goal of the so-called “free trade” agreements is made crystal clear in a letter about the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement sent recently to Speaker Nancy Pelosi by the CEO’s of Citibank, Coca-Cola, General Motors, ExxonMobil, and others: The letter states right at the beginning: “The US-Colombia FTA will: eliminate barriers to U.S. farm products...it will provide new sales opportunities for American farmers and ranchers.” In other words: local agriculture will be destroyed, and peasants and rural workers forced to migrate.

These investor rights agreements and policies are intensifying the economic situation in the Latin American region where 200 million people, more than 40 percent of the population, is living below the poverty line, and there are more than 100 million indigents, with 40 million children living in the streets, and where the enormous inequality has become accelerated by these “free trade” policies that benefit multinationals and the local groups connected with the import business.

The beginning of a solution to the “immigration problem” begins with the reversal of the policies of a false “free trade” like NAFTA, CAFTA and other agreements.

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Conviviality against Thought Control

2011-10-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Doublespeak

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

Stuart Chase’s The Tyranny of Words (1938) described an “anxiety culture” where the manipulation of word meanings was a device for control. Chase’s book encouraged the study of semantics (the science of word meaning). Within a decade George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) coined the notion of doublespeak, the act of disguising and distorting of words.

What was then a conversation point has become the norm. Today, doublespeak is so common that euphemisms such as “downsizing” for layoffs or you’re fired and “take out” for destroy or murder are used without reflection. The intentional ambiguity has become part of the political stratagem.

The intent of doublespeak is to deny or disguise the truth. As propaganda it rivals Adolph Hitler’s Big Lie and is today so widespread that out of necessity the field of linguistics has grown to the point that there are numerable subfields.

Doublespeak has led to the field of forensic linguistics to breakdown the meaning or intent of words to juries and judges alike. This has led to the development of the International Association of Forensic Linguists that publishes the Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law.

George Carlin had a whole routine on euphemisms such as he “passed away,” avoiding the reality of “he is dead.” The use of euphemisms is nothing new; in the 18th century, Shakespeare in Hamlet used the euphemism “die” for “orgasm,” thus Hamlet said "I die in your lap." The problem today is that the use of euphemistic words is so pervasive.

There are varying layers of euphemisms, which involve sophisticated metaphors. They can be traced back to the Greeks and historically they have enriched poetry and dichos (aphorisms). Euphemisms are so common that we often accept their literal meaning without reflection.

To protect oneself it is important to be cautious and develop a general knowledge of semantics. University of California Los Angeles professor Otto Santa Ana’s Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse is especially informative in today's context of the demonization of Mexican-origin peoples. Santa Ana gives the reader awareness and the tools to decipher propaganda. Particularly interesting is how the government uses metaphors such “desert storms” substituting it for the reality of the war or invasion of Iraq in the 1990s.

Just thinking about different meanings, how different is the use of “Manifest Destiny” from Deutschland über alles. In U.S. history the so-called Western Expansion has been described as “The Winning of the West” as if the Indian Wars had been a ballgame.

In other instances, it is called the “Western Expansion,” the “Western Movement,” or the “re-annexation of Texas and the Southwest” (which again are all euphemisms for Manifest Destiny). Are these expressions factual? Euphemisms obscure realities; they erase alternative histories and ways of being.

History is replete with examples of doublespeak.

At the turn of the 19th century, industrialists and bankers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon built financial and industrial empires by opportunistically using the public treasury and grabbing land grants on the so-called public domain, which were really the enclosed indigenous home lands, so they could construct their railroad lines; they privatized the country's natural resources and exploited and assassinated workers in the so-called “Labor Wars.” Their behavior was so nefarious that historians and reformers dubbed them the Robber Barons.

Later, the foundations endowed by the robber barons funded historians such as Allan Nevins to rewrite history and rechristen them as the “Captains of Industry.” The Texas-based King Ranch, which accumulated a million acres of land, much of it stolen from Mexican farmers, paid Historian Tom Lea to write a Horatio Alger-like eulogy to Richard King.

In recent times, countless other instances of doublespeak have crept into the American vernacular. Expressions such as “pulling oneself up by his or her bootstrap,” “equality,” “equal opportunity,” “free world” or the “democratic world” are misused. We refer to countries led by dictators as “democratic” simply because they support us. Western Civilization means the white world and along with the “free world” insidiously refer to countries that at one time had empires and profited from the sale of slaves.

As a student of urban history, words such as redevelopment and urban renewal bug me. In Tucson I came across a group called the Southern Arizona Leadership Council whose members have made fortunes by buying government land at bargain prices and displacing homeowners. They have made millions by having the inside track to contracts and jobs.

In Los Angeles, we call “urban development” or “urban renewal,” people removers or bulldozed communities. People were displaced and others made huge profits because of this removal.

Lately, words like “class warfare” and “equality” have taken on distorted meanings. In the present economic crisis Tea Partiers and other right-wing fundamentalists call the one percent who often pay minimal or zero taxes “job creators.” The rest of us are parasites.

Are they really job creators when most have received huge federal bailouts but refuse to reinvest money in American jobs? For that matter are they patriotic because they wear flagpins? Is the ninety-nine percent waging class warfare by criticizing the privilege of the few?

For that matter, are the Koch brothers philanthropists because their foundations donate money to art galleries that bear their names? Should they be called philanthropists for funding groups to fight government regulation and disenfranchise voters with the aim of making higher business profits and paying lower taxes?

The tyranny of words becomes dangerous when translating foreign words. Recently my friend Arnaldo Cordova wrote an article in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada in which he referred to the rash of bombings in Mexico as being the byproduct of “delinquencia organizada,” which upon a hurried reading I translated as organized juvenile delinquency. Boy was I embarrassed.

But look at the idiots who translate the word la raza as strictly meaning race when it popularly refers to a people (with shared histories and ethnic traditions).

Because of the gullibility or ignorance of others, the xenophobes continue to intentionally confuse communication, entering Hitler’s Big Lie twilight zone. Recent anti-immigrant campaigns have taken a similar bent. In 1994 the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 campaign that restricted public services for undocumented immigrants was insidiously called 187. In California Section 187 refers to the California Penal Code that defines the crime of murder.

This demonization has its roots in the term “illegal alien.” Illegal conjures the imagery of criminality; alien invokes the imagery of body snatchers from outer space.

This imagery plays on the American fears that recall 1980s and 90s movies of extraterrestrial invasions. They are popularized by people who still believe in the boogeyman and are afraid of the dark. Many white people in Arizona are afraid that they are losing their patrimony to the Mexican body snatchers, although most Mexicans have been in Arizona longer than the snowbirds.

Words have meaning; there are consequences in distorting them. Look no further than the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” In the process, the truth becomes a casualty when it loses its sense of reality. What is keeping this country afloat is scientific or critical thinking and we are losing this edge. Doublespeak is the antithesis of science.

Thinking is not bad, it won’t kill you. Msgr. Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality (1975), laments the loss of convivial tools in our society:

I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members.

Our anxiety culture today is in danger of losing its most basic convivial tool -- reasoned communication. Today, doublespeak has crossed over the line. People are captives of the political euphemisms of others who are purposely dishonest. In the end, this will lead to lethal consequences that may in many instances kill and in other occasions make us poorer and less free as the truth loses its sense of reality.

Alabama's State of Exception

2011-10-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

CUT THE WATER OFF TO THOSE SONS OF....

Reports from Alabama indicate the extremist application of the new anti-immigrant law (HB56) signed by the governor in May of this year. At least one water utility has posted this sign, warning customers that without a valid drivers' license, the water supply will be shut-off to residences.

Apparently, the state of economic exception in Alabama is designed to force undocumented workers and their families -- both citizens or non-citizens -- out of the state by denying them access to water. This grotesque barbarism clearly qualifies the New South as the New Nazi Germany, and this is not hyperbole.

Jews were also routinely denied access to water and other public utilities as part of the disciplinary machine that hatefully continues to spew these sorts of poisonous and immoral laws designed to rob the working class of life. The tactics of this civil war against the rule of law should rightfully earn the USA infamy as a major gross violator of basic human rights. We must continue to work until laws that deny people access to food, water, shelter, education, and health care are abolished and our common wealth is restored.

Guest Blog: Dr. Cintli on Alabama & Arizona

2011-10-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present the "Letter to Birmingham: From the anti-Mexican State of Arizona" by Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez. This is more than an update on the unjustly and erroneously affirmed Alabama anti-immigrant law (HB56), the one that the mainstream media, gloating, presents as "Arizona on Steroids". Roberto's beautiful letter speaks to a re-awakening of the collective deep memory people of color have of the segregationist days of Bull Connor and of the fact that Arizona's white power structure wants a return to the world of the segregationist South in the heart of the desert Southwest. We are re-posting this narrative of resistance from The Column of the Americas.

A letter to Birmingham...
From the anti-Mexican State of Arizona

Dear Birmingham…

I write this to you from Tucson, Arizona, from a state synonymous with dehumanization and racial profiling, from a land of fear and hate. Birmingham, I think you know what I speak of. But don’t think I am alluding to your past; also today.

HB 56, the bill that your state legislature recently passed and that your governor signed, is being touted as the toughest anti-immigrant bill in the country, one that was affirmed by a U.S. District judge this September. This measure requires school officials to act as immigration agents and permits police officers to detain people without bail, based merely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. That it has fomented hate and caused panic and fear was the point, wasn’t it?

You might be wondering why someone from Arizona would be writing to a Southern city? The answer is simple; Birmingham represents memory; it is etched into the psyche of the nation. It is also seared into Tucson’s memory, not just because many of us from the U.S. Southwest also lived through the civil rights era, but also because on May 3 of this year, one of our elders in our community was arrested for attempting to read the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King Jr. This occurred during a school board meeting, this in the midst of a hostile anti-Mexican, anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant atmosphere in this state.

Here we have our own Bull Conner; Sheriff Joe Arpaio – the same Sheriff who unapologetically proclaimed on CNN that it was an honor to be compared with the KKK (11/12/07). Here, we also have Tom Horne, former state schools superintendent, who has long invoked the memory of MLK Jr., in his six-year effort to eliminate Ethnic Studies. He claims that doing so would constitute the fulfillment of MLK’s Dream. His successor, John Huppenthal, campaigned on the promise to “Stop ‘La Raza’. ” That is his dream. Against all evidence, he is conducting a modern-day Inquisition into Tucson’s Mexican American Studies K-12 department, attempting to prove its maize-based curriculum is anti-American.

In Tucson, our struggle is not simply about the right of our students to learn Mexican American history, language and culture, but even more so, our struggle here is about the right of everyone to be treated as full human beings. Indeed, this is something that you, Birmingham, know all too well. Last month signaled your grand return to the world stage of dehumanization; it’s as if you had been waiting some 50 years to breathe uninhibited, able once again to exhale the fumes of racial supremacy. This is something you haven’t been able to do since the courts and the civil rights movement forced you to cease your legalized discrimination against African Americans. But your fight is not really with brown people; it’s just about enforcing the law, right?

Please note that in Arizona, we don’t refer to dehumanizing measures that violate the rights of human beings as laws. Yet, this is beyond how we characterize this new bigotry; we are conscious that Mexicans in many parts of the country are viewed and treated as less than human. The following quote by Otto Santa Ana, in Brown Tide Rising, explains this bias: “Only humans have human rights.” I am certain that African Americans in the South understand this well.

Here, we have heard your governor, Robert Bentley, brag about the toughness of HB 56. Truthfully, there’s a bit of racial nostalgia and wistfulness communicated in his voice, projecting the sublime and whispered wish: “If we could only also apply these laws to our Black population too.” Am I mistaken, or is he not the same governor who in January proclaimed that only people who believe in Jesus Christ are his brothers and sisters.

As such, I don’t have to wonder what he thinks of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews. But forgive me if this causes me to question whether he considers African Americans, American Indians, Arab Americans and Mexicans as his true brothers and sisters too. As long as they are “legal”?

Birmingham, is this how you wish to be known and remembered? As a place that in the 21st century openly and legally dehumanizes its brown populations?

Birmingham, do you think the world actually believes you when you say you have nothing against brown people, Mexicans or immigrants – that your only beef is with “illegal aliens?” Do you think your ability to discern is credible? Isn’t that like dehumanizing African Americans, but hiding behind “states rights.” Wasn’t slavery and segregation legal in your state, in this country?

So Birmingham, yes, please lecture us on “the rule of law.” And keep listening to your governor, because we here in Arizona are certainly paying close attention. Here are his words in reaction to the judge’s ruling: “…this fight is just beginning… I will continue to fight at every turn to defend this law against any and all challenges.”

Don’t know what you hear, but eerily, we hear echoes of George Wallace: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Birmingham, your state legislature and your governor have once again brought “disgrace upon your state.” We know the objective is to take HB 56 to the Supreme Court. And let’s not mince words; we know that ethnic cleansing is not an unintended consequence. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Here, we thank your civil and human rights organizations and your religious community. Please continue to fight. Our memory is long. Yes, we remember the 1950s and 1960s… but we also remember the Trail of Tears. Please do not permit a new one on your soil. After all, the brown men, women and children subject to this new draconian measure… they are our brothers and sisters… as they are yours.

Sincerely

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez

'SWEET HOME ALABAMA'? THE GHOST OF EXCEPTED LABOR

2011-09-27T22:17:00.000-07:00

Rotting food sans phantom workers

Reports from across the country over the past year continue to confirm the damaging economic effects of policies adopted by some twenty states (and counting) that have passed and adopted extremist anti-immigrant legislation (e.g., Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, etc.). Civil rights lawsuits and Justice Department actions against these "exceptional" laws also continue to unfold.

As predicted by this blog, and in numerous other sources including studies by academic organizations cited in the May 2010 NACCS Letter to Governor Brewer on SB1070, these unconstitutional state laws are "political play," but they have exacted fairly immediate economic damage on capitalist interests, especially in the agribusiness sector. Farmers and large growers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of laws that demonstrably interrupt or eliminate the availability of the largely undocumented workers that harvest our food crops.

The most recent reports of this damage come from Alabama, where rotting fields of squash and other labor-intensive crops are widespread. White growers are alarmed and protesting this state-level immigration law crackdown.

Alabama's statute is currently considered the toughest (most criminalizing of the Other) among the dizzying variety of right-wing anti-immigration laws that have been passed in more than twenty states ever since Arizona “led” the way with its now largely court-neutered SB1070, which was signed into law in April 2010 and overturned by federal district and appeals courts later that summer (July 28, 2010). There are also dozens of cities and municipalities with similar laws seeking to restrict access to health care, housing, and education.

This is the pure and violent (not just mean-spirited) politics of the "bare life" - a widening battle over the reproduction of specific kinds of human populations, and it is largely fueled by a eugenics-like obsession among Tea Party advocates who fear the looming transition that will make "whites" a demographic minority.

The Alabama law, which the media pundits have anointed as “Arizona on Steroids,” makes the statute passed in the Land of Citrus, Cows, Cotton, and Chicano labor seem downright “lite.” Alabama’s steroidal version of 1070 is the nation’s most restrictive, aggressive, and punitive of the state laws basically designed to force undocumented workers out the state’s labor markets. I say this with knowledge that Oklahoma's version allows the state to seize and sell the real estate property of an undocumented immigrant to pay for court, detention, and deportation costs plus penalties. The Republicans then smugly proclaim themselves the defenders of private property rights.

The ACLU has of course challenged the Alabama law and, again, we fully expect the courts will resolve the issue simply by re-asserting federal supremacy in the setting of immigration policy and law, as is specified under the U.S. Constitution.

Regardless, Governor Robert J. Bentley (R) signed the Alabama statute, known as HB56, this past summer on June 10, 2011. He and other Alabama Tea Party Republicans justified the law as a panacea for addressing the state’s 9-10 percent unemployment rate.

They also cited the statute as a law and order move. The Governor and his allies declared they designed the law to strengthen the state’s role in the national security apparatus. Here immigration and labor law reform and the War on Terror get conveniently conflated into one big bundle: Mexicans – alongside “Arab” and “Muslim” people – are the biggest internal security threat to a permanent state of economic exception (a new American apartheid?) to go along with the permanent state of emergency designed to forever wage an endless “War on Terror” but that actually serves as an attack on the very civil and constitutional rights that make it possible for the multitude to assert "constituent" power.

The pundits and policy-makers are of course debating what to do but they are largely oblivious to certain key trends: One is that even the most conservative ranchers and growers are now thinking twice about supporting the extremist bent so widespread among the Tea Party-dominated Republicans. It may even be that agribusiness interests will not likely to vote, or at least withdraw active support, for any more anti-immigrant candidates.

Even members of the American Farm Bureau, an organization chartered across the fifty states that provides insurance and other related financial and business services to farm owners and operators, are taking exception to the Tea Party’s obsession with imposing a state of economic exception on Mexican workers in agriculture. This fact alone may lead to Congressional action on a “guest worker” program for the agribusiness corporate sector – even before the next election; even with the current radical and obstructionist GOP caucus in charge. Obama will surely oblige in the securing of a policy that blends militaristic control of the border, continued deportation of the "illegals," and a new Bracero Program for the "importation" of "temporary guest workers." These state sovereignty administration advocates should be careful what they wish for.

Both sides are “spooked.” The Tea Party wing is spooked by Mexican workers and the coming demographic transition to a majority of minorities. The agribusiness and corporate wing, especially in the agricultural but also construction and manufacturing sectors, are spooked by the “ghosts” of Mexican labor – the rotting fruits and vegetables in the fields; unfinished homes and office buildings; lack of kitchen help; and unassembled garments and furniture sets; all these are constant reminders of how restrictive anti-immigrant laws are creating “phantom” workers, the abstract labor that has disappeared for now.

I see this disappearance is a form of resistance, a refusal by the undocumented transnational worker to be rendered as a mere Homo sacer; this is an escape not back to Mexico but to safer ground beyond a state intent on imposing economic exceptionality on a category of humans that have been stripped of their humanity, demonized, and denied the right to work or even just to live.

It is this last point that most of the punditocracy overlooks. The denial of a right to work, let alone live, is coded right into the language and intent of the Alabama statute: People are not just denied jobs no one else is taking; they are denied access to housing (even renting to "illegals" is now a crime that punishes both landlords and tenants); they are denied access to health care and education and pretty much anything related to our biological and social reproduction. These laws attack the very conditions that temper our ability to remain alive and healthy.

In this sense the phantom workers of the undocumented multitude are the "canaries in the mine." They are the "indicators" that ALL workers are endangered and threatened. When the most vulnerable among us, the undocumented workers that have in almost every case faced inter-generational historical trauma and structural violence; when the most "marginal" and excepted among us; when this multitude resists, then it is time to start listening.

These are not acquiescent victims. These are agents of change; precursors of transformation; even perhaps protean forms of our own future as change agents? When we understand this as U.S. citizens, albeit as members of a social class that is always teetering on the verge of being stripped down to a state of abject rightlessness, will we finally understand the need to redefine exactly what citizenship is? Will we have the wisdom to understand how the undocumented present the fact of globalization from below and our future as a constituent power depends on how strongly we are able to connect to all workers, regardless of their place of birth?

This leads me to think: Sure, squash and pumpkin are rotting in Alabama's farm fields. But there is something else rotting in Alabama and the rest of this state of exception nation: Our souls, the very core of our sense of common humanity. And as a result, our prospects for democracy and a turn toward the exercise of our constituent power.

HB 2281 UPDATE: Cultura or Cult?

2011-08-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

TUSD BOARD PRESIDENT STEGEMAN NEEDS RE-EDUCATION CAMP [sic]

Joseph Campbell has long been one of my favorite scholars in the field of comparative religion and the study of mythology. I first encountered Campbell's magnificent work as an undergraduate in, of all places, a Chicano Studies course on poetry taught by Alurista at the University of Texas in 1974. The work I personally encountered during that class was The Hero's Journey, a book first published in 1954.

I discussed The Hero's Journey with Alurista since I was already reading it. It is a book about myth but it is also about the human quality of resilience through the experience of discovery and loss, of how one adapts and grows from our journeys into the unknown, which begins with the crossing of thresholds or boundaries that mark the separation of the familiar from the unfamiliar. Alurista thought this could be used as an analog for understanding the role of Chicana/o poetry, that is, as an exploration across boundaries. Alurista thought that borders that are meant to separate may in the end dissipate before the power of the transition to a full humanity realized only through the acceptance of the "Other". Poetry is the language we use to realize this more just and peaceful moral order.

Lately, I have been thinking about this lesson, which I learned in one of my first Chicana/o Studies classes. I am intrigued by this idea of crossing thresholds and believe this has implications for what is happening in Arizona today. The basic insight is simply about creativity springing from the act of crossing thresholds. What does this mean, in light of the recent attacks on the unjustly besieged Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) by School Board President Mark Stegeman? [See the guest blog entry from The Three Sonorans].

The most recent phase of this attack occurred this past Friday (August 19) during Stegeman's testimony at a court hearing related to litigation over the constitutionality of HB2281. [This is Arizona's thought control statute that seeks to dismantle Chicana/o Studies across the state's public schools, alleging that such classes preach the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed for students of a specific ethnic group, teach ethnic solidarity instead of focusing on the individual, and promote racial resentment]. The latest attack on the integrity of the MAS Program was waged by Board President Stegeman, whose testimony characterized the program as "a cult."

This claim was based on Stegeman's apparent misreading of the "solidarity clap" - a widely used motivational practice rooted in social movements that is simply meant to drum-up enthusiasm for the task at hand. The instructor in a MAS Program class that Mr. Stegeman visited earlier this year had started the session with this solidarity clap as a prelude to consideration of the texts at hand. This is the basis for Stegeman's absurd and inaccurate claim that Chicana/o Studies is a "cult."

A point of fact: Public school and college teachers use a variety of motivational tools at the start of classes and the "solidarity clap" is one example I have witnessed in dozens of classes, seminars, and conferences. I've recently seen the solidarity clap at meetings of the American Studies Association (ASA) and a recent workshop on environmental justice at The White House. If we follow Stegeman's logic, then all these white professors at the ASA meetings and WH staffers and Cabinet members are also cult followers.

But the solidarity or unity clap, dating back to the days of Cesar Chavez and the farm worker struggle, is not some secret ritual practiced by violent political cult members seeking to re-conquer the "Lost Land" of Aztlán. Stegeman is projecting his unfounded fears; searching for a point of entry to an unfair and baseless critique of a highly successful academic program.

The real issue here is not the existence of cults and cult-like behavior in our public schools. The real issue is the fabrication of slanderous myths by those who oppose intellectual freedom and free speech and thought in our educational institutions. Mr. Stegeman has violated the public trust and should resign from the TUSD Board.

According to my colleague, Rudolfo Acuña, the report about the 'cult' statement came from a Ms. Hunnicutt:

I have read an unofficial synthesis of the hearings and in no place was it 'revealed' that the Mexican American Studies program is a cult. This represents shoddy reporting at best. Stegeman, a failed economist, deduced this from the farm worker hand clap and he then makes a leap of logic tying it to Eric Hoffer’s right wing book which was used in the same fashion to malign Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement during the 60s. [Hoffer's book] was the bible of the John Birch Society until the analysis was pointed the other way. Hoffer was second only to Ayn Rand in the pantheon of right wing kooks...The Tea Party and the Arizona Republican Party would be more appropriate subjects to apply Hoffer’s theoretical model. Evidently neither Hunnicutt nor Stegeman... know the difference between opinion and fact.

Professor Acuña is correct: This demonizing style of paranoid politics is something we have witnessed before. That an elected official would rely on Hoffer's discredited 'Bircher Bible' is unconscionable and a true violation of the public trust; it is unbecoming of a leader of public school education in Arizona. There is another insight from Campbell's work that seems especially poignant and appropriate given this attack on Chicana/o Studies as a "cult." Before proceeding, I should note that the late Professor Campbell, alongside Mircea Eliade, is probably the most important and influential student of comparative religions and myth in the history of this field of scholarly research.

In 1972, the prolific Campbell published another important and widely acclaimed book, The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860 (1972, reprinted 1975). This is a very innovative and persuasive study on the historical relation between cult and drama. In the book, Campbell describes the modern idea of the cult as a "Cinderella concept" and then makes this insightful observation - that leads to a clearer understanding of who decides what gets classified as "cult":

From 1700 to 1750 - using these dates only as a convenient but imprecise set of brackets for what might otherwise be called the Enlightenment - most thinking about myth may be described as subscribing to the orthodox Christian view of myth, the deist view of myth, or the rationalist view of myth. The Christians...drove home the notion that myth meant pagan fables and pagan religion and was therefore, as a word, exactly equal to false, while gospel, meaning Christian religious stories, was exactly equal to truth. To Christian thinkers in the eighteenth century...Greek or Roman or Egyptian myth meant only a collection of false gods and grotesque tales that needed to be explained away or reconciled with Scripture. Pagan myth could be interpreted as an invention of the devil, or the gods could be identified as fallen angels, but the usual interpretation was to consider pagan fable a degenerate version of biblical truth...(p. 3).

This excerpt clarifies what I believe is happening in Arizona, except the problem is not that Chicana/o Studies is a cult; the problem is that Mark Stegeman, and other opponents of the MAS Program, have bought into the discourse games of a white Christian mythology: Chicana/o poetry may as well be the language of the devil, judging from Stegeman's purposeful mis-characterizing of a respected and effective field of academic study.

The Three Sonorans made a valid point the other day in their Friday blog: The Unity clap is cult, but pledging allegiance to a flag made of cloth in unison is "normal."

Actually, yes: The "Pledge of Allegiance" before the "Stars and Stripes" is constructed as normal while the unity or solidarity clap is not and that is the point of Campbell's observation regarding the power of myths and cults.

Those who are part of the dominant culture and political order get to define and impose what is considered "normal" and what is rejected as "cult"-like. As Campbell demonstrates, this has been going on since the rise of Christianity and colonialism (they go together) brought hunger, disease, war, ethnocide, and destruction to indigenous peoples around the planet.

It is not fair; it is untruthful and inflammatory; but what do you expect of a partisan mindset that uses the state of exception to forestall the looming demographic and socio-cultural transition that is the American Experiment? But, alas, that is the chosen political and ideological project of those who continue to abuse the power/knowledge dialectic. And this can, has been, and will once again be challenged. We must oppose this racist construct not by defending ourselves from the ridiculous charge of being a cult - the claim is as absurd as "birther" beliefs about President Obama not being a U.S.-born citizen.

Instead, we can begin by demonstrating that Mr. Stegeman is merely re-playing the old Enlightenment trick of demonizing the Other, simply because he does not understand that cultura is not the same as culto; he does not appreciate what natural and social scientists around the world have understood for decades: Diversity is the key to resilience and this applies as much to micro-organisms as to entire societies.

This pathological style of discourse will, I predict, not fare well as part of the State of Arizona's legal arguments in defense of HB2281.

The social scientific study of cults demonstrates that cults are authoritarian, exploitative, and use mind and thought control through ritualistic practices. In profound contrast, Chicana/o Studies is anti-authoritarian; collaborative and participatory; and embodies the critical spirit - rejecting the idea that any one group or person has a privileged and eternal hold on truth claims. This typically includes the instructor of Chicana/o Studies who abides by the bedrock principle of remaining open to the truth claims of others. This is not what cult leaders do. So, by this definition, Chicana/o Studies is the anti-thesis of a cult.

If anything fits this definition it is not the Chicana/o Studies class starting a session with the unity clap but rather the Pledge of Allegiance that indoctrinates students to accept "patriotic" obedience to the state and whatever it seeks to accomplish - war, conquest, regulation of bodies and minds, etc.

If anything bears a resemblance to a cult it is the type of schoolroom imagined by the reactionary and anti-democratic legislators who drafted HB2281, including Senator Russell Pearce, an associate and sympathizer of extremist cult-like neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups. It is these elected officials who propose to transform our public schools into indoctrination camps by converting our free and open society campuses into institutions modeled on the concentration or prison camp - in which public schools are a deadly minefield of unprotected speech ready to obliterate free and critical inquiry.

Sociologists and psychologists who study organized cults and cult behavior have developed a variety of intervention techniques meant to "liberate" cult followers from bondage to authoritarian and exploitative Masters: The methods are invariably described as "de-programming" and "re-education." I am only half joking, but judging from his testimony, it seems Board President Stegeman would benefit from a few weeks at a "re-education camp" to learn the difference between free critical inquiry and the mind-numbing homogeneity he would seek to impose on students in the TUSD.

Here I am hoping that Stegeman goes back to school to learn about the leading edge of social science and humanities scholarship before he feels compelled to lead a besieged school district and its board of directors who are charged with navigating the treacherous political waters of the state of exception in Arizona's public schools. May the TUSD Board take the hero's journey and make their way back from across the threshold to the embracing of a new America that remains fearless and resolute before the wondrous diversity of human souls and minds that have a thirst and hunger for truth, freedom, and the many roads that lead one and all to realize the full range of human knowledge that makes our world a more just possibility as a work-in-progress.

HB 2281 UPDATE: From the "Three Sonorans"

2011-08-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Mark Stegeman – it is called “cultura” not “ur a cult”

by DA Morales on Aug. 20, 2011, under Ethnic Studies, Headline news

Wow…
TUSD board president Mark Stegeman comes out and admits that he feels Ethnic Studies is a cult in court on Friday.

Mark Stegeman might be demoted on August 23rd. Photo: Chris Summitt.

In Stegeman’s notes he described it as ritualized. “I guess I had an epiphany,” Stegeman told the attorney. He instantly thought about a book he read a long time ago that described different facets and the social dynamics of cult psychology.
That cult-like behavior he observed out of the classroom, too, and he found it troubling that classes had a social justice frame.
via Day One (Part One) of the Ethnic Studies Appeal: Stegeman Describes Classes’ Cult-Like Behaviors | The Range: The Tucson Weekly’s Daily Dispatch.

That whole “social justice” stuff is evil? To scholars all across the nation it is a celebration of “cultura” — to Mark Stegeman it is “ur a cult!”

There are so many angles to take on this. Let me begin with the following. The cultural divide and white privilege have reached an all-time high in this Ethnic Studies issue.

I am going to be making references to what Mari Herraras wrote about the first day of testimony, so read her article to understand more about what happened. Gary Grado also wrote about Stegeman calling MAS a cult, but you need a subscription to read his article.

Mark Stegeman received his so-called “epiphany” after hearing the unity clap. This is a clap where people get into sync, and then clap faster and faster. This is what set him off? The clap has been around since the Cesar Chavez days, and unions also use it. I know the UA Economics professor may not like unions, but the clap is not part of a “ritualistic” cult.

But let’s talk about the white privilege since Stegeman’s testimony reeks of it.

A very simple way to think of white privilege is when Anglo-American ways are seen as the “default” ways. When you walk into a board room and there are only non-minorities in there, or when you walk into a classroom and there are no non-minorities in there, then this does not raise a flag, but when the majority are black or Latino, then you must be at a “special” meeting; something different than the “default” or what is “normal.”

You must be in an Ethnic Studies class, or the board meeting must be for the NAACP or LULAC, because we all know “normal” board rooms aren’t all black.

I will refer you to Tim Wise who has YouTube videos on the subject, and has written many books about white privilege to learn more about the topic.

Here are some local and recent examples of it.

The TUSD board meetings begin with everyone standing up together, turning to face a nationalistic symbol, a piece of cloth with stars and stripes on it, and then place their hands over their heart and recite, in unison, a chant which also includes a supernatural deity.

I remember John White, the man who tried to bring a knife to the TUSD board meeting, once turning to his neighbor, a MAS supporter, during the Pledge of Allegiance and shouting the words “under God” in her face, with a bit of spit getting on her face, which some people call patriotic behavior that disabled American vets are allowed to do.

Unity clap is cult, but pledging allegiance to a flag made of cloth in unison is “normal.”

If the flag magically changes color, then you are now falling under the influence of foreign propaganda, and you might as well be saluting a swastika. If you do a similar thing with a cross, you are a good Christian, if it is something else you are a cult and praying to an idol.

Welcome to America

Also in attendance at today’s court case is Loretta Hunnicutt from TU4SD who has promised to fill us in to what happened. She has already called MAS a cult before, so I’m sure she will praise Stegeman and Hicks’ courageous testimony.

But speaking of cults, which is pretty much in the eye of the beholder, since some consider Mormonism a cult, while some consider any form of religion a cult, let us consider her background.

As a Catholic student at Salpointe High School where Mrs. Hunnicutt went, what does it mean when everyone does a “sign of the cross” in unison; is that “ritualistic” behavior that is found in cults?

Heck the whole Catholic Mass is known as the Rite of the Mass; rite as in ritual. People stand together and get down on their knees together, recite prayers and prepared responses in unison at every Mass.

But Catholics do not belong to a cult, they are a religion. But some Protestants consider Catholics different from Christians, and their adoration of the Virgin Mary leads some Christians to justify why they call Catholics a cult.

Your perspective here is important. What is “normal” or “default” for you is “ritualistic cult” behavior for someone else.

In every classroom at the UA there is a flag and the constitution, mandatory under state law. Some court rooms or other government buildings have the 10 commandments. The Judeo-Christian “default” for what is “normal” is strong in America.

Should the Bible be banned because of
the violent stories contained within?

Consider one book that is allowed at the school that Loretta Hunnicutt attended; the Bible.

I already know what some people will do; justify the Bible abstractly just like some people justify the Constitution but never talk about that blacks are three-fifths of a person part.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for Bible banning in anyway, but I agree that Bibles should be accessed even though there is some really horrible stuff in there, like incest, rape, murder of woman and children, and more.

It’s a historical and cultural piece of literature, and it is important to understand it to understand people around the world, just as it is important to understand the Q’uran also. My personal favorite is Joseph Campbell which talks about them all.

One favorite story that is used against Mexican American is the story of the Aztecs and Aztlan. One favorite story that is shared from the Bible is the story of the “chosen people” and God leading them to the “promised land.”

What’s the difference? In the Bible God allows them to murder and taking virgin women as their own after taking over a city. These types of stories can be found not only in Latino households, but in most American households, easily accessible by children. (Try Deuteronomy 22 and surrounding chapters for a good night-time story.)

Sexism is not accepted in our society but it is the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church. Just try to ordain a woman as priest and you will find yourself excommunicated. Yet these are the beliefs that the TUSD superintendent holds as a Catholic, and passages talking about women to be submissive to their husbands (Colossians 3:18) are not ignored but part of the New Testament readings in the Catholic Church. Since Hunnicutt went to Salpointe I wonder if she is a good submissive wife, or if Pedicone’s wife is also submissive to the ruler of Tucson’s largest school district?

All religions have their problems, and I am not here to attack them. What I want to point out though is the inconsistency in allowing them to have practices that are “un-American” and also violent, yet no one ever thinks about attacking them, but it is open season on Mexican American history and their myths and stories?

Ironically, Christians are gentiles, and the Old Testament describes how these heathens can be dealt with, yet people still read these verses every week.

It is like they do not even realize what they are reading. Like they blindly accept, reading and chanting in unison… what’s that called again?

An Ethnic Studies high school student schools
Dr. Stegeman on the facts.

At least MAS classes have critical thinking in them, and not all students think the same, and debates and discussion are encouraged. This is why a former Ethnic Studies student was able to take on someone with a Ph.D. from MIT, none other than Mark Stegeman himself, in an impromptu debate and she held her ground.

Ethnic Studies high-school degree vs Ph.D. from Ivy League

Yes, these classes are dangerous, only in the sense that education is dangerous to the Plan for Arizona; the private prison plan for poor people.

I finally had an “epiphany” today also, and that is that the white privilege on the TUSD board, which allows people to not think they are racist but attack a race of people, is very dangerous, and our board members are not enlightened at all, but hold some very draconian views towards diversity and the future of America.

They want one class for all students, where all students are trained to be the same, and have the same knowledge and ignore the same truths that everyone else ignores

And it all begins by placing your hand over your heart and chanting in unison with millions of other schoolchildren across the nation, pledging allegiance to a nationalistic symbol, and no one realizing the “ritualistic” aspects of cult-like behavior we have everyday in our schools.

But that is “normal” in Arizona 2011.

Oh yeah, and calling our commander-in-chief unAmerican is the new patriotism. But it has nothing to do with race. Or being Muslim even though he is not. He is just not “normal” if you know what I mean…
Tags: ethnic studies, mark stegeman
Posted in Ethnic Studies, Headline news | 1 Comment »

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Arizona Ethnic Studies Struggle

2011-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

Arizona: How about the children?

The Left Never Learns

Rodolfo F. Acuña

11 August 2011

Since the United States seized half Mexico’s territory after the American War of 1847, Mexican Americans have suffered a chronic isolation. The Mexican American population was centered along the border, often months away from the East Coast, a place where very few white Americans lived. Consequent to this isolation, most Americans an out of sight, an out of mind mindset developed.

What most people knew about Mexicans was formed by stereotypes in the press and popular literature -- stereotypes that persisted to until recently in the works of progressive such as John Steinbeck and John Grisham. Trade unionist had more jaundiced views, seeing Mexicans competitors and potential.

Mexicans, however, endured hundreds of lynchings and suffered discrimination. Even though many Mexicans had never seen Mexico, white Americans considered them foreigners--intruders in land that once belonged to them. It was not until the World Wars when large numbers of Mexican Americans lost their lives fighting for the U.S. that some Americans accepted them.

As transportation cut distances between the East and the Southwest, the numbers of Mexicans multiplied, and their voting power increased. The new visibility forced the left begin to take some notice. Liberals cared about the plight of migrants and condemned discrimination, but Mexicans were never high on the Left's shopping list of causes. It was even harder for the left to tack on the word Mexican to American as if the terms were incompatible.

Mexicans were so isolated that even the sociologist was slow in finding them. Many of the early studies on Mexican Americans included the descriptor “the invisible minority” when referring to the group as a whole.

Things appeared to be looking up by the 1980s as labor finally dropped its xenophobic policies toward immigrants. The truth is that their numbers were too large to ignore. About this time, the fiction of a greater Latino community emerged as more Latino organizations headquartered themselves in Washington, DC.

However, events in Arizona, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and elsewhere were a wakeup call and they have exposed the vulnerability of Latinos and exploded the myth of the sleeping giant.

The reality is that Latinas/os organizations are national in name only. They have not yet formed the national consciousness, which is essential to forming a community. Without this national consciousness, it does not function as a family.

Liberals as a whole do not include Latinas/os on their Xmas gift lists. Progressive magazines run an occasional article about injustices toward them and feel good about eating their weekly taco.

A strange value system has evolved that we unfortunately pass on to our children. Consciously and unconsciously, we get caught up with the idea that there is no natural order of things. History becomes an abstraction, a political tool for those who justify the chicanery of the robber barons in our midst. Without this moral compass it is difficult to form a logic that informs our values.

A new vocabulary emerges that limits us. A person who questions or, for that matter thinks, is a cynic, a skeptic. She is labeled a pessimist instead of a seeker of truth.

I consider myself a cynic but far from being a pessimist I am optimistic because I believe that ultimately history will judge the current crop of criminals. I am active in the struggle in Arizona because I believe in values such as community – that help check injustices.

I would be lying if I did not add that my optimism is being sorely tested by the lack of justice in Tucson today. The events in Arizona shake my faith in American democracy and the fairness or ability of the judicial system to bring about equality under the law.

Without passion, a moral compass does not check the grievous actions of government as well as the lynch mob that often controls places like Arizona.

In Arizona I met Sean Arce, a young forty some teacher who coordinates the Tucson Unified School District’s La Raza Studies program. You cannot miss Sean, he is a big man. Sean is married, has two kids Maya and Emiliano. His wife is a school teacher; he is working his on his PhD; she on a law degree at night.

Born in Tucson Sean was raised in Oakland, California; a linebacker at San Jose State University. Sean returned to Tucson to play linebacker for the University of Arizona. Sean became a school teacher and was one of the founders of the TUSD's highly successful La Raza Studies. He wanted to do something about the dropout problem; he wanted to teach students to think critically.

The problem is that Arizona does not want Mexican Americans to get an education. Based on pressure by Tea Party leaders the assault on La Raza Studies has been incessant for a decade.

In 2010 the legislature passed HB 2281 which outlaws Mexican American Studies as seditious. Driven by the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), a cabal of mostly white males, the TUSD wants to eliminate Sean. SALC members have reaped over a billion dollars by manipulating Tucson government – e.g., the city, the schools, the University of Arizona.

SALC anoints business friendly directors of these public programs who in turn determine who gets the contracts. SALC’s decisions have nothing to do with leadership, civic improvement or community. The pursuit of its members is profit. Its attitude is, “What’s good for SALC is good for Tucson.”

SALC’s power rests on the support of the Arizona Republican Party, today a hostage to the Tea Party Movement. Its base is disaffected white voters who fear the growth of the Latina/o numbers.

Used to not being questioned, the SALC leadership feels threatened by the growing Mexican American sense of community. In 1997 the TUSD was forced to initiate a Mexican American Studies program. SALC was stunned by its successes in bonding the community. They were weary of teachers such as Sean who did not just draw a paycheck but put in 80 hour weeks teaching. The results were too good.

Empowered by 2281 and racist state politicians SALC moved to control La Raza Studies. They appointed one of their own John Pedicone as superintendent of the TUSD at the incredible salary of $250,000. This was so even though Pedicone had had an unspectacular career as a six year superintendent of a district of under 6,000 students.

In just over a year, Pedicone has made life miserable for Sean, his family, the teachers and students. Just this month Pedicone stripped Sean of his supervisorial duties. Teachers are being transferred to non-threatening positions.

In the midst of an educational crisis Pedicone has come up with a solution -- attract white students to three of its magnet schools. The cash strapped TUSD Governing Board passed a $92,000 appropriation to fund the campaign.

According to Pedicone, the district does not educate students because there are not enough white students "in a district where 75 percent of students are minority, the reality is there is a need to attract Caucasian kids to get some kind of balance."

The target schools have students of nearly 85 percent Mexican American.

Arizona’s older white Americans comprise 83 percent of the state; children under 18 are 57 percent minority. SALC’s answer is to wipe out a program where 80 percent of its Latino students go to college, in comparison to only 24 percent nationwide. Anyone who does not agree with it is “anti-American, Marxist, communist, socialist, and must be stopped.” Get rid of Sean Arce and his Pancho Villa’s followers will be silenced.

Where is the liberal media and the Latina/o community in all of this? Where is the moral outrage that will check what is going on? Evidently the courts and the Barack Obama administration have turned the other way.

The Ninth Circuit decision recently required enforcement of the settlement agreement between Tucson schools and the federal government which embodies the ethnic studies program, reopening court supervision. Pedicone and company laugh at this decision and do what they damn please.

Where is the moral outrage of liberal media and liberal institutions? The truth be told, they always have a Wisconsin or a Jerry Brown to re-elect.

But the hardest thing to understand is why the Latina/o and particularly the Mexican American communities outside Tucson have been so passive?

Perhaps we have become a Prozac nation. Remember the American people were had by Wall Street – and few went to jail.

But how much different is SALC from the Mexican cartels or the Italian mafia? How much different is Pedicone from the pedophile? They both damage generations of students who are deprived of being all that they are capable of.

It always seems that people like Sean pay the price for caring about the kids, for caring about the community.

PLEASE GO TO http://saveethnicstudies.org/, CLICK ON THE DONATE BUTTON AND CONTRIBUTE $5.00, $10.00 OR MORE MONTHLY. SUPPORT THE TUCSON COMMUNITY, IT IS YOUR COMMUNITY.

See, http://www.thenation.com/blog/162664/why-arizonas-ethnic-studies-crisis-should-matter-all-educators-interview-dr-rudy-acuna

Guest Video Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Arizona Ethnic Studies Struggle

2011-08-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present a video clip of Professor Rodolfo Acuña discussing the banning of his book, Occupied America, by the Arizona Superintendent of Public Education. The ban is part of the attack on Ethnic and Chicana/o Studies under Arizona's new law, HB2281, and officially now as A.R.S. §15-112(A)-(D). The Save Ethnic Studies (SES) organization has filed suit in Arizona District Court challenging the constitutionality of this attack on freedom of speech and thought.I am the lead author on the amicus curae brief being prepared for the lawsuit by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) on behalf of plaintiffs. The brief will be posted here next week. <p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;hr class="more"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p> RODOLFO ACUÑA on his banned book, 'Occupied America: A History of Chicanos' from International Union, UAW on Vimeo.

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Arizona Ethnic Studies Struggle - II

2011-07-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Moderator's note: I apologize for the month-long quiet. It has been a busy month and much of my work, beyond farming, has focused the past month on efforts to prepare an Amicus curiae brief for the Save Ethnic Studies lawsuit against HB2281. As Past-Chair of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, I was tapped as the lead author on this 'friend of the court' brief. The brief will be ready next week and will be posted here.

In the meantime, we present an update from Rodolfo F. Acuña on the targeted boycott of Arizona and the upcoming special regional conference of the Rocky Mountain Foco of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. We urge all our Arizona followers and readers to make plans now to attend this historic meeting in November, which will focus entirely on the struggle to defend Chicana/o and ethnic studies in Arizona.

Boycott

To Be or Not to Be?

Rodolfo F. Acuña

The Rocky Mountain Foco of the National Association for Chicana/o Studies (NACCS) had scheduled a conference for the weekend of November 4, with organizers projecting about five hundred scholars, community activists and students attending; however, preparations fell through because of housing problems.

The biggest hurdle was the Arizona boycott called by supporters who condemn the racism made clear by passage of SB 1070 and HB 2181, the anti-immigrant and anti-ethnic studies laws targeting Latinas/os and that have created an environment that condones the assassination of a nine year of Mexican girl who vigilantes shot down in cold blood.

The purpose of boycotts is to bring a resolution and clarify the issues. Instead, the Arizona boycott has taken on a life of its own; frankly, it is confusing. While it has punished some big businesses, it has also hurt small establishments – friend and foe alike.

Certainly, there are admirable instances of fantastic support such as Sound Strike whose members have played only to raise money for the anti-racist cause. The collective has exposed the perfidy of performers such as Elton John and Vicente Fernández. However, the fact remains that the Arizona boycott has also caused confusion as to whether to stay away from Arizona or not.

While the decision is ultimately that of Arizonans, especially those from the Tucson area to decide what form the boycott will take, there should be a wider discussion as to its effectiveness.

Boycotts have been historically used by labor to level the playing field. Unions exercise economic power to force management to the negotiating table. Boycotts were used by the Civil Rights Movement for similar purposes and popularized by César Chávez and the Farmworkers. Indeed, the prototype for Latina/o mobilization of communities was and is the Grape Boycott, which remains the farmworkers most enduring legacy.

Yet, the Chicana/o Movement has learned little from the Grape Boycott. The National Association for Chicana/o Studies has cancelled conventions because it was censuring Colorado and Arizona. In these instances, not much was accomplished and the boycotts left wounds because Coloradans and Arizonans resented the boycotts of their states while California that was a worse offender was left alone. Presumably California was too large to mess with.

The forgotten lesson was that César did not call a boycott of California or Arizona but asked people not to buy grapes. The farmworkers did not boycott all food markets but those that were carrying grapes. It singled out the worst offender Gallo. They picked off and divided and conquered, playing RALPHS against VONS Moreover, it gave a widee circle of people a stake. What more can I say, the approach was masterful and it politicized millions of supporters.

The weakness of the Arizona boycott was driven home as we were frantically trying to put together a NACCS Conference in Tucson to protest efforts there to eliminate La Raza Studies. Roberto Rodriguez has been worked tirelessly to try to get facilities at the University of Arizona. However, it does not look good because of the costs but more because of the looseness of the boycott.

An issue is, where would professors and students stay and still honor the boycott? We had counted on staying at the Tohono O'odham casino until we learned that some of the Nation’s leadership had cooperated with the border patrol.

The alternative is to stay at the Yaqui Casino that tucsonenses say has been supportive. The problem arose that the hotel will not be open until the first weeks of November. After this point the option will be open to us. Los tucsonenses are compiling a list of friendly establishments for eating etc. Hopefully, this list will include bed and breakfast facilities and small friendly motels.

The lack of clarity about what the Arizona boycott entails has stifled participation of outside groups, which in turn has prevented large numbers of people from traveling to the Tucson area to show their support for La Raza Studies. More, it has discouraged the infusion of cultural expressions such as that that enriched the farmworker and Chicana/o movements.

Columnist David Morales points out that there has not been a corrido or better still corridos dedicated to la Raza Studies struggle in Tucson. It is crucial that this struggle be memorialized by the Mexican ballad, which is so much part of our history. One of the functions of the conference is to hold contests for the best corridos, poems, essays and art on the Tucson struggle.

Not many people know what HB 2281 is. They do not know that Tucson is where the bulk of the Mexican population in Arizona live. Supporters righteously poured into Phoenix which is the source of the poison. However, most do not know that most Latinas/os live in Tucson and the southern part of the state which is under siege.

Aside from sponsoring freedom marches to Tucson, like the farmworkers, we should identify the enemy. The poison in that city is the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), a cabal of developers and so-called civic leaders who speculate in land and government contracts. The cabal has acquired considerable power anointing Tucson Unified School District superintendent John Pedicone and board members Mark Stegeman and Michael Hicks who are spearheading the destruction of the Raza Studies program and advocating censorship.

We should learn what their business connections are in California and elsewhere and boycott them. It is as simple as “a fiend of my enemy is my enemy.” Boycotts are effective when they are centered.

There has to be a rethinking. It is true that the Republican Party is the main source of support for this racist movement. But just as bad are the blue dog Democrats. They are complicit and empower people like SALC, the Tea Partyers, and the Minutemen. They are running lackey dogs such as Mark Stegeman who claim to be Democrats.

Hopefully, the Rocky Mt. NACCS Conference will take place on December 2-4. It is important to show that Latinas/os and their friends stand in solidarity with La Raza Studies against censorship and racism.

CONTRIBUTE $5.00 A MONTH OR MORE TO DEFEND LA RAZA STUDIES AND EDUCATION IN ARIZONA, Fight Back!

Click on to http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/our_story.shtm

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Arizona Ethnic Studies Struggle

2011-06-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

Critical Thinking: The Basis of Scientific Thought

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

Recently, two Tucson Unified School District board members were asked, “Explain what critical pedagogy means to you and does it have a place in elementary and secondary education?”

Although respondents’ opposition to the district’s Mexican American Studies program was based on the programs use of critical theory to motivate students, they said that they did not know much about it.

Tea party activist Michael Hicks’ response was expected. However, I expected more from University of Arizona economist Mark Stegeman since someone with his pretensions should have at least an elementary acquaintance with epistemology.

Stegeman said, “In many of its manifestations, critical theory is heavily influenced by Marxist and post-Marxist theory. Part of the idea here is that the elites which dominate the modes of communication create a reality which prevents the general population from understanding its situation. There is often an emphasis on the subjective nature of reality and the difficulty of separating it from the language used to describe it. There is also often a strong component of left-leaning ideology and social advocacy.”

Stegeman added, “critical theory is an advanced intellectual exercise. It is obviously important in some fields but is also conceptually beyond what most high school (and obviously younger) students can comprehend.” He added that he was surprised by how social scientists and the humanities blend political judgments into their teachings. According to Stegeman, economists were different: “most economists are at least, aware of the importance of insulating science from these considerations.”

I don’t want to argue, but on what planet does Stegeman live?

Studies show that students taking college economics courses are swayed by the professors’ political leanings. According to a study by the Federal Reserve's Bank of New York, economic classes shape students’ world views.
.
The field of economics is far from objective; it came into vogue after World War II as a counterpoint to the New Deal. Heavily endowed, its corporate benefactors rewarded the economists zealous support of free markets and their antipathy to government intervention. The field embodied the antithesis of John Maynard Keynes who theorized that capitalism functioned best when managed by government regulation.

Whether Stegeman wants to acknowledge it or not, an international elite exists that forms a global consensus on economic principles that are in turn taught to university students. Studies show that most economics professors are more likely to be Republican, subscribing to the views of neoclassical economists.

According to the cited Federal Reserve study, students taking five economics courses were less likely to join the Democratic party and have more than a 10 percent higher chance of joining the Republican party. These courses impacted the students’ civic views, i.e., business majors were less likely than students with other majors to volunteer for a cause, political or otherwise.

The study also found that "Those who completed more economics courses were more likely to agree that tariffs reduce economic welfare and less likely to think that trade deficits adversely affect the economy. The more economics courses taken the less likely respondents were to believe that government should regulate oil prices, and the more likely they were to believe that the minimum wage increases unemployment. Finally, the more economics courses taken the less likely respondents were to believe that . . . the distribution of income should be more equal."

Most American professors, whether liberal or conservative and regardless of their field of study, share a common world view. They are overwhelmingly Eurocentric, witness the views of liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Straightening out differences between right and wrong through critical thinking is not a theoretical exercise but a method of study. The question should be, where would be without critical reasoning?

After the near collapse of our economic system, the faith of economists in neoclassical theories should have raised some concern – Bernie Madoff cannot be blamed – he was not an aberration, just the one who went to jail.

We study the theory of knowledge? Simply to learn if a given proposition is true. We must have a good reason for believing so. Acquiring knowledge is a method that tests a proposition to find out if it is true. This vetting process goes as far back as Socrates who was the first recorded philosopher using critical thinking as a method.

The Olmecas and other Mesoamerican civilizations used critical reasoning to study the cosmos. The search for the truth produced a writing system, advanced mathematics and calendars. The forecasting of the alignments of the stars and planets in the year 2012 was truly phenomenal.

Knowledge as we know it is based on intuition, authority, revelation or science. It can be argued that most progress is based on the latter and that the first three are its antitheses. History shows us that when beliefs trump scientific truths, progress becomes redundant as in the case of Europe during the Dark Ages.

Yet, even medieval scholars struggled against blind faith. Scholasticism, a European Catholic method of learning, was used to test the mysteries of faith. It placed a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning, practicing the principle of negation. It all went wrong when in the end, faith trumped scientific reasoning.

Auguste Comte and others secularized the study of knowledge in the 19th century by developing new scientific methods to test accepted truth.

In the United States, the search for new methods was vigorous. Increasingly scholars rejected truths based on intuition, authority or revelation alone. Educators such as John Dewey developed new theories, i.e., in "How We think" Dewey defined critical thinking as "reflective thought."

Later, the physicist Thomas Kuhn added to the study of knowledge by theorizing that science undergoes periodic "paradigm shifts." According to Kuhn, progress is not linear as deductive reasoning inferred but continuous.

In my freshman year, I was required to take courses in inductive and deductive logic or reasoning as it is sometimes called. Granted these techniques were taught from a definite Jesuit viewpoint, everyone knew and accepted it. Learning is part of growing up as is coming to grips with differences.

Deduction and induction are part of critical thinking, and basing of any paradigm on intuition, authority or revelation is anti science.

By the sixties, an obvious question was, why were the public schools failing people of color and the poor? Many wanted to make society more democratic and reform public education.

The renowned historian Edwin Fenton came up with the "inquiry method" of teaching social studies which was adopted by teachers throughout the country. Fenton held workshops on the inquiry method that were sponsored by state boards of education. "Edwin Fenton organized over 200 workshops about curriculum development in thirty-one states and nine foreign countries.”

The gist of the inquiry method was that it “encourages a student to reach beyond the facts he is given in class and construct his own notions about historical events. It is through this type of historical inquiry that a student will become engaged. A personal relationship will develop between the student and the information.”

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed came out in English in 1970 and was based on successful literacy campaigns in Brazil and other Latin America countries. From the beginning, Freire was demonized and red baited by the large latifundistas (plantation owners) for teaching their serfs how to read.

It is important to note that Freire was part of the Liberation Theology movement during and after Vatican II. Organizers formed comunidades de base (base communities) throughout Latin America. Liberation Theology attempted to return to the gospel of the early church when congregations were responsible for the community’s spiritual and material well being.

Apparently critical thinking is working in Tucson; it has the establishment nervous. The reaction is reminiscent of that of California Superintendent of Schools Max Rafferty in the 1960s who said that the inquiry method was subversive because it encouraged students to question.

During the sixties, as in the case of Arizona, many people felt threatened – it is not easy to give up privilege.

Los Angeles Unified School Board Member Dr. Julian Nava in the late 1960s was asked by a contemporary from the San Joaquin Valley, "Dr. Nava, you really don't want to educate Mexicans, do you, who would pick our crops?”

Well, this is just what critical pedagogy wants to do. It wants to educate students to be able to read and understand the constitution and help others.

A Postscript

In Los Angeles, you don’t see many Latinas/os panhandling. You see them at the freeway entrances with bags of oranges and peanuts trying to earn their daily bread. This short essay takes a cue from this tradition and asks you to contribute to the Save Ethnic Studies lawsuit in Tucson. It is a struggle against ignorance and the attempt of the Hicks’ and Stegemans to put us back in the Dark Ages.

When I interviewed for my first tenure track teaching job in 1958 with the Los Angeles, an interviewer failed me because he said that I could not teach public school children because I had been educated by the Jesuits and used the scholastic method. Although I see the errors of this method today, he was wrong. After years of study, I realize that what is important is for students to learn. In Tucson, critical theory engages students; they want to learn and this is good. Learning is good, feeling pride in yourself is good, and helping others is better.

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE $5.00, $10.00 OR WHAT YOU CAN A MONTH TO DEFEND LA
RAZA STUDIES IN ARIZONA

Click onto http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/our_story.shtml
Click onto the “Donate” button and Fight Back!

Arizona's State of Exception: Senator Russell Pearce to be Subject to Recall Vote

2011-06-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

Grassroots Mobilization Leads to Massive Support for Recall Petition

In what is being characterized as an unprecedented development, Arizona's registered voters have assembled a massive petition for a recall election of Senator Russell Pearce, the primary architect of Arizona's anti-immigrant and anti-Ethnic Studies legislative assault of the past two years. This is unprecedented because it will be the first time in the history of American politics that the standing President of a state Senate is subject to a recall election.

In a story prepared by Jeff Biggers for The Nation (May 31, 2011), the recall campaign reportedly has assembled 18,300 signatures, which by far exceeds the 7,756 signatures required under law for a special recall election of a state senator. The petition and signatures must still be verified by the Arizona Secretary of State but the overwhelming numbers suggest that the special election will take place later this summer.

Since 2008, we have been covering the development of the state of exception in Arizona, a well-organized effort to attack the constitutional rights of immigrants and other Latina/os that has been led by Senator Pearce whom we have criticized for his close connections and relations with extremist groups in Arizona including known associates and members of Nazi and other white supremacist groups. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has provided assistance to Pearce and other politicians bent on reversing the inevitable demographic transformation of Arizona into a Latina/o majority state. All along, we have argued that these attacks are intended to disenfranchise the growing mass of Latina/o voters in the state.

Apparently, this petition demonstrates that voters have had enough of the race-baiting and hate-filled vitriol that has driven this anti-immigrant campaign whose most remarkable accomplishment was passage of SB1070, a bill that has been successfully challenged by state residents and the Obama Justice Department as unconstitutional. Biggers' report overlooks that fact that the targeted boycott of Arizona by Latina/o and immigrant rights organizations has already caused serious economic damage to the state's convention and tourism businesses.

The recall campaign cut across traditional party lines and numerous Republicans signed the petition in a purported demonstration of disgust for the hypocrisy on exhibit when GOP politicians like Pearce champion the cause of small government and then turn around and legislate to make government ever larger and more intrusive in the political, cultural, economic, and personal life of all Arizonans.

Bigger's article quotes Chad Snow, a Phoenix Republican activist and co-founder of Citizens for a Better Arizona: "We want to send a message to Senator Pearce, to every legislator down here at the Arizona legislature, that this kind of extreme, ideologically driven policies will no longer be tolerated in our state."

While some pundits and observers, including Biggers, see this as a turning point in the Arizona legal civil war over immigrants and the future of ethnic studies, we recognize that the recall election may fail and, regardless of that outcome, there are other laws already on the books, and that have been left in place under further federal court review, that represent a clear and present danger and an unconstitutional attack on immigrants, their communities, and their employers.

Of particular concern is the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last month upholding the constitutionality of the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a controversial state law that requires all Arizona employers to confirm the legal status of their workers via E-Verify, the federal electronic verification system.

Under that law, the state may impose severe, some say debilitating, penalties including the loss of business licenses on employers that hire 'unauthorized aliens.' In that case, the plaintiffs included an odd set of allies that paired the Chamber of Commerce on the same side against the law with leading liberal groups such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

The Chamber of Commerce, which brought the suit, calls the law a "business death penalty." Wow! Does that mean the business elite in Arizona are now Zapatistas, who famously declared in January 1994 that NAFTA was a "death sentence" for indigenous peoples?

HB 2281 Update: School District Officials Respond to Citizen Questionnaire

2011-06-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Moderator's note: We are presenting several documents relevant to the continued campaign to save ethnic studies in Arizona public schools and specifically the draconian measures being considered by the Board of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). This is done as part of our continuing coverage of the Save Ethnic Studies campaign to repeal HB 2281.

The documents posted here include: (1) an open letter to the Board of the TUSD dated May 25, 2011; (2) the Questionnaire submitted with the letter; and (3) a series of responses by some of the TUSD Board members. We offer these documents without further comment but endorse the efforts of Tucsonans United for Sound Districts to defend ethnic studies and to hold our elected officials transparently accountable to all Arizona students, parents, and teachers.

Tucsonans United for Sound Districts

1325 North Wilmot Road

Suite 200

Tucson, AZ 85712

www.tu4sd.com

Sent by email: March, 25, 2011

TUSD Governing Board
Attention: President Dr. Mark Stegeman
Ms. Judy Burns
Ms. Adelita Grijalva
Mr. Michael Hicks
Mr. Miguel Cuevas

1010 East Tenth Street
Tucson, Arizona 85717-0400

Re: Questionnaire

Dear President Stegeman and TUSD Governing Board Members,

Tucsonans United For Sound Districts applauds the district’s new commitment to accountability and transparency as evidenced by the hiring of Dr. John Pedicone. The statements made regarding the district’s desire to change the culture are encouraging and we are hopeful about the future of the district.

In an effort to “put kids first and the public back into public education,” TU4SD continues its efforts to reengage the public in the issues of and support for our public schools. We hold that as the public’s sense of ownership in the district grows so does their commitment to get involved and work to preserve our public schools. Many recognize that it is primarily the public’s confusion about the district’s schools and the issues facing the district which has led to the continuing and almost exponential increase in local charter schools and the flight from our districts’ schools.

If the public had a better understanding of its elected representatives’ thinking on these issues perhaps their fears and concerns would be put to rest and we could all focus on, as so many of you have expressed, ‘selling the district to the public.’

Unlike so many groups which have made demands on the Board recently, we of course do not demand an answer; we respectfully request an answer by the end of business on Tuesday March, 28, 2011. If you do not intend to answer the questionnaire, please be so kind as to advise us of that choice as well. If you choose not to respond, we will share that information with the public as well.

We look forward to hearing from you in a joint effort to open the lines of communication with the public. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
Loretta Hunnicutt
Member, Tucsonans United For Sound Districts

QUESTIONNAIRE

TUSD BOARD MEMBERS RESPOND

Answers of Ms. Judy Burns

From: Judy Burns
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2011 11:10 AM
To: admin tu4asd
Subject: Re: TUSD Governing Board questionnaire

Dear Ms. Hunnicutt,

I believe that the questionnaire you have asked board members to fill out is a violation of the open meeting law. As an elected body we are charged with coming to decisions about things in open meeting and after public discussion. You are asking us to all answer the same questions and then plan on some sort of compilation and public decimination [sic]. I am waiting legal advice before proceeding with answering any of your questions.

Sincerely,
Judy Burns,
TUSD Governing Board

From: Judy Burns
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 9:23 AM
To: admin tu4asd
Cc: Mark Stegeman
Subject: RE: TUSD Governing Board questionnaire

Though this is not a direct violation of the OML, the manner in which you plan on using board members answers on things we have not discussed as a board, concern me. It is one issue to ask a board candidate these types of questions, another to ask a sitting board member to commit to a vote one way or another.

I am going to decline answering your questionairre [sic] for the above reason. I like to know all sides of an issue, cost, scope etc. Before making a commitment to move forward.

Thank you for your interest,

Judy Burns, TUSD Governing Board

Answers of Mr. Michael Hicks

1. What do you believe the Governing Board should do to bring the cost of administration down to the level of other very large Arizona districts (about $600 per pupil) from the current rate of $791 per pupil?)This amounts to nearly $10 mil. More than other districts)

I believe that the Board as a whole needs to recognize that we spend too much on administration and make a firm commitment to change. TUSD spends more than most other large districts on administration. The Board and Superintendent need to start evaluating administrative positions looking for any overlaps and redundancies. TUSD has layers of administrators and directors that need to be evaluated for there importance to and relationship with classrooms. Our focus must be on direct and indirect services to the classroom. We also need to evaluate programs for their effectiveness because most of these each programs have their own set of administrators.

2. Do you believe you and the public has the right to know how the TUSD administration has spent all the money the state appropriates for the purpose of desegregating TUSD schools?

Yes, absolutely.

3. If your answer to question 2 was "Yes," will you vote to pay for an external audit of how TUSD has spent, and continues to spend, this money?

I ran for school board on the promise of bringing accountability and transparency to the district. Since taking office I have handed in more Request for Information than the district has seen in a long time. The public wants to know and I want to know where the money is, where it is going, and what do we have to show for it. I fully support an audit of all spending, not just the desegregation dollars. That money was set aside specifically to help our underserved kids, and if one penny was not spent on proven programs to reduce the achievement gap someone should answer for that.

4. Explain what critical pedagogy means to you and does it have a place in elementary and secondary education?

I am not an expert on this topic. As I understand the term critical pedagogy, traditionally it referred to teaching and learning practices that are designed to raise learners' awareness of oppressive social conditions. It often focuses on a person’s race and/or gender. Often critical pedagogy also has a collective political component, so the new awareness of the oppressive social conditions are the first step of a larger collective political struggle to challenge and transform oppressive social conditions and to create a society based on concepts like social justice. When the teachers and proponents talk about critical thinking, they are not talking about teaching kids who to view an issue from all sides with a large amount of information from varied resources, they are teaching the kids how to view issues in terms of the oppressors and the oppressed with an emphasis on their ethnicity.

No, I don't believe that critical pedagogy should be used in any k-12 schools (period), it can and should be available to more mature minds that are capable of examining all sides of an issue such as those hopefully found in our colleges and universities.

5. To what extent should history and English classes be based on critical theory?

Critical pedagogy is not the most obvious or reasonable solution to the shortcomings our current curriculum has in addressing the accomplishments of all Americans of every race and some of the failings of our government. It is necessary for us to learn about the good and bad of our country, but critical pedagogy is not the answer. The common misconception is that we are adding more diversity to the curriculum, and everyone can agree that we need to do that, but adding politics to the classroom is not the answer.

6. One reason offered during a recent school board meeting for the shift to K-8 schools is the belief that this will prevent the junior high population flight from TUSD, what in your opinion is the number one reason to shift to this model, and how exactly will this reduce the number of students leaving TUSD?

This model has had some success around the country and there is no reason to believe that it will not be successful here. The key is to changing the entire culture of the district at the same time we are changing school models.

7. To what extent does TUSD have a responsibility to consider the effects of school closures on the surrounding neighborhoods?

We have a great deal of responsibility to consider the neighborhoods. Carson for example has a great deal of support from the surrounding community and it has become center of neighborhood cohesion and positive community activity. As stewards of our schools and the taxpayers’ money we do at times have no choice but to close schools. We don’t take that responsibility lightly and we try to be very fair in our decision making.

8. Certain programs that TUSD offers such as the traditional "back to basics" classrooms found at Bonillas and Dodge have waiting lists. In an effort to prevent flight from the district should the Governing Board increase the number of schools using the "back to basics" curriculum model? Why or why not?

Just the other night at the Carson meeting parents were suggesting that the district might be able to save money if we returned to more traditional, basic, proven curriculums and I am sure if we did, we would save money and I believe that this is what the public wants and we serve the public. We live in a community where the most successful and one of the most popular charter schools is a back to basics school, maybe we should take the hint and reevaluate what we are offering the public.

Answers of Dr. Mark Stegeman

It is important to emphasize that my answers reflect only my own views and not the views of the Board as whole.

1. What do you believe the Governing Board should do to bring the cost of administration down to the level of other very large Arizona districts (about $600 per pupil) from the current rate of $791 per pupil?)This amounts to nearly $10 mil. More than other districts)

First, we need to understand, more precisely, where the administrative costs arise. Staff has agreed to provide an analysis of administrative costs within the next few weeks. Second, we should study those areas in which our costs per pupil appear to be higher than other districts. In some cases, there may be good reasons for this, such as our unusually high proportion (about 15%) of special education students. Third, we need to study even those areas where our costs do not appear excessive relative to other districts, in the belief that we should do better than average. In some cases economies of scale should help, and in some other areas we should insist on better management and tighter attention to costs. Fourth, as a result of these analyses, we will need to make hard decisions to bring costs down. I think that the Board should clearly communicate, to the superintendent, the importance of this issue.

The state's measure of what fraction of money goes into the classroom is flawed, but even by that measure I hope that TUSD will strive for 60%, which is significantly higher than our recent percentages.

Some areas in the TUSD administration have been cut substantially and may now be operating fairly efficiently. It is also clear that this does not hold across all areas, especially in some departments and programs which have for many years escaped thorough scrutiny.

2. Do you believe you and the public has the right to know how the TUSD administration has spent all the money the state appropriates for the purpose of desegregating TUSD schools?

It is our responsibility to make current desegregation spending (and spending in general) much more transparent than it has been in the past. This is one of my highest priorities.

Legally, the public already has the right to inspect the documents which describe how money has been spent, historically. I am not convinced that TUSD should invest substantial staff resources in clarifying where all the money has been spent, over the past decades. TUSD has myriad accumulated and in some cases pressing issues and problems to solve, which have more impact on the students enrolled in our classes today.

3. If your answer to question 2 was "Yes," will you vote to pay for an external audit of how TUSD has spent, and continues to spend, this money?

We just completed a productive audit of our bus operations: the auditor's conclusions were quite negative and will lead to major changes. We will probably hire other outside auditors, in the future, to investigate specific areas, though I remain concerned about TUSD’s general tendency to rely heavily on consultants and outside contractors. Auditors (aside from our accounting auditors) are somewhat different from those ongoing relationships, because they are hired once, to complete a study.

TUSD’s post-unitary plan already requires it to pay two full-time compliance officers, one internal and one external, to monitor desegregation spending. I hope that it is unnecessary to spend additional money on an outside audit of that area.

4. Explain what critical pedagogy means to you and does it have a place in elementary and secondary education?

Critical theory, which is a broad rather than a precise term, is an academic approach to the understanding of texts, society, and how our texts and language form our understanding of society and thus the society itself. It has become important in English and other fields in the humanities and social sciences, but it has never penetrated economics.

Therefore, I am probably not the best person to ask.

In many of its manifestations, critical theory is heavily influenced by Marxist and post-Marxist theory. Part of the idea here is that the elites which dominate the modes of communication create a reality which prevents the general population from understanding its situation. There is often an emphasis on the subjective nature of reality and the difficulty of separating it from the language used to describe it. There is also often a strong component of left-leaning ideology and social advocacy.

In my few encounters with respected academics in the humanities, especially those who work on the boundaries with social science, I have sometimes been surprised by the melding of science and political advocacy. Economists also sometimes allow ideology or politics to corrupt science, but most economists are, at least, aware of the importance of insulating science from these considerations.

I emphasize again that my understanding is limited: critical theory is an advanced intellectual exercise. It is obviously important in some fields but is also conceptually beyond what most high school (and obviously younger) students can comprehend.

Therefore, and also because it is often politically loaded, my current view is that, while critical thinking should be emphasized throughout our curriculum, critical theory has little place in K-12 education.

5. To what extent should history and English classes be based on critical theory?

What teachers teach reflects their training, but I cannot imagine that critical theory should play any major role in the teaching of English, and certainly not in the teaching of history, in the K-12 system. It is appropriate for university-level education.

6. One reason offered during a recent school board meeting for the shift to K-8 schools is the belief that this will prevent the junior high population flight from TUSD, what in your opinion is the number one reason to shift to this model, and how exactly will this reduce the number of students leaving TUSD?

This question is better directed to the staff which have studied this issue. Reasons often cited are that many parents seem to prefer it, that it is a way of keeping students in grades 7-8 well-grounded and somewhat insulated from older students, and simply that the alternative model of junior high schools often does not appear to perform well.

There are arguments for junior high schools as well, including the preservation of more small, local, elementary schools. From my viewpoint as an educator but also an outsider from the academic field of "education," the difficulty of determining what are really the best educational models has made the entire field subject to fads and magic solutions, which sweep over school systems and then recede. This instability has been, in my opinion, one of the weaknesses of the U.S. educational system.

7. To what extent does TUSD have a responsibility to consider the effects of school closures on the surrounding neighborhoods?

TUSD has a great responsibility. For the decisions which must be made this year, we have tried to create a system which ensures considerable community input into the disposition of TUSD's recently closed schools.

8. Certain programs that TUSD offers such as the traditional "back to basics" classrooms found at Bonillas and Dodge have waiting lists. In an effort to prevent flight from the district should the Governing Board increase the number of schools using the "back to basics" curriculum model? Why or why not?

Various schools in TUSD have had waiting lists (Dodge is a conspicuous example); some of those employ traditional education and some do not. It makes sense to follow the market by investing in the models which families seem to want, but that is not the only criterion for making curriculum decisions.

HB 2281 Update: Motion for Summary Judgement Filed

2011-05-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: As we continue to report on the developments related to the struggle for quality, equitable, and relevant education and freedom of speech in Arizona's public schools, this new legal action merits your attention. This motion for summary judgement filed by opponents of HB 2281 basically entails a request that the courts immediately dismiss the law on Constitutional grounds (First Amendment rights). For further analysis of HB 2281, see our earlier blog postings of January 3 and January 2, 2011. Also please review the blog of August 1, 2010. We will be releasing the Statement on HB 2281 from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies in the coming weeks. Please visit for these updates.

SAVE ETHNIC STUDIES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 26, 2011

Contact: Deyanira Nevarez

2281 Project Director, Save Ethnic Studies

(520) 975-1485 cell

info@saveethnicstudies.org

MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ISSUED IN HB 2281 ETHNIC STUDIES CASE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On May 25, attorney Richard M. Martinez filed a motion for summary judgment in the case against HB 2281. The motion, filed on behalf of the 13 litigants in the case (11 TUSD Mexican American Studies instructors and two TUSD students), makes the case that the prohibitions outlined in HB 2281 are too vague and broad and violate the first amendment rights of teachers, schools and students. Since every provision of the law violates the constitution, the motion calls for the law to be overturned in its entirety.

It is fundamentally argued that this law is designed to limit the material and ideas allowed in the classroom and thus restrict the first amendment rights of teachers to teach and students to learn.

The motion cites legal precedent and common sense examples, as well as the political atmosphere in which this law was crafted by former Arizona superintendent of public instruction (now attorney general) Tom Horne and the Arizona legislature, to make the case for striking HB 2281 down.

A full copy of the motion will be available soon at http://saveethnicstudies.org/.

The motion addresses the law's four major provisions prohibiting instruction that:

Promotes the overthrow of the United States Government;
promotes resentment toward a race or class of people;
is designed primarily for people of a particular ethnic group and
advocates ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.

In addressing the first part (promotes the overthrow of the United States Government), the motion uses the example of the battle of the Alamo between Texas insurgents and the Mexican army, asking as a teacher might, "Who are the rebels and who are the patriots? Did the insurgents instigate a war against a sovereign nation?" and more importantly, by raising such questions are teachers advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government?

The section of the motion cites the chilling effect that would have on teachers, forcing them to restrict classroom discussions to topics politically safe rather than offering topics for debate.

In part b (promotes resentment toward a race or class of people), the motion uses the example of a possible discussion of jihad and the attacks of September 11. Could this promote bitterness toward Muslims and therefore make the topic off limits for discussion? For that matter, might a discussion of the Apache raids in Arizona promote resentment toward Apaches?

In section c (is designed primarily for people of a particular ethnic group), the motion asks if the majority of students in an African American history class are African American, could the class be banned? Or for that matter, as is the case at many Tucson Unified School District schools where Latinos outnumber other ethnic groups, could any class that has a large number of Latino students be banned? Would a math class with mostly Latino students be banned?

In addressing section d of the law (advocates ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals) the motion raises the question of whether a discussion of Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month would be in violation of the law. What about such topics as Juneteenth and Cinco de Mayo, or such groups as the NAACP, the American Indian Movement or the Ku Klux Klan? Might a teacher be in trouble for teaching about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?

So much of American history would be simply off limits by the vague wording of this law, and clearly the rights of teachers to teach and students to learn is violated by this law in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

GUEST BLOG: David Bacon on Subaltern Cross-Border Worker Organizing

2011-05-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

By David Bacon

Re-posted from the original by the Americas Program on: May 22, 2011 at
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4606.

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

Introduction

In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they've ever been.

Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.

All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.

This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:

What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?

How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?

One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?

How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border?

The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

The working class movements of the U.S. and Mexico both began in the decades after the seizure of Mexican territory in the War of 1848, its incorporation into the territory of the U.S., and the unequal relationship cemented by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

After the turn of the century, cross-border solidarity became an important political movement, as Mexicans began migrating to the U.S. as railroad workers, miners and farm laborers. The Flores Magon brothers, on the run from the regime of Porfirio Diaz, began organizing what became the uprising in Cananea and the Liberal Party in the communities of railroad workers in Los Angeles, St. Louis and elsewhere north of the border.

The two were active participants in the radical socialist and anarchist movements of the day, and were associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. After the Cananea rising, J. Edgar Hoover pursued them in his first campaign of organized anti-labor and anti-left repression. The brothers were caught, tried and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison, where Ricardo died.

Today in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on the wall of the longshore union hall, hangs a banner dated 1906, declaring the union part of the Casa Obrera Mundial. The Casa Obrera Mundial was a Mexican group associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the banner testifies to the links that existed between workers of the two countries at that time, and their internationalist outlook. Later, members of the IWW fought in the Mexican Revolution itself.

The roots of the cross-border solidarity movement are very deep, going back more than a century. They are part of the labor culture of workers and unions, and have been almost since the beginning of our two labor movements.

During the 1930s, strong cross border relationships developed between workers on both sides. In Mexico and the U.S., their challenge was the same - to organize the vast bulk of workers in the largest enterprises, especially the basic industries.

Through the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican labor had a government that depended on a strong, albeit politically controlled, union movement. Communists and socialists organized the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and began supporting the beginnings of labor movements in other countries through the Confederation of Workers of Latin America (CTAL), headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano.

In the U.S., the New Deal was a product of the upsurge in labor organizing led by the left, and in turn it also created a favorable environment in which many industrial workers were able to organize.

From that period to the present, the relationships between workers in the U.S. and Mexico grew closer when the left was strong, both in terms of organized political parties, but also as a set of ideas that were supported by large numbers of workers. From the beginning, the strongest relationships have existed between industrial workers - miners, railroad workers, factory workers, farm workers, longshore workers and others.

During the period of the labor upsurge of the 1930s and 40s, most solidarity activity was organized by Mexican unions in support of workers in the U.S. In part, this was due to a point of view among those unions that saw Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, especially along the border, as part of their own constituency. They sought to protect and defend the interests of people they viewed as their own paisanos.

In 1937 5000 workers marched to the bridge in Laredo during an onion strike in the Rio Grande Valley. The major working class organizations of the border states were present - the Congreso de Trabajo, the railroad union and the Mexican Communist Party. Vicente Lombardo Toledano came from Mexico City to speak.

Together with grassroots unions organized by left-wing workers on the U.S. side, the groups cooperated in setting up the Asociacion de Jornaleros (the Agricultural Workers Union) in Laredo, Texas. In the following years, Mexican unions increased their organizing activity in Texas. The CTM held Conventions of Mexican Workers in Dallas in 1938, in San Antonio in 1940, and in Austin in 1941.

The program of these gatherings emphasized the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans in the southwest. That battle goes on today in Arizona and other states. Other demands included stopping local authorities from dropping Mexicans from the relief rolls during times of high unemployment. Today immigrants, even with permanent residence visas, still can't get most kinds of Social Security and welfare benefits.

As the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began to grow, Mexican unions and organizers cooperated in efforts to organize Mexican workers on the U.S. side. The CTM set up committees among Mexican workers in the southwest. After Lombardo Toledano and others established the Universidad Obrera in Mexico City, Mexicans living in the U.S. were sent for training. Emma Tenayuca, the young Communist who led the most famous strike of Mexican women of the time, the pecan strike in San Antonio, got her organizer training beforehand at the Universidad Obrera.

In U.S. copper mines 60% of the workers were Mexican or Mexican American. The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union, with roots in the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW, used border alliances to build union locals in mining towns. This was a logical and necessary step, since the same families worked in mines on both sides of the border. They shared a similar union history, in which the fight against the inferior Mexican wage as a central demand in both Mexican and U.S. mines, which belonged to the same companies.

On May Day in 1942 500 Mine Mill members marched with 10,000 Mexican workers in Ciudad Juarez. Humberto Silex, Mine Mill's leading organizer, established Local 509, which became the union's most important local. Silex addressed the rally. The following July 4, Toledano traveled from Mexico City to speak in El Paso's Independence Day celebration.

Solidarity went beyond speeches and conventions. CTM organizers coordinated with U.S. organizers during the first strikes by Mine Mill in El Paso, especially during the key battle to organize its giant smelter. In 1946 Mine Mill struck 14 ASARCO plants to gain national bargaining. The CTM donated money, and pledged to stop Mexicans from crossing the border to break the strike.

In Los Angeles, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union established Local 26 for southern California warehouse and light manufacturing workers. The union used Mexican organizers, including Jess Armenta and Bert Corona. Corona, a leftist born in Ciudad Juarez, became local president. Later Humberto Camacho, a Mexican organizer for the United Electrical Workers, helped establish UE Local 1421.

Corona and Camacho became the two most influential leaders of the immigrant rights movement through the 1970s, not just in Los Angeles, but nationally. Their labor and solidarity activity created a base for fighting for immigrant rights. That core of activists and their militant program called for defending the rights of undocumented workers. They made the modern immigrant rights movement possible.

Corona, Camacho, and their generation of solidarity and labor activists saw that unions in both countries had a common interest. Labor, they believed, should try to raise the standard of living in both countries, and stop the use of immigrants as a vulnerable labor supply for employers.

Immigration laws in the U.S. were constantly used against strikes by Mexican workers. From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. As the cold war started, deportations were used to try to break this cross-border movement. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE's predecessor) arrested and tried to deport Humberto Silex. He became one of the most famous anti-deportation cases of the McCarthyite period.

Luisa Moreno, an organizer of garment workers in Los Angeles, was deported to Guatemala. Another political deportee of the cold war was Refugio Martinez, a leader of the United Packinghouse Workers in Chicago. Martinez helped build community organizations in Mexican barrios, including El Frente Popular Mexicano, the Toledano Club, and the Asociacion Nacional Mexicano Americano. Armando Davila, of the United Furniture Workers in L.A., was also deported. The government tried to deport Lucio Bernabe, a leader of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers who led organizing drives in San Jose canneries. His deportation was stopped. But Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican movie actress, was deported after playing a role in Salt of the Earth, the movie written by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters documenting the role of women in the strike by Mine Mill at the Empire Zinc mine.

Many of the deportations were fought by the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, a left-wing immigrant rights organization based in Los Angeles. The deportation wave marked the rise of cold war hysteria. They were not isolated, but part of the context of the repression of Mexican immigrants generally. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, the combination of enforcement and bracero contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.

As a political weapon, deportations were part of a general wave of repression that included firings, and even prison for left-wing and labor activists. At the same time, the labor movements on both sides were purged of left-wing leaders. In the U.S., the CIO expelled nine unions, charged with being Communist. In Mexico, independent movements like that of the railroad workers were crushed, and its leaders, also accused of being Communists, were sent to prison.

As a result, the people who had organized the solidarity movement of the 1930s and 40s were fighting just for their survival. Unions that were its base, like the miners or farm workers, were attacked and in some cases destroyed. The labor movements in both countries became more nationalistic. In the U.S. a cold war labor leadership defended U.S. foreign policy goals, especially anti-communism. Anti-communism provided a common ground with the charro leadership of the CTM and other Mexican unions, who feared any independent movement challenging them from the left.

The American Institute for Free Labor Development, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, had an office in Mexico City. But the office did not organize solidarity efforts to defend workers against U.S. corporations and the wars and interventions that supported them. Instead, U.S. labor/intelligence agents helped in the suppression, imprisonment and even murder of militant unionists throughout Latin America. When solidarity efforts began again years later, the distrust and suspicion engendered by that history took years to overcome, and in some areas still exists today.

Even during the worst times, however, there were still relationships among progressive activists and union locals. When miners went on strike in Cananea in the 1960s, a Mine Mill leader, Maclovio Barrajas, organized food and money for them from the U.S. side. When Mine Mill went on strike later, the Cananea miners reciprocated.

During the 60s, as the introduction of container technology transformed work on the waterfront, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) invited Mexican longshore workers to come work in the L.A. harbor and learn to drive the cranes. Today there are still retired members of the Federation of Stevedores in Mexican Pacific coast ports who remember that experience of worker-to-worker solidarity.

Corona and Camacho, and ILWU Local 26 and UE Local 1421, supported some of the first efforts in Tijuana to organize independent unions in the maquiladoras, as the industry started to mushroom. A critical strike at Solidev and Solitron in the late 1970s was supported both by Tijuana's left, including veteran Communist Blas Manriquez, and a network of activists on the U.S. side led by Camacho.

After the repression of the student movement in Tlatelolco in 1968, and especially in the years just before the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) became the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) and eventually the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), left-wing worker activists moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles to organize what had become a huge population of Mexican workers living there. Some became organizers for the UE, and eventually other unions as well, helping to spark the city's labor upsurge of the 1980s and 90s.

Corona helped build that same activist base through the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA). It single-mindedly fought for the rights for undocumented workers, urging workers to join unions, fighting to get unions to defend them, and organizing workers on its own when labor was unresponsive.

Today unions are often so busy just trying to survive that looking at the history of earlier solidarity efforts seems a luxury. But it is important to know that the movement for solidarity among workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico didn't begin with NAFTA. Those earlier efforts are an important reservoir of experience. They show that solidarity is an integral and indispensable part of the history of the labor movement in both countries. Earlier worker activists and leaders have given unions today a rich, although little-known, store of knowledge of tactics, strategy, and above all, politics. They often paid heavily, so their contributions should not be lightly set aside or ignored.

One important conclusion of those earlier years is that solidarity has always been a two-way street. Mexican unions especially played a key role in the organization of US unions, some of which would not exist today without that early support, particularly in the southwest.

Those early efforts met success by concentrating on the key role of Mexican workers in the U.S. Today's circumstances are different, but the migration of people is just as important to solidarity today as it was eighty years ago.

Solidarity has always been a project of the left in each country. A strong left produced a base for developing common action. It popularized political ideas that helped workers understand that internationalism was necessary to confront transnational corporations and the governments and policies that supported them. Conversely, the cold war, nationalism, and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., and repression on both sides of the border, were the tools used to break those bonds and proscribe those ideas. Today those threats are growing again. Ties between workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico must grow stronger to defeat them.

David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach - migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations - and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.

For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org

See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)

Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008

http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

Arizona's State of Exception: Arpaio's Gulag cum Cartel

2011-05-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF DEPUTIES ARRESTED AS PART OF DRUG AND HUMAN SMUGGLING RING

In a story dated May 25, 2011, the Arizona Republic newspaper is reporting that three Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) employees, including a deputy in the human-smuggling unit, were arrested Tuesday by authorities who say they were involved in a drug- and human-trafficking ring and used Sheriff's Office intelligence to guide smugglers through the Valley.

The report reveals that the sheriff's employees were among 12 suspects arrested Tuesday during a series of early-morning raids at 16 locations throughout the Valley where investigators had targeted members of the organization.

The group mostly moved heroin, according to investigators, and officials suspect each of the arrested sheriff's employees played a crucial role in moving the drugs and hiding the illicit profits. Authorities say the ring moved about $56,000 worth of heroin a week through the Valley.

As most of us know, Sheriff Arpaio and his office are already under federal investigation for a number of serious allegations including the misuse of public funds, illegal and false arrests targeting immigrant rights activists, and systematic denial of basic rights to immigrants held in detention by the MCSO.

What needs to be addressed here is the role of the federal program known as "Secure Communities" in creating the environment for these sorts of abuses and illegal activities to take place. One has to wonder if these events would have unfolded in the absence of Arizona's participation in this federal policing program that is itself coming under attack as a number of states, including Illinois, move to terminate the agreements with the feds.

For now, it seems clear that Arpaio's gulag (prison camp) is also part of an international smuggling cartel. This must make the Tea Party activists feel all warm and fuzzy about their deification of the MCSO, eh?

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Arizona Civil Rights Struggle

2011-05-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

Arizona is not above the law!

Rodolfo F. Acuña

Last month marked the 150^th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, marking the start of the Civil War. Days before in his Inaugural Address President Abraham Lincoln summed up the differences between the South and the North saying, “One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute."

The South lost the war, but the argument was hardly settled. Throughout the past 150 years people have sought to distort history creating the popular mythology that the war was about states’ rights.

Time recently wrote about the civil war, “150 years later, Americans have lost [Lincoln’s] clarity about the cause of the Civil War…,” asking “why we still fighting the Civil War?” The war, according to Time, was not about states’ rights, it was about the Constitution.

Yet, two-thirds of Americans believe myths made in Hollywood. The public is ahistorical and wants to believe that the slaves were happy people deluding themselves that everyone in America is equal.

Part of the blame for this nonsense can be laid at the feet of the federal government and its failure to uphold the Constitution because it either not does not want to offend anyone or because it prefers to serve special interests. The courts with a few exceptions have allowed the 14^th amendment to become a sham, allowing idiots to fly the confederate flag in defiance of history.

The truth be told, Dwight Eisenhower reluctantly enforced Brown v. Board of Education. He was afraid to offend the sensibilities of Southerners -- calling out the National Guard to prevent chaos. Still, many Americans could not come to grips with their true motives and throughout the fifties and sixties racist mobs protested that they were not racist; it was all about states’ rights and local control of schools.

Here we are five decades later and the State of Arizona is still under the delusion that it is defying the Constitution because it is protecting its states’ rights. According to them, it has nothing to do with racism. State officials feel entitled to violate the law of the land, and squander millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds to play out their prejudices.

Where is the federal government in all this? It allows the Koch brothers and their gaggle of billionaires to manipulate the rabble through fear and lies much the same as the slave owner plutocracy used the landless masses to fight a war to preserve their wealth.

I could be flippant and blame it on intelligence. Indeed, Arizona like most of its fellow red states ranks in the lower 40 percent of the nation in I.Q. test scores, something that they cannot blame on the undocumented since California ranks fourteenth in the upper 30 percent with a much higher undocumented population. But, I realize that test results greatly depend on the quality of the schools, which Arizona and the rest of the red states refuse to fund.

Placing their faith on the strength of right wing legal assaults on the Brown case, Tucson superintendent John Pedicone and the majority of Tucson Unified School District Board of Education believe that they can get their way in the courts many of which are controlled by right wing ideologues.

The truth be told, the TUSD has a long history of segregated schools and constitutional noncompliance. In 1974, the African and Mexican American communities sued the TUSD in an attempt to get it to comply with Brown. Four years later the TUSD agreed to end segregation and do away with the vestiges of segregation. But it remained under a court order until 2008 when the court released the district pending the court’s acceptance of a post unitary plan.

In 2010, the court accepted the TUSD’s Post Unitary Plan which board member Mark Stegeman admitted that he opposed because he disagreed with the plan’s contract to expand the Mexican American Studies program.

However, whether he agreed or not once the court passed the Post Unitary Plan, Stegeman was bound to implement it or resign his office. It was a binding contract and his continued opposition proves bad faith.

The truth be told, it was not as if the federal government was forcing the TUSD to do the impossible. To facilitate desegregation the federal government gives the TSUD $63 million annually in federal desegregation funds.

What it boils down to is that the district and Stegeman want to keep the money but they also want to play out their prejudices and kill the MAS program. For this Stegeman and his cabal evidently got assurances from state officials that they could violate its agreement and continue to get $63 million dollars.

The Mexican American Studies program receives about $500,000 of these special funds less than 1 percent of the special funds. MAS more than pays its way; the district profits another $12 million from the state for student attendance. Over the course of the thirty years the TUSD received more than a billion dollars in special funds apparently for acting in bad faith.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice joined by black and Latina/o plaintiffs has appealed a federal judge's decision to end court oversight of TUSD. It cites that after three decades the schools are still racially imbalanced. The TUSD is not acting in good faith the plaintiffs argue that there should be at least partial oversight.

Through this whole ordeal, TUSD has continued to drag its feet. On May 6, 2011 Pedicone admitted that there was a great deal of work to be done on the post-unitary plan. “We find ourselves so far behind it has to be a priority for this district. Concerns regarding the impact of our lack of completion of key responsibilities are paramount.”

Even so, Pedicone and a majority of the board members continue to knowingly violate the post unitary plan. Board members lied to the 9^th Circuit when they promised to expand Mexican American Studies. Stegeman lied when he said that he was working in good faith as did Michael Hicks and Miguel Cuevas.

Elected officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Lying to the courts is a felony and an impeachable offense. If an ordinary citizen lies on his or her income tax, he or she is thrown in jail.

In Arizona most elected officials violate their oath of office with impunity, justifying their malfeasance with the perverted logic that the federal government has no jurisdiction over them and that they are somehow defending states’ rights.

This is galling. California pays over eight times more federal taxes than Arizona while having only five times as many people. Yet, Arizona and the red state cabal are getting much more representation in the U.S. Senate and are getting back more for every dollar paid in federal taxes. For every dollar Arizona sends to Washington D.C. it gets $1.19 while California receives 78 cents.

Like my daddy used to say, “If you are living in my house and I am paying the bills at least respect me.”

In this case the United States is paying the bills. Be grateful, respect the Constitution and don’t lie.

No one forced the TUSD to sign the Post Unitary Plan. It promised to expand Mexican American Studies. Yet it is trying to kill it because of lying state and local superintendents and a disingenuous board chairman.

These elected officials should read history: the issue of states’ rights was settled in 1865 and the Confederacy lost. As for the federal government, “respect for the rule of law is based on fair and equal application of the law.”

In conclusion, if Pedicone, Stegeman, Hicks and Cuevas want students and community members not to swarm their board meetings and respect them, they should lead by example—not lie, respect their contracts and keep their oath to obey the Constitution—if not they should resign.

CONTRIBUTE $5.00 A MONTH TO DEFEND LA RAZA STUDIES AND EDUCATION IN ARIZONA

Click on to http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/our_story.shtml

Click on to the "Donate" button and Fight Back and help push La Raza Studies to Number 1

Guest Blog: Dr. Cintli on Arizona and Human Rights

2011-05-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Recall Arizona from the 19th Century

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez

May 17, 2011

The dictionary definition of insanity should be changed to spell A-R-I-Z-O-N-A and its state capitol building should be designated as a home for the criminally insane. But lest we kid ourselves, this Arizona insanity has now spread nationwide. Let's take a tour of the [police] state.

On the educational front, Tucson Unified School Superintendent, John Pedicone, has managed to militarize school board meetings. He has done this because several weeks ago, the high school group UNIDOS, tired of having their Mexican American Studies program targeted for elimination, chained themselves to the school board members chairs, prompting the board to cancel its meeting. For this, the students and others have received death threats. At the subsequent May 3rd meeting, officially, some 100 police officers were deployed to the TUSD headquarters. However, on top of TUSD security guards, including those staffing metal detectors, along with bomb squad officers, helicopters, plus riot squad officers deployed inside and around the building and neighborhood, it is likely that the officers totaled closer to 200.

At this meeting, seven people were arrested for the criminal act of attempting to speak to the board. One elderly and disabled professor, Lupe Castillo, 69, was arrested by some 20 helmeted and shielded officers for attempting to read "A Letter from the Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. The others arrestees were [secretly] sent to two jails before they were booked and released. In the action inside, dozens of riot squad police physically threw other people out the building, including elders, this while hundreds of MAS supporters outside stood their ground. Then later, the violence, caught on videotape, started behind the building. Police officers in full riot gear began throwing young students, parents and other community members around like rag dolls. Officially, the officers did a great job, commended by the chief of police.

All this is the calm before the storm, precipitated by a 2010 law (HB 2281), purportedly inspired by Martin Luther King Jr, that has declared the teaching of Ethnic Studies illegal. This week, an audit ordered by the state schools superintendent, John Huppenthal, who ran on the campaign to "eliminate La Raza" (the Mexican people) - is scheduled to be released, with expected pre-ordained findings that will declare Tucson's highly successful MAS program to be out of compliance.

That's from the sane part of the state. Now, from the insane sector:

This past week, the governor signed SB 1404, a law that attempts to wall the state from the rest of society. Not satisfied with the federal walls that line the U.S./Mexico border, Arizona will soon be embarking upon creating its own wall along the Arizona/Sonora border, financed through online donations and built by prison labor. Being that imprisoning migrants is a growing multi-billion dollar industry, look for the state to employ incarcerated migrants to attempt to build it.

Beyond the state's 2010 (SB 1070) racial profiling law, this year, state legislators attempted to pass nearly two dozen even more stringent laws, including one that would overturn birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Legislators also attempted to pass two other laws that can only be construed as attempts to secede from humanity; SB 1443 and SCR 1010 were attempts to exempt the state from federal and international laws, respectively.

Most of this legislation is designed to incarcerate migrants and to enrich the private prison industry. The mastermind of most of this legislation is state senate president, Russell Pearce, who in addition to facing a recall, is also embroiled in the Fiesta Bowl "gift" scandal that threatens to bring down he and many of his associates.

And then there's Maricopa County's unindicted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who continues to thumb his nose at the feds with his ongoing racially motivated mass dragnet raids. Recent investigations have found that in eight years, his department has misspent close to $100 million, and that his top commanders targeted "enemies," confirming he is the most corrupt Sheriff in America. Federal investigations into his activities continue.

Outside of the state, the governor of Georgia recently signed HB 87, joining Arizona, Utah and Indiana in implementing anti-immigrant racial profiling laws. Twenty other states are pursuing a similar return to the 19th century. The good news is that Utah's HB 497 anti-immigrant law, was recently blocked by a Utah judge, and the DREAM ACT has again been introduced in Congress.

Given recent dramatic events on the international front, it is generally thought that the president can now restore sanity and actually bring about actual immigration reform. Regarding Ethnic Studies, not sure he can do anything about those intent on "eliminating La Raza."

Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

Column of the Americas

PO BOX 3812

Tucson, AZ 85722

COLUMN: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/

Immigrants for Sale: The Prison-Detention Center Profit Complex

2011-05-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: In October 2010, we ran a post entitled, 'Detaining' Profits. This post focused on the rise of the private prison and detention center complex. In that post, we highlighted the role of Wall Street speculators and bankers in financing the rise of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and other companies that are making billions from the detention and imprisonment of undocumented immigrants and other workers including many with legal status. We also reported on the link between anti-immigrant laws like SB1070 and the rise of this private for-profit prison and detention sector noting that there have been numerous incidents of violence against detainees including cases of rape and homicide deaths covered over as suicides.

We present this outstanding new video short that takes a close look at the private prison-detention center complex. It comes to us courtesy of the grassroots organization, cuéntame and immigrantsforsale.org. The time has come to dismantle this massive profit-making machine that banks on poverty, inequality, and displacement of innocent hard-working people.

DEMOCRACY NOW! Discussion of Obama's Speech

2011-05-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present this embedded video episode from the Democracy Now! program of May 11, 2011. Amy Goodman discusses Obama's speech and the politics of immigration reform with three guests, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based immigrant advocacy organization; Sunita Patel, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights; and Molly Molloy, Latin American specialist focused on border issues and co-editor of the new book, El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin, about the hidden face of America’s war on drugs.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama

2011-05-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present the entire text of President Obama's speech on immigration reform delivered in El Paso this past Tuesday. In the coming days, we will be posting further analysis and discussion of the speech and a 20-page document prepared by the White House that offers greater detail on the President's approach to comprehensive immigration reform.

IMMIGRATION AND BORDER SECURITY

CHAMIZAL NATIONAL MEMORIAL, EL PASO, TEXAS TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Hello, El Paso! It's great to be back here with all of you, and to be back in the Lone Star State. I love coming to Texas. Even the welcomes are bigger down here. So, to show my appreciation, I wanted to give a big policy speech... outdoors... right in the middle of a hot, sunny day.

I hope everyone is wearing sunscreen.

Now, about a week ago, I delivered the commencement address at Miami Dade Community College, one of the most diverse schools in the nation. The graduates were proud that their class could claim heritage from 181 countries around the world. Many of the students were immigrants themselves, coming to America with little more than the dreams of their parents and the clothes on their backs. A handful had discovered only in adolescence or adulthood that they were undocumented. But they worked hard and gave it their all, and they earned those diplomas.

At the ceremony, 181 flags - one for every nation represented - was marched across the stage. Each was applauded by the graduates and relatives with ties to those countries. But then, the last flag - the American flag - came into view. And the room erupted. Every person in the auditorium cheered. Yes, their parents or grandparents - or the graduates themselves - had come from every corner of the globe. But it was here that they had found opportunity, and had a chance to contribute to the nation that is their home.

It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself. E pluribus, unum. Out of many, one. We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America's precepts. That's why millions of people, ancestors to most of us, braved hardship and great risk to come here - so they could be free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. The Asian immigrants who made their way to California's Angel Island. The Germans and Scandinavians who settled across the Midwest. The waves of the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who leaned against the railing to catch that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

This flow of immigrants has helped make this country stronger and more prosperous. We can point to the genius of Einstein and the designs of I. M. Pei, the stories of Isaac Asimov and whole industries forged by Andrew Carnegie.

And I think of the naturalization ceremonies we've held at the White House for members of the military, which have been so inspiring. Even though they were not yet citizens, these men and women had signed up to serve. One was a young man named Granger Michael from Papua New Guinea, a Marine who deployed to Iraq three times. Here's what he said about becoming an American citizen. "I might as well. I love this country already." Marines aren't big on speeches. Another was a woman named Perla Ramos. She was born and raised in Mexico, came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and joined the Navy. She said, "I take pride in our flag ... and the history we write day by day."

That's the promise of this country - that anyone can write the next chapter of our story. It doesn't matter where you come from; what matters is that you believe in the ideals on which we were founded; that you believe all of us are equal and deserve the freedom to pursue happiness. In embracing America, you can become American. And that enriches all of us.

Yet at the same time, we are standing at the border today because we also recognize that being a nation of laws goes hand in hand with being a nation of immigrants. This, too, is our heritage. This, too, is important. And the truth is, we've often wrestled with the politics of who is and who isn't allowed to enter this country. At times, there has been fear and resentment directed toward newcomers, particularly in periods of economic hardship. And because these issues touch on deeply held convictions - about who we are as a people, about what it means to be an American - these debates often elicit strong emotions.

That's one reason it's been so difficult to reform our broken immigration system. When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election. So we've seen a lot blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts - from leaders of both parties - fall prey to the usual Washington games. And all the while, we've seen the mounting consequences of decades of inaction.

Today, there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Some crossed the border illegally. Others avoid immigration laws by overstaying their visas. Regardless of how they came, the overwhelming majority of these folks are just trying to earn a living and provide for their families. But they've broken the rules, and have cut in front of the line. And the truth is, the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are trying to immigrate legally.

Also, because undocumented immigrants live in the shadows, they're vulnerable to unscrupulous businesses that skirt taxes, pay workers less than the minimum wage, or cut corners with health and safety. This puts companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or overtime or just a safe place to work, at an unfair disadvantage.

Think about it. Over the past decade, even before the recession, middle class families were struggling to get by as costs went up but incomes didn't. We're seeing this again with gas prices. Well, one way to strengthen the middle class is to reform our immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everyone else. I want incomes for middle class families to rise again. I want prosperity in this country to be widely shared. That's why immigration reform is an economic imperative.

And reform will also help make America more competitive in the global economy. Today, we provide students from around the world with visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities. But our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States. So instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs in America, we train them to create jobs for our competition. That makes no sense. In a global marketplace, we need all the talent we can get - not just to benefit those individuals, but because their contributions will benefit all Americans.

Look at Intel and Google and Yahoo and eBay - these are great American companies that have created countless jobs and helped us lead the world in high-tech industries. Every one was founded by an immigrant. We don't want the next Intel or Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root in America. Bill Gates gets this. "The United States will find it far more difficult to maintain its competitive edge," he's said, "if it excludes those who are able and willing to help us compete."

It's for this reason that businesses all across America are demanding that Washington finally meet its responsibility to solve the immigration problem. Everyone recognizes the system is broken. The question is, will we summon the political will to do something about it? And that's why we're here at the border today.

They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete...And we've gone further. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts working the border. I've deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the skies from Texas to California...But even though we've answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time...They'll say we need a higher fence to support reform. Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Or alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That's politics.

In recent years, among the greatest impediments to reform were questions about border security. These were legitimate concerns; it's true that a lack of manpower and resources at the border, combined with the pull of jobs and ill-considered enforcement once folks were in the country, contributed to a growing number of undocumented people living in the United States. And these concerns helped unravel a bipartisan coalition we forged back when I was a United States Senator. In the years since, "borders first" has been a common refrain, even among those who previously supported comprehensive immigration reform.

Well, over the past two years we have answered those concerns. Under Secretary Napolitano's leadership, we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible. They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents - more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.

They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.

And we've gone further. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts working the border. I've deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the skies from Texas to California. We've forged a partnership with Mexico to fight the transnational criminal organizations that have affected both of our countries. And for the first time we are screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments - to seize guns and money going south even as we go after drugs coming north.

So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. But even though we've answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time. They'll say we need to triple the border patrol. Or quadruple the border patrol. They'll say we need a higher fence to support reform.

Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Or alligators in the moat.

They'll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That's politics.

But the truth is, the measures we've put in place are getting results. Over the past two and a half years, we've seized 31 percent more drugs, 75 percent more currency, and 64 percent more weapons than before. Even as we've stepped up patrols, apprehensions along the border have been cut by nearly 40 percent from two years ago - that means far fewer people are attempting to cross the border illegally.

Also, despite a lot of breathless reports that have tagged places like El Paso as dangerous, violent crime in southwest border counties has dropped by a third. El Paso and other cities and towns along the border are consistently rated among the safest in the nation. Of course, we shouldn't accept any violence or crime, and we have more work to do. But this progress is important.

Beyond the border, we're also going after employers who knowingly exploit people and break the law. And we are deporting those who are here illegally. Now, I know that the increase in deportations has been a source of controversy. But I want to emphasize: we are not doing this haphazardly; we are focusing our limited resources on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes; not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income. As a result, we increased the removal of criminals by 70 percent.

That is not to ignore the real human toll. Even as we recognize that enforcing the law is necessary, we don't relish the pain it causes in the lives of people just trying to get by. And as long as the current laws are on the books, it's not just hardened felons who are subject to removal; but also families just trying to earn a living, bright and eager students; decent people with the best of intentions. I know some here wish that I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that's not how a democracy works. What we really need to do is keep up the fight to pass reform. That's the ultimate solution to this problem.

And I'd point out, the most significant step we can take now to secure the borders is to fix the system as a whole - so that fewer people have incentive to enter illegally in search of work in the first place. This would allow agents to focus on the worst threats on both of our borders - from drug traffickers to those who would come here to commit acts of violence or terror.

So, the question is whether those in Congress who previously walked away in the name of enforcement are now ready to come back to the table and finish the work we've started. We have to put the politics aside. And if we do, I'm confident we can find common ground. Washington is behind the country on this. Already, there is a growing coalition of leaders across America who don't always see eye-to-eye, but who are coming together on this issue. They see the harmful consequences of this broken system for their businesses and communities. They understand why we need to act.

There are Democrats and Republicans, including former-Republican Senator Mel Martinez and former-Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; leaders like Mayor Michael Bloomberg; evangelical ministers like Leith Anderson and Bill Hybels; police chiefs from across the nation; educators and advocates; labor unions and chambers of commerce; small business owners and Fortune 500 CEOs. One CEO had this to say about reform. "American ingenuity is a product of the openness and diversity of this society... Immigrants have made America great as the world leader in business, science, higher education and innovation." That's Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, and an immigrant himself. I don't know if you're familiar with his views, but let's just say he doesn't have an Obama bumper sticker on his car.

So there is a consensus around fixing what's broken. Now we need Congress to catch up to a train that's leaving the station. Now we need to come together around reform that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants; that demands everyone take responsibility.

So what would comprehensive reform look like?

First, we know that government has a threshold responsibility to secure the borders and enforce the law. Second, businesses have to be held accountable if they exploit undocumented workers. Third, those who are here illegally have a responsibility as well. They have to admit that they broke the law, pay their taxes, pay a fine, and learn English. And they have to undergo background checks and a lengthy process before they can get in line for legalization.

And fourth, stopping illegal immigration also depends on reforming our outdated system of legal immigration. We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to not only study here, but also to start businesses and create jobs here. In recent years, a full 25 percent of high-tech startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants, leading to more than 200,000 jobs in America. I'm glad those jobs are here. And I want to see more of them created in this country.

We need to provide farms a legal way to hire the workers they rely on, and a path for those workers to earn legal status.

Our laws should respect families following the rules - reuniting them more quickly instead of splitting them apart. Today, the immigration system not only tolerates those who break the rules, it punishes the folks who follow the rules. While applicants wait for approval, for example, they're often forbidden from visiting the United States. Even husbands and wives may have to spend years apart. Parents can't see their children. I don't believe the United States of America should be in the business of separating families. That's not right. That's not who we are.

And we should stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents - by denying them the chance to earn an education or serve in the military.

That's why we need to pass the Dream Act. Now, we passed the Dream Act through the House last year. But even though it received a majority of votes in the Senate, it was blocked when several Republicans who had previously supported the Dream Act voted no.

It was a tremendous disappointment to get so close and then see politics get in the way. And as I gave the commencement at Miami Dade, it broke my heart knowing that a number of those promising, bright students - young people who worked so hard and who speak to what's best about America - are at risk of facing the agony of deportation. These are kids who grew up in this country, love this country, and know no other place as home. The idea that we would punish them is cruel and it makes no sense. We are a better nation than that.

So we're going to keep up the fight for the Dream Act. We're going to keep up the fight for reform. And that's where you come in. I will do my part to lead a constructive and civil debate on these issues. We've already held a series of meetings about this at the White House in recent weeks. And we've got leaders here and around the country helping to move the debate forward. But this change has to be driven by you - to help us push for comprehensive reform, and to identify what steps we can take right now - like the Dream Act and visa reform - areas where we can find common ground among Democrats and Republicans to begin fixing what's broken.

I am asking you to add your voices to this debate - and you can sign up to help at whitehouse.gov. We need Washington to know that there is a movement for reform gathering strength from coast to coast. That's how we'll get this done. That's how we can ensure that in the years ahead we are welcoming the talents of all who can contribute to this country; and that we are living up to that basic American idea: you can make it if you try.

That idea is what gave hope to Jose Hernandez, who is here today. Jose's parents were migrant farm workers. And so, growing up, he was too. He was born in California, though he could have just as easily been born on the other side of the border, had it been a different time of year, because his family moved with the seasons. Two of his siblings were actually born in Mexico.

They traveled a lot and Jose joined his parents picking cucumbers and strawberries. He missed part of the school year when they returned to Mexico each winter. He didn't learn English until he was 12. But Jose was good at math, and he liked it. The great thing about math was that it's the same in every school, and it's the same in Spanish.

So he studied hard. And one day, standing in the fields, collecting sugar beets, he heard on a transistor radio that a man named Franklin Chang-Diaz - a man with a name like his - was going to be an astronaut for NASA.

Jose decided that he could be an astronaut, too.

So he kept studying, and graduated high school. He kept studying, earning an engineering degree and a graduate degree. He kept working hard, ending up at a national laboratory, helping to develop a new kind of digital medical imaging system.

And a few years later, he found himself more than 100 miles above the surface of the earth, staring out the window of the Shuttle Discovery, remembering the boy in the California fields with a crazy dream and an unshakable belief that everything was possible in America.

That is what we are fighting for. We are fighting for every boy and girl like Jose with a dream and potential just waiting to be tapped. We are fighting to unlock that promise, and all that it holds not just for their futures, but for the future of this great country.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform

2011-05-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Immigration [media] politics after El Paso

The President's El Paso speech on immigration reform is not by any measure a progressive set of ideas. We will return to that issue later this week. For now we are concerned with the manner in which everyone, from the President to the politico and chattering classes, are talking at us - at Latina/os as if we are suspicious bodies out of bounds. We are not part of the discussion. The punditry is debating whether the Obama Administration "will try to get a bill passed that has teeth in it" as per Chris Matthews in recent Hardball discussion (see video below).

It seems more than a bit odd to me that the Hardball discussion on the President's immigration speech had two non-Latina/o commentators - Clarence Page and Chris Cillizza. Both did a commendable job in arguing that the politics of immigration reform will ultimately be driven by the growing power of Latina/o communities even if there is no agreement before 2012. The commentary was fine. But there was a huge silence.

It is more than awkward that these type of MSM discussions usually take place without the participation of the Latina/o immigration activists, social scientists, and the many researchers at Latina/o think tanks and universities that have done the most significant immigration research for more than thirty-five years.

If you care about the issue as understood from the vantage points of those who are the targets of anti-immigrant hysteria, would it not make sense for media opinion-makers like Matthews and others to invite any of the many talented and knowledgeable Latina/o "experts" on immigration? I got the sense, especially from Clarence Page, that he knew Matthews should let Latina/os "speak for ourselves." It is like placing an entire people under a microscope subject to the gaze of others with no voice or ability to gaze back.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Documentos de México insurgente/ 1: The National March for Peace (May 7, 2011)

2011-05-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We are launching a new series of posts related to Zapatista and Zapatista-inspired social movements in Mexico, entitled Documentos de México insurgente. We sometimes hear people say, "We are all Zapatistas." The contemporary struggles and creative organizational forms emerging all over Mexico and in the U.S. are a growing mass revolt or insurgency, by those who belong to the two-thirds world majority or what Sub Marcos once called "basement Mexico." For our first entry we are posting a set of important documents originally presented by our colleague Dorinda Moreno and shared through the Historia-Listserv administered by another colleague, Dr. Roberto Calderón. We include here Dr. Calderón's introduction and present these documents unedited.

Nota: This long post containing over 7,000 words includes the voices and plan presented at Mexico City's Zócalo on Sunday, 8 May 2011, in what came to be called the March for Peace or simply, the May 8th March, which calls for an end to the violence enveloping Mexican society. The order of the materials is as follows: Javier Sicilia's speech presented at the Zócalo at the end of the three-day March for Peace from Cuernavaca to Mexico City; the speech presented by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos in support of what he terms the National March for Peace (dated 7 May 2011); and the speech by Rosario Ibarra de Piedra (dated 7 May 2011). These three key speeches are followed by the formal document presented by Javier Sicilia called Pacto por un México en paz, con justicia y seguridad (Pact for a Mexico in Peace, with Justice and Security). Our thanks always to Dorinda Moreno and Molly Molloy for forwarding this set of documents in separate emails poster to their listas earlier today. Adelante. - Roberto R. Calderón, Historia Chicana [Historia]

From: On Behalf Of dorinda moreno [fuerzamundial@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2011 11:28 AM
Subject: [Community4ImmigrantRights] PALABRAS DE SICILIA, EZLN, ROSARIO IBARRA

Source: 2011/5/9 Camilo Perez Bustillo <cperezbustillo@gmail.com>

DISCURSO ÍNTEGRO QUE PRONUNCIÓ EL POETA Y ESCRITOR, CUYO HIJO FUE ASESINADO EL 28 DE MARZO, JAVIER SICILIA, EN EL ZÓCALO DE LA CIUDAD DE MÉXICO HOY 8 DE MAYO DE 2011 A LAS 5 DE LA TARDE, AL TÉRMINO DE LA MARCHA NACIONAL POR LA PAZ CON JUSTICIA Y DIGNIDAD

Tal vez la era se convierta por completo en un tiempo de penuria. Pero tal vez no, todavía no, aún no, aun a pesar de la inconmensurable necesidad, a pesar de todos los sufrimientos, a pesar de un dolor sin nombre, a pesar de la ausencia de paz en creciente progreso, a pesar de la creciente confusión.

-Heidegger

(Nuestro) peso es (nuestro) amor; a donde quiera que se (nos) lleve, es él quien nos lleva. (Ese) don que proviene de (nosotros) nos inflama y nos eleva: (nosotros) ardemos y vamos.

-San Agustín

Hemos llegado a pie, como lo hicieron los antiguos mexicanos, hasta este sitio en donde ellos por vez primera contemplaron el lago, el águila, la serpiente, el nopal y la piedra, ese emblema que fundó a la nación y que ha acompañado a los pueblos de México a lo largo de los siglos. Hemos llegado hasta esta esquina donde alguna vez habitó Tenochtitlan –a esta esquina donde el Estado y la Iglesia se asientan sobre los basamentos de un pasado rico en enseñanzas y donde los caminos se encuentran y se bifurcan–; hemos llegado aquí para volver a hacer visibles las raíces de nuestra nación, para que su desnudez, que acompañan la desnudez de la palabra, que es el silencio, y la dolorosa desnudez de nuestros muertos, nos ayuden a alumbrar el camino.

Si hemos caminado y hemos llegado así, en silencio, es porque nuestro dolor es tan grande y tan profundo, y el horror del que proviene tan inmenso, que ya no tienen palabras con qué decirse. Es también porque a través de ese silencio nos decimos, y les decimos a quienes tienen la responsabilidad de la seguridad de este país, que no queremos un muerto más a causa de esta confusión creciente que sólo busca asfixiarnos, como asfixiaron el aliento y la vida de mi hijo Juan Francisco, de Luis Antonio, de Julio César, de Gabo, de María del Socorro, del comandante Jaime y de tantos miles de hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos asesinados con un desprecio y una vileza que pertenecen a mundos que no son ni serán nunca los nuestros; estamos aquí para decirnos y decirles que este dolor del alma en los cuerpos no lo convertiremos en odio ni en más violencia, sino en una palanca que nos ayude a restaurar el amor, la paz, la justicia, la dignidad y la balbuciente democracia que estamos perdiendo; para decirnos y decirles que aún creemos que es posible que la nación vuelva a renacer y a salir de sus ruinas, para mostrarles a los señores de la muerte que estamos de pie y que no cejaremos de defender la vida de todos los hijos y las hijas de este país, que aún creemos que es posible rescatar y reconstruir el tejido social de nuestros pueblos, barrios y ciudades.

Si no hacemos esto solamente podremos heredar a nuestros muchachos, a nuestras muchachas y a nuestros niños una casa llena de desamparo, de temor, de indolencia, de cinismo, de brutalidad y engaño, donde reinan los señores de la muerte, de la ambición, del poder desmedido y de la complacencia y la complicidad con el crimen.

Todos los días escuchamos historias terribles que nos hieren y nos hacen preguntarnos: ¿Cuándo y en dónde perdimos nuestra dignidad? Los claroscuros se entremezclan a lo largo del tiempo para advertirnos que esta casa donde habita el horror no es la de nuestros padres, pero sí lo es; no es el México de nuestros maestros, pero sí lo es; no es el de aquellos que ofrecieron lo mejor de sus vidas para construir un país más justo y democrático, pero sí lo es; esta casa donde habita el horror no es el México de Salvador Nava, de Heberto Castillo, de Manuel Clouthier, de los hombres y mujeres de las montañas del sur –de esos pueblos mayas que engarzan su palabra a la nación– y de tantos otros que nos han recordado la dignidad, pero sí lo es; no es el de los hombres y mujeres que cada amanecer se levantan para ir a trabajar y con honestidad sostenerse y sostener a sus familias, pero sí lo es; no es el de los poetas, de los músicos, de los pintores, de los bailarines, de todos los artistas que nos revelan el corazón del ser humano y nos conmueven y nos unen, pero sí lo es. Nuestro México, nuestra casa, está rodeada de grandezas, pero también de grietas y de abismos que al expandirse por descuido, complacencia y complicidad nos han conducido a esta espantosa desolación.

Son esas grietas, esas heridas abiertas, y no las grandezas de nuestra casa, las que también nos han obligado a caminar hasta aquí, entrelazando nuestro silencio con nuestros dolores, para decirles directamente a la cara que tienen que aprender a mirar y a escuchar, que deben nombrar a todos nuestros muertos –a esos que la maldad del crimen ha asesinado de tres maneras: privándolos de la vida, criminalizándolos y enterrándolos en las fosas comunes de un silencio ominoso que no es el nuestro–; para decirles que con nuestra presencia estamos nombrando esta infame realidad que ustedes, la clase política, los llamados poderes fácticos y sus siniestros monopolios, las jerarquías de los poderes económicos y religiosos, los gobiernos y las fuerzas policiacas han negado y quieren continuar negando. Una realidad que los criminales, en su demencia, buscan imponernos aliados con las omisiones de los que detentan alguna forma de poder.

Queremos afirmar aquí que no aceptaremos más una elección si antes los partidos políticos no limpian sus filas de esos que, enmascarados en la legalidad, están coludidos con el crimen y tienen al Estado maniatado y cooptado al usar los instrumentos de éste para erosionar las mismas esperanzas de cambio de los ciudadanos. O ¿dónde estaban los partidos, los alcaldes, los gobernadores, las autoridades federales, el ejército, la armada, las Iglesias, los congresos, los empresarios; dónde estábamos todos cuando los caminos y carreteras que llevan a Tamaulipas se convirtieron en trampas mortales para hombres y mujeres indefensos, para nuestros hermanos migrantes de Centroamérica?

¿Por qué nuestras autoridades y los partidos han aceptado que en Morelos y en muchos estados de la República gobernadores señalados públicamente como cómplices del crimen organizado permanezcan impunes y continúen en las filas de los partidos y a veces en puestos de gobierno? ¿Por qué se permitió que diputados del Congreso de la Unión se organizaran para ocultar a un prófugo de la justicia, acusado de tener vínculos con el crimen organizado y lo introdujeron al recinto que debería ser el más honorable de la patria porque en él reside la representación plural del pueblo y terminaran dándole fuero y después aceptando su realidad criminal en dos vergonzosos sainetes? ¿Por qué se permitió al presidente de la República y por qué decidió éste lanzar al ejército a las calles en una guerra absurda que nos ha costado 40 mil víctimas y millones de mexicanos abandonados al miedo y a la incertidumbre? ¿Por qué se trató de hacer pasar, a espaldas de la ciudadanía, una ley de seguridad que exige hoy, más que nunca una amplia reflexión, discusión y consenso ciudadano? La Ley de Seguridad Nacional no puede reducirse a un asunto militar. Asumida así es y será siempre un absurdo. La ciudadanía no tiene por qué seguir pagando el costo de la inercia e inoperancia del Congreso y sus tiempos convertido en chantaje administrativo y banal cálculo político. ¿Por qué los partidos enajenan su visión, impiden la reforma política y bloquean los instrumentos legales que permitan a la ciudadanía una representación digna y eficiente que controle todo tipo de abusos? ¿Por qué en ella no se ha incluido la revocación del mandato ni el plebiscito?

Estos casos –hay cientos de la misma o de mayor gravedad– ponen en evidencia que los partidos políticos, el PAN, el PRI, el PRD, el PT, Convergencia, Nueva Alianza, el Panal, el Verde, se han convertido en una partidocracia de cuyas filas emanan los dirigentes de la nación. En todos ellos hay vínculos con el crimen y sus mafias a lo largo y ancho de la nación. Sin una limpieza honorable de sus filas y un compromiso total con la ética política, los ciudadanos tendremos que preguntarnos en las próximas elecciones ¿por qué cártel y por qué poder fáctico tendremos que votar? ¿No se dan cuenta de que con ello están horadando y humillando lo más sagrado de nuestras instituciones republicanas, que están destruyendo la voluntad popular que mal que bien los llevó a donde hoy se encuentran?

Los partidos políticos debilitan nuestras instituciones republicanas, las vuelven vulnerables ante el crimen organizado y sumisas ante los grandes monopolios; hacen de la impunidad un modus vivendi y convierten a la ciudadanía en rehén de la violencia imperante.

Ante el avance del hampa vinculada con el narcotráfico, el Poder Ejecutivo asume, junto con la mayoría de la mal llamada clase política, que hay sólo dos formas de enfrentar esa amenaza: administrándola ilegalmente como solía hacerse y se hace en muchos lugares o haciéndole la guerra con el ejército en las calles como sucede hoy. Se ignora que la droga es un fenómeno histórico que, descontextualizado del mundo religioso al que servía, y sometido ahora al mercado y sus consumos, debió y debe ser tratado como un problema de sociología urbana y de salud pública, y no como un asunto criminal que debe enfrentarse con la violencia. Con ello se suma más sufrimiento a una sociedad donde se exalta el éxito, el dinero y el poder como premisas absolutas que deben conquistarse por cualquier medio y a cualquier precio.

Este clima ha sido tierra fértil para el crimen que se ha convertido en cobros de piso, secuestros, robos, tráfico de personas y en complejas empresas para delinquir y apropiarse del absurdo modelo económico de tener siempre más a costa de todos.

A esto, ya de por sí terrible, se agrega la política norteamericana. Su mercado millonario del consumo de la droga, sus bancos y empresas que lavan dinero, con la complicidad de los nuestros, y su industria armamentista –más letal, por contundente y expansiva, que las drogas–, cuyas armas llegan a nuestras tierras, no sólo fortalecen el crecimiento de los grupos criminales, sino que también los proveen de una capacidad inmensa de muerte. Los Estados Unidos han diseñado una política de seguridad cuya lógica responde fundamentalmente a sus intereses globales donde México ha quedado atrapado.

¿Como reestructurar esta realidad que nos ha puesto en un estado de emergencia nacional? Es un desafío más que complejo. Pero México no puede seguir simplificándolo y menos permitir que esto ahonde más sus divisiones internas y nos fracture hasta hacer casi inaudibles el latido de nuestros corazones que es el latido de la nación. Por eso les decimos que es urgente que los ciudadanos, los gobiernos de los tres órdenes, los partidos políticos, los campesinos, los obreros, los indios, los académicos, los intelectuales, los artistas, las Iglesias, los empresarios, las organizaciones civiles, hagamos un pacto, es decir, un compromiso fundamental de paz con justicia y dignidad, que le permita a la nación rehacer su suelo, un pacto en el que reconozcamos y asumamos nuestras diversas responsabilidades, un pacto que le permita a nuestros muchachos, a nuestras muchachas y a nuestros niños recuperar su presente y su futuro, para que dejen de ser las víctimas de esta guerra o el ejército de reserva de la delincuencia.

Por ello, es necesario que todos los gobernantes y las fuerzas políticas de este país se den cuenta que están perdiendo la representación de la nación que emana del pueblo, es decir, de los ciudadanos como los que hoy estamos reunidos en el zócalo de la Ciudad de México y en otras ciudades del país.

Si no lo hacen, y se empeñan en su ceguera, no sólo las instituciones quedarán vacías de sentido y de dignidad, sino que las elecciones de 2012 serán las de la ignominia, una ignominia que hará más profundas las fosas en donde, como en Tamaulipas y Durango, están enterrando la vida del país.

Estamos, pues, ante una encrucijada sin salidas fáciles, porque el suelo en el que una nación florece y el tejido en el que su alma se expresa están deshechos. Por ello, el pacto al que convocamos después de recoger muchas propuestas de la sociedad civil, y que en unos momentos leerá Olga Reyes, que ha sufrido el asesinato de 6 familiares, es un pacto que contiene seis puntos fundamentales que permitirán a la sociedad civil hacer un seguimiento puntual de su cumplimiento y, en el caso de traicionarse, penalizar a quienes sean responsables de esas traiciones; un pacto que se firmará en el Centro de Ciudad Juárez –el rostro más visible de la destrucción nacional– de cara a los nombres de nuestros muertos y lleno de un profundo sentido de lo que una paz digna significa.

Antes de darlo a conocer, hagamos un silencio más de 5 minutos en memoria de nuestros muertos, de la sociedad cercada por la delincuencia y un Estado omiso, y como una señal de la unidad y de la dignidad de nuestros corazones que llama a todos a refundar la Nación. Hagámoslo así porque el silencio es el lugar en donde se recoge y brota la palabra verdadera, es la hondura profunda del sentido, es lo que nos hermana en medio de nuestros dolores, es esa tierra interior y común que nadie tiene en propiedad y de la que, si sabemos escuchar, puede nacer la palabra que nos permita decir otra vez con dignidad y una paz justa el nombre de nuestra casa: México.

Javier Sicilia

PALABRAS DEL EZLN EN LA MOVILIZACIÓN DE APOYO A LA MARCHA NACIONAL POR LA PAZ

Hoy estamos aquí para decirles sencillamente a esas buenas personas que en silencio caminan, que no están solos.Que escuchamos el dolor de su silencio, como antes la digna rabia de sus palabras.Que en su alto a la guerra...Que en su no más sangre...Que en su estamos hasta la madre...¡No están solos

7 de mayo del 2011.

Madres, padres, familiares y amistades de las víctimas de la guerra en México:

Compañeras y compañeros bases de apoyo zapatistas de las diferentes zonas, regiones, pueblos y municipios autónomos rebeldes zapatistas:

Compañeras y compañeros de la otra campaña y adherentes a la sexta declaración de la selva lacandona en México y en el mundo:
Compañeras y compañeros de la zezta internacional:
Hermanas y hermanos de las diferentes organizaciones sociales:
Hermanas y hermanos de las organizaciones no gubernamentales y defensoras de los derechos humanos:
Pueblo de México y pueblos del mundo:
Hermanas y hermanos:
compañeras y compañeros:
     Hoy estamos aquí miles de hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos del ejército zapatista de liberación nacional para decir nuestra pequeña palabra.
     Hoy estamos aquí porque personas de corazón noble y dignidad firme nos han convocado a manifestarnos para parar la guerra que ha llenado de tristeza, dolor e indignación los suelos de México.
     Porque nos hemos sentido llamados por el clamor de justicia de madres y padres de niños y niñas que han sido asesinados por bala y por la altanería y torpeza de los malos gobiernos.
     Porque nos sentimos llamados por la digna rabia de las madres y padres de los jóvenes asesinados por bandas criminales y por el cinismo gubernamental.
     Porque nos sentimos convocados por los familiares de muertos, heridos, mutilados, desaparecidos, secuestrados y encarcelados sin tener culpa o delito alguno.
Y esto es lo que nos dicen sus palabras y sus silencios:
Que la historia de México se ha vuelto a manchar de sangre inocente.
Que decenas de miles de personas han muerto en esta guerra absurda que no lleva a ninguna parte.
Que la paz y la justicia no encuentran ya lugar en ninguno de los rincones de nuestro país.
     Que la única culpa de estas víctimas es haber nacido o vivido en un país mal gobernado por grupos legales e ilegales sedientos de guerra, de muerte y de destrucción.
     Que esta guerra ha tenido como principal blanco militar a seres humanos inocentes, de todas las clases sociales, que nada tienen qué ver ni con el narcotráfico ni con las fuerzas gubernamentales.
     Que los malos gobiernos, todos, el federal, los estatales y municipales, han convertido las calles en zonas de guerra sin que quienes las caminan y trabajan estuvieran de acuerdo y vieran la forma de resguardarse.
     Que los malos gobiernos han convertido en zonas de guerra las escuelas y universidades públicas y privadas, y los niños y los jóvenes no entran a clases sino a emboscadas de uno y otro bando.
     Que los lugares de reunión y diversión son ahora objetivos militares.
     Que al ir al trabajo se camina con la angustia de no saber qué va a pasar, de no saber si una bala, sea de los delincuentes o sea del gobierno, va a derramar la sangre propia o la de un familiar o la de una amistad.
     Que los malos gobiernos crearon el problema y no sólo no lo han resuelto, sino que lo han extendido y profundizado en todo México.
     Que hay mucho dolor y pena por tanta muerte sin sentido.
     Que alto a la guerra.
     Que no más sangre.
     Que estamos hasta la madre.
     Que ya basta.
     Las palabras y los silencios de esas buenas personas no representan a los malos gobiernos.
      No representan a los criminales que roban, despojan, secuestran y asesinan.
     Tampoco representan a quienes, desde la clase política, quieren sacar ganancia de esta desgracia nacional.
     Los silencios y las palabras de estas personas son las de gente sencilla, trabajadora, honesta, estas personas no quieren un beneficio personal.
     Sólo quieren justicia y que el dolor que han sentido y sienten no llegue al corazón de otras madres, otros padres, otros familiares, otras amistades, de niños, niñas, jóvenes, adultos y ancianos que no hacen otra cosa que tratar de vivir, de aprender, de trabajar y de salir adelante con dignidad.
     O sea que las palabras, los silencios y las acciones de estas buenas personas demandan algo muy sencillo: una vida con paz, justicia y dignidad.
     ¿y que les responde el gobierno?
     Los padres y madres de unos niños y niñas muy pequeños que murieron y se lastimaron en un incendio por culpa de los malos gobiernos, demandan que se haga justicia, o sea que se castigue a los culpables, aunque sean parientes o amigos del gobierno, y que no se vuelva a repetir ese crimen, para que otros padres y madres no mueran un mucho al morir sus hijas y sus hijos.
     Y el gobierno les responde con declaraciones y promesas mentirosas, tratando de cansarlos y de que olviden y se olvide su desgracia.
     Los familiares y amistades de unos estudiantes que fueron asesinados dentro de una universidad privada demandan que se conozca qué pasó y se haga justicia y no se vuelva a repetir el crimen de convertir los centros de estudio en campos de batalla para que otros familiares, amistades, maestros y compañeros de estudio no mueran un mucho al morir los estudiantes.
     Y el gobierno les responde con declaraciones y promesas mentirosas, tratando de cansarlos y de que olviden y se olvide su desgracia.
     Los habitantes de una comunidad honesta y trabajadora, creada de acuerdo a su propio pensamiento, se organizan para construir y defender la paz que necesitan, combatiendo al crimen que el gobierno protege. Por eso uno de sus habitantes es secuestrado y asesinado. Sus familiares y compañeros piden justicia y que no se vuelva a repetir el crimen de que se maten el trabajo y la honestidad, para que otros familiares y compañeros no mueran un mucho al morir quienes luchan por el colectivo.
     Y el gobierno les responde con declaraciones y promesas mentirosas, tratando de cansarlos y de que olviden y se olvide su desgracia.
     Unos jóvenes, buenos estudiantes y buenos deportistas, se reúnen para divertirse o salen a pasear o a platicar sanamente, un grupo criminal ataca el lugar y los asesina. Y el gobierno los vuelve a asesinar al declarar que esos jóvenes eran criminales que fueron atacados por otros criminales. Las madres y los padres demandan justicia y que no se vuelvan a repetir los delitos de no proteger a los jóvenes y de acusarlos injustamente de ser delincuentes, para que otras madres y padres no mueran un mucho al morir dos veces la sangre que para estar viva fue nacida.
     Y el gobierno les responde con declaraciones y promesas mentirosas, tratando de cansarlos y de que olviden y se olvide su desgracia.
     Compañeros y compañeras:
     Hermanos y hermanas:
     Hace unos días empezó a caminar en silencio el paso de un padre que es poeta, de unas madres, de unos padres, de unos parientes, de unos hermanos, de unas amistades, de unos conocidos, de seres humanos.
     Ayer fueron sus dignas palabras, hoy es su silencio digno.
     Sus palabras y sus silencios dicen los mismo: queremos paz y justicia, o sea una vida digna.
     Estas personas honestas están pidiendo, demandando, exigiendo del gobierno un plan que tenga como principales objetivos la vida, la libertad, la justicia y la paz.
     Y el gobierno les responde que seguirá con su plan que tiene como principal objetivo la muerte y la impunidad.
     Estas personas no buscan ser gobierno, sino que buscan que el gobierno procure y cuide la vida, la libertad, la justicia y la paz de los gobernados.
     Su lucha no nace del interés personal.
     Nace del dolor de perder a alguien que se quiere como se quiere a la vida.
     Los gobiernos y sus políticos dicen que criticar o no estar de acuerdo con lo que están haciendo es estar de acuerdo y favorecer a los criminales.
     Los gobiernos dicen que la única estrategia buena es la que ensangrenta las calles y los campos de México, y destruye familias, comunidades, al país entero.
     Pero quien argumenta que tiene de su lado la ley y la fuerza, sólo lo hace para imponer su razón individual apoyándose en esas fuerzas y esas leyes.
     Y no es la razón propia, de individuo o de grupo, la que debe imponerse, sino la razón colectiva de toda la sociedad.
     Y la razón de una sociedad se construye con legitimidad, con argumentos, con razonamientos, con capacidad de convocatoria, con acuerdos.
     Porque quien impone su razón propia, sólo divide y confronta. Y es así incapaz de razón colectiva y por eso debe refugiarse en la ley y la fuerza.
     Una ley que sólo sirve para garantizar impunidad a parientes y amigos.
     Una fuerza que está corrompida desde hace tiempo.
     Ley y fuerza que sirven para despojar de un trabajo digno, para solapar ineptitudes, calumniar, perseguir, encarcelar y matar a quienes cuestionan y se oponen a esa razón, a esa ley y a esa fuerza.
     Tener miedo de la palabra de la gente y ver en cada crítica, duda, cuestionamiento o reclamo un intento de derrocamiento, es algo propio de dictadores y tiranos.
     Ver en cada dolor digno una amenaza, es de enfermos de poder y avaricia.
     Y mal hace el mando que les dice a sus soldados y policías que el escuchar a la gente noble y buena es un fracaso, que el detener una matanza es una derrota,
que el corregir un error es rendirse, que pensar y buscar mejores caminos para servir mejor a la gente es abandonar con vergüenza una lucha.
     Porque el saber escuchar con humildad y atención lo que dice la gente es virtud de un buen gobierno.
     Porque el saber escuchar y atender lo que la gente calla es la virtud de gente sabia y honesta.
     Compañeros y compañeras:
     Hermanos y hermanas:
     Hoy no estamos aquí para hablar de nuestros dolores, de nuestras luchas, de nuestros sueños, de nuestras vidas y muertes.
     Hoy no estamos aquí para señalar caminos, ni para decir qué hacer, ni para responder a la pregunta de qué sigue.
     Hoy estamos aquí representado a decenas de miles de indígenas zapatistas, muchos más de los que hoy somos vistos, para decirle a ese digno paso silencioso:
que en su demanda de justicia…
     Que en su lucha por la vida…
     Que en su anhelo de paz…
     Que en su exigencia de libertad…
     Nosotras, nosotros, las zapatistas, los zapatistas, los comprendemos y los apoyamos.
     Hoy estamos aquí para responder al llamado de quienes luchan por la vida.
     Y a quienes el mal gobierno responde con la muerte.
     Porque de eso se trata todo esto, compañeras y compañeros.
     De una lucha por la vida y en contra de la muerte.
     No se trata de ver quién gana de entre católicos, evangélicos, mormones, presbiterianos o de cualquier religión o no creyentes.
     No se trata de ver quién es indígena y quién no.
     No se trata de ver quién es más rico o más pobre.
     No se trata de quien es de izquierda, de centro o de derecha.
     No se trata de si son mejores los panistas o los priístas o los perredistas o como se llame cada quien o todos son iguales de malos.
     No se trata de quien es zapatista o no lo es.
     No se trata de estar con el crimen organizado o con el crimen desorganizado que es el mal gobierno.
     No.
     De lo que se trata es de que para poder ser lo que cada quien escoge ser, para poder creer o no creer, para elegir una creencia ideológica, política o religiosa, para poder discutir, acordar o desacordar, son necesarias la paz, la libertad, la justicia y la vida.
     Compañeros y compañeras:
     Hermanos y hermanas:
     Estas nobles personas no nos están llamando o convenciendo para ser de una religión, una idea, un pensamiento político o una posición social.
     No nos están llamando a quitar un gobierno para poner otro.
     No nos están diciendo que hay que votar por uno o por otro.
     Estas personas nos están convocando a luchar por la vida.
     Y sólo puede haber vida si hay libertad, justicia y paz.
     Por eso ésta es una lucha entre quienes quieren la vida y quienes quieren la muerte.
     Y nosotros, las zapatistas, los zapatistas, elegimos luchar por la vida, es decir, por la justicia, la libertad y la paz.
     Por eso…
     Hoy estamos aquí para decirles sencillamente a esas buenas personas que en silencio caminan, que no están solos.
     Que escuchamos el dolor de su silencio, como antes la digna rabia de sus palabras.
Que en su alto a la guerra….
     Que en su no más sangre…
     Que en su estamos hasta la madre…
     ¡No están solos!
     Compañeros y compañeras:
     Hermanos y hermanas:
     ¡Vivan la vida, la libertad, la justicia y la paz!
     ¡Muera la muerte!
     ¡Para todos todo, nada para nosotros!
     ¡democracia!
     ¡libertad!
     ¡justicia!
     Desde las montañas del Sureste Mexicano.

Por el Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena. Comandancia General del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

México, 7 de mayo del 2011.

POR LA PAZ SIN MILITARIZACIÓN NI VIOLENCIA
DECLARACIÓN DE ROSARIO IBARRA ANTE LA MARCHA POR LA PAZ

Con mucho optimismo saludamos la Marcha por la Paz que ha llegado a la Ciudad de México desde Cuernavaca, así como las que simultáneamente se realizan en otras ciudades del país. Anuncian un despertar social muy amplio que harto de la violencia y sobre todo de las vejaciones, crímenes y violaciones a derechos humanos que se cometen todos los días y que arrojan alrededor de 40 mil ejecuciones y miles de nuevos desaparecidos y huérfanos desde lo que Felipe Calderón llamó una guerra contra el crimen organizado, se está levantando para exigir un alto a este curso y un cambio de rumbo.

Para nosotras, madres y familiares de desaparecidos políticos que tenemos más de 35 años exigiendo justicia, encontrarnos con esta respuesta y exigencia social tan amplia, masiva y nacional, es motivo de optimismo en la lucha y confirmación de la justeza de nuestro reclamo por la vía de la movilización y la lucha y no exclusivamente por medio del lamento y el llanto. Lamentablemente este hartazgo social ha tenido que explotar provocado por el dolor ante tantas nuevas muertes y desapariciones. Especialmente el que provoca la pérdida de un hijo que, como de alguna manera ha dicho Javier Sicilia, no tiene nombre siquiera: se puede ser huérfano o viuda, pero no hay palabra para nombrar siquiera tanto el dolor como la realidad de una inhumana y brutal pérdida de un hijo.

Y ahora es más gente en todo el país que sin tener que esperar a ser tocados por esta violencia acuden también al llamado para protestar. No hay más salida que la de la movilización, protesta y organización popular para detener y cambiar esta situación. Iniciativas legislativas, cambios pequeños, promesas y programas gubernamentales quedan en gestos demagógicos, si no hay una fuerte movilización popular exigiéndolo y forzándolo. En 1978, por ejemplo, conseguimos una ley de amnistía pero no por medio de acuerdos legislativos, en un momento en que no había siquiera legisladores de izquierda, sino después de varias y largas luchas y una huelga de hambre de las madres de los desaparecidos en la Catedral.

Por eso son insultantes las supuestas respuestas gubernamentales a esta protesta, diciendo que debemos gritar el “ya basta” a los criminales y no a ellos y en definitiva insistir en llamar a la “unidad nacional” en torno a ellos y su guerra. Ni unidad nacional en torno a ellos, ni acuerdos y pactos para enfrentar la situación de violencia desbocada que se vive, cuando son ellos precisamente los responsables de lo que ocurre hoy. Para usar políticamente la declaración de guerra al crimen organizado por parte de un gobierno sin legitimidad democrática, se abrió un proceso de militarización que ha abierto junto con el clima de violencia, el avasallamiento social y la violación de derechos humanos que al igual que los crímenes se mantienen en la impunidad.

Por eso es que la exigencia debe ser clara. No queremos la militarización. Las fuerzas armadas que, pasando encima de la Constitución, realizan labores policiacas deben regresar a su cuarteles y junto con ello acabar con la impunidad, castigar a los culpables de estos crímenes y presentar a los desaparecidos. Obviamente lograr lo anterior requiere, en vez de un acuerdo con el actual gobierno, un cambio radical cuyas posibilidades ya anuncia esta gran movilización nacional.

Por todo lo anterior, mis compañeras y yo, madres de desaparecidos políticos, emocionadas por esta Marcha, nos uniremos este domingo 8 de mayo ya cerca del Zócalo pues aunque la mayoría de nuestro contingente es ahora de personas mayores, sacaremos la fuerza necesaria para encontrarnos con los miles y miles que hoy también exigen justicia. Nunca nos ha animado el deseo de venganza contra los criminales que desde el poder se llevaron a nuestros hijos; es la exigencia de justicia lo que nos empuja a luchar y sentirnos reanimadas con tantas y tan diferentes voces que dicen ya basta.
México, D. F., 7 de mayo de 2011.

ROSARIO IBARRA

From: On Behalf Of molly [mollymolloy@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2011 11:07 AM
Subject: [frontera-list] Pacto por un México en paz, con justicia y seguridad

Animal Político
http://www.animalpolitico.com/2011/05/conoce-el-pacto-por-un-mexico-en-paz-con-justicia-y-seguridad/

Publicado: mayo 8, 2011

Conoce el Pacto por un México en paz, con justicia y seguridad

Javier Sicilia presentó esta tarde en el Zócalo capitalino un documento en el que convoca a un Pacto por un México en paz, con justicia y seguridad.

Aquí te lo presentamos completo:

I Razones de urgencia

Ante la emergencia nacional, hoy más que nunca resulta necesario tomar medidas urgentes para detener esta guerra con su escalada de violencia y regenerar el tejido social y comunitario.

Este momento histórico adverso y profundamente violento es resultado de estructuras económicas y sociales que generan desigualdad y exclusión Aquí impera la muerte lenta causada por la miseria la pobreza el desempleo la falta de oportunidades para el desarrollo pleno de nuestras vidas y por la destrucción del ambiente.

La guerra contra el narcotráfico es una manifestación de políticas y acuerdos internacionales que sitúan a México como el campo de batalla donde a los pobres de este país y Centroamérica les toca pagar una alta cuota de vidas humanas para que las drogas lleguen a su destino y consoliden grandes negocios.

Frente a este escenario el Estado ha optado por una estrategia militar para enfrentar al crimen organizado y la protesta social privilegiando un proceso de militarización intensivo y extensivo de la seguridad pública no sólo por el amplio despliegue de las fuerzas militares en territorio nacional sino también por la creciente presencia de los mandos castrenses en la dirección de las policías civiles.

Resultado de esta estrategia que pone en el centro la confrontación violenta es una guerra civil donde mexicanos matan mexicanos generando 40 mil ejecuciones en lo que va del sexenio.

Sólo en el mes pasado en abril se contabilizaron mil 427 asesinatos considerando los cuerpos hallados en las narcofosas Las víctimas civiles se cuentan ya por miles en todo el país más de 230 mil personas desplazadas 10 mil huérfanos la Redim calcula 30 mil aunque no es una cifra oficial 10 mil secuestros de migrantes más de 30 alcaldes asesinados.

Un componente fundamental que explica esta escalada de violencia y guerra es la enorme corrupción y su infiltración en el Estado en todos sus niveles.

La impunidad es otro de los factores que determinan lo que hoy sucede en el país 98 3 de los delitos quedan impunes Tenemos un sistema de procuración e impartición de justicia incapaz de investigar y sancionar a quienes cometen los delitos y la violación de derechos.

II Visión común con exigencias mínimas y compromisos

1 Exigimos esclarecer asesinatos y desapariciones y nombrar a las víctimas Proponemos a la sociedad y planteamos la exigencia y mandato a las autoridades acciones de corto y mediano plazo que inicien un nuevo camino de paz con justicia y dignidad.

A.- Se deben esclarecer y resolver los asesinatos las desapariciones los secuestros las fosas clandestinas la trata de personas y el conjunto de delitos que han agraviado a la sociedad Determinar la identidad de todas las víctimas de homicidio es un requisito indispensable para generar confianza.

B.- Exigimos a las autoridades estatales y federal la resolución pública que presente a los autores intelectuales y materia les de algunos de los casos emblemáticos que han agraviado a la sociedad entre ellos la familia Reyes Marisela Escobedo y su hija Rubí Bety Cariño y Jirí Jaakola las niñas y niños de la guardería ABC la familia Le Barón los jóvenes de Villas de Salvárcar los jóvenes de Morelos.

C.- Convocamos a la sociedad civil a rescatar la memoria de las víctimas de la violencia a no olvidar y exigir justicia colocando en cada plaza o espacio público placas con los nombres de las víctimas.

2 Exigimos poner fin a la estrategia de guerra y asumir un enfoque de seguridad ciudadana

A.- Se debe cambiar el enfoque militarista y la estrategia de guerra de la seguridad pública y asumir una nueva estrategia de seguridad ciudadana con enfoque en los derechos humanos.

B (I).- Exigimos que antes de dos meses los Congresos locales aprueben la reforma constitucional en derechos humanos y sea publicada para darle plena efectividad y que en el mismo plazo se instituya el mecanismo de protección de periodistas y defensores de derechos humanos.

B (II).- Exigimos que no se aprueben leyes o normas que conculquen los derechos humanos y las garantías individuales bajo el concepto de seguridad nacional y que no se aprueben las modificaciones propuestas al dictamen de la Ley de Seguridad Nacional.

3 Exigimos combatir la corrupción y la impunidad

A.- Se requiere una amplia reforma en la procuración y administración de justicia que dote de verdadera autonomía al Ministerio Público y al Poder Judicial que establezca el control ciudadano sobre las policías y los cuerpos de seguridad avance en la reforma de los juicios orales y establezca sistemas más efectivos de control judicial que reduzcan la discrecionalidad en los procedimientos y resoluciones de fondo La justicia no puede seguir al servicio de intereses y cálculos políticos También se requiere legislar para generar la capacidad y atribuciones de investigación y consignación de funcionarios públicos de los tres órdenes de gobierno en casos de corrupción.

B.- Exigimos que en máximo 6 meses el Congreso elimine el fuero de legisladores y funcionarios de los tres órdenes de gobierno en materia de actos de corrupción delitos del orden común y de crimen organizado.

4 Exigimos combatir la raíz económica y las ganancias del crimen

A.- La criminalidad y su violencia tiene como su motor las ganancias derivadas del narcotráfico los secuestros la trata de personas la extorsión la venta de protección y demás delitos que después reinyectan los recursos en la economía mediante el lavado de dinero Exigimos un combate frontal al lavado de dinero y activos de los delincuentes mediante la creación de unidades autónomas de investigación patrimonial en coordinación con fa Unidad Federal de Inteligencia Financiera que permitan reunir material probatorio para formular acusaciones y dictar sentencias por los actos de negocios ilegales.

B.- Exigimos la presentación de un Informe a la Nación sobre los resultados de la investigación patrimonial y el lavado de dinero que muestre los casos más notorios que se han sancionado en este sexenio y sobre el avance en la integración de las Unidades de investigación sobre lavado de dinero de las 32 entidades federativas y la federal.

5 Exigimos la atención de emergencia a la juventud y acciones efectivas de recuperación del tejido social

A.- La seguridad ciudadana no se resolverá con armas y violencia Exigimos una política económica y social que genere oportunidades reales de educación salud cultura y empleo para jóvenes porque son las y los principales víctimas de esta estrategia Exigimos la recuperación del carácter público de la educación y romper el control corporativo que ejerce la cúpula del SNTE sobre la política educativa así como el incremento inmediato en los recursos destinados a las acciones sociales de seguridad ciudadana al menos en la misma proporción de los destinados a las fuerzas armadas y de seguridad pública.

B.- Exigimos que en los próximos 3 meses se establezca un programa especial de emergencia nacional para y de jóvenes que invierta las prioridades del presupuesto garantizando al menos lo mismo que se destina a seguridad para la construcción de escuelas y el aumento de la matrícula en educación secundaria media superior y superior un sistema universal de becas para estudiantes de secundaria EMS y superior de escuelas públicas así como recursos para proyectos culturales deportivos productivos y sociales realizados por los propios Jóvenes y sus organizaciones como actores de reconstrucción del tejido social en sus barrios comunidades y unidades habitacionales.

6 Exigimos democracia participativa

Mejor democracia representativa y democratización en los medios de comunicación. La seguridad requiere democracia y nuevos medios de participación ciudadana Exigimos que se amplíen los medios e instrumentos de participación ciudadana en los asuntos públicos mediante el reconocimiento institucional de la consulta popular las candidaturas independientes la revocación de mandato, la contraloría social y las acciones colectivas.

Se requiere una política de Estado en materia de telecomunicaciones que rompa en el menor tiempo posible los monopolios y genere una amplia democratización y apertura no sólo a la competencia sino al fortalecimiento de los medios públicos.

Exigimos a la Cámara de Diputados que en un periodo extraordinario a más tardar en dos meses apruebe la minuta de reforma política constitucional aprobada por el Senado que establece la consulta popular la iniciativa legislativa las candidaturas independientes y la reelección inmediata de legisladores y alcaldes.

III Para iniciar el camino

Proponemos dos momentos para lograr esto:

-Un pacto ciudadano entre los miembros de la sociedad civil y;

-En un segundo momento, una serie de planteamientos y de mandatos de exigencias a los gobernantes a los líderes de los partidos políticos y a los factores de poder.

Este momento requiere la participación de todas y todos el Pacto de la sociedad civil implica un esfuerzo de unidad y organización de la sociedad civil nacional para que tengamos una voz y acciones con el fin de parar esta guerra y la violencia social corrupción e impunidad que nos está destruyendo como personas y como nación.

El 10 de junio nos reuniremos en Ciudad Juárez con las Comisiones de Verificación y Sanción que la sociedad civil nacional establecerá en este tiempo con especialistas y gente honorable para cada uno de los 6 puntos.

Durante este periodo hasta el 10 de junio las Comisiones con las aportaciones del resto de la sociedad civil irán especifican do con más detalle las acciones correspondientes a cada exigencia.

Invitamos a toda la ciudadanía en las comunidades barrios colonias lugares de trabajo a aportar en esta discusión y construir espacios de reflexión y acción colectiva nacional permanentes.

Hacemos además un llamado a nuestros compatriotas que radican allá y al pueblo de los Estados Unidos de América para que apoyen nuestra movilización y exijan al gobierno y al Congreso de ese país que detengan el flujo de armas hacia México y el lavado de dinero.

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Dismantling the National Security State?

2011-05-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

Secure Communities Challenged by Illinois Governor

There were two important developments this past week that bear comment in this blog. The first overshadowed the second but the second development is truly more significant for the future of democracy prospects in the United States. The death of Osama bin Laden (OBL) was the first event and we have already started a lively set of discussions and blogs on that topic focused on the implications for the political culture of the USA and the struggle against the state of exception.

The second development involves something that has been largely overlooked: It involves a letter from Pat Quinn, the Governor of Illinois, to Marc Rapp, Acting Assistant Director of Secure Communities, a project to turn local police into deputies of federal law enforcement, at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Governor Quinn's letter informs Homeland Security that the State of Illinois is terminating its participation in the "Secure Communities" Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) that the Illinois State Police (ISP) had signed with Homeland Security in November 2009.

The original MoA, like those signed by other states, was to focus on the arrest and deportation of immigrants with a criminal record. The statistics from the DHS suggest that is not how the program has worked out. Indeed, DHS's own data show that only 20 percent of the immigrants captured and deported under the Secure Communities program fit the definition of a criminal background. What about the other 80 percent?

Too many innocent people are being deported with no criminal record at great cost to their families and communities. No data is currently available, but some experts have suggested that the majority of those deported under Secure Communities are members of mixed-status families in which some are U.S. citizens.

Governor Quinn's courageous action is an important step in the right direction - that is, away from a bloated and dangerous national security state that commands local police forces with long records of racial profiling, abuse, and corruption as defenders of white privilege and capitalist interests. We encourage other governors to follow suit and revoke these unconstitutional agreements with would-be framers of a police state.

We present a copy of the first page of Governor Quinn's letter below:

HB 2281 Update: Elderly Supporter of Ethnic Studies Arrested

2011-05-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: The video below was posted last Tuesday, May 3 by the group, Three Sonorans, at the website The Daily Arizona Star. The video shows Guadalupe Castillo, a respected elder who has been teaching Ethnic Studies since 1971, in attendance and trying to present information and views at the Board of Directors Meeting of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). She was preparing to read Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" when she was arrested by the police.

This is the state of exception at work. What happened to the right of the people to assemble peaceably? What happened to freedom of thought and expression? This is a school board that oversees the education of tens of thousands of youth and yet, the basic rights enshrined in the Constitution, are not above quashing in that crowd. Beyond despicable.

After the arrest, Ms. Castillo explained why she was present: "All the rights that we have struggled for are being erased and the disrespect to this community has to be...we have to take a stand. The right to, in a non-violent way and with love, protest for our rights. To demand our rights."

Ms. Castillo demonstrates the highest level of commitment and solidarity possible from our elders and this is at the heart of the constituent power that continues to inspire and drive the growing mass of participants in the new Chicana/o Movement - call it movimiento 2.0 - that has been unleashed by the policing of our cultures, knowledge, economic status, and citizenship.

In the 1980s, the pundits were wringing their hands over the so-called "Sleeping Giant" of the coming Latina/o [sic] majority. We were not sleeping. We were training, learning, and gathering our force for the ongoing tsunami of social movement organizing and protest that will not let up until we have defeated the forces undermining democratic prospects in our societies, north and south of the border.

Guest Blog: Chaim Eliyah on bin Laden's Death and American Democracy

2011-05-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

One more such victory...

Chaim Eliyah

“One more such victory will be my demise.

–Pyrrhus, 279 B.C.

This post is intended as a response to Dr. Peña’s recent post, “Who or what is dead, bin Laden or American Democracy?” In this post, Dr. Peña asked three questions about the state of our country after bin Laden’s death:

The death of Osama bin Laden has most Americans cheering. All this celebrating is fine as catharsis, but it poses several questions of greater importance to our survival as a nation:

1. Why are Americans celebrating at a time when our society is being subjected to systematic attacks on our civil liberties and Constitution? Why are they not protesting the War on Civil Liberties?

2. Why are Americans not protesting the continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do they not object to the growing cost of these wars (currently estimated as approaching $3 trillion)?

3. Why are Americans not asking the right questions? When will the wars end? Why don't we bring the troops home now? Why are we not taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share of the costs of war and the costs of the meltdown of the capitalist system that is destroying the productive and reproductive potential of the American working class?

First off, I would say the celebrating is not fine as catharsis. The majority of Americans smiling for the media cameras and celebrating bin Laden’s folly do not suffer from any deep malady that requires cathartic purification. Moreover, there is something unsettling about a nation whose citizens, in the aggregate, will unquestioningly believe that one person is responsible for the bulk of their problems as a people. It is a mindset characterized in part by sheer laziness, for it is indeed an apathetic population that will accept such superficial explanations instead of digging for profound and complex truths; and yet, it is precisely this intellectual stupor that is the greatest threat to our nation.

A lot of people lost family members on September 11, 2001; and those people, perhaps, have reason to feel relief in whatever measure of closure bin Laden’s death can bring them. But then, as now, people asked the wrong questions; many Americans were bloodthirsty, desiring revenge against anyone and everyone who seemed to fit the description of the alleged aggressors. Mosques like the one in Mountlake Terrace were vandalized in the days and weeks following the attacks, in a reactionary wave of assaults often characteristic of fascist states. For the umpteenth time in Western history, the media conjured up the image of the primitive Arab aggressor and filled the American imagination with the notion that Muslims are public enemy number one, paving the way for an overzealous and fiscally careless president got us involved in two very costly and pointless wars. The hundreds of thousands of deaths that have taken place as a result of these wars (not only as a direct result of fighting, but also of the toll that a state of war takes on a nation as a whole) have not given back the lives of the three thousand; instead, their deaths have caused further grieving, further division, and further hatred.

This is our greatest national security problem. As Dr. Peña pointed out in the referenced blog post, our civil liberties have fallen under constant assault in the name of "Homeland Security," which is a thinly veiled euphemism for the gradual realization of a masterful plan that exposes the American populace to the vicissitudes of a surveillance society at a rate that will keep them more focused on the ever-increasing financial and technological demands of their daily lives than on the encroaching problem of the police state. It is staggering to think that the American people fail to connect the dots between the continual increase in their daily strife, the massive decrease in their purchasing power versus that of the middle class even two decades ago, and the high cost of a war economy.

According to numbers released by the Obama administration?s budget office, 57% of the 2011 national discretionary budget is spent on the defense budget (including veteran's affairs) and 3% on Homeland Security. In other words, fully 60 cents of every dollar spent by congress on discretionary programs goes toward keeping the military machine alive or paying for benefits associated with military service. While we have an ongoing responsibility to honor our commitments to those who have served in the U.S. military, we also have a responsibility to the greater society to ensure that future generations can enjoy a less militarized existence. The energy and creative genius of our nation’s youth should no longer be bent to the will of those who would engage in wars of aggression.

Unfortunately, however, the congressional budget is a snapshot of our economy as a whole. Concomitant portions of industry are dedicated to private-sector weapons development, aerospace engineering, and other manufacturing niches that are intricately linked with the military or police state apparatus. These industries and those who work for them have a vested interest in the war machine and in perpetuating the myth of an ethnic aggressor against whom we are justified in waging war. To question this construction or to oppose war on the basis of pacifism would be, for them, economic suicide.

The recent case of the Texas schoolteacher who assumed that his Muslim student must be in mourning for Osama bin Laden is an excellent example of the ways in which our stubborn ignorance belies our self-serving interests as a nation. It would not be convenient for the Texas schoolteacher to know his student's true opinions any more than it would be convenient for the weapons manufacturers to know that the end recipient of the destructive force of their work product is an innocent Palestinian child who hopes and dreams for peace.

Until we are willing to confront our societal notions of the economy, work and employment, competitive advantage, and American exceptionalism, the wars will not end. In fact, they are likely to increase in scope and intensity until we are forced to realize collectively that we are a military empire and that military imperialism is unsustainable.

HB 2281 Update: Timeline of Struggle to Save Ethnic Studies

2011-05-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: As we will continue our reporting on the campaign to Save Ethnic Studies in Arizona in the coming weeks, we thought it useful to post this chronology of recent events related to this defining new civil rights movement led by Chicana/o, mexicana/o, and Native American students.

Chronology of the New Civil Rights Movement

Jan 3- Two hours before Tom Horne's position changes from State Superintendent to Attorney General he serves a letter to TUSD calling them out of compliance with 2281 and [with] 60 days to eliminate the program before the states begins withholding funds. He presents "evidence" of the classes' non-compliance such as testimony from anonymous teachers, out of context quotes from books like Rudolfo Acuna's Occupied America and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and lyrics from Chicano hip hop groups "El Vuh" and "Aztlan Underground."

The 11 teachers along with their attorney Richard Martinez and Save Ethnic Studies.org, the non-profit organization providing the legal defense for the teachers, counter his press conference with their own a few hours later in Tucson.

Jan 8- John Roll, Chief Arizona U.S. District Judge who was assigned to see the case against HB 2281, is killed along with five others at a "Congress on your Corner" event with Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords. Congresswoman Giffords is shot and 19 others are injured. A 45-day extension is added to TUSD's 60 day deadline to become in compliance in HB 2281.

Jan 11- The 11 plaintiffs announce to TUSD school board members that if the district does not join their lawsuit or create their own battling the state of AZ on the constitutionality of the bill, they will be added onto the lawsuit as defendants. They give TUSD 48 hrs to reply.

Jan 14- TUSD announces to the "Arizona Daily Star" that the district is going to be in compliance with the bill, making whatever compromises to the program to do so. TUSD is now going to be added on to the lawsuit Acosta v. The State of AZ.

Jan 24- The five who were found guilty are sentenced to 10 hours of community service and fines.

Feb 5- Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Committee hosts first Community Forum in Support of TUSD's Ethnic Studies Program to educate about the success of the program and rally support on combating HB 2281. Students of the program, parents of the students, teachers and staff of the department, and elected officials speak on behalf of Ethnic Studies.

Feb 8- At TUSD school board meeting U.N.I.D.O.S. (United Non-discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our Studies); a new Tucson youth coalition of students from local high schools, alumni and community members who formed in response of the growing attacks on education and culture by Arizona legislature, make their grand debut to the community and TUSD board members with a press conference.

Representatives of the group demand a sit-down meeting with all TUSD school board members and that the district, the State Board of Education and the state of Arizona must act in accordance to international human rights laws, which HB 2281 violates.

A musical, cultural and artistic celebration continues outside of TUSD 1010 building after the demands are read to school board members during the 'call to the audience.'

Feb. 28- UNIDOS has a sit down discussion with only two of the five TUSD board members Adelita Grijalva and Judy Burns and present the positive impacts that Raza Studies does for the Latino community and what negative results will occur to the district's students if TUSD doesn't do everything in its power to protect the classes.

Mar. 8- UNIDOS representatives make a public statement in response to their meeting with the two school board members during Call to the Audience at TUSD school board meeting. UNIDOS demands for an announcement by the board members in the next 24 hours that they will keep the classes as they are no matter what the state may do. UNIDOS urges the district to act in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, "One has not only a legal, but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

That very same morning of the school board meeting, unbeknownst to the community, the district made its first move to dismantle the program from the inside. Superintendent John Pedicone gave his position as supervisor over Director of Student Equity, Augustine Romero and Mexican-American Studies Director, Sean Arce to Asst. Superintendent Lupita Garcia -- who has openly made statements in the past that she would like to see the department abolished.

Mar 11- Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Committee holds press conference outside TUSD 1010 building denouncing the move of positions.

Mar 16- The Arizona Department of Education and State Superintendent John Huppental hire the Cambium Learning Group of Dallas, TX to conduct a four to six week curriculum audit of the Mexican American Studies Department to evaluate whether the program is in compliance with HB 2281 and meets up to state standards. The audit group will make unannounced classroom visits, interview students and staff, and evaluate teaching materials.

Mar 17- Save Ethnic Studies sends a letter to the TUSD governing board bringing to light the criminal history of Steve Gallon, who is appointed as head consultant of the audit for Mexican American Studies. Steve Gallon is the former superintendent of Plainfield School District in New Jersey and was arrested in 2010 with 11 criminal charges including conspiring to commit theft of more than $10,000 of educational services.

Mar 18- Steve Gallon resigns from the position following Save Ethnic Studies' coverage of his criminal past and is replaced by Luanne Nelson.

Mar 21- State audit for Mexican American Studies begins and Save Ethnic Studies with attorney Richard Martinez issue a press release calling the audit unlawful and a waste of tax payer money which will cost us $170,000. Martinez brings into question how the audit could possibly remain unbiased when the state of Arizona is hiring this group to investigate the teachers who are suing the state over the constitutionality of HB 2281. He also points out additional violations such as Federal Family, Educational, and Privacy Rights Act of 1974.

Mark Stegeman, president of the Tucson Unified School District governing board, submits an opinion piece to the Arizona Daily Star calling for Mexican American Studies to transition to Hispanic Student Services, which would only focus on extracurricular activities, and for the classes, who currently count as accredited core English and Social Studies classes, to be reduced down to elective classes.

April 6- The 11 teachers suing the state refuse to meet with the auditors in a "focus group discussion." Save Ethnic Studies sends a letter on their behalf to Superintendent Pedicone, declining the invitation because the audit lacks any legal authority, defined terms and remains unknown if the persons conducting the audits have any expertise in Mexican American critical race theory.

April 11- Sally Rusk and Maria Federico-Brummer, 2 of the 11 teachers express in an op-ed how any sort of compromise to the program is unacceptable. They explain why transition the classes from accredited core classes to electives would kill the program. They further defend the program which meets and excels far beyond the achievement gap for the Latino population, which is the second largest failing in TUSD as well as its majority population. In fact most of schools where these classes are taught have a 90 percent minority population -- mainly Latino.

April 12- UNIDOS boycotts TUSD school board meeting due to silenced youth voice. Students in press release recount the lack of response to their demands for the district, superintendent and board members to show true support for the program. Instead, all the district has done is refuse to join the teacher lawsuit or initiate one of their own, released a resolution declaring compliance with an unjust HB 2281, are currently cooperating with a biased State audit of the classes, and the board president Mark Stegeman is publicly advocated for killing our Ethnic Studies program by turning our classes into electives.