Our own courtroom artist Citlali Villegas, Librotraficante Citlali, shows her rendition of the oral arguments.
Any day a judge in Arizona will rule on the Mexican American Studies (MAS) ban.
Everyone’s intellectual freedom is on the line.
And it is clear to me that we are on the verge of the Dark Ages or a Renaissance.
The Dark Ages:
If Arizona’s unfair, un-American anti-Ethnic Studies law is upheld, it’s a fair guess that at least every state that copied Arizona’s anti-immigrant bill SB1070 - the “show me your papers” law - will also copy this law. The law was enforced against only Mexican American Studies at this point, but there have been attempts to apply it to other groups. With a legal sanction, this bill can be applied to a lot of other fields of study. You can bet there is an extreme far right legislator in some state with his boney finger on a paragraph from The Color Purple which he will use to justify banning Women’s Studies, and then they will just go down the list of great classes-prohibiting one after the other. Use your imagination to anticipate ways they will stifle your imagination.
Members of the plaintiffs’ legal team wheel-in boxes and boxes of evidence.
Is this the end of logic?
Worse, I was in the court room when a judge from the 9th Circuit Court of appeals said that if a school district has proof that a course helps certain students progress, but the school district then outlaws the courses the action smacks of discriminatory intent.
This statement has haunted me.
If you review the evidence, if you listen to the oral arguments in the case, there is no logical reason to condone the ban of Mexican American Studies in Arizona. The sense the Arizona ban makes is non-sense.
In other words, the only way for Arizona to uphold the MAS ban would be to sanction illogic.
In order for Arizona to uphold the ban on Mexican American Studies it would have to codify the notion that student achievement does not matter. (Evidently the teachers who have improved student achievement have been incorrectly teaching all these years.) Arizona would have to sanction stifling intellectual freedom in the class room and freedom of speech in general. Witnesses for the state have cited as evidence everything from posters in a class room to the lines from a poem that former TUSD MAS teacher Curtis Acosta wrote-for an event outside of class-which was never performed.
The question becomes is Arizona willing to burn down the entire educational enterprise in order to continue to oppress Chicanos and in order to open the door to the oppression of so many other groups?
If that is the case, I suppose the next Librotraficante Caravan to Tucson will include buses from every state of the union.
On the other hand, if the MAS ban is overturned, we are on the verge of a Renaissance.
A generation or two earlier and this ban would have decimated our community.
Make no mistake, this ban has hurt our community. Teachers who should have been extolled for their work were fired, sued, or maligned. And even when this ban is overturned, at least 5 year of powerful instruction has been lost. An entire generation of high school students did not benefit from the full scope of this instruction.
On the other hand, it was powerful to be in the Arizona courtroom as our community brilliantly responded to the attacks from the state from the class room to the court room.
In Houston, we heard about the Arizona ban because the students of Tucson were telling the world through social media. We saw students, community members, and student groups like UNIDOS stand up for education and their community before it was reported nationwide on mainstream news. They inspired us to become Librotraficantes and to caravan to Tucson with shipments of the banned books to spread the word about the ban and to open Librotraficante Under Ground Libraries along the 1,100 mile bus ride from Houston, Texas to Tucson, Arizona. And those Under Ground Libraries are thriving.
It was inspiring to meet the family of Noah González and Jesus González, the high school students who are now the plaintiffs suing the state. One of the first witnesses too was Maya Arce, one of the original students in the lawsuit, who is now in college. Of course, her father Sean Arce, one of the original MAS teachers, also testified, so this is a family affair via immediate blood lines but now also across state lines as Tejanos, Californians, and people from New Mexico, New York and from all across the nation descended on the court room to show their support for our Tucson familia.
it was potent hear the expert witness for the students, Chicana and Chicano scholars who are leaders in the academic world, including Dr. Angela Valenzuela from Tejas, whose book Subtractive Learning was cited as evidence to overturn the ban. Likewise, Dr. Nolan Cabrera was on the stand to defend the bullet-proof research he and his team conducted-proving that the original Mexican American Studies program at full-strength increases student performance. Also, Stephen Pitti, professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, provided his expert testimony. It was a potent example of intellectual shock and awe which the lawyers for the state of Arizona could not refute.
It was powerful too watch the rhetorical genius of the multicultural legal dream team assembled by Chicano civil rights Lawyer Richard Martinez which consisted of Steven A. Reiss, Esq. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP; David Fitzmaurice, Esq.; Luna N. Barringon, Esq.;and Robert Chang, Esq. Executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, Seattle University School of Law, and their teams.
It was as if I was in the court room listening to the oral arguments for Brown vs Board of Education, or as if I was listening to Tejano Civil Rights lawyer Gus Garcia argue Hernández vs the State of Texas.
Dr. Nolan Cabrera, Tony Diaz-El Librotraficante, and civil right lawyers Richard Martinez entering the Arizona Federal Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona.
Of the case, Richard Martinez said, “Our legal team, with representatives from New York, Seattle and Tucson, presented powerful evidence that the actions of the State of Arizona violated the Equal Protection and First Amendment rights of the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American students. The Plaintiff’s expert testimony from Chicanx scholars and researchers was such a stark contrast to the dehumanizing, Anti-Mexican rhetoric of the State’s witness testimony. In his closing statements, plaintiff attorney Steven Reiss summed it up beautifully stating that while the racism may in fact be everywhere, “I see it in this case, I see it in the enactment of this statute, and I see it in the enforcement of the statute.”
Dr. Anita Fernandez, a scholar and educator, who is also the Director of Xito, and a huge supporter of the cause, said of the case, “During trial there were many memorable moments, including the admissions from John Huppenthal that he did not and would not apologize for his repeated racist blog statements, the e-mails that proved that the both Tom Horne and John Huppenthal had only on purpose in seeking enactment of HB 2281, to eliminate the Mexican Studies program , and the cross examination of Dr. Stephen Pitti, our expert on the treatment of Mexican Americans in Arizona the use of code words during the period HB 2281 was proposed legislation then became law. Dr. Pitti demonstrated repeatedly his superb command of the history of Arizona, the discrimination Mexican Americans have faced historically and which continues to be a reality in Arizona. We are hopeful that Judge Tashima will conclude that the actions of the State of Arizona were unconstitutional and clear the path for students of every color to have the opportunity to enroll in classes that are innovative and make a real and important difference in their education.”
It was powerful to realize that our community has the talent to be the gifted students who stand up to injustice, to be the intellectuals who write the books, to teach the books, to write research about the books, to write textbooks, to defend the books in court, and then some.
I can’t promise or predict if this un-American law will be overturned within the month or within the decade, but it is obvious to me that our community is empowered. Perhaps Democracy has to be rebooted every 40 - 50 years. This time the task has fallen on our shoulders, and I am proud to say we have risen to the occasion. Our time is here. Long live Mexican American Studies.