Arizona Students Protest New Law Banning Ethnic Studies Classes

from Democracy Now!:



AMY GOODMAN: Kim Dominguez was one of those arrested. She’s a graduate of La Raza studies. She joins us now from Tucson, along with Isabel Garcia, who also took part in the protest. Isabel Garcia is the co-chair of the Coalition for Human Rights, which is based in Tucson. She’s a legal defender of Pima County, Arizona.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Kim, let’s begin with you. Explain what La Raza studies are and why you were arrested.

KIM DOMINGUEZ: Well, the program is actually called Mexican American Raza Studies. When I enrolled in the class in 2002, it was titled Hispanic Studies. And so, Mexican American Raza Studies, junior year, is American history through a Chicano perspective, and we look at several different issues, not just nationally and not just within the Chicano community, but globally. And senior year is American government through a social justice perspective, so we learn how to do different methods of looking at social injustices, such as video documentation, photo documentation, blogging, different things like that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the proponents of this legislation have claimed that this kind of ethnic studies program is creating divisions among the American people, among youth, in terms of how they see their role in the United States. What’s your response to that?

KIM DOMINGUEZ: Well, I don’t think—I don’t think it’s creating any division, and I don’t think that this process of, like, division starts between the students in the classes. I think that if anything is promoted in the classes, it’s solidarity among humanity, not any—between any ethnic group.

AMY GOODMAN: Isabel Garcia, can you talk about how this fits into your whole campaign around human rights? I mean, this is the second bill that has been passed in the last month. You first had the bill around immigration, and maybe you can talk about that and how that has fueled the response to this second bill that would ban ethnic studies in the public schools of Arizona.

ISABEL GARCIA: Yes, for the last ten, fifteen years, this state, of course, has seen a dramatic increase in like the anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant Mexican sort of hysteria around here. And as—following 1070, like you say, 2281 was also approved. If you can imagine, this is a Republican government and legislature that portends to or pretends to say that all control should be local. Here we have a local successful Chicano, Mexican American studies program that has proved over and over and over again that the students who take these classes not only do much better in the high stakes testing system that they have here, but these are students that come out into the world and the relate to the entire—all cultures because they’ve been able to learn something about Mexican Americans. So it is totally tied to this anti-immigrant fervor that has gripped the state because they have come here.

Tom Horne, who is now running for attorney general, has come here to focus on TUSD and what we believe is sort of like a cultural cleansing, an ethnic cleansing. It’s very, very clear what this legislature is up to. They’re trying not only to drive immigrants either underground or out of state, but all of us to put us in—really in our place. These measures are absolutely racist measures, backed by racist tendencies on the part of these legislators, and they’re absolutely lying about everything that they say about Raza studies. They’re totally lying. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/14/arizona_students_protest_new_law_banning