Tuscon MAS Students Speak Up

On Monday, the Librotraficanté Caravan kicked off it's tri-state trek with a press conference at the Alamo. The movement, organized by literary activist Tony Diaz, began in response to Arizona's controversial HB 2281, legislation banning Ethnic Studies from the state's public school curriculum.

While Diaz and others, including Sandra Cisneros and Luiz Alberto Urrea, gather in cities across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona over the next week to speak out against the bill and distribute recently banned books, Tuscon students recently held a public forum discussing the negative effects of HB 2281 on their learning environment.

Last week, backed by 26 other education and civil rights organizations, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NAACS) filed an Amicus Curiae brief in the U.S. District Court in Tuscon as part of the ongoing lawsuit filed in Novemeber by the Mexican American Studies Program challenging the constitutionality of the new legislation.

In the brief, Devon Peña of NAACS states:

We support the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District and are united in opposition to academic discrimination against Mexican American and Ethnic Studies. This respected field of study has been unjustly targeted and demonized by Arizona authorities, which is strangling the pursuit of a comprehensive education and silencing the perspective of Mexican Americans and their cultural background. This law has resulted in censorship of important books and eliminated a program with proven academic success for traditionally neglected students.

Much more to read after the jump.