For Immediate Release                                                                             

January 24, 2012                                                                                              
CONTACT:
Tony Diaz, Nuestra Palabra Director
AztecMuse@aol.com 

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

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

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

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

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

The caravan is intended to:

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

Founded in 1998, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say has gone from the party hall of Chapultepec Restaurant to Exhibit Hall F of the George R. Brown Convention Center. Today, the entire city is our forum. When we began, we were told that there was not an audience for Latino literature. We are thrilled to say that today the largest book events in Houston are Latino events. We are proud to bring you Houston’s contribution to the Latino Literary Renaissance. WEBSITES:  www.Librotraficante.com and www.NuestraPalabra.org

Also depicted is Corky Gonzales. He got his name and his start from his early involvement in amateur boxing and was ranked at the very top of his division. He later founded the Crusade for Justice in Denver, as he took the most overt role in reshaping the ways Chicanos viewed our own identity. Early on, he embraced the idea that Chicanos had an unexplored indigenous (Indian) identity. His work still lives via La Escuela Tlatelolco in Denver.

Many veteran activists and scholars were involved in the mural project in one way or another. At the time of the painting, noted organizer Maria Jimenez insisted that the muralists include Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. That tidbit is an invaluable part of history that symbolizes the growth that many Chicano males went through as a result of the Chicana feminist influence in the Chicano Movement.

Students, alumni and the general public have enjoyed the mural for years, and there has been some swift reaction. Two online petitions have surfaced, one on change.org, the other on my blog site, OurNewAnahuac.net. A facebook page has gone up, which you can find if you do a search of University of Houston on facebook. Faculty and students have met with administrators in an attempt to convince them to preserve the art. In addition, a few days ago, many people spoke out against the destruction of the mural at an assembly of the student government. All of these actions are happening spontaneously and independently of each other.

There have been few recent events or problems which have motivated so many people so quickly.

For many, the mural is a symbol. One signatory to the petition writes “I did not attend U of H but am familiar with the mural. It is more than a mural. It symbolizes a part of our past and serves as inspiration for future generations. When my eyes first fell upon it, I felt a sense of pride and encouraged students to consider U of H because I felt the university was aware of and respectful of our and the cultures of others.”

I felt the same way when I first saw it, and I can say that the mural was an influential factor in my decision to attend U of H. I don’t think that our community will allow this mural to be destroyed with out at least some resistance.

If this mural or if just the idea of the mural is important to you, please consider signing one or both of the online petitions. Speak out!

Sign At This Link; Firme en esta página:

www.ournewanahuac.net/save-uh-mural

The university upholds diversity throughout different courses of study as a goal, and sometimes chooses minority students in certain areas of study to help meet this goal. This is important to understand. Diversity is an intrinsic goal or value that the university is pursuing, among others. The court upheld the practice of using race as one of many factors in university admissions.

White activists quickly spoke out, and I was asked to debate a critic of the court’s decision on a local news radio station. Essentially, the critic suggested that we should try to be colorblind in the admission process. I quickly countered that we could not be colorblind without being outright blind. I was armed with statistics.

Funding
Helms Elementary is a predominately Latino school in HISD. Poe Elementary is one of the whitest elementary schools in HISD. In fact, Poe had a white majority until last academic year.

The difference in funding between this Latino school and this white school is outrageous. In 2010 Helms got $30,000 from the HISD magnet budget, whereas Poe got $387,975. Only a completely blind people could overlook the disparity in funding and the implications that it has on racial equity in education. Some people might want to be colorblind, but none of us wish to be completely blind.

It is important to note that this difference in funding is within the same district. The difference in funding between rich, white districts and poor, minority school districts is even more staggering.

Top-ten percent policy
There is also the issue of automatic admission for the top-ten percent of high school graduates. Statistics seem to indicate that this policy has increased minority enrollment at UT. However, the results have produced a cluster of minority students in social sciences, but the policy has not produced an adequate number of minorities in the areas of hard science and business.

Critics say that the top-ten percent admission policy is a colorblind solution to the problem of minority enrollment. However, it does not produce a sufficient amount of minority students in select course areas, and the university continues to fall flat in its goal of academic diversity. This answers the critics’ complaints that poor, white students should be given a leg up too. Whites are over-represented in select areas of study, despite the top-ten percent policy. In this case, affirmative action attempts to patch a hole that the top-ten policy does not address.

Constitution
As conservatives complain that affirmative action is not in keeping with the constitution, we should also look toward the constitution. The constitution will continue to be almost irrelevant to our community, as long as the document does not address the rights and needs of nations (minorities) in the United States. Legislators have gone through great pains to ensure that any rights granted in the document be granted only to the individual. A movement that will address group rights is far over due. One such right would be dollar for dollar equality between whites and minorities. Such a policy would have had a far greater impact on quality of education than did integration.

In sum
Traditionally, supporters have defended affirmative action by speaking about historical injustices aimed at people of color. Indeed, the recent court decision repeated the refrain that such affirmative action policies need not be extended for more than twenty five years, ostensibly due to the belief that the historical injustices would then be erased.

Again, let us not be blinded by such arguments. Affirmative action is not only necessary because my grandfather was required to attend the Mexican-only school in South Texas. Affirmative action is necessary TODAY because TODAY’S Mexican schools receive only a fraction of the funding that white schools do. When group rights are recognized through self-determination, and when funding is totally equalized, we will then see disparities disappear. At that point, affirmative action will be unnecessary and irrelevant. I pray for this to happen within twenty-five years.

It will not be time, but rather social conditions and funding policies that will dictate the end of affirmative action.

Letter From HISD

To all my friends with students in Texas classrooms: Are you ready to see forty kids per classroom? Read this letter from HISD. This is serious.

The Social Justice Education Project (SJEP) and our Critically Compassionate Intellectualism model have and are showing profound effects on academic success, graduation rates, and participation in post-secondary education. Evaluation already in place determined the following information for the students who participated in the program.

Comparing the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) pass rates over six academic years (2004 to 2009) for SJEP students and non-SJEP students who failed the AIMS their sophomore year, we have found significant differences among these same students and their junior year (SJEP year one) performance on the AIMS exam:

       ♦SJEP students passed at the rates of 68% (reading), 76% (writing), and 54% (math).

       ♦Non-SJEP students passed at the rates of 23% (reading), 17% (writing), and 21% (math).

The data reveals that SJEP students are:

♦3 x more likely to pass the reading portions than their non-SJEP peers.

♦4 x more likely to pass the writing portions than their non-SJEP peers.

♦2.5 x more likely to pass the math portions than their non-SJEP peers.

Student surveys indicate:

        Almost all SJEP students agree that the SJEP has better prepared them for college and that

        working on their projects has helped them believe that they have something worthwhile to

        contribute to society (97% and 98% respectively).

The SJEP shows great impact on the post-secondary participation of our graduates:

      ♦67% of SJEP students enroll in post-secondary education when they graduated high

        school. This is 179% greater than the national average of 24% for Mexican American

        students.

SJEP students explain how the program transformed their perceptions of themselves and the world:

      ♦”[SJEP] made me realize what everything is and who I am…It just gives

   you power to do better for yourself — to keep learning, want to keep doing things.”

      ♦“I love the project, it was great, and it helped me feel smarter … and the project gave the   

          idea that I could help my community; and that is what I am going to do with my life.”

Social Justice Education Project

Tucson Unified School District &

The University of Arizona

However, others seem to have new, emerging concerns about DREAM. Last week a stalwart of Houston’s community activism wrote a piece about the possibility of DREAM causing a split in the movement and dampening commitment to a comprehensive bill.  (No names on the author because I’m not sure if it was an open letter). 

Additionally, Stace Medellin of DosCentavos.net has also written that he is no longer as eager to see a stand alone DREAM Act, since it might give some Brown Cred to Republicans who don’t deserve it.

It will not be a novelty to see a movement who has fought for years and has garnered some significant victories to demand more than what it initially did. I hope that this is where we are headed.

I write this with no offense intended to my friends who are fighting for a stand-alone DREAM Act. They exemplify dedication and will. I just think that we should not sell ourselves short.

I am proposing a statewide conference call to respond to these changes starting in the Fall school year. If you would like to participate and have not registered, please e-mail me using the contact form on this blog, and provide a brief statement on your background and community work. If you have registered, please send me agenda items that you would like to see listed, along with any ground rules for the conference call that you would recommend.

The conference call is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, June 12 at 1:00 PM. Those who have registered will receive instructions for the call by e-mail later on this week.

Adelante y hasta la victoria!

Adelante

Their change in perception was unintentional, but it made me aware of the power and efficacy of propaganda.  Admittedly, the speed with which this propaganda took root caught me off guard, as jaded as I am about the machinations of politics, conspiracy and media manipulation.  The original rationale for invading Iraq is important, to be sure, but more shocking is how quickly national media outlets can skew the public’s perception of what happened only a few years ago.  I have not seen any polls, but I am more than certain that the vast, vast majority of United Statesians now believe the original cause of the Iraq invasion to be the War of Terror. 

It made me think a little bit about the great shift if public perception that the Texas State Board of Education might be responsible for by changing the curriculum standards in the text books.  History is replete with forgotten movements and unnoticed heroes, especially our history and our heroes.  These movements and heroes are intentionally forgotten by curriculum writers and boards.  It is a shame that these handful of people might have the power to completely erase the Civil Rights movement from scholastic discourse within few years.

I remember looking up Chicano Movement once in my high school history book’s index.  There was only a “Chicago Movement,” listed.  When I looked up this “Chicago Movement,” I actually found what I was looking for, or at least a portion of it:  two paragraphs on the Chicano Movement existed in the book after all.  The index was mislabeled.

It will be a sad day, indeed, when I will wish that at least the Chicago Movement would still exist in the book’s index.

UPDATE: Stace Medellin from DosCentavos.net did a post on the specifics of how the board’s mandates will take its toll on our history.

The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana make a call for full support for the students and youth who are demonstrating courage in the struggle for legislation that they interpret will provide them an option to obtain legal immigration status. The legislation is the Dream Act, which proposes to permit those students and youth who arrived to the U.S. at an early age without legal status, and have completed high school, the option to apply for legal status while attending college or serving some branch of the U.S. military.

Notwithstanding many concerns with the legislation raised by many organizations nationally, particularly those that oppose mandatory military service, obligatory military registration, the draft, and the use of the military, and war, to resolve international disputes, MAPA and HERMANDAD go on record in support of the youth who are defining their own options through courageous acts of political/civic action.

The Dream Act is not without controversy, however, and both MAPA and HERMANDAD have raised concerns about the legislation since the beginning. The original version of the Dream Act was actually the best in that it did not include military service as an option to obtain legal status, but instead listed the pursuit of higher education, which included vocational, and community service as the criteria to qualify for eligibility.

It is now no secret that the Pentagon had a hand in fashioning later versions of the legislation with the willing help of congressional legislators. Historically people of color have been easy prey for conscription, the draft, and even the “all-voluntary” military service considering the financial inducements on the one hand, and the dire poverty statistics of these communities on the other. The various branches of the U.S. military have experienced increasing difficulty in meeting their goals for recruitment, and in the face of multiple wars of a prolonged character, the military is hard-pressed to find sufficient willing adherents to its brassy and provocative slogans like “BE ALL YOU CAN BE.”

It should also be acknowledged that the vast majority of immigrant youth, particularly Latino, do not and will not attend college (less than 10 percent), nearly 30 percent do not complete high school, and less than 40 percent who enter college do not complete the instructional program with a degree. These are horrific statistics on the down-side of this social dynamic that cannot and should not be ignored when we are considering immigration-related legislation to address the issue of legal status of our youth and family members.

It is for these reasons that MAPA and HERMANDAD only conditionally support the Dream Act, and advocate for the cleansing of the bill of its military service clause, or minimally return the community service option as an integral part of the legislation. When people talk of choice in the Dream Act, but ignore the statistics indicated above, and leave out of the legislation other viable alternatives such as community service to permit a path to legalization, in reality they are opposed to real choice and real options.

For now, however, we are called upon to support our youth and students who are defining the struggle for options by their courageous actions while we continue the debate about the best form of the Dream Act that should be enacted by the U.S. Congress.

Nativo Vigil Lopez
National President