Join the Librotraficante Caravan of Banned Books in #ATX Tomorrow to the Texas State Capitol—Friday, April 29, 2022

 Friends:

Tony Diaz, the famous “Librotraficante,” or book smuggler, has turned his sights on his very own Texas after having smuggled books to Arizona when the Tucson Unified School District dismantled the Mexican American Studies program in 2010, resulting in a court case in which I and others testified that was ultimately won in 2017. (Note: I have covered all of this amply on this blog; keyword search the following to learn more: “Mexican American Studies (MAS),” “TUSD Ethnic Studies,” “Tony Diaz,” and “Librotraficante.”)

Now in light of banned books in Texas, he and his colleagues are looking to smuggle books into different places, including Austin. Here is his Austin schedule in the event that you want to join us tomorrow as we openly challenge the attack on our history and the censorship of books in the schools.

—At 2:00 PM, Librotraficante Underground Library, Palm Park 200 N IH-35 frontage road, 5B (also known as “Palm School”)

—At 3:00 PM, March for Cultura (from Palm Park to the Capitol, along Cesar Chavez St. to Congress St., to the State Capitol Building). 

—At 3:30 PM, Austin State Capitol

—At 5:00 PM Refreshments, Raul Salinas

—At 8:00 PM (Teatro) ¡Estar Guars!: A May The Fourth/Cinco De Mayo Comedy Fiesta, 600 River St, Austin, TX 78701-4218, United States

Like Librotraficante on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Librotraficante

Follow Tony Diaz on Radio Show 90.1FM KPFT: https://www.tonydiaz.net/radio

He is also a reporter for Fox 26 News Houston: https://www.fox26houston.com/

Check out the wonderful piece on him below by Alejandro Serrano in the Houston Chronicle, as well. I won’t have a revolution if I can’t dance, my friends. Looking forward to good times tomorrow!

-Angela Valenzuela

‘Book smugglers’ plan caravans from Houston, San Antonio to start underground library for banned books

Alejandro Serrano, Staff writer | Houston Chronicle | April 27, 2022

Librotraficante members Tony Diaz and Liana Lopez try to decide which sign to make into a large poster on Tuesday, April 19, 2022, in Houston. The group of activists plans to use signs and posters later this month at a rally in Austin, following a caravan from Houston, against recent efforts to ban books in the state.

 

Godofredo A. Vásquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

A decade ago, Tony Diaz and four other Latinos organized a caravan to deliver forbidden books and history to Tucson, Ariz., where a Mexican-American studies program had been banned from schools.

The “book smugglers” return this week, spurred by the wave of book challenges and bans that has spread across the country over the last year, with some parts of Texas leading the charge.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas has seen a surge in requests to pull books from schools. Here are Houston's numbers so far

The Librotraficantes, which translates to book traffickers, plan to lead a pair of caravans loaded with banned books to Austin from Houston and San Antonio Friday with a similar mission to 10 years ago: spread the words others have sought to suppress.

“I am hoping that this is going to open the eyes of our community members,” said Diaz, who 24 years ago founded Nuestra Palabra, which started as a group of Latino writers and has evolved into a mission to promote Latino literature and culture. “This is not a one-shot deal. We proved that we are here for decades-long work. We’ve proven that, but now this movement is a response to the movement that is trying to silence voices.”

The caravans, organized in partnership with LULAC Texas, are in response to a spate of attempts to remove books from school libraries across Texas and the nation. In the Houston region, school districts so far mostly have avoided mass challenges that have occurred elsewhere, but still have recorded an increase in requests for book reviews. Last week, the ACLU of Texas accused Katy, Klein and San Antonio’s North East ISDs of violating students’ First Amendment rights by removing dozens of books and, in some instances, not following designated review procedures.

The American Library Association tracked the most attempts to ban books last year — 729 challenges to library, school and university materials — since it began 20 years ago compiling a list of such efforts.

In Texas, state officials have emboldened such efforts. Gov. Greg Abbott put educators in the cross-hairs, essentially accusing them incorrectly of stocking porn in school libraries, among other attacks.

COMPLAINTS: Books challenged in Houston schools are 'contrary to everything Christian', promote BLM

State Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, sent a list of some 850 books — many of which explored LGBTQ issues — to school districts, asking if the titles were on their shelves.

The moves helped spur the return of the Librotraficantes, who already were thinking of marking the 10-year anniversary of the original caravan.

“Honestly, I thought we were just going to mark the anniversary,” Diaz said. “But the book bans are back.”

Since the original caravan to Arizona, a federal judge ruled in 2017 the state had violated Mexican-American students’ constitutional rights by ending the successful ethnic studies program, writing in an opinion that the enactment and enforcement of the ban was “motivated by racial animus.”

To Diaz, a writer who switched from fiction to nonfiction around the time Arizona enacted the ban because he figured he “can’t make this stuff up anymore,” the ruling was a victory. He also believes the current attacks on history have been informed by that success, as well as the success of the 2012 caravan.

So, he and the Librotraficantes have organized again.

On HoustonChronicle.com: How did 400 Katy ISD parents get a book removed? Accusations of Marxism and 'critical race theory.'

Friday’s events are expected to start with a morning press conference in Houston before some 45 individuals board a bus to Austin, where it will meet the bus from San Antonio at Palm Park. There they will launch an underground library with about 200 donated books, to start. The group, Diaz said, will give some of the books to La Peña, a cultural organization and art gallery that will serve as their steward.

“Literally, what it means is it will be a bookshelf with those books and then the stewards decide: Do they just lend them out, do they give them away,” Diaz said. “When they run out, they need to tell us.”

In the afternoon, The Librotraficantes plan a procession of banned books on Cesar Chavez Street to Congress Avenue en route to the capitol in a “March for Cultura.”

The group also plans to honor six Latina icons — among them Dr. Angela Valenzuela, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who had testified in a case cited by the federal judge who overturned Arizona’s law — in hopes of inspiring their recognition in Austin, Diaz said.

The whole plan came together in a matter of weeks, Diaz said, following a conversation about the 10th anniversary of the Tucson caravan.

Liana Lopez, one of the other five original organizers who goes by Librotraficante Lilo, said it felt like the effort to ban Mexican American studies that spurred the first protest was a “testing ground” for the current, wider attacks on history.

“I don’t understand what is scary about history,” Lopez said. “The only way to heal is to heal ourselves first, and we have to be able to address what’s happened in the past in a way that is not scary.”

alejandro.serrano@chron.com

View Graphic with hyperlinks at http://www.librotraficante.com/

The Texas GOP has Declared War on Books. I've Seen This Before," by Lupe Mendez, the Texas Observer

Great read by librotraficante Lupe Mendez in this Texas Observer piece. Many of us have seen this before, as well.

As Yogi Berra famously said, "It's deja vu all over again."

With Arizona as the test case for how to respond to banned books, we need to re-ignite the Librotraficante movement in Texas again—but this time, for Texas instead of Arizona. 

So prescient of Librotraficante founder, Tony Diaz, who brought a lot of imagination and motivation to the fight over the dismantling of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District back in 2010 that involved a court battle and subsequent victory. These struggles not only give us hope, but they chart a path toward success against those that would deny us our First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights to our precious knowledge and curriculum.

In the meantime, students must continue to gain access to the liberatory knowledge that they're being denied by fearful zealots and bullies. 

More immediately, we all need to show up to the SBOE the first week of April to get involved in the conversations taking place right now on the social studies standards for the state of Texas. 

El movimiento continua! The movement continues.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

The Texas GOP has Declared War on Books. I've Seen This Before," by Lupe  Mendez

Jan. 14, 2022

A decade ago, in March 2012, a group of writers, artists, educators, and activists banded together to combat the deplorable actions of Arizona’s state legislature. The state’s lawmakers had recently passed a bill making the teaching of “Ethnic Studies” illegal, along with banning courses that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” The bill also created a list of banned books. Of the more than 80 books that were eventually added to the list, many of the authors were Black and Latinx.

The Arizona law was so restrictive that it made news here in Texas, where we created the Librotraficante Movement in order to highlight the attack on books, educators, and education by “conservative” politicians. Librotraficante means “book smuggler,” and that’s what we did: collect books in Texas and “smuggle” them to Arizona, where those same titles had been abruptly banned. We used all of our book nerd talents to create an old-school freedom ride, collecting 35 bus riders and caravanning to six cities: Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson. We collected more than 1,000 copies of Arizona’s banned books and disseminated them to community libraries through book bundles to Arizona high school students. The Librotraficante Movement has been crucial in giving a voice to students of color across the nation.  

A decade later, that work stays with you. Now the attacks are happening right here in the Lone Star State.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, which banned the teaching of “critical race theory” in Texas classrooms. Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans have also called for bans of school library books that might make students “uncomfortable.” State Representative Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, has named 850 books he’d like to see removed from libraries. Like in Arizona, the lists seem to target non-white and LGBTQ authors. This much is clear: The Republican Party intends to deny children access to books, authors and an education that would spur their intellectual growth. And in an effort to satisfy their base, Republicans in Texas are pushing away the one population that needs their attention the most: youth—and more pointedly—youth of color.

LUPE MENDEZ

 State Republicans’ run on libraries and classrooms comes as the state’s demographics continue to shift. In the 2019–2020 academic school year, Hispanic students accounted for the largest percentage of the state’s student enrollment with roughly 53 percent. White students made up only 27 percent of the student body; Black students represented 13 percent, and Asian students represented 5 percent. Each year Texas schools get more diverse, but the same can’t be said for the state legislature.  

It’s worth noting that at the same time the Legislature was cooking up Senate Bill 3, the body quietly shot down another bill that could have created a whole new set of possibilities for youth in Texas. House Bill 1504, filed by state Representative Christina Morales (D-Houston), would have allowed school districts to create an Ethnic Studies course as an alternative to World Geography and World History courses. The bill made no mandates but would have granted the thousands of school districts across the state the ability to adapt coursework to their specific student bodies. It was a beautifully fair bill that gained both Republican and Democratic sponsors. 

The bill couldn’t survive the state’s intensifying culture wars, however. It was placed on the Senate’s intent calendar in May before dying.  

That brings us to the present. For a playbook of how to combat the troubling new actions in Texas, I think back to the last days of the Librotraficante caravan. As we arrived in Tucson, where the school district had shut down a Mexican American Studies course, a few of us were assigned the task of sorting the more than 1,000 books amassed during the caravan. It was early morning—7:30 or so—when we noticed that a tiny group of teens had come by. They quietly approached to see the books and grabbed some, retreating without a word. Later, a young lady grabbed a book and took it away to the corner to read it. 

As the day went on, the young lady returned, saying, “Thank you for giving me this moment. I was just about to finish this book on the day the district personnel came to forcibly take the books away from us.” Wise beyond her years, she left us with some parting advice: “I want you to have this book back. Give it to somebody else. I hope somebody can learn from this book.”   

As an educator and a writer, those words were especially powerful. If you can get a kid to pick up a book that they haven’t seen in three months, then read it like it’s a sacred text—hell, you have witnessed all that is good in education. 

Now, 10 years later, I’m still a Librotraficante. And I’m ready to do it all over again.

Intellectual Powerhouses Unite to Support TX Ethnic Studies Bill as it goes to a Public Education Hearing

Friends and Colleagues:

Happy to share this press event organized and posted on Youtube by Librotraficante Tony Diaz last Monday that  focuses on Ethnic Studies Bill HB 1504 co-authored by Christina Morales (D-Houston) and Alma Allen (D-Houston). HB 1504 allows for African American and Mexican American Studies to count toward high school graduation—as well as Native American Studies and Asian American Studies once these get aligned to state standards. To take a look at the bill itself, check out my earlier post titled, Rep. Christina Morales files Ethnic Studies Bill 1504 that links Ethnic Studies to High School Graduation. 

Though on short notice, a few of us appearing in the photo did get the chance to testify last Tuesday, namely,Tony Diaz, Lucero Saldaña, Maria Unda, Alexzandra Roman, Ron Castro, and myself. Thanks to all who supplied written testimony.

If you wish, you can also listen to our testimonies here at 2:09-2:37. I think we did a great job if may say so myself.

The bill is currently pending in committee. We must apply pressure. Call and email house members telling them to vote in favor of this bill. Great job, everybody!

-Angela Valenzuela

Facebook Live Town Hall Meeting Tonight to Discuss Ethnic Studies (HB 1504) this evening on Facebook at Librotraficante

Facebook Live Town Hall Meeting to Discuss Ethnic Studies (HB 1504) this evening on Facebook at Librotraficante with our host, Tony Diaz of Librotraficante

Friends,

This super-exciting bill (HB 1504) gets heard in the Texas State Legislature tomorrow on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Join us this evening for a discussion on this bill, including ways to strategize.

-Angela Valenzuela

When: Monday, April 5, 6:30 pm, CST

Where: https://www.facebook.com/Librotraficante

Who:

• Dr. Christopher Carmona, Chair of the K-12 Education Committee of the NACCS Tejas FOCO,

• Dr. Angela Valenzuela, whose research has paved the way for Ethnic Studies

• Ron Castro, Mexican American Studies teacher, Project YES!

• Scheduled to attend: Texas State Representative Christina Morales, Co-sponsor of TX HB1504, which will make Ethnic Studies Count Towards High School Graduation.

Topics for Discussion

Press Conference:

Tuesday, April 6, 2021,

9:30 am. South Entrance. Texas Capital Building.

Hearing Details:

Public Education Committee Hearing for The Texas Ethnic Studies Bill HB1504.

Tuesday, April 6. Time is indefinite.

In-person testimony is urgently needed.

Sign up the day of at the kiosk at the capitol.

You may also send written testimony.

 How to Advocate Beyond Testifying:

Contact your state rep. To locate them visit: www.WhoRepresentsMe.com.

Submit written testimony. (More details to come.)

More info: www.TexasSizedHistory.com

For further comment on the press release and the work group you can contact: 

More info on press conference contact Tony Diaz: Tony@Librotraficante.com, Texas State Representative Christina Morales, (512) 463-0732 tammy.pirtle@house.texas.gov. 

Dr. Christopher Carmona, Chair, National Association of Chicana/o Studies-Tejas Foco Committee on Mexican American Studies in K-12 Education, (956) 854-1717

Please visit us at: www.mas4txschools.org 

Chicano Renaissance: The Power of Cultural Capital

From Tony Diaz, the Cultural Accelerator.  Still savoring our June 12, 2018 victory before the State Board of Education.  I does feel like a renaissance.  So much more work lays ahead though, including possibly establishing certification requirements, setting up pathways for young people to become an Ethnic Studies teacher, and even at some future point, making it a statewide requirement for graduation like Oregon did.  In the meantime, we need to push for additional curriculum writing and preparing more teachers to teach it.  My thoughts...

Keep up the great work and the high energy, Tony!

-Angela Valenzuela

 Chicano Renaissance: 

The Power of Cultural Capital

by Tony Diaz | 11.19.18

The Renaissance

            For a rebirth, there must be a death.

            I want America to profoundly understand that we as Chicanos were on the brink of being erased.

            I want America to remember that in our lifetime, just over 1 year ago as I write this, Mexican American Studies was banned in Arizona.

            Additionally, I want our community to know what a powerful feat it was to defy and overturn that ban.

            Arizona’s prohibition of our history and culture revealed many things.

            First, we are not making up stories about oppression. We now have the proof-with a paper trail.

            Secondly, we are powerful.

            I want to break down what transpired, not just for posterity, but also as a guide for our community to understand its power in order to quantify, cultivate, and accelerate it.

            We are the generation of Cultural Accelerators, and everything we once did to merely survive, will now help us thrive.           

Banned Chicano authors Dagoberto Gilb & Rudolfo Anaya with Tony Diaz, El LIbrotraficante Photo Credit Liana Lopez

The Tip of the Pyramid                                                                                                                                  

            Policy change is the tip of the pyramid, and our community’s cultural capital is the base.

            Mexican Americans have directly experienced the power of cultural capital through two potent examples.

1. In 2017, the Chicana/Chicano community overturned the banning of Mexican American Studies in Arizona.
2. In 2018, Chicanas and Chicanos advocated and succeeded in getting Mexican American Studies endorsed statewide by the Texas State Board of Education.

Texas is the first state of the union to do so.

            Other states through other means have supported Ethnic Studies, and some school districts across the country have gone as far as making an ethnic studies course a requirement for graduation, but Texas is the only state in the nation to specifically endorse Mexican American Studies (MAS).

            Of course, MAS is inclusive. At each step of this advocacy, we have gone out of our way to also include a path for African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Native American Studies. We paved the way because we were inspired to invest our Cultural Capital in defying, containing, and overturning the direct banning of MAS in Arizona. Now that we have quantified our community’s Cultural Capital, we have simply continued to accelerate it.

                                                                                                                                                            Photo Credit Liana Lopez

The Arizona Ban of Mexican American Studies was Intended to Destroy Our Community.

            If Arizona’s ban of Mexican American Studies had been implemented a generation or two earlier, it would have decimated our community for generations to come.

            In fact, you need only study some of the earlier practices imposed upon our community for the full effects of this structural oppression to register.

            From the lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, to Operation Wetback, to Mexican Only Schools you can trace the deep psychological and societal impact of these practices for generations. The ban still left lasting scars. Our familia in Tucson suffered the brunt of this. The MAS K-12 curriculum in Tucson was the gold standard for culturally relevant curriculum. It should have been extolled. The dropout rate for our community was in the double digits. The Cabrera Report and Cambium Report, among other research, proved that the MAS curriculum raised the graduation rate to 98%.

            Instead of being praised, MAS was banned, and MAS teachers were fired, maligned, and sued.

            It was the brilliance, tenacity, and vision of the Tucson gente who were able to withstand this attack and gather the cultural capital to overturn this terrible law.

            We in Houston were honored to lend our granito de arena to draw attention to this cause and to contain it. We were concerned that Arizona’s Anti-Ethnic Studies Law would spread the way Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant laws spread.

            It was clear to we Tejanos that all of our communities were put at risk by the Arizona far right Republican legislators attacking our History and Culture.

            In 2012, I and 4 other veteran members of the Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say quantified our cultural capital and decided to invest it in defying this attack on intellectual freedom and freedom of speech.  

            In March of 2012, in 8 weeks, we organized the Librotraficante Caravan to smuggle back into Tucson the books that were part of the outlawed curriculum, especially since it included several Tejanas and Tejanos. We rented a bus and travelled the 1,100 miles from Houston to Tucson, stopping in 6-cities, opening 4 under ground libraries, and joining a national movement to oppose this racist, un-American law.

            Again, it was the people of Tucson who directly took on the Arizona law, and the Librotraficantes learned a lot from them in the ensuing and victorious struggle.

            Our Tucson familia taught us to be brave and bold.

            It was also clear that our intellectual advancement was a threat to some-since they tried to ban it for good.

            We also learned just how powerful we can be.

            And we brought all that knowledge back to Texas.

            The rest, as they say, is History.       

--Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante

Fear of Books: 4 Stories by Tony Díaz, "El Librotraficante"

 

Tony Díaz

Fear of Books: 4 Stories

7/05/2018

“It’s clear to me that our intellectual advancement is a threat to some people, because they tried to make it illegal.”--Tony Diaz

It always come down to the books. The fact that people want to keep them from us proves that books are powerful.

And just when you think book oppression is over, you find out that it’s not.

Yes, we must celebrate our victories. This edifies and inspires.

But we have to keep in mind that the book-burners keep updating their tactics.

Here are 4 new sides to this as exemplified by 4 stories in the news.

But first, because of the cultural upheaval around us caused by policies unleashed on our community, we must celebrate our victories and also define and manifest our goals.

On that note, in Texas The Librotraficantes are celebrating the Texas State Board of Education’s state-wide endorsement of Mexican American Studies. This comes the first year, and really, just a few months, after Arizona’s racist ban of Mexican American Studies was over-turned in court.

That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news.

ICE Freezes The Books

Immigration officials don’t seem to want you to donate books to traumatized children who have been separated from their families by ICE.

In Philadelphia, officials first told folks it was okay to donate books for the children caught in the cross hairs of a broken immigration system. But then they told folks no!

Immigration officials are separating families, isolating children, and they don’t want you to make sure those children can spend time reading. Perhaps they don’t these children to be thinking. Perhaps they don’t want those children learning. Arizona evidently banned Mexican American Studies for those same reasons. Otherwise, there are no logical explanations for Immigration to tell folks yes, give the children books-then say NO!

Maybe Immigration officials want to only traumatize children. Maybe they are easier to handle when they are catatonic.

We Have Seen This Before

There is a precedent for this. The legal opinion overturning Arizona’s racist ban of Mexican American Studies said that it was implemented with discriminatory intent. So, we are not making this stuff up.

But Immigration officials have a chance to reveal their intentions.

Lisa Cruces from Houston is gathering books for children who are being detained by the border patrol. If you have questions for her, we will be talking to her on our radio show, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say On The Air Tuesday July 10, 2018. 

(We air Tuesdays live 6p-7p cst on 90.1 FM KPFT, livestream at www.kpft.org and podcasts at www.NuestraPalabra.org.).

Lisa is a great ally of Nuestra Palabra and the Librotraficantes. She was key in getting the Nuestra Palabra Radio showed archived in the University of Houston Digital Archives. We are making History.

Here is a link to her book drive.

More Book Lovers:

This public defender is collecting books for folks who are incarcerated. She was doing it by running photo copies. She has started to receive donations that lead up to books for folks who want them the most but who have the least access to them.