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Friday, March 30, 2012

CNN Special (Op-Ed) What is the Tucson school district afraid of?


CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported on this story for In America.  Her report is here.
By Roberto Rodriguez, Special to CNN

(CNN) – Look at the image above. For people who live outside of Tucson, Arizona, it evokes shock and even horror. For most of us here, it was but another day in Arizona.

On March 13, the day I took this photo, students from Tucson High School showed  up to the Tucson Unified School District board meeting, to once again air their support for the now dismantled Mexican-American studies department.

On May 3, 2011, I witnessed dozens of riot-equipped law enforcement officers treat Mexican-American studies supporters inside and outside of Tucson Unified School District headquarters as though they were potential terrorists. To get into the meeting, everyone had to pass through metal detectors. That evening, seven women, including two senior citizens, were arrested for attempting to speak before the school board.

All this happened because the week before, on April 26, nine students, tired of being given the run-around, chained themselves to the school board chairs in an effort to prevent the dismantling of the Mexican-American Studies department. All this was triggered by an unconstitutional 2010 state measure, HB 2281, which in effect, bans the teaching of ethnic studies.



The following link will take you to both the piece that aired on this topic March 29 on CNN, and Thelma Gutierrez'’s written piece also for CNN: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/29/stiff-security-at-tucson-arizona-school-board-meetings-angers-latinos/

Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com - http://drcintli.blogspot.com/ or 520-626-0824

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Nakum Journal: The Indigenous Cultures Institute

Nakum Journal, an Indigenous Journal is available through Amazon. The first two issues of this journal (hardcopies) are available at: http://www.amazon.com/Nakum-Indigenous-Cultures-Institute/dp/1475028822/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dp_0X3Bpb12KP8AT_tt

This journal includes an article I wrote for them regarding Tucson's ongoing Ethnic Studies controversy:

Tucson’s Maiz-Based Curriculum: MAS-TUSD Profundo

By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodríguez

1. At a time of sky-high dropout rates nationwide, the Mexican American Studies (MAS-TUSD) K-12 program in Tucson Unified School District is a highly successful department that graduates nearly 95% of its students and sends more than 70% of them to college.1 MAS-TUSD students also score higher on state-mandated standardized tests in English, History and Math.2 By all rights, the nation’s premiere Mexican American Studies K-12 program should be exported nationwide; instead, it is embattled and on an inexplicable path to eventual extermination. The conflict over Tucson’s Mexican American Studies has been a six-year-long struggle, including several courtroom battles, and continues with no end in sight. Despite its phenomenal success, the MAS-TUSD curriculum has raised the ire of the state of Arizona because, according to the former State Schools’ Superintendent Tom Horne, the intellectual author of the anti-ethnic studies measure HB 2281, it purportedly teaches hate and separatism and advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. The objective of this essay is thus to examine the MAS-TUSD curriculum, a curriculum that Horne as well as Governor Jan Brewer and current Superintendent John Huppenthal have actively disparaged for the past several years, and one that is generally unknown to the public because the media deals primarily in sound bites. As a result, few people other than TUSD educators are familiar with its contents beyond the caricature, an effect I hope to correct in this essay.

For rest of NAKUM journal article, go to: http://indigenouscultures.org/nakumjournal/tucsons-maiz-based-curriculum-mas-tusd-profundo

To purchase hard copies of the journal, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Nakum-Indigenous-Cultures-Institute/dp/1475028822/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dp_0X3Bpb12KP8AT_tt

Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com
520-626-0824

Monday, March 26, 2012

Arizona’s Curriculum Battles: A 500-Year Civilizational War

Arizona’s Curriculum Battles: A 500-Year Civilizational War  
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/7337-arizonas-curriculum-battles-a-500year-civilizational-war
Monday, 26 March 2012 10:49 By Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Truthout | Op-Ed 
Public Intellectual Project

A young boy is searched by security guards at the entrance of the Tucson Unified District headquarters, ahead of a school board meeting on March 13, 2012. (Photo: Roberto Cintli Rodriguez)
A young boy is searched by security guards at the entrance of the Tucson Unified District headquarters, ahead of a school board meeting on March 13, 2012. (Photo: Roberto Cintli Rodriguez)

The censorship, banned curriculums and banned books in Arizona, are subject to much spin, which often lacks a grasp of the bigger and more ominous picture. These actions in Arizona are a stark premonition of what could happen elsewhere, but what's important to remember is that they are not new. The suspension and dismantling of Arizona's Mexican-American studies (MAS) program in Arizona is the most dramatic and recent incident in a process that was set in motion some 500 years ago.

On paper, HB 2281 - Arizona’s 2010 anti-ethnic studies house bill - criminalizes the teaching of ethnic studies, but the reality is that there has always been but one target: Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Raza Studies department. Under intense political pressure, it was renamed Mexican American studies or MAS-TUSD.[i] However, the name change did not spare the department, as the state schools' then-Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, had already targeted the department for elimination.

In this highly successful department, Horne saw something un-American at its core, something evil and cancerous. MAS-TUSD’s indigenous, maiz-based curriculum, was something he saw as outside of Western civilization - something outside of Greco-Roman culture. He is unaware of the irony that maiz, or corn, is indigenous to this very continent, whereas things Greco-Roman are not. For Horne, what he deemed to be the "foreign" curriculum was something that had to be destroyed at all costs.

Among those who look on in horror at what is happening in Arizona, many are blinded to the fact that this has already occurred in every state of the union.[ii] Arizona was the last holdout. Thus, as people look on in horror, what they should be contemplating is not simply how to help save Arizona, but how to reverse the 500-year process of de-indigenization and dehumanization that continues unabated on this continent and in virtually every country in this hemisphere.

Asking what is at stake in Arizona is not only asking the wrong question, but it is asking it a few centuries too late. This, Horne understands. He refers to the process of eliminating Raza Studies as a civilizational war. And indeed, it is the very same one prosecuted by Bishop Diego de Landa in Mani, Yucatan, where he declared an auto-da-fé  in 1562, setting in motion one of humanity’s greatest cultural tragedies: the destruction of Mayan books, known as amoxtlis. That three-day book burning is only one incident in a hundreds-of-years process that attempted to destroy the intellectual, mathematical, scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge of this continent. (Fortunately, while thousands of Mayan, Nahua and Mixtec amoxtlis were destroyed, the knowledge itself was not; it was simply suppressed and survived via oral tradition).

In this civilizational war, one by one, peoples and communities - and their unique corpus of knowledge - are condemned as pagan, barbaric and demonic; a dehumanization that prepared the ground psychologically for the same peoples to be evangelized and colonized.

In the realm of civilizational war, that auto-da-fé was never actually called off or corrected. Instead, De Landa thereafter wrote a book (“Relación de las cosas de Yucatán”) about the Maya, which to this day, many Western scholars praise for its insights into Mayan civilization, conferring upon the destroyer of Mayan culture the title of foremost expert on the Maya.

Mind-boggling is perhaps the best adjective that fits here. Yet up until recently, this has been the norm throughout history: indigenous peoples are reduced to illiterate savages, to be civilized and studied, never to be treated as co-equals.

Fast forward 500 years and Horne, who today is the state’s attorney general, may soon be viewed as the state’s foremost champion of human rights. Horn ironically fancies himself an adherent of Martin Luther King Jr.[iii] His successor to the superintendent position, John Huppenthal, is less grandiose in his ideas and ambitions, but also fancies himself a  multiculturalist (though he would never employ this term). They have both destroyed MAS-TUSD in order to “improve” it by giving all students greater exposure to the many cultures that make up Arizona and this nation.[iv]

Akin to Diego de Landa, they, apparently, are the experts with respect to what should be taught about Mexican Americans. Dr. John Pedicone, superintendent of TUSD, also ranks with these two other experts in determining what knowledge is valid and what it is that should be taught in Tucson schools. It is under his stewardship that MAS-TUSD has been dismantled.

But all of this is the smallest of pictures.

Critics of the program rightly point out that MAS-TUSD is the only department of its kind in the nation. But they are incorrect as to why. The reason is that the policy of “reducciones,” the colonial practice of attempting to literally wipe out all vestiges of indigenous knowledge, is nearly complete. It was not a 300-year colonial project, but an ongoing one, continued by successive governments, under different guises and different names, whether it has been called civilization, Westernization, modernization, evangelization, Hispanicization, Americanization or forced assimilation. In the United States, American Indians know all too well the variants in the process used to "reduce" them: the boarding school.

Why was MAS-TUSD unique? Because per Horne’s view, it had reversed history; it was in the process of reversing a historical process. In his view, MAS tapped into historical memory; it utilized culture to bring out the best in students. Horne believes that students should be treated as atomized individuals, not as members of distinct cultures, and he believes that the only valid culture they should be exposed to is that which is based on Western civilization. He cares little or nothing about their personal or academic success, their agency or empowerment - what is essential is their indoctrination.

This is why the whole nation has it upside down. This is why Arizona is not the future. It’s not that other states may enact future and similar bans. Through omission, those bans have long been in effect, in this country and on this continent. That is why MAS-TUSD was virtually the lone example, nationwide, of a district-wide indigenous and social-justice-based K-12 curriculum.

In no other district nationwide are the indigenous or maiz-based concepts of In Lak’ Ech ("You are my other me") and Panche Be ("To Seek the root of the Truth") taught.[v] In no other district nationwide is this curriculum at the center, as opposed to at the fringes or the margins. At MAS-TUSD, indigenous knowledge was in its proper place; at the center, and more importantly, at the root of the curriculum. In that sense, Horne has always been correct: maiz-based knowledge does not emanate from Greece or Rome. It is indigenous to this continent, including Arizona, purportedly the site of the oldest cornfield in the nation.[vi]

That this curriculum is unavailable in other districts nationwide means that this “reduccion,” in effect, has already also taken place nationwide. Many, many thousands of years of the history of this continent have been displaced, and, at best, marginalized or remanded to institutions of higher learning. Apparently, the history of this continent is out of bounds for K-12 students.

Every child should know the amazing history of this continent. But they don’t. Rare is the K-12 student who can name more than one or two cities that existed prior to the first European setting foot on Abya Yalla - on this continent - before it was renamed America.[vii] If they don’t know those names (there were thousands of cities), still less do they know the history of this continent.[viii] This erasure did not or has not taken place solely in Tucson, but virtually throughout the entire continent, and it has been normalized, with K-12 students having no knowledge of an entire continent (prior to the arrival of Europeans), its peoples, its civilizations, its knowledges and philosophies. That ignorance is the norm, rather than the exception.

This is why Raza Studies or Chicana/Chicano Studies have long been opposed - even and sometimes especially - at colleges and universities. [ix] From their inception, there has been a relentless cold war waged against them, often waged under the guise of budget cuts. This cold war has also been waged against American Indian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, African American Studies and Asian-Pacific Islander Studies (erroneously categorized as ethnic studies).[x] Their existence has been tolerated, as is the case in Arizona, at the university level. But their existence in Tucson at the K-12 level, along with their great success as measured by student achievement, apparently assured its targeting and destruction. The department boasted an unheard-of near-100 percent graduation rate at a time when the drop-out rates for students of color range between 40 and 60 percent.

To be sure, MAS-TUSD should not be counted out just yet. But for those outside of Tucson, that is to miss the point. For the most part, the rest of the country and the rest of the continent has already been “reduced.” Most of the continent has either been Hispanicized or Anglicized.

Translated, what this means is that it is not ethnic studies in Tucson that needs to be saved, but rather, metaphorically, it is that “reduccion” or forced assimilation needs to be reversed in every community, in every school and in every nation on this continent. A further translation: decolonization is not a project of the past, but of the present.

Caravans should be going to Los Angeles, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Denver, Dallas and Houston, Kansas City and Chicago, Atlanta and New York, not to solely support Tucson, but to place humanity at the center of school curriculums and ensure that indigenous peoples and their/our history remain at the center on this content, along with the rest of humanity.

If people want to see what erasure or a disappeared curriculum looks like, they can look not to Tucson, but to every K-12 curriculum in the nation. This is not hyperbole. Akin to what the Zapatistas often told visitors as they streamed into Chiapas after their January 1, 1994, uprising: “If you want to assist us, go back home and fight for your own human rights.” In this case, people should examine the curriculum of their local schools and wage the battles there, ensuring a relevant and inclusive curriculum, one that stresses humanization or rehumanization.

It is easy to descend upon Tucson to fight against banned books. And perhaps that’s why people will come and why they will always be welcome. But the real challenge should be for people to fight for an indigenous-centered social-justice-based curriculum in everyone’s local school. We do, after all, live in the Western Hemisphere - not Western Europe. This battle has to be waged at local school board meetings and at state legislatures. To not do so is to accept that reduccion, or that auto-da-fé that has yet to be extinguished.

To read other articles by writers in the Public Intellectual Project, click here.

* Five of Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez's books and one video are on the banned curriculum list. The video is: “Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan.” The books are: “Justice: A Question of Race,” 

“Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut and Uncensored,” “The X in La Raza,” “Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human,” and “Cantos Al Sexto Sol.” This last book is a collection of more than 100 Raza/Indigenous writers, writing on the topic of origins and migrations. These bans highlight that virtually the entire cultural production of the past generation of Raza/Indigenous writers/artists has been criminalized.

Rodriguez teaches at the University of Arizona and can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com.


 [i]Under similar pressure, the name of the University of Arizona's Mexican American and Raza Studies Department was changed to the Department of Mexican American Studies. The right wing assumes La Raza means "The Race," but the concept is actually traced to Mexican scholar Jose Vasconcelos, who coined the term at the beginning of the 20th century. The concept alludes to the mixture of all the races of the world.

[ii] This alludes to the teaching of the so-called master narrative of history, traditionally taught in US schools as the story of this nation and continent, beginning with the pilgrims or with Christopher Columbus, an event that set in motion the ideas of providence and manifest destiny - the belief that God had bestowed upon Europeans/European Americans, the right to conquer all of the Americas.

[iii] Bernard Lafayette Jr., a colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. and a Freedom Rider, along with virtually the entire civil rights community nationwide, begs to differ with Horne, consistently denouncing his use of the civil rights icon to destroy MAS.

[iv] Huppenthal doesn’t appear to grasp big-picture ideas. He is more plain-spoken in his biases. For instance, when he campaigned for Arizona superintendent, he campaigned on the promise to Stop La Raza (the department, presumably, not the people).

[v] Much of what is known about In Lak’ Ech and Panche Be comes to us in the United States via Domingo Martinez Paredes, a Mayan scholar from Yucatan and an author of several books, including “Un Continente y Una Cultura.”

[vi] University of Arizona researchers pinpoint the corner of Ina and Silverbell in Tucson as the oldest cornfield (4,000) in what is today the United States. The oldest evidence of corn in the United States however, was found in Bat Cave, New Mexico, dating close to 6,000 years before the present era. It is believed that maiz was created some 7,000 years ago in Southern Mexico.

[vii] Abya Yalla is a word from the Cuna peoples of Panama, a term that indigenous peoples from this continent have adopted in lieu of “The Americas.” Other similar names include Pacha Mama from the Quechua peoples of the Andes and Cemanahuak from the Nahua peoples of Mexico, or Turtle Island by a number of American Indian peoples.

[viii] The one city that most seem to know is Mexico City-Tenochtitlan. A few may have heard of Teotihuacan (misnamed the City of the Gods), the huge pyramid site 45 minutes north of Mexico City.
[ix] Huppenthal campaigned on the promise to eliminate Raza Studies at both the K-12 level and at the university level.

[x] A more proper term should be civilizational studies. Women Studies and LGBT Studies have also been similarly attacked, though they are generally not lumped into the category of ethnic studies. In Arizona, HB 2281, in effect, bans “ethnic studies.”


Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or go to: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/
520-626-0824


Cintli don't tweet, text, facebook, digg and is not linked.... but you can still email or call me.

 

Monday, March 19, 2012

Former Arizona School's Chief Nonsensically Invokes specter of KKK


by Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne made a comeback appearance in federal court on Monday, arguing before U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima, the validity of the state’s anti-Ethnic Studies HB 2281 measure.

The occasion was a motion to invalidate HB 2281 by the Acosta plaintiffs. Whereas the original 11 educators were ruled not to have standing, the lawsuit remains in standing via 3 students.

In court, Horne put forth a bizarre theory, arguing that Tucson’s Mexican American Studies department was little different if the KKK had created it. This was bizarre in two ways; it was Horne himself, as the former Arizona Schools Chief, who led the crusade to eliminate the MAS department, helping to write a series of bills that culminated with the signing of HB 2281. Much of the arguments against the MAS-TUSD department has come from well-known and unapologetic bigots that could hardly pass for educators or human rights activists. The allusion to the KKK is mind-boggling, though it is not a new argument; Horne has claimed that it was Martin Luther King Jr. who inspired him and who has guided him in his effort to dismantle Tucson’s MAS department.

Bernard Lafayette, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a former freedom rider, has repeatedly denounced Horne in Tucson for his misuse of MLK Jr’s beliefs and legacy.

Look for similar denunciations from the nation’s African American community as a result of Horne’s attempt to link Mexican American Studies with both the KKK and Nazi Germany. He made allusions to both in court, arguing that the motion to dismiss HB 2281 should be ignored. 

More on this story shortly

XColumn@gmail.com

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Flecha de Tenamaxtli: Tucson to Phoenix: 165 Miles


Flecha de Temaxtli: Tucson to Phoenix: 165 Miles
by Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez

The last time we ran from Tucson to Phoenix, students from the Social Justice and Education Project of Tucson's Mexican American Studies Department determined to defend their besieged department by running in 115 degree heat. That run succeeded virtually at the time we arrived at the capitol.

However since then, HB 2281 has been passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor. It was also subjected to an independent audit -- which found in favor of MAS-TUSD. That did not stop the state superintendent from both ruling MAS-TUSD out of compliance with state law. After a kangaroo hearing which supported Huppenthal's position, rather than contest the farce, instead, TUSD complied and suspended the MAS Department.

This past week, two powerful events coincided in Arizona, to protest the suspension of MAS-TUSD, along with the banishment of the MAS-TUSD curriculum and the banning of the books and its teaching materials.

The Librotraficante caravan has brought both authors and banned books back to Arizona.


The other event was a run from Tucson to Phoenix. This time. This time, it might have gotten into the high 80s, but we ran 165 miles, not 120.
                                           Joaquin Murrietta Park

The superintendent was given a document that he most assuredly does not understand. He was given a document re the Doctrine of Discovery... the subject of this year's UN Permanent Forum on the rights of Indigenous Issues. (More on this in next few weeks). The point of the run was to serve notice to the state that the issue of the suspension of Mexican American Studies is beyond a local issue.

HB 2281  supposedly makes it illegal to teach in Arizona schools. However, in fact, it violates virtually every section of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including 8 additional international human rights treaties.

The run this year began from The Aztlan Boxing gym with a teach-in about the Flecha de Tenamxtli, then proceeding (via a walk/caminata) to TUSD Headquarters.
                                                             
                                                                 TUSD Headquarters
Streets of Tucson
Streets of Tucson

                                                                   Early morning Day 2
Mayra and Daniel
As is customary on Indigenous runs, protocols normally call for relay running. For this run, runners ran mostly mile-legs from Tucson to the town of Marana, where they spend the night in the Yoem pueblo -- a Yaqui town that has been there since the beginning of the 20th century. On the first day, the walkers/runners covered 28 miles.

The next day, 77 miles were covered, crossing the O'otham  Nation. There, severall O'otham runners ran with us, winding up on Tonatierra ceremonial grounds.
Arriving in Marana

Netta and Alex, Calpolli Teoxicalli

children's run

Jose with Flecha de Tenamaxtli

Running on soft earth

O'otham runners joining run
3rd day in desert

children leg of run

Representing UNIDOS

Day 3

On the lookout

In Phoenix, last leg

Ceremonial staffs in front of Dept of Education

Site of Native American Caucus
As with the 2009 run, the story has already been written, though the words will follow in the next few weeks. The run was powerful... and the message for Mr. Huppenthal? We have been here thousands of years... and we will continue to be here long after he, Horne and Dr. Pedicone are long gone.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Huppenthal reveals military strategy against MAS Dept in Arizona

The war against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Arizona is not hyperbole.

The man who ran a campaign to "Stop La Raza" explains the military strategy waged against the Mexican American Studies Department, but in the process falsely argues that he has been vindicated by the courts. The case of HB 2281 has not gone before the courts.

Actually, it is in the courts -- Federal Court -- before Judge Tashima. This case, Acosta v. Huppenthal -- was filed in late 2010.

What Huppenthal argues is both nonsensical, and something else.  He is referring to a Kangaroo proceeding.

After the independent Cambium report (commissioned by Huppenthal himself) completely vindicated the Mexican American Studies Department, Superintendent John Huppenthal turned to an administrative law judge to essentially override Cambium. The ALJ is not part of the judiciary, but an extension of state government.

The proceedings gave Huppenthal what he wanted, relying on the testimony of an expert witness who was not an expert on Ethnic or Mexican American Studies, who never went into an MAS class and never spoke to an MAS teacher or student.

To view Huppenthal's military strategy, go to this conservative media site:
http://www.westernfreepress.com/2012/03/06/wfp-interviews-john-huppenthal-arizona-state-superintendent-of-public-instruction/
Aside from using a military analogy as to how the state vanquished MAS-TUSD, what we also have to remember is that TUSD was under threat of economic sanctions -- a tactic also reserved for enemies in war.

Please repost/forward this video on FB and anywhere else people see fit.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

CAMINATA TENAMAXTLI


Please post/forward and spread far and wide.



WHY WE ARE RUNNING/WALKING (AGAIN)

Historic Pilgrimage: Wed. March 14 – Fri March 16 Tucson to Phoenix

 By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez



Why would a community gather at 5a.m., walk across the city of Tucson, then run 120 miles to Phoenix in 115 degree heat? We ran in 2009 because the assault against Ethnic Studies was the final straw.

In Arizona, the assault against democracy, against equality and against education is etched into this backward state’s motto. And yet, no one is targeted more than the red-brown peoples of this state, who are treated simply as being part of an inconvenient past and in the way. Here, thousands of migrants have been found dead in the desert due to intentional governmental policies and racial profiling is business as usual. Here, Operation Streamline sees some 70 migrants daily in Federal Court, where they are charged, tried, convicted and sentenced in one hour…and then shipped to private prisons.

Problem is, most peoples of Mexican descent in this state cannot be deported and thus, the assault on the culture, history, identity, language and education.

When we ran in 2009, the highly successful Raza Studies program was targeted for elimination. On that exhilarating 120-mile run, we ran to defeat a bill [successfully] that would have criminalized the teaching of Ethnic Studies. Though we won that day. The following year, Gov. Jan Brewer signed the now infamous HB 2281 on May 12, 2011, a bill right out of the Inquisition.

After numerous battles and legal struggles, and the outright banning of Mexican American Studies earlier this year, we again prepare to once again run through the desert. But this time, it will be 165 miles.

We know that HB 2281, which we will never recognize as a law (as well as the racial profiling SB 1070), is unconstitutional. What we want to tell the world is that both measures also violate at least 9 international human rights treaties & conventions, particularly, the 2007 UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Since that first run, our community has been assaulted non-stop. TUSD recently suspended Mexican American Studies, banned the curriculum, banned the books (some are being stored in the book depository)… but most importantly, TUSD and the state have banned a worldview. In effect, that view originates with maiz – with the teaching of In Lak Ech (Tue res mi otro Yo-You are my other Me) and Panche Be (Buscar la Raiz de la Verdad-To seek the root of the Truth). This has been deemed to be un-American. Our community begs to differ. We will run not to ask for rights, but to assert them, as guaranteed, by both the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.

If you cannot join us for at least part of the run, at least help support us. We fight, not for the rights of a few thousands of students in Tucson, but for the rights of all of humanity. That they can ban a peoples’ history means they can ban anyone else’s history.

Here’s the schedule and directions on how you can join us and support us. You can also use same contact info for information.

SCHEDULE

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 (28 miles)
XINACHTLI (Indigenous Peoples Studies Session) @ 8:30 am* @ Aztlan Boxing Gym 1631 S. 10th Ave. 85713

Continuing to XINACHTLI @ TUSD 1010 Offices 1010 E. 10th St. @ 10:30 am
Continuing to Joaquin Murrieta Park 1400 N. Silverbell Rd. for lunch @ 12:30 pm
Continuing to Yoem Pueblo in Marana for Indigenous Peoples Studies Session, dinner and lodging (arriving around 6:30pm, 7pm)

Thursday, March 15, 2012 (77 miles)
Sunrise from Marana continuing to Chantlalli Izkalotecah (Maricopa, AZ) for XINACHTLI, food, and lodging (arriving around 6:30pm, 7pm)

Friday, March 16, 2012 (50 miles)
Sunrise from Chantlalli Izkalotecah to Arizona Department of Education 1535 West Jefferson Phoenix, AZ
Expecting to arrive at 3pm and close at 6 pm

*All times approximate

PURPOSE OF RUNNING/WALKING:


Submission to the United Nations
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
May 7-18, 2012 UN Headquarters New York
Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery
“Colonization and Cognition,
Human Rights and Education”
A Pilgrimage of Purpose and Self Determination



SUPPORT
Transportation will be provided for supporters to join Caminata on Thursday and Friday. Support for Friday in Phoenix is critical. If you believe you can commit to one, two or three of the days, contact the following number. If you are on spring break, please give it some deep thought. It will be historic akin to when we ran to Phoenix in 2009. For info or questions, please contact Calpolli Teoxicalli 520.551.5229 or write: teoxicalli@yahoo.com 

PAYPAL
If you want to support via Paypal, go to UNIDOS page at:  http://unidostucson.wordpress.com/donate-to-youth-voice/http://unidostucson.wordpress.com/donate-to-youth-voice/

Thanks
Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
XColumn@gmail.com