• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SAL BALDENEGRO 9. 10.17 “THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG”

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SAL BALDENEGRO 9. 10.17 “THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG”

September 10, 2017 by Tia Tenopia

The arc of the moral universe is long …

Arizonans recently experienced two doses of good news. One was the determination by a federal judge that the banning of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) curriculum was rooted in racial animus. The other was the conviction for criminal contempt of court of Joe Arpaio for defying a court order to stop his racial-profiling campaign. These victories didn’t fall out of the sky. They are the culmination of the efforts of many people—students, parents, teachers, community activists, lawyers—who worked hard (via demonstrations, lawsuits, petitions, community organizing, etc.) over many years. I am proud to say that my family and I were very much involved in these resistance activities.

On the surface, banning MAS and Arpaio’s racist actions are totally discrete phenomena. But the underpinnings of these seemingly disparate events are intertwined. They even share a KKK-Neo-Nazi nexus.

SB 1070 is at the root…

The banning of MAS and Arpaio’s actions are rooted in the (“Show me your papers”) SB 1070 law passed by the Arizona legislature in 2010. Based on fear of Mexicans, SB 1070 set out to challenge the legitimacy of people of Mexican descent in Arizona, to portray us as foreigners in our own land. That fear is based on some demographic realities: We are a fast-growing community, we are younger than other U.S. populations, and we tend to have larger families. Many communities and school districts are now Latino-majority.

The banning of Mexican American Studies has its roots in anti-Mexican legislation of SB1070.

The latter scares the hell out of the racist folk. In 1982, in a piece I wrote, I said, “The last thing the racists in our midst want is a bunch of educated, articulate, and assertive Chicanos and Chicanas running around doing political mischief—like registering people to vote and running for office.” That was true in 1982, it was true in 2010, and it is true today.

These dynamics are what brought to prominence a pathetically mediocre politician, Russell Pearce, the sponsor and co-author of SB 1070. Pearce was also the original sponsor of the legislation to criminalize Mexican American history in Arizona and ban MAS. Tom Horne and John Huppenthal, who finalized the MAS ban, and Joe Arpaio are proteges of Russell Pearce.

The KKK-Neo-Nazi nexus…

In 2004, I detailed the nexus between Russell Pearce and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the contemporary incarnation of the White Citizens Councils (aka “white-collar KKK”) who in the 1950s were parties to and/or enablers of the murder of Black children and civil-rights workers in the South. At the time, Pearce was proposing an initiative that addressed the non-existent “problem” of non-citizen immigrants voting in elections, a lie that is still being fomented by President Trump and his minion, Kris Kobach, the other co-author of SB 1070.

[According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Kobach, who is running for Governor of Kansas, has ties to white nationalist groups and has refused to denounce the recent Charlottesville KKK-neo-Nazi-white supremacist rally that resulted in the murder of a counter-protester.]

Arizona Senator Russell Peace has attended rallies led by neo-Nazis J.T. Ready.

In 2007, the White Knights of America—the modern version of Mississippi’s 1950s-1960s White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—rallied at the AZ Capitol, vowing to “(Return to) … a White American Nation (and to) fight against the Mexicanization of America.” The White Knights of America’s photo gallery from that day features images of Russell Pearce with known Neo-Nazi J.T. Ready. And there is video footage of Pearce at a 2009 rally at the AZ State Capitol with J.T. Ready. At another rally led by Ready, the Nazi swastika is ubiquitous and the “Seig Heil” Nazi salute is chanted loudly. On video, Ready refers to Pearce as a “father figure.”

[In 2012, J.T. Ready killed his girlfriend and three others, including a one-year-old child, and then himself in a domestic-violence rampage.]

Like his mentor Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio identified openly with the KKK. On November 12, 2007, Arpaio, a militant proponent of the KKK-endorsed “birther” movement that questioned Barak Obama’s American citizenship, was a guest on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” On that program Arpaio noted that many people were comparing him to the KKK and boasted that he considered it “an honor” to be compared to the KKK.

Even as Arpaio was expressing his KKK pride, one of his most egregious moral-ethical failings came to light. Between 2004 and 2007, over 400 sex crimes reported to Arpaio’s office were either inadequately investigated or not investigated at all. At least 32 of these dealt with child molestations involving Latino children victims. Apparently, in Arpaio’s universe, the sexual abuse of children is acceptable … if those children are brown and have Spanish surnames.

The genesis of the MAS ban…

According to Horne’s court testimony, the MAS ban originated in the spring of 2006 when Tucson High School Chicano/Chicana students protested a speaker (a Horne ally who would not allow questions) by taping their mouths, turning their backs, raising their fists, and walking out of the auditorium. Horne concluded that this “rude” behavior was taught in MAS classes. That same day Horne saw someone wearing a M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) T-shirt. Believing M.E.Ch.A. to be an “extremely anti-American” organization associated with MAS, Horne concluded that MAS needed to be eliminated.

In 2008, Arizona Senator Russell Pearce, at Horne’s request, introduced legislation to ban MAS. This was the first salvo in the campaign to try to erase our history.

In 2010, Pearce’s anti-MAS legislation re-surfaced as HB 2281 and was passed. On his last day as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, December 30, 2010, Horne found the MAS curriculum in the Tucson Unified School District to be in violation of HB 2281. Huppenthal succeeded Horne and on his first day in office reinforced Horne’s assessment that the Tucson Unified School District MAS curriculum violated HB 2281.

It is noteworthy that Huppenthal ran for the office on the platform of “stopping La Raza.” And for several years Huppenthal posted blog comments under a pseudonym in which he denigrated Mexicans. One typical Huppenthal posting: “No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English.” In one of these blog postings, Huppenthal sang the praises of Russell Pearce and SB 1070.

The bitter aspects…

While the court found the MAS ban was based on racial animus, it did not mandate a remedy.

The two victories under discussion—the MAS court decision and Arpaio’s conviction—are in a sense bittersweet victories.

While the court finding that the MAS ban was based on racial animus vindicates what we knew and contended all along, it has a bitter aspect, that is, it did not mandate a remedy. The logical remedy, of course, would be to make our community whole by mandating that the MAS curriculum be reinstated in TUSD. Theoretically, the court, which has not issued its final ruling, can still do that.

However, reinstating MAS in TUSD would be quite complicated given TUSD’s pusillanimous decision to accept Huppenthal’s finding that the MAS curriculum was illegal and to dismantle the MAS curriculum. The MAS teachers, who fought valiantly on behalf of their students, are dispersed throughout the district and some have left the district and even the state. The district instituted “culturally relevant courses” to replace the banned MAS courses. These courses have been institutionalized, complicating their uprooting.

Nevertheless, the MAS court finding is a significant victory for our community and can have wide-ranging repercussions. The finding for all intents and purposes nullifies HB 2281 and gives the lie to the racist nonsense that Mexican American history is “un-American” and “promotes the overthrow of the United States government.” And most importantly, it opens the door for Arizona school districts to develop and implement MAS curricula. This is huge.

Trump upheld the rule of law and order by pardoning Joe Arpaio, a convicted criminal.

The bitter aspect of Arpaio’s conviction is that President Trump, the defender of the KKK and neo-Nazis, has pardoned his fellow “birther” and KKK-defender Arpaio. By all accounts, the pardon cannot be undone. But Arpaio’s conviction is nevertheless a huge and significant victory for our community. Any time an avowed racist is brought before the bar of justice and found guilty—keep in mind that the contempt of court conviction derives from Arpaio’s conviction for racial profiling—is a cause for celebration by decent people, particularly Arpaio’s victims. Despite the pardon, Arpaio’s legacy sits in the shadow of his conviction as a racist.

It took a while for these victories to materialize, but they did. As noted by the Rev. Theodore Parker (and cited often by Martin Luther King, Jr.), “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” c/s

__________________________________________________________

Copyright 2017 by Sal Baldenegro. To contact Sal, write:  salomonrb@msn.comPhotos of elected officials in the public domain. Other photos used under the “fair use” proviso of the copyright law.

 

Filed Under: Blogs, Political Salsa y Más Tagged With: MAS victory, Mexcian American Studies, Political Salsa y Mas, Sal Baldenegro

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 01.28.23 CRYSTAL CITY 1969

January 27, 2023 By wpengine

An Inspiring Latino Play: Crystal City 1969 David Lozano and Raul Trevino wrote Crystal City 1969 in 2009, a production which The Dallas Morning News called the “Best New Play” of 2009. Residents from Crystal City learned of its success by word of mouth, but individuals who contributed to the school walkouts that permanently transformed […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 01.20.23 OSCAR ALVARADO MASTER MOSAIC ARTIST

January 20, 2023 By wpengine

Oscar Alvarado: Latino Master Artist of Tile Mosaic On most days of the year, Oscar Alvarado steps out of the warehouse at his San Antonio Southtown studio, spaces that he shares with his twin brother Robert, to look over sections of nearly two acres filled with sand, tile, rock, glass, and steel. He treasures the […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT AL RENDON AN ACCLAIMED LATINO PHOTOGRAPHER

January 14, 2023 By wpengine

Al Rendon: A Highly Acclaimed Latino Photographer Every American City has its favorite photographer who is able to produce revealing imagery that captures the mind and soul of its people, that documents the cultural attributes of its society, and that reveals the historical aspects of the region’s landscape. Large cities with diverse populations count on […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT JOSÉ ESQUIVAL A CHICANO TRAILBLAZER

January 7, 2023 By wpengine

José Esquivel: A Chicano Art Trailblazer José Esquivel, one of the founding members of the Chicano art movement in America, passed away on December 16, 2022. He was 87 years old. A memorial to Esquivel is planned for Tuesday evening, January 3rd at the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Through his paintings Esquivel documented life in his […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA EVENT 1966 UFW PEREGRINACIÓN (PILGRIMAGE) MARCH

By Tia Tenopia on March 19, 2013

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they  faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Category: History, LATINOPIA EVENT

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

LATINOPIA MUSIC LOS FABULOCOS “UNA PURA Y DOS CON SAL”

By Tia Tenopia on January 4, 2015

Delta Groove Music recording artist Los FabuLocos is a Southern California band whose unique sound, “Cali-Mex,”is a fusion of blues, Americana and Chicano soul music. Band members include Jesús Cuevas, accordion and vocals; Rubén Guaderama, guitar,bajo sexto, tres and vocals; James Barrios, bass and vocals; Mike Molina, drums and Kid Ramos, guitar( not in this […]

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2023 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin