Two former students of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies classes and one current TUSD student are asking for the public’s financial support. They have released a YouTube video requesting donations to make their dream of attending the radical cducator’s conference in Chicago this coming week.
The conference “will bring together educators from around the country in dialogue and skill-building. Workshops and speakers will focus on teacher activism, implementing education for liberation in the classroom, actively resisting the neo-liberal agenda for our public schools, and organizing with students and communities,” according to the conference website.
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The Free Minds, Free People Conference “is a national gathering the brings together teachers, high school and college students, community activists, academics and parents from across the country to build a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation.” The conference “will highlight recent educational justice movements, lifting up the voices of teachers and students who participated in these struggles in order to learn from the actions and philosophies of educators engaged in teacher activism. Teachers and youth that led the way in the struggle to save Mexican American Studies in Tucson, those that organized their community to support the teachers’ strike in Chicago, and other significant national movements will be featured.”
Organizers of the conference include: Bill Ayers from Chicago, IL and Curtis Acosta, from Tucson, Az., and Keith Catone, from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, in Providence, RI.
Catone writes on the website that “Being part of the Free Minds, Free People and Education for Liberation Network community has been one of the most invigorating and powerful experiences I’ve ever had! I can’t wait for the energy and beauty that we’ll all bring to Chicago!”
According to Acosta, the “FMFP 2013 will not only be a space to share the amazing work folks from all over the country are doing in terms of equality and justice for marginalized and disenfranchised communities, but also a place for action with the addition of our Sunday assemblies.
Ayers notes on the conferences website that the “Free Minds/Free People is a community of dreamers and doers, educators and activists, parents and students gathered to make a movement and seize the moment.”
For a mere $25 fee participants will hear from radical educators from across the country and receive a free copy of the 2013-2014 edition of Planning to Change the World: A Lesson Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers, co published by the Education for Liberation Network and the New York Collective of Radical Educators.
The TUSD students will participate in a presentation entitled New Tactics from Tucson: Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing, lead by Anita Fernandez and Ernesto Todd Mireles.
“This workshop will update participants on the ongoing battle to preserve Chican@ Studies, including Prescott College’s “Freedom College” classes and the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO), which applies an activist-oriented pedagogy steeped in a Xican@ epistemology. Facilitators will engage participants in experiential samples from XITO workshops, and participants will leave with a firm understanding of the stakes regarding Ethnic Studies nationally, some options for organizing in their own communities, and resources for use in their own classrooms.”
Maria Teresa Mejia, Mia Cristerna, and Maya Arce are reaching out through Tucson blogger David Abie Morales’s website; The Three Sonorans, to raise funds for the trip to Chicago.
According to conference materials, in the spirit of redistribution, the conference organizers are “offering a fee range to all participants. You can decide how much to pay within that range. The Early Bird range starts at $15 for youth (21 and under) and $60 for everyone else. The top end of the range is $300, and there are several levels in between–$100, $140, $180, $220 and $260. Early Bird registration ends on June 17. After that, fees go up to $20 (youth only), $75, $115, $155, $195, $235, $275 and $315. There is also a small service fee.”
“We ask everyone to be as generous as possible when deciding how much to pay. The actual cost per participant is $140. All fee levels have the same access to public conference activities. If you are able to pay at one of the higher levels, your contribution will help us ensure that the conference is accessible to all members of our community. If all of these levels are unaffordable to you, we still want you to be a part of this conference,” according to the conference website.
Mejia tells Three Sonoran readers that she was inspired to get involved in her community, “the year I took MAS with Acosta, I was inspired to get involved in my community. The community helped me to handle the struggles I had been facing. They where (sic) there to lend a hand when my mom was struggling with breast cancer. They pushed me to do better in school and to recognize the abilities and talents that I have. Without that class, without the community, and without the love and support I would not be on track in school, taking classes I never thought I would be, and dreaming of being a midwife”
Mejia is asking for her community to “please donate five dollars to pay for food and housing in Chicago.”
Cristerna writes that she “wasn’t introduced to MAS recently, in fact I was never really introduced to it, I was more raised in it. I am born and raised from Los Angeles California and have been very active within my community since a young age. My time in Arizona is filled with countless experiences of youth activism mostly surrounded around MAS.”
A recent graduate of Tucson High School, she writes that gained a family in the MSAS classes, “A family that united in a time of need, when our community was being attacked and we needed to support each other.”
“Through the battle for MAS I had the opportunity and the room to grow into the leader I am today.” She hopes that the community will “help us get to Chicago to share our voices and the story of our community.” She did not specify a dollar amount in her plea.
Arce, whose “dad Sean Arce was the co-founder and director of Mexican American Studies before it was eliminated in TUSD,” says that “her mom and dad were Chicano Studies majors and members of M.E.Ch.A. at the University of Arizona. Being brought to community events, protests, and marches as a young child allowed me to grow up to become aware of my community and realize the importance of standing up against injustices.”
Arce is a plaintiff in the 9th Circuit appeal of Judge Tashima’s ruling in the matter of Arizona’s law, which the Mexican American classes were found to violate. The law prohibits the promotion of resentment based on race or ethnicity, the over throw of the government, the segregation of students by race.
Arce is asking the community to “help us continue the struggle for Chicana/o Studies and assist us by donating today.”
Arce’s dad, who was arrested this year on Domestic Violence charges in an incident with her mom, will be participating in the interactive Saturday Plenary on Saturday afternoon. The traditional plenary structure will be replaced by a “more interactive, democratic experience. The discussion, called, Save Public Education, Defend Our Communities: Two Parts of the Same Struggle, gives us the opportunity to talk about the challenges and rewards of bringing teachers and communities together in the struggle for education justice.
Arce, who is now a consultant with the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing will be joined by Karen Lewis, president, of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Acosta, was awarded a leave of absence from TUSD last year and now heads up the Acosta Latino Learning Partnership; a group of “consultants” that have “decades of experience.”
Acosta is also offering, this fall semester, a class called CLASS to high school juniors and seniors, through Prescott College in Tucson. Students can earn college credit, and they will take the class free of charge. CLASS stands for Chicano Literature, Art and Social Studies.
Acosta told Barbara Grijalva of KOLD News that he expects the class CLASS will be a model for the nation as students study Chicano literature and learn the historical context of that literature.
One long time educator pointed put that the Mexican American Studies classes were intended to address the culture and history of Mexican Americans students, however, the classes were nothing more than a vehicle to indoctrinate students rather than educate. One long time educator who reviewed the conference materials said, “This institute is all about promoting indoctrination and anyone who contributes to it will be promoting the teaching of racial and ethnic resentment as well as the purposeful segregation of students by their race and ethnicity. The political agenda is clear and so is the lack of educational value.”
Among the conference’s presentations will be Social Justice Teacher Education to Resist Neoliberalism, led by Barbara Madeloni. Medeloni writes, “We need our schools of education to ask pre-service teachers to wrestle with identity and race, to explore the historical/cultural contexts of school, and to frame teaching as the political work that it is. After all, teaching always asks us to imagine the kind of society we want to live in.” The presentation will focus on “an article in the summer issue of Rethinking Schools captures the struggle underway in teacher education. Will it be a site for unmasking oppression, for radical imagination and education as liberation? Or will it become a place for rote technical training and corporate compliance?”