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In tonight's final round of public testimony at Tucson's historic three forums on the proposed "Unitary Status Plan," the federally arranged desegregation agreement between Mexican American and African American plaintiffs and the Tucson Unified School District, the voices of one community desperately need to be heard by the court-appointed "Special Master" and rest of the nation: Tucson's youth.
"In order for these court-ordered district changes to be genuine, sustainable, and transformative," concludes a new statement released by an alliance of student and youth activists, "students and community members must be engaged in meaningful ways at every level of the process."
Few other participants understand and have carried the burden of TUSD's national disgrace over banning Mexican American Studies better than Tucson's youth.
Among the nearly 7,000 students served by the nationally acclaimed but now dismantled Mexican American Studies program, recognized by recent studies for its higher graduation rates, test scores and civic engagement and hailed by educational experts as "the nation's most innovative and successful academic and instructional program in Ethnic Studies at the secondary school level," they have been demonized by extremist state politicians in a bizarre witch hunt for sheer election gain, and dismissed by patronizing TUSD officials; they have witnessed the firing and persecution of their beloved teachers, and had their Mexican American Studies literature and history curricula and books confiscated from their classrooms.
Throughout Arizona's manufactured crisis over Ethnic Studies, Tucson's youth have been in the forefront of engaging in dialogue and discussion, galvanizing an enduring new civil rights movement, and carrying on a legacy "to restore respect, justice, and equity in our educational experience and school district."
"As a collective, as students and alumni (Chicano Literature After School Studies program, Tucson High and U of A MEChA, and UNIDOS)," Mexican American Studies alumni and UNIDOS activist Danny Montoya noted, "we held a forum on the Unitary Status Plan, and out of the suggestions of the community, along with our input, we drafted this document--Declaration of Intellectual Warriors--to present to the Special Master and the plaintiffs."
Here's a copy of the document:
Declaration of Intellectual Warriors
November 26, 2012
Created by:
Chicano Literature After School Studies program
Tucson High M.E.Ch.A
University of Arizona M.E.CH.A
U.N.I.D.O.S
Declaration of Intellectual Warriors
Dear Special Master Hawley,
We, the youth belonging to the Chicano Literature After School Studies program (C.L.A.S.S.), Tucson High M.E.Ch.A, University of Arizona M.E.CH.A, and U.N.I.D.O.S., along with community input, collectively submit the following response addressing the proposed TUSD Unitary Status Plan:
Restoration of Mexican American Studies
The new Mexican American Indigenous Studies program must be built on the foundation of the previous program that had demonstrated quantitative and qualitative measures of success. Therefore, the implementation of the Mexican American Indigenous Studies program and the other Ethnic Studies Programs must take budgetary priority over the implementation of the Multicultural Program.
Expansion of Ethnic Studies
With the expansion and implementation of the new Mexican American Indigenous Studies and African American Studies, we demand that Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern American Studies be included in the plan. Core level curriculum will be essential for these courses. We believe that all ethnic groups should have a chance to develop their cultural identity by learning the contributions their people have made in the United States, as well as their experiences in this country.
Core vs. Elective
All Ethnic Studies course must be considered as core English and core Social Studies classes, as opposed to Elective credits.
Women’s Studies and LGBTQ Studies (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer)
In every section of the Ethnic Studies curriculum there will be an emphasis on the perspective and contributions regarding gender, women, and the LGBTQ community.
K-8 Expansion
It is imperative that all of the Ethnic Studies programs be expanded to all learning levels. We reaffirm the decision to expand the programs from K-12 grade levels and expect that the newly developed African American, Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern American courses be held to the same standard.
Directors
The position of Coordinator of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy needs to be changed to a Director’s position. In addition, there should be multiple directors (i.e., one representing Latino, and one representing African American Studies), with each Director having appropriate teaching experience in the field of study s/he will be directing, and each reflecting the ethnic background of the community s/he serves.
Public Hiring of Directors
The hiring process of the Directors of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy must include representatives of the community who are former Ethnic Studies students and teachers because of their unique expertise and experience with culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. These community members must also have decision-making power in the hiring of the directors.
Community Decision-making Power
To ensure grassroots participation, we demand the creation of a community committee with formal representatives and full voting powers be established, that takes part in the following areas and decisions:
The hiring process of the Directors of Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy, and other staff.
Curriculum
Course creation
And Overall USP Implementation and Accountability
The district must ensure formal representation, with full voting powers, to:
C.L.A.S.S.
M.E.C.h.A.
U.N.I.D.O.S.
Parent
Community member
Former MAS teacher
Naming
Each program Director (i.e. Mexican American Indigenous, African American, Native American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern Studies) must have the authority to name her/his corresponding program as s/he sees fit in reflecting the cultural relevance of the curriculum.
Capacity for new classes
A course involving culturally relevant pedagogy must be available at every high school. As enrollment demands indicate the need for additional courses, additional courses must be established. The establishment of an Ethnic Studies Class shall be determined by the number of students requesting the class, not by the set number of previously established classes. The number of students in a class should not exceed thirty students; allowing more than thirty students in one class is detrimental to the learning environment.
Censorship
The Unitary Status Plan must promote a pedagogy and curriculum that is free from censorship. Teachers must have the freedom to teach all aspects of the literature and history called for in the curriculum.
English Language Learners (ELL)
The Unitary Status Plan must limit the segregation of ELLs to no more than two hours per day. Interaction between ELLs and their English-speaking peers promotes ELLs' acquisition of English and fosters a shared sense of community among all students, while extended segregation creates social divisions and restricts ELLs' opportunities to acquire English in real-world situations.
Dual Language Programs
The Unitary Status Plan must also recognize and include Dual Language (DL) classes as Advanced Learning Experiences. Dual Language programs provide academic enrichment and offer the same kind of rigorous and challenging instruction found in GATE and IB programs. Moreover, DL programs have a greater capacity to serve ELLs and are more likely to positively affect a significant portion of the ELL population.
Discipline
Students guilty of minor infractions shall not be subject to removal from class as a part of their punishment, whether through in-school suspensions or out-of-school suspensions. Humiliation and demeaning disciplinary tactics must be prohibited.
Restorative Justice
Restorative Practices must be used as stated in the Unitary Status Plan in order to promote accountability, while building a healthy, positive, constructive, and supportive school environment for every student. TUSD must not resort to police, border patrol, or Juvenile Hall as means of disciplinary action.
Transportation
TUSD is responsible for the providing school bus transportation for all students. Students must be provided with school buses before and after school. Providing students with public transportation vouchers is an inadequate form of transportation. The use of public transportation extends the travel time from students, taking time from their studies.
Equal Time in Class
All schools of equivalent educational levels need to be in the classroom for the same amount of time. Decreasing any schools meeting time creates disparities in the quality of education a student receives.
No School Closures
TUSD proposes school closures that are disproportionately targeting Southside and Westside area schools. This negatively impacts working class, students of color, and their families and communities. It is impossible for TUSD to implement a Unitary Status Plan if it finds solutions in closing down our schools. We ask that the USP clearly state that no school closures are acceptable.
Supervising of the Implementation of the Unitary Status Plan
Students enrolled in TUSD schools and Ethnic Studies courses must have the same right as other community members to play an active role in monitoring the district’s implementation of the Unitary Status Plan. Their active participation in the monitoring process will be a key factor in keeping TUSD in compliance with the Unitary Status Plan.
Conclusion
As students, we are clear that in order for these court-ordered district changes to be genuine, sustainable, and transformative, students and community members must be engaged in meaningful ways at every level of the process. To restore respect, justice, and equity in our educational experience and school district, we ask for the full integration of our student demands in your Unitary Status Plan.
Mr. Hawley, we, the students await a detailed response to all our points above.
With Gratitude & Sincerity,
Chicano Literature After School Studies program,
Tucson High M.E.Ch.A,
University of Arizona M.E.CH.A,
U.N.I.D.O.S
St. Louis-based Arch Coal obviously didn't get the memo last week.
As fellow absentee coal company Patriot announced its intentions to phase out large scale strip mining operations in central Appalachia, and a renewed effort was launched in Washington, DC to get Congress and the White House to deal with the mounting health and humanitarian crisis and pass the ACHE Act moratorium on all mountaintop removal, Arch displayed its Big Coal hubris by moving forth with a permit application to strip mine the historic confines of Blair Mountain in West Virginia.
Another Blair Mountain Thanksgiving, another outlandish, toxic and unnecessary strip mining permit to fight in an area that virtually every historian and archaeologist and coal miner considers to be one of the most important and sacred sites for labor history--the site of largest armed insurrection for labor rights in the country.
Residents in the Blair Mountain region need you to speak now against the destruction of their history--and their health and livelihood.
Here's a link to the writing letter campaign to the West Virginia DEP on the proposed permit, which is due at the end of this week.
“The Adkins Fork permit would destroy one of the most important areas of the battlefield,” said Brandon Nida, an archaeologist from UC Berkeley and organizer with the Blair Mountain Heritage Alliance (BMHA) located in Blair. “From archaeological surveys, this is the one of the only areas we positively know was occupied by the miners. We’ve found ammunition from the miners, we know where they fought and died. This is some of the most hallowed ground in labor history.”
Earlier this spring, West Virginia-raised Nida gave an overview of Blair Mountain and its historical significance and the latest battle against Arch Coal.
“This permit adds to the cumulative impacts for the Spruce Fork watershed which has an estimated 17,000 acres permitted or with current operations,” said Kenneth King, a local resident who has worked to preserve Blair Mountain for the last twenty years. “And it's not just the environment, I’m also really concerned about how this is going to affect people’s health.”
King cited numerous peer-reviewed health studies linking mountaintop removal mining to health hazards and risks, including rare forms of cancer, respiratory issues, and birth defects.
Here's a video overview of the campaign, featuring local resident King:
King added: “We need everyone to write in, but that is just the first step. This is going to be a tough campaign against one of the largest coal companies in the world. We need people to stay involved as we take this campaign to the national level."
Call it a moment of truth for Big Coal--and a small crack in the wall of denial for the US Congress and the White House.
On the cliff of bankruptcy, St. Louis-based Patriot Coal Corporation agreed this week to a settlement to phase out its large-scale strip mining and mountaintop removal operations in central Appalachia. Even more importantly, Patriot became the first coal company to admit "our mining operations impact the communities in which we operate in significant ways, and we are committed to maximizing the benefits of this agreement for our stakeholders, including our employees and neighbors.”
That's not quite a full admission of Big Coal's role in the mounting humanitarian crisis from mountaintop removal, but the action by Patriot, engineered in a court settlement thanks to the extraordinary work of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Appalachian Mountain Advocates and the Sierra Club, is an important step toward abolishing the 40-year nightmare of mountaintop removal.
In a line: If Big Coal recognizes the damages of mountaintop removal and agrees to phase it out, isn't it time for the US Congress and President Obama to bring an end to the most egregious environmental and human rights violation in the nation?
For those living amid the toxic fallout of massive strip mining and mountaintop removal operations in central Appalachia, which provides less than 5 % of national coal production, the time has come to passed the ACHE Act, the historic bill that calls for "a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services."
"I pray this action by Patriot Coal to halt the impact of man's destructive abomination upon God's creation might serve as a catalyst for the US Congress to expedite the enactment of HR 5959," said Mickey McCoy, ACHE coordinator for Kentucky, "reducing cancer death rates and birth defects of children within the human race who reside in Appalachia."
“For a company to admit that it’s harming the community is a major step, but we can’t wait for all the companies to end mountaintop removal out of the goodness of their hearts," said Debbie Jarrell, Coal River Mountain Watch in West Virginia. "Citizens have pleaded with Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and others for decades to stop this abominable practice, but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears and government agencies have not ended the practice. I worry for my grandchildren’s health and for the health of everyone in the community. Patriot is showing that a company doesn’t have to threaten its neighbors’ health and that mountaintop removal is unnecessary.”
In a released statement yesterday, ACHE campaign coordinator, Bo Webb added:
“We greatly appreciate the inimitable work of Appalmad, Sierra Club, OVEC and WVHC in bringing about this significant move. However, we cannot afford to rest. Health damage continues to climb as Alpha Natural Resources and other coal companies persist in blasting mountains to ashes, spreading silica dust and elevated levels of PAH toxins across our communities, contaminating our air, our water and our garden soils. This admission and action by Patriot Coal is a clear mandate to the US Congress to immediately pass the ACHE Act into law; providing an immediate pause on all new mountaintop removal permits and a health study to address the effects of MTR on human beings. Until then, mountaintop removers will continue to jeopardize thousands of citizens’ lives while state agencies do nothing to protect us. We’ve been exposed to hazards such as toxic blasting dust for years, and are now experiencing the long term health impacts. I’m tired of watching my family and neighbors die.” The ACHE Act, HR 5959, would place an immediate moratorium on new or expanding mountaintop removal permits until the federal government completes health studies proving that the practice does not endanger human health. Fourteen original co-sponsors introduced in the ACHE Act in the US House of Representatives in June; it now has 27 cosponsors."
According to the ACHE campaign, the bill's co-sponsor U.S. Representative Louise M. Slaughter (NY-28), a native of Harlan County, Kentucky, added to the call for real action by Congress: "When industry representatives admit to the dangers of mountaintop removal mining, there can be no more excuse for inaction or delay. The Appalachian community has fought hard for today's settlement. It is high-time that the federal government join the fight to end mountain top removal and protect additional Appalachian communities from similar threats to the environment and public health."
Now it's time for the US Congress and the White House to repond.
The provisional and early ballot debacle continues to unfold this week in Arizona, where the outcome of several high profile races remains uncertain. As an unprecedented number of cases emerge around registration problems, dubious provisional ballot measures and still uncounted early ballots, especially in heavy Latino-voting neighborhoods, citizens groups in Maricopa County and around the state are ramping up protests and calling on voters to chronicle any difficulties at last week's voting polls.
"We are especially interested in providing examples to the press of real people who encountered difficulty voting on election day, did not receive their ballot in the mail, was not included on the voter list, etc.," Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, wrote in an email alert. "Please forward to me anyone that falls into any of these categories."
Questions abound:
In the face of record early Latino voting, did Maricopa County engage in blatant voter suppression?
Given the Department of Justice law suit over racial profiling and mounting post-SB 1070 fallout, will Maricopa County citizens now lead a recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio effort?
Legendary Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman released this short film on protests in Phoenix, demanding acountability and clarification on the extraordinary levels of provisional ballots and voting problems in Latino areas overseen by Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell. The final tallies, according to the Maricopa County office, is due on November 16.
According to a statement from Parraz, an alliance of Latino and citizens groups in Maricopa County has agreed to a weeklong plan of action, including a major protest on Friday, November 15th at the Maricopa County Recorder's Office:
Tuesday, Nov. 13th @ 4:00PM - Action at County Recorder's Office, 3rd Ave and Jefferson
Wednesday, Nov. 14th @ 9:00AM - Action at Board of Supervisors Auditorium, 203 W Jefferson
Wednesday, Nov. 14th @ 4:00PM - Action at County Recorder's Office, 3rd Ave and Jefferson
Thursday, Nov. 15th @ 5:00PM - Large Scale Protest at County Recorder's Office, 3rd Ave and Jefferson
Move over, Ohio.
Despite record early voting ranks among Latinos, Arizona took a giant step ahead of the nation into the quagmire of provisional and early ballot mayhem, as outraged Latino voters and allies converged on the Maricopa County Tabulation Election Center in Phoenix today, demanding clarification and proper counting of unprecedentedly massive numbers of uncounted ballots that could potentially affect the outcome of the high profile races of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and U.S. Senate candidate Richard Carmona, among others.
Winning 465, 249 votes from nearly 96 percent of precincts reporting last night, Arpaio reportedly defeated challenger Paul Penzone by nearly 10 percent. With 99.76 percent of the precincts reporting, Republican Jeff Flake reportedly defeated Carmona for the U.S. Senate, 809,283 votes to 725,831.
But that's not the end of the story.
While estimates of uncounted provisional and returned early ballots vary wildly -- from 150,00 to more than 400,000 in Maricopa County alone, and thousands more across the state -- many Arizonans are now questioning the extraordinary levels of provisional ballots issued, and numerous voters have emerged with stories of undue barriers and difficulties at the polls for Latino voters.
"We have examples of newly naturalized citizens who registered to vote only to find out a few days before the election that they were not on the voter list," Randy Parraz, President of Citizens for a Better Arizona, noted. "We have examples of others who were deemed to be age ineligible and left off the voter list but who were in fact 18 and over. We have many citizens who requested a ballot in the mail and never received it."
"This is a travesty, not just for the Latino community in Maricopa County," Petra Falcon, Executive Director of Promise Arizona in Action, said in a statement, "but for every voter in Arizona, and for every American who believes in democracy."
Photo courtesy of Promise Arizona. CBA leader Randy Parraz speaks, as Promise AZ director Petra Falcon stands to side.
"Everything we believe in as Americans depends on having a fair election system we can all trust and believe in," added Falcon. "The County Recorder is right in declaring this election undecided. We promise Arizona and the country that we will do everything to make sure that all eyes are on the County Recorder as every vote is counted."
"This is about guarding our protected right to vote," said Parraz,
While the Maricopa County Recorder has posted November 16 as the date for Provisional Ballot Status information, the various groups vowed to remain at the election office's until every vote is counted.
When 20-year Phoenix resident and businesswoman Maria Maqueada turned in her emergency ballot today at the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, thanks to the assertive efforts of Citizens for a Better Arizona, one more vote was cast in what observers are already calling a record Latino vote in Arizona.
Whether such a grassroots surge in the Latino vote will be able to overcome out-of-state contributions and Republican hijinks, including the latest report today on misleading robocalls to Arizona Democrats on polling stations by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Flake, a determined network of Latino and community groups galvanized by citizens fed up with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's notorious reign and the state's SB 1070 "papers, please" immigration policy has already shifted the political landscape in tomorrow's election -- and beyond.
The reversal of the Arizonification of America is in full force.
In a statement released today by Promise Arizona in Action, a community group dedicated to greater civic involvement, more than "111,975 Latinos in AZ have already voted early," marking an extraordinary 28 percent increase in early voting among Latinos in 2008.
"These numbers reflect what our volunteers have been seeing while speaking to voters at their doors," Promise Arizona's Petra Falcon said. "The Latino community here is experiencing an awakening of civic engagement. Latino voters are really excited and enthusiastic about voting this year."
Falcon's growing ranks of Latino youth in Promise Arizona, along with the Adios Arpaio Campaign, Joe's Got to Go, Campaign for Arizona's Future, AZ Center for Empowerment, Mi Familia Vota and nearly a dozen other organizations have registered tens of thousands of new voters. In a stunning upset last year, Parraz and his Citizens for a Better Arizona led the historic recall of SB 1070 architect and state senate president Russell Pearce.
Earlier this week, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials released a report projecting an increase of nearly 70,000 Latino voters in Arizona; an estimated 359,000 in 2012, compared to 291,000 in 2008.
According to the Promise Arizona statement:
In 2008, approximately 180,800 Latino voters were on Arizona's Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) statewide. This year, there are 251,752 Latinos on the list, accounting for a dramatic 39 percent increase. The number of Latinos on PEVL today would represent 92 percent of all Latinos who voted in AZ in the last Presidential elections. Of the people on the PEVL in 2008, 86,902, nearly half (48 percent) took advantage of their option to vote early.This year, at least 111,975 Latinos in AZ have already voted early. That is already a 28 percent increase in the number of Latinos who voted early this year compared to 4 years ago. This proves that Latinos are turning out to vote in unprecedented numbers across Arizona this year.
In Maricopa County, there are 152,604 Latinos on PEVL, and 70,754 have already voted. 50,966 Latinos voted early in 2008 accounting for 40 percent increase from 4 years ago.
With former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona in a neck-in-neck race with Flake for the U.S. Senate, every vote in Arizona counts.
Outside the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, after the Citizens for a Better Arizona turned in more than 3,000 ballots collected from area voters, Parraz hailed the record turn out and predicted, "Sheriff Arpaio is going to be in for a surprise tomorrow night."
Out of all the meaningless slogans bantered around this election season, President Obama's clinging to the "clean coal" banner ranks as one of the most specious.
"Clean coal" is a hoax, and the president knows it, and outside of appeasing a few Midwestern Big Coal sycophants and his Duke Energy coal buddy Jim Rogers, who helped to underwrite the Democratic Convention this summer in Charlotte, Obama has little to gain from invoking the offensive phrase.
You're offensive, President Obama, to use your own words.
Offensive to coal miners and their families who have paid the ultimate price, offensive to people who live daily with the devastating impacts of coal mining and coal ash in their communities and watersheds, and offensive to anyone who recognizes the spiraling reality of climate change.
If Ameren, one of the biggest coal-supporting utility companies in the nation, can throw in the towel on the FutureGen "clean coal" boondoggle in Obama's adopted state of Illinois, then why can't our president at least state the truth during his election -- or drop the sloganeering?
It's sad enough to watch the president mock Republican Mitt Romney for his dead-on realization, once upon a time, that coal-fired plants kill.
It's even sadder, as our nation drifts along in Titanic denial toward climate destabilization, for our president to crow about being a friend of a deadly rock.
And it's downright tragic for Obama apologists -- all of whom live in Washington, D.C. or non-coal mining areas -- to turn a blind eye to Obama's unleashing of massive coal mining permits in the Powder River Basin, to the regulated humanitarian and health disaster of mountaintop removal in Appalachia, and the destructive operations of longwall mining for farm communities in the heartland.
Coal is not and will never be clean, and President Obama and all of his apologists know it.
Mitt Romney is right: Coal kills.
Coal kills three miners daily, as black lung has spiked during the Obama administration.
Coal mining and burning pollutants contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S., according to the Physicians for Social Responsibility: "Heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal life cycle -- mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post combustion wastes -- impacts human health."
Coal slurry, coal ash, mercury, strip mining, silicosis -- the deadly list goes on and on.
President Obama: Stop using the "clean coal" slogan.
Follow Jeff Biggers on Twitter @JeffRBiggers
Over 30 years ago, The Bloomsbury Review emerged from the back room of an independent bookstore in Denver as a harbinger in the shifting literary world. Its message didn't pull any punches :
We don't plug the mega-bestsellers. We don't push celebrity biographies or "how-to-get-richer-thinner-smarter-happier books." And we don't hype books or authors that are reviewed in every newspaper and magazine in the country. You hear enough about them already. The Bloomsbury Review is simply lively writing about good reading and great writers.
As book sections in daily newspapers vanish, and the whirl of social media and radio and TV networks blurs into fleeting headlines, the unfolding quarterly issues from The Bloomsbury Review have never seemed more important. And more lasting.
Do books matter? Do authors play a special role in our communities and lives?
Dating back to its first issue in 1980, The Bloomsbury Review has answered those questions with a commitment to small and independent presses, academic publishers, and the extraordinary works of thousands of American and international poets, novelists and nonfiction writers often left out of the daily pulp and media hype.
Featuring groundbreaking and in-depth interviews between authors and cutting edge reviews of new and rediscovered books, The Bloomsbury Review cultivated my generation -- and a huge community of readers in the 1980s until today -- with insights and challenges from emerging writers across the country, Latin American authors, Russia's literary underground, prose & poetry from the Caribbean, South African writers in the Apartheid era, among scores of other literary movements and themes rooted in the American West and across the States.
For many readers, TBR has been the place they discovered: Wendell Berry, Linda Hogan, Edwidge Danticat, Carolyn Forché, Rita Dove, Milan Kundera, Vikram Seth & Ted Conover, Ed Abbey and Barbara Kingsolver, Junot Diaz, Terry Tempest Williams, Eduardo Galeano, and Isabel Allende -- and literally thousands of other authors.
Every issue has wrestled with the role of the writer in society -- the dangerous intersection between arts, culture and resistance. Based in the American West, The Bloomsbury Review has provided some of the most important and pioneering analysis on the role of writing, the land and a sense of place.
And now The Bloomsbury Review needs our help. The cost of ethics, as David Perkins has noted, has been especially devastating for the literary world and print media.
Without any major corporate support, a grassroots effort has emerged to keep The Bloomsbury Review and its legacy alive. Here's an update from Alice Auer Connor, the sister of Tom Auer, founder of The Bloomsbury Review, and sister to current Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Marilyn Auer:
I am starting a grassroots effort to preserve one of our national literary treasures, The Bloomsbury Review. It is a small, beautifully written quarterly magazine about what is new and upcoming in the book world, focusing on the work of new and seasoned writers. It has been advertising supported for the last 33 years, but as we all know, advertising dollars are severely limited these days. We have loyal readers and followers -- it is to you that I am reaching out today and to your friends who read. I am an avid book lover and reader and average about $40 per month in book purchases.
Since we are in danger of closing our doors, I am asking that you please donate $40 one time to The Bloomsbury Review, to keep the magazine open, to keep my sister Marilyn, the editor and publisher, working her special kind of magic for the written-word artists in our world today. If this amount of money is not comfortable for you, please send what you can. The bare-bones budget won't change. It will remain the same.My grassroots effort is a one-time deal--no gifts, no monthly pledges, no gimmicks, no fundraisers to go to, just a cyberspace one-person-at-a-time effort to keep a needed voice for literature alive.
Please send this email and our message to your friends who read and love books and may wish to help. You could also attach your own message and reason for forwarding it. Thanks.
If you wish to donate by check, please make it out to The Bloomsbury Review and send it to 1553 Platte St, Suite 206, Denver, CO 80202-1167. If you would like the convenience of a credit-card donation please call the office at 303-455-3123. This is not tax deductible, but it is good karma.
When President Obama travels to Keene, California on Monday, October 8th, to establish the César E. Chávez National Monument, I hope he publicly recalls the Arizona native's towering legacy in civil rights and immigration showdowns in Arizona today.
Cesar Chavez's "si se puede" spirit is alive and well in Arizona today -- the other Arizona -- in the fight against SB 1070's "show me your papers" provision, the outlawing of Mexican American Studies in Tucson, the rights of DREAM ACT students, and the growing electoral campaigns to take down Sheriff Joe Arpaio and reclaim the state from its rightwing interlopers.
And rightly so: Forty years ago, Arizona was once again the national "showdown" over immigration, and Chavez -- a native of Yuma, Arizona -- and Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers gave birth to the "si se puede" movement to help Republicans "realize that there is nothing to fear from treating their workers as fellow human beings."
As the first arrests under SB 1070 take place week, never has Chavez's movement seemed more relevant to Arizona and the nation today.
A pullquote from BusinessWeek in the summer of 1972 testified to the state's key role in influencing the rest of the nation on immigration policy: "Arizona-type legislation is spreading to many other farm states, despite protests." Chavez returned to his native Arizona on May 11, 1972, to hammer out a compromise over labor rights with Governor John "Jack" Williams, who signed a bill that banned secondary boycotts and strikes during harvest time, cracked down on collective bargaining rights and union membership procedures, and made it a crime to make "misleading" speeches about boycotted products. Williams didn't pull any punches about his view of migrant workers: "For me, those people don't even exist."
Chavez launched a boycott of Arizona's lettuce, and a "fast for love," he announced, "in the spirit of social justice in Arizona and to try by our efforts through the fast and our sacrifices to erase the fears that the growers and the Republican legislators and the Republican governor have of the Union. The fast is to try to reach the hearts of those men, so that they will understand that we too have rights and we're not here to destroy, because we're not destroyers, we're builders."
For Chavez, whose grandfather had built the family's first home in Arizona three years before it became a state in 1912, Williams's act was subversive and "un-American." He declared the bill was "discriminatory" and aimed at "farmworkers who are Black, Brown and Indian." He added: "No other labor force is asked to live with these repressive measures."
Sound familiar?
Chavez recognized the underlining focus of this bill -- not unlike SB 1070, it was intended to keep the cheap labor of largely Mexican and Mexican American migrant workers in a state of fear. "When 70 percent of the labor force lives in fear of being deported," declared the UFW El Macriado, "there are no cries to end child labor, no demands for drinking water, no petitions for toilets, no protests against the foul conditions of the labor camps." By effectively outlawing the United Farm Workers' efforts to unionize, the newspaper went on, the state of Arizona "does not admit that 100,000 illegal aliens enter each year to slave in the fields, live in the squalor and be thrown out of the country penniless when the crops are harvested."
Launching a recall effort, Chavez and his organizers gathered 176,000 petition signatures, and reminded Arizona of the state's changing electoral demographics. In the process, they reinvigorated the demoralized Democratic Party. For Chavez, the recall campaign had the effect of "waking up" the people. "It had never happened before in Arizona," he noted in his memoir, "or anywhere."
While the recall and legislation would both be caught up in the courts, the impact of Chavez's work in Arizona was irreversible: In 1974, thanks to the thousands of new voters signed up by the "si se puede" movement, Raul Castro was elected governor of Arizona -- the first and only Latino governor.
Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 1984, Chavez foretold the connections between his work and today's historic demographic shift in California, Arizona and the nation:
"The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm," Chavez had concluded. "Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians do the right thing by our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade. But it will come, someday!"
That day is now, in Arizona, President Obama, as you go to California on Monday.
A new generation of Latino activists and their allies will be organizing across the state against SB 1070, the Mexican American Studies ban, Sheriff Arpaio and on behalf of Dream Activists and progressive candidates.
Jeff Biggers is author of the newly released State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream (Nation Books). Follow Jeff Biggers on Twitter @JeffRBiggers
When the national Banned Books Week kicks off on September 30, I plan to read an excerpt from Tucson-based author Leslie Silko's acclaimed Ceremony novel, in the Rethinking Columbus anthology.
Recipient of a Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko's masterpiece is not only one of the great American literary treasures. It has profoundly influenced a generation of readers, writers and especially students across the nation.
And yes, Virginia, as part of the Rethinking Columbus collection, which has been taught in hundreds of schools from Alaska to Maine, Silko's Ceremony excerpt in that anthology was unabashedly banished from the curriculum of teachers in the outlawed Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) last year.
Banished, banned, proscribed, removed--when I broke the story on Salon last year, the TUSD spokeperson Cara Rene attempted to spin the district's hasty and indiscriminate actions as some kind of temporary measure of suspension: The books "will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage." In truth, still awaiting a federal court ruling, the Mexican American Studies program and its curriculum lists of books, videos, documents no longer exist in these highly acclaimed TUSD courses.This is the duplicity at work: Silko may be taught in other classes, but her writing in Rethinking Columbus or the outlawed Mexican American Studies program remains a closed book.
Sorry, TUSD, but for those who believe in intellectual freedom for all students and teachers and readers, a partial book ban in classroom teaching is no less egregious than a total ban.
One photo I received from a high school in Tucson, on the day of the book confiscations, will forever haunt me. An administrator had reportedly written on the box: Banned books (please remove).
Once the rest of the national media weighed in, and outrage and public condemnation over violations of intellectual freedom and censorship came from virtually every major literary, library, publishing, academic and educational organization, TUSD's bungling of the Mexican American Studies crisis and confiscation of books turned into a national disgrace. With only a handful of books in the school libraries for more than 50,000 students, TUSD's rush to dismiss the story as rumor or save face looked even more ridiculous.
In celebration of the Librotraficante "book smugglers," even the New York Times editorial board called out TUSD's hypocrisy:
School officials say the books are not technically banned, just redistributed to the library. But what good is having works from the reading list -- like "Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941" and "The House on Mango Street," by Sandra Cisneros -- on the shelves if they can't be taught? Indeed, the point of dismantling the curriculum was to end classroom discussions about these books.
So, this year for Banned Books Week, as I tour the country with my own book on the historical legacy of Arizona's century-long battle for civil rights, State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream, I will begin by reading from Silko's masterpiece as a reminder of Tucson's still unfolding crisis over its banished books: " "I will tell you something about stories...They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death."
Jeff Biggers is the author of the newly released, State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream. You can follow him on Twitter @JeffRBiggers
