LULAC Was Served A Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), Averting a Hostile Takeover by Members of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP)

Geez, what a week here in San Juan Puerto Rico! Our ancestors were surely crying out from their graves that LULAC is neither a partisan organization, nor is it up for sale.

What a terrible idea to seek to submit our organization to the rancorous politics over statehood in Puerto Rico.

Do read yesterday's post by journalist Suzanne Gamboa and the entirety of this message to gain a fuller understanding. The first is the message, including the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), that we all received this morning putting us on notice that the election had been stopped and the second is a more elaborate statement by LULAC President Domingo Garcia from this evening in both English and Spanish. 

The short of it is that yesterday evening's issuance of the TRO brought the election to a screeching halt and that election fraud will get investigated. 

Today is a proud day for National LULAC. 

Thanks to President Garcia and our LULAC leaders for their competent leadership and loyalty to our constitution in these troubled times. 

For now, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Dear LULAC Members in Puerto Rico,

 

LULAC was served tonight with a temporary restraining order (TRO) that enjoins or prevents us from having a national election in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, July 30, 2022. The members of the national board are named as defendants in the matter, and as such, any actions by them or anyone else that violates the TRO can and will have serious consequences up to and including monetary fines and jail time.

 

In light of this legal action, I am informing you that the national assembly meeting scheduled for Saturday, July 30, 2022, is in recess until the matter has been heard in court, as mandated by the TRO. You are advised not to go to the assembly hall as no lawful meeting is allowed. Please continue your visit and other travel plans while in San Juan, and I will keep you informed on the next steps in this matter.

 

Sincerely,

 

Domingo

Domingo Garcia, LULAC National President

Latino civil rights group could see bigger push for Puerto Rico statehood: Puerto Rican LULAC members are growing their ranks and could change the leadership and makeup of the historically Mexican American organization

Here at the National LULAC Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where this will get decided. Just being here on the island and talking to regular folks, this is a very emotional issue. It cuts hard three ways. Some want statehood; others independence, and others, the status quo which is commonwealth status with sizeable numbers in each category. 

It's not looking good for President Domingo Garcia. If he loses the election, this will definitely be a game changer. We'll see what happens at Saturday's business meeting. Whatever happens, I sense that this dynamic will be playing out for a long time, not just within LULAC, but for folks on island, as well. More to come.

-Angela Valenzuela

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-civil-rights-group-see-bigger-push-puerto-rico-statehood-rcna21904

Puerto Rican LULAC members are growing their ranks and could change the leadership and makeup of the historically Mexican American organization.

By Suzanne Gamboa

Puerto Rican members of the country’s oldest Latino civil rights organization are rapidly growing their ranks to potentially tilt the group’s coming elections and escalate its lobbying for statehood.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, founded in 1929 by Mexican Americans in Texas, is scheduled to hold its elections this summer at its national convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico — its first conference since 2019 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

LULAC’s president, Domingo García, faces a challenge from Juan Carlos Lizardi, president of a LULAC council in New York and the son of one of LULAC’s board members, Elsie Valdés, who is Puerto Rican and a statehood activist.

The contest is pushing LULAC further into the fight over Puerto Rico’s status, worrying some members that if Lizardi wins, the issue will dominate over others for which LULAC advocates.

It also stands to shift the leadership of the organization, which has always been Mexican American. LULAC was formed Feb. 17, 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, by Mexican Americans in the state, some of them business leaders and professionals.

As the election plays out, the divisive issue of Puerto Rico’s status is also creating some fractures within LULAC.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. Although all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, those who live on the island cannot vote in U.S. congressional or presidential elections. The territory’s representative in Congress — called a resident commissioner — cannot vote on legislation on the floor.

Puerto Ricans are divided among those who want statehood and those who prefer the current territorial status; a smaller percentage want Puerto Rico to be independent. Previous votes on the issue in Puerto Rico have been rife with controversy.

Although LULAC's CEO recently said the organization is taking a stand in support of statehood, based on a 2018 resolution, its president said otherwise.

“I support Puerto Ricans’ right to self-determination and a fair election,” García told NBC News. “But LULAC is bigger than that. We’re dealing with immigration and education and funding for that. I just met with the chief of police in Los Angeles regarding criminal justice reform.”

Lizardi and his supporters hold an advantage in the election because LULAC’s constitution allows only those who show up at the conference to vote.

Some LULAC members are forgoing the trip to Puerto Rico for the July conference because of cost concerns. In a close vote, the LULAC board rejected proposals to cancel this year’s conference.  

Meanwhile, members on the island are rapidly escalating the number of “councils” — LULAC’s local entities — in Puerto Rico and New York. Most have been formed in the past three months.

Last year, Puerto Rico had 54 councils. As of this month it has 170 — having added 116 in the last two months. Texas, because it is where LULAC was founded and because of its size, has tended to have the most councils; it had 206 last year.

Lizardi did not respond to email or phone messages requesting comment.

In a phone interview, Valdés said councils are often created at election time when there is more interest in the leadership races, which motivates involvement. Other candidates have formed councils in Puerto Rico, more than this year, to increase their votes, she said.

"All presidents elected since Belen Robles up to Domingo Garcia have been elected thanks to Puerto Ricans’ votes," said Valdés, a 32-year LULAC member and the organization's national VP of the Women's Commission.

Hilda Duarte, the president of a Dallas LULAC council, said she may not be able to afford to attend the convention unless other members help pay her costs.

She said she is concerned about the sudden growth in LULAC councils in Puerto Rico and how it might shift LULAC's priorities.

“The Puerto Ricans want statehood. That’s something they have to decide. They are the ones who have to vote and get excited and once and for all settle their future. … We’ll support whatever they do,” Duarte said.

Two bipartisan bills addressing Puerto Rico's status are competing in Congress, both sponsored by Puerto Rican members of Congress. One is pushing for statehood and the other would create a process for deciding Puerto Rico's status.

'This is a Latino issue'

This month, LULAC CEO Sindy Benavides refocused attention on LULAC's 2018 resolution supporting statehood, resurfacing it in a recent interview in The Hill.

Until the interview, the nearly four-year-old resolution has gotten little attention since its passage by LULAC members who attended its 2018 Phoenix convention.

"Migrant Justice Means Facing Root Causes," by David Bacon in Truthout

I so respect and admire photojournalist David Bacon who has been following the plight of impoverished, vulnerable migrants and how their experiences are implicated in the deep injustices associated with international and domestic capitalism that exploits their labor for profits as the cost of doing business.

Like my friend, feminist scholar Martha Cotera said the other day, "We should stop calling poor people poor and start naming this situation and context as "wage theft." She is absolutely right. And David Bacon's cutting analysis of U.S.-Mexico-Latin American relations maps on well to Martha's comments.

Bacon is very clear that bandaids like aid and loans are not anywhere near sufficient in stopping the flow of migrants as structural change in the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America. Addressing root causes anchored in the brutal excesses of capitalism, is what's needed.

Do read all of this. It offers an enhanced understanding of the larger forces that cause migration and how folks here in the U.S. are impacted. In an ideal world, folks from Mexico, Central, South America and the Caribbean, wouldn't have to migrate to make ends meet. It's not that they want to; it's that they have to. Understanding this fosters empathy and awareness of how our country negatively impacts lives and well-being in places far beyond our borders.

-Angela Valenzuela

#RacialCapitalism

Factory workers halt their work to protest against the lack of safety measures against COVID-19, outside Electrocomponentes of Mexico, a company in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 20, 2020.

HERIKA MARTINEZ / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

MIGRANT JUSTICE MEANS FACING ROOT CAUSES

By David Bacon, Truthout, 6/23/22

MEXICO CITY - 10/2/14 - Students  and workers march from the Plaza of Three Cultures (Tlatelolco) to commemorate the massacre of hundreds of students by the army in 1968.  Some marchers also were farmers who held corn and machetes to protest the impact of free trade agreements.

At the end of the just-concluded Summit of (some of) the Americas, President Joe Biden announced a “Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection,” claiming that participant countries are “transforming our approach to managing migration in the Americas … [recognizing] the responsibility that impacts on all of our nations.”

Recognizing that the U.S. has some responsibility for addressing the causes of migration is important. But President Biden stopped well short of acknowledging the U.S.’s two centuries of intervention in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, which lies at the root.

Biden pledged $300 million to help U.S. “partners in the region continue to welcome refugees and migrants” augmented by further World Bank loans. World Bank loans are often tied to demands for austerity and reforms to attract corporate investment, and therefore themselves are a cause of poverty and displacement. Aid and loans will not stop the flow of migrants because dealing with the root causes of migration requires fundamental, structural change in the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America.

When we go to the border and listen to people in the migrant camps, or talk with the families here who have members in immigration detention centers, we hear the living experiences of people who have had no alternative to leaving home. Escaping violence, war and poverty, they now find themselves imprisoned, and we have to ask, who is responsible? Where did the violence and poverty come from that forced people to leave home, to cross our border with Mexico, and then to be picked up and incarcerated here?

Overwhelmingly, it has come from the actions of the government of this country, and the wealthy elites it has defended.

It came from two centuries of colonialism, from the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, when this government said that it had the right to do as it wanted in all of the countries of Latin America. It came from the wars that turned Puerto Rico and the Philippines into direct colonies over a century ago.

It came from more wars and interventions fought to keep in power those who would willingly ensure the wealth and profits of U.S. corporations, and the misery and poverty of the vast majority of their own countries.

Smedley Butler, a decorated Marine Corp general, told the truth about what he did a century ago, writing, “I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.”

When people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti tried to change this injustice, the U.S. armed right-wing governments that made war on their own people. Sergio Sosa, a social activist during Guatemala’s civil war who now heads a workers’ center in Omaha, Nebraska, told me simply, “You sent the guns, and we buried the dead.”

Over 1 million people left El Salvador in the 1980s and an estimated half million crossed the border to the U.S. at that time. How many more hundreds of thousands crossed from Guatemala? How many more after the U.S. helped overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti? How many from Honduras after Manuel Zelaya was forced from office in 2009, and U.S. officials said nothing while sending arms to the army that used them against Honduran people?

Since 1994, 8 million Mexicans have come as migrants to work in the U.S. In 1990, 4.5 million Mexican migrants lived in the U.S. In 2008, the number peaked at 12.67 million. About 5.7 million were able to get some kind of visa; another 7 million couldn’t but came nevertheless. Almost 10 percent of the people of Mexico live in the U.S.

The poverty that forced 3 million corn farmers, many of them Indigenous, from Mexico to come here was a product of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), making it impossible for them to grow the maize they domesticated and gave to the world. Archer-Daniels-Midland and Continental Grain Company used NAFTA’s stolen inheritance from Indigenous Oaxacans to take over the Mexican corn market. One of the most important movements in Mexico today is for the right to stay home, the right to an alternative.

What has produced migration from rural parts of Mexico is the same thing that closed factories in the U.S: Green Giant closed its broccoli freezer in Watsonville, California, and 1,000 immigrant Mexican workers lost their jobs when it moved to Irapuato in central Mexico, where the company could pay lower wages.

In a Tijuana factory assembling flat panel televisions for export to the U.S., a woman on the line has to labor for half a day to buy a gallon of milk for her children. Maquiladora workers live in homes made from pallets and other materials cast off by the factories, in barrios with no sewers, running water or electrical lines.

Because our two economies are linked, Mexico suffers when the U.S. economy takes a dive. When recessions hit the U.S., customers stop buying the products made in the maquiladoras, and hundreds of thousands of workers lose their jobs. Where do they go?

When the U.S. sought to impose the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) on El Salvador in 2004, then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Otto Reich told Salvadorans that if they elected a government that wouldn’t go along with CAFTA, the U.S. would cut off the remittances sent by Salvadorans in the U.S. back to their families at home.

Young people, brought from El Salvador as children, joined gangs in Los Angeles so they could survive in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Then they were arrested and deported back to El Salvador, and the gang culture of L.A. took root there, with the drug trade sending cocaine and heroin back to the U.S. barrios and working-class neighborhoods here.

When people arrive at the U.S. border, they are treated as criminals. John Kelly, the dishonest general who advised Donald Trump in the White House, called migration “a crime-terror convergence.”

Yet people coming to the U.S. are part of the labor force that puts vegetables and fruit on the table, cleans the office buildings, and empties the bedpans and takes care of people here when they get old and sick. Turning people into criminals and passing laws saying people can’t work legally makes people vulnerable and forces them into the lowest wages in our economy.

To employers, migration is a labor supply system, and for them it works well because they don’t have to pay for what the system really costs, either in Mexico or in the U.S. Trade policy and immigration policy are inextricably bound up with each other. They’re part of the same system.

NAFTA didn’t just displace Mexicans. It displaced people in the U.S., too. In the last few decades Detroit lost 40 percent of its population as the auto industry left. Today many Ford parts come from Mexico. But the working families who lost those outsourced jobs didn’t disappear. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people began an internal migration within the U.S. larger than the dustbowl displacement of the 1930s.

Knowing where the violence and poverty are coming from, and who is benefitting from this system, is one step toward ending it. But we also have to know what we want in its place. What is our alternative to detention centers and imprisonment? To the hundreds of people who still die at the border every year?

The migrant justice movement has had alternative proposals for many years. One was called the Dignity Campaign. The American Friends Service Committee proposed A New Path. What we want isn’t hard to imagine.

We want an end to mass detention and deportations, and the closing of the detention centers. The militarization of the border has to be reversed, so that it becomes a region of solidarity and friendship between people on both sides. Working should not be a crime for those without papers. Instead, people need real visas that allow them to travel and work, and the right to claim Social Security benefits for the contributions they’ve made over years of labor.

But we also want to deal with the root causes of migration.

U.S. auto companies employ more workers in Mexico now than in the U.S. Every flat-panel TV sold here is made in Mexico or another country. While the workers at General Motors’ Silao factory in Guanajuato, Mexico, recently voted courageously for an independent union and negotiated a new contract with important wage gains, a worker in that factory still earns less in a whole day than a U.S. autoworker earns in an hour.

Decades of trade agreements and economic reforms have created that difference and forced people into poverty. For many, that makes migration involuntary, the only means to survive. We need hearings in Congress that face that history squarely — its impact on both sides of the border.

We have a long history of solidarity with progressive Mexican unions in our own labor movement. That’s a big part of the answer to the problems of NAFTA and free trade that we’ve always advocated. Our unions on each side need to support each other, so that we can lift up workers regardless of the location of their factories.

We also want an end to military intervention, to military aid to right-wing governments, and to U.S. support for the repression of the movements fighting for change.

U.S. companies have been investing in Mexico since the late 1800s. They are not simply going to abandon their investment in Mexico, and the U.S. government is not going to abandon its effort to control the Mexican economy because wages rise. The key elements in how we fight against what this means for workers on both sides of the border is unity and coordinated action.

In both countries copper miners have been on strike against the Mexican conglomerate Grupo Mexico in the last decade. Their unions see solidarity as the answer. So do the United Electrical Workers and the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, and my union, Communications Workers of America, with the Sindicato de Telefonistas de la República Mexicana, and others.

If you think this isn’t possible or just a dream, remember that a decade after Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. (That same year, Congress put the family preference immigration system into law — the only pro-immigrant legislation we’ve had for 100 years.)

That was no gift. A civil rights movement made Congress pass that law. When that law was passed we had no detention centers like the ones that imprison migrants today. There were no walls on our border with Mexico, and no one died crossing it. There is nothing permanent or unchangeable about these institutions of oppression. We have changed our world before, and a people’s movement can do it again.

MORE THAN A WALL / MAS QUE UN MURO

More Than a Wall / Mas que Un Muro explores the many aspects of the border region through photographs taken by David Bacon over a period of 30 years. These photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the social movements in border communities, factories and fields. This bilingual book provides a reality check, to allow us to see the border region as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and equality, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other. - Gaspar Rivera-Salgado

David Bacon has given us, through his beautiful portraits, the plight of the American migrant worker, and the fierce spirit of those who provide and bring to us comfort and sustenance. -- Lila Downs

MORE THAN A WALL / MAS QUE UN MURO

- a book of photographs by David Bacon and oral histories created during 30 years of covering the people and social movements of the Mexico/U.S. border

- a complex, richly textured documentation of a world in newspaper headlines daily, but whose reality, as it's lived by border residents, is virtually invisible.

- 440 pages

- 354 duotone black-and-white photographs

- a dozen oral histories

-  incisive journalism and analysis by David Bacon, Don Bartletti, Luis Escala, Guillermo Alonso and Alberto del Castillo.

- completely bilingual in English and Spanish

- published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the Werner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford University

Price:  $35 plus postage and handling

To order, click here:  

https://david-bacon-photography.square.site/product/more-than-a-wall-mas-que-un-muro/1?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

"The "border" is just a line. It's the people who matter - their relationships with or without or across that line. The book helps us feel the impact of the border on people living there, and helps us figure out how we talk to each other about it. The germ of the discussion are these wonderful and eye-opening pictures, and the voices that help us understand what these pictures mean." - JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund 

U.S. Census Bureau reports "Latinos Rise to Record-High 18.9% of U.S. Population"

Here are informative statistics out of the U.S. Census Bureau, showing a marked increase of the U.S. Latino population which, as we know, is highly diverse. Not shown here, but other data show that Mexican-origin people are just above 60 percent of all Latinos/Hispanics. As addressed more fully in a recent post to this blog, what it means to be "Latino," "Latina" or "Latinx" is a social construction, accounting for why we don't all vote the same and why pan-ethnic "Latina/o" or "Latinx" identities might be more salient in some places and times than in other places and times. 

To be sure, there is a lot of richness and complexity to what we might call the "Latino experience." Thanks to Dr. Victor Saenz for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

Latinos Rise to Record-High 18.9% of U.S. Population

by Alyssa Gonzales July 19, 2022

---

The U.S. Latino population has risen to 62,647,044, representing 18.9% of the nation’s population, according to new Census Bureau estimates.

The number of Latinos in the U.S. grew by 767,907 from 2020 to 2021, an increase of 1.2%, according to the newest data.

Here is everything you need to know.

What Defines “Hispanic Origin” on the Census?

Individuals filling out the Census can choose between two ethnicities, “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not Hispanic or Latino”

What defines being “Hispanic or Latino” when filling out the Census?

According to the Census website, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines “Hispanic or Latino” as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.

The Census Bureau has conducted content tests to improve the design and function of different questions on race and ethnicity since the 1970s.

With the growth in diversity and population, individuals may find the ethnic categories confusing or wish to see their specific on the census questionnaire.

Census research showed that, over time, an increasing number of people do not identify with any of the official OMB race categories, contributing to a rise in respondents who are racially classified as “Some Other Race” (SOR).

The Census website reports, “This was primarily due to reporting by Hispanics, who make up the overwhelming majority of those classified as SOR, not identifying with any of the OMB race categories.”

The Census Bureau has continued to conduct research and outreach regarding race and ethnicity. Read more about the usage of the terms Latinx, Latino, and Hispanic.

How Fast is the Latino Population Growing?

The Latino population continues to grow rapidly.

In 2010, Latinos accounted for 16% of the U.S. population.

Latinos reached 18.5% of the U.S. population in 2019, and they have now reached 18.9% as of 2021, according to the new Census Bureau data.

“Hispanic (of any race) was the largest gaining and second-fastest-growing race or Hispanic origin category, increasing by 767,907 or 1.24% [from 2020 to 2021],” according to the data.

The Hispanic origin category increased by 1.54% in the 12-month period between 2020 and 2021.

Of the current 62,647,044 U.S. Latinos, there are 31,716,199 Latino males (50.6%) and 30,930,845 Latina females (49.4%).

Where Is the Latino Population Rising or Falling?

The states of California, Florida, and Texas continue to have the biggest Latino populations, but other states have seen growth as well.

Maine and Montana were the fastest-growing states for Latinos, both at a 5.4% rate.

Only two areas experienced declines in Latino population, including New York with a 1.1% decrease and the District of Columbia 2.5% decrease.

The median Latino population for counties in 2021 was 1,217 people. Los Angeles County had the largest Latino county population at 4,824,989 people, followed by Harris County, Texas (2,097,602) and Miami-Dade County, Florida (1,838,864).

California saw the largest Latino population with a total of 15,754,605.

What is the Median Age of U.S. Latinos?

The Census Bureau also reported that the “median age for most states also increased from 2020 to 2021, indicating their populations are getting older overall.”

2021 Census Population Estimates show that the national median age has increased by 3.4 years, with the largest single-year gain of 0.3 years coming in 2021, bringing it to 38.8 years.

While Latinos are much younger than the national median age, the median age of Latinos increased from 30.2 in 2020 to 30.5 in 2021. This is older than the median age of Latinos in 2010 (27.3 years).

Why Is Latino Health Important?

The rapid growth of the Latino population means the nation’s future health depends on it.

Yet Latinos face vast health inequities that contribute to health disparities in cancer, Alzheimer’s, COVID-19, and other health conditions.

Inequities include:

• Access to healthy food and food insecurity.
• Health discrimination and
• Wage gaps and workforce discrimination.
• Housing, transportation, and green spaces.
• Access to healthcare and clinical trials.

Systemic change is needed to address the inequities to achieve health equity, where Latinos and all people have a fair, just opportunity to be their healthiest.

How Can You Improve Health Equity for U.S. Latinos? 

You can speak up for Latino health in your community.

Enter your county name to receive a Salud America! Health Equity Report Card.

The report card serves as a data dashboard tool that auto-generates Latino-focused and local data with interactive maps and comparative gauges.

This can help you visualize and explore health-related factors in your area compared to your county to the rest of the state and the nation.

The data from the report card can help start or support a conversation about solutions to inequities that impact your community! Share it with local leaders and on social media!

Get your Health Equity Report Card!

Texas House of Representatives July 17, 2022 Report on the Uvalde School Shooting: Read all 77 pages

 Friends,

Here is a reference, a report on what happened in Uvalde that you can read in its entirety here. 

The report was authored by Rep. Dustin Burrows, Chair, Rep. Joe Moody Vice-Chair, and the Honorable Eva Guzman, Public Member.

I was surprised to learn that the gunman, who previously attended Robb Elementary, entered the very fourth-grade classroom where he was once a student himself. He so needed help and assistance that he apparently never received.

Angela Valenzuela

Uvalde school shooting report: Read all 77 pages

After a Texas school shooting, conservatives blamed ‘woke’ programs once approved by Republicans

This ongoing story out of the Mansfield Independent School District located south of Fort Worth, Texas, illustrates the nonsense involved in the fight against this community's very legitimate fears of school violence. It manifests as a conservative backlash against socioemotional learning (SEL)—motivated by a political action committee—that Republicans once supported as a response to mass shootings.

As stated herein, back in 2018, this was not at all "a liberal takeover of the suburban school system, but [was established] at the urging of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration." It was a reform that gave the appearance of responsiveness to school violence without having to legislate on gun reform.  

And now, this much-needed reform of SEL in our schools is getting viewed as an entry point to allegedly harmful, "woke" ideologies that, apparently, some of these Mansfield parents fear even more than guns.

If these parents really understood both SEL and Critical Race Theory (CRT), they would understand the extremism of their own views. Not only is CRT NOT taught in our schools, but if it were, it would work positively to deflate and minimize inter- and intra-personal conflict because of the intellectual understandings and tools it would provide. It helps students to have an educated analysis of power dynamics in society, and how they can exercise their own agency to help make the world a better place. 

I should know. I teach CRT and students' main reaction over many years of teaching it is feeling like they've been denied this knowledge. Pretty much without exception, students tell me that they wonder why they have to go to college to first learn this when it could have been ever so helpful earlier on in their lives. Teachers are the quickest to make such statements and how they could have been better teachers had they learned these things earlier.

The best part of this piece is learning about the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Texas. A cursory look at their website speaks volumes of how SEL can and should be beneficial to all.

Trauma and Grief Resources

Trauma Toolkit for Educators (from ReThinkEd)

How Children Cope With Ongoing Threat and Trauma: The BASIC Ph Model 

(from NASP) 

Addressing Grief: Brief Facts and Tips (from NASP)

Addressing Grief: Tips for Teachers and Administrators (from NASP)

Recommended Books for Children Coping With Loss or Trauma (from NASP)

Trauma: Brief Facts and Tips (from NASP)

School Safety and Crisis (from NASP)  

All of this is so unfortunate. In a societal context where so many, including children, have experienced so much loss and tragedy, may Mansfield ISD be a testament to how outsized racial fears can impede much-needed, life-saving policies and practices. I hope that parents and school board members are able to better effectively and intelligently anticipate and challenge the work of political action committees that seek little more than to sow fear and division.

-Angela Valenzuela

After a Texas school shooting, conservatives blamed ‘woke’ programs once approved by Republicans 

In 2018, GOP politicians promoted social and emotional education as a tool to stop mass shootings. Now some conservative activists are arguing those programs are not a solution to school violence, but a cause.

This spring, thousands of residents in the Mansfield Independent School District received political mailers that blamed a recent school shooting on “woke” school policies, inflaming partisan divides ahead of a heated school board election.Illustration by NBC News; Zerb Mellish; NYT via Redux; AP

July 18, 2022, 7:00 AM CDT / Updated July 18, 2022, 2:07 PM CDT

By Mike Hixenbaugh

ARLINGTON, Texas — In October, after a student opened fire at Timberview High School in North Texas, wounding two classmates and a teacher, parents in the Mansfield Independent School District initially rallied together, praying publicly for the victims and praising officials for reacting quickly to prevent a worse tragedy.

But six months later, a different narrative began to spread through this suburban Dallas school district, one that put the blame for the shooting on a new district approach to disciplining students. It started with political mailers sent to thousands of homes.

“MISD put ‘woke’ politics over the safety of our children,” the flyers read in all caps, above a news clipping about the Timberview shooting, which reportedly resulted from a fight between two Black students. The flyers, paid for by a conservative political action committee, warned that the Mansfield school district had “stopped disciplining students” based on “Critical Race Theory principles.” As a result, it said, “kids were nearly killed.”

But the Mansfield mailer omitted a key detail: Some of the local school policies that it was attacking were initially implemented three years ago, not as part of a liberal takeover of the suburban school system, but at the urging of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration.

The mailers reflected a growing belief among some conservative parents, both in Mansfield and nationally, that school programs meant to address students’ emotional well-being have become vehicles for indoctrinating children with progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality. The flyers, sent in mid-April ahead of a school board election, also previewed how some prominent Republicans would respond one month later after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — making a visceral connection between anti-racism initiatives in schools and parental fears about the physical safety of their children.

The fight in Mansfield reveals how quickly conservative messaging has evolved when it comes to hot-button debates over education, racism and school violence. 

In the wake of school shootings in Texas and Florida in 2018, many Republican leaders, including Abbott, enthusiastically endorsed efforts to expand school-based social emotional learning programs, which they viewed as a way to prevent mass shootings without taking action on gun reform. Pointing to reams of academic studies, advocates say these teaching and disciplinary approaches help students cope with adversity while steering them away from violence.

Since last year, however, those educational concepts have been swept up in a movement to rid schools of initiatives meant to address racism and inequity — a conservative backlash that experts say is now threatening the very programs that Republicans once presented as a solution to school violence. 

Since last year, however, those educational concepts have been swept up in a movement to rid schools of initiatives meant to address racism and inequity — a conservative backlash that experts say is now threatening the very programs that Republicans once presented as a solution to school violence.

The flyers were paid for by a conservative political action committee.Zerb Mellish for NBC News

Far-right groups and grassroots parents have attacked social emotional learning — and related practices such as restorative discipline, which focuses on character development rather than punishment alone — as a “Trojan horse” for critical race theory, an academic study of racism that some on the right have used to label lessons on racism and gender that they find objectionable.

Conservative activists have seized on the fact that some social emotional learning programs encourage children to celebrate diversity, sometimes introducing students to conversations about race, gender and sexuality. And opponents take issue with one of the underlying goals of such initiatives: to reduce racial disparities in school disciplinary outcomes.

As a result, some Republican lawmakers who previously supported social emotional learning have soured on the concept. Several GOP-controlled state legislatures have considered bills to ban social emotional learning from schools. And many of the Republican proposals for stopping mass shootings following the massacre in Uvalde have instead focused on empowering schools and police to crack down harder on students who show signs of violence.

“It’s sort of ironic that these groups are throwing social emotional learning under the bus when these are the very things that our kids need now, and they need them now more than ever before,” said Donna Lord Black, who leads the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Texas, a nonpartisan group that advocates for these programs in schools. 

The result of this sudden partisan reversal: Education experts say one of the few bipartisan solutions to school violence has been reduced to another culture war talking point — one with the emotional power to potentially turn out voters while driving a deeper wedge between them.

In Mansfield — a quickly diversifying suburban school district that encompasses some areas that are majority Black, and some areas that are majority white — the political mailers blaming the Timberview shooting on “woke” school policies stirred intense feelings among residents.

The flyers included an image of a white child cowering in a school hallway under the words, “Restore safety. Restore sanity. It’s time for a new school board."

VanDella Menifee believes the flyers were meant to divide the community. Zerb Mellish for NBC News

VanDella Menifee, the mother of a Black student who was at Timberview on the day of the shooting, said the mailers incorrectly implied the district had stopped disciplining non-white children at a high school where three-quarters of the students are Black or Latino.

“I believe those flyers were designed to play to parents’ fears and to divide this community,” Menifee said.

Mindy Stonecipher, a white mom who has criticized Mansfield’s social emotional learning and disciplinary policies, said she shared Menifee’s concerns about the political mailer, which she called “extreme.”

But Stonecipher, who leads a group of concerned parents called Voices for Mansfield, said she agrees with the flyer’s underlying point. She argues that Mansfield’s embrace of social emotional learning has tied up educators with new responsibilities and left some feeling powerless to discipline unruly students — ultimately, making classrooms less safe. 

“This is a giant social experiment,” Stonecipher said. “And the public school system is the lab."

‘A pathway to hope’

The shooting at Timberview High School on Oct. 6 started with a fight between two students, according to police and video of the classroom brawl later posted on social media. After a teacher broke up the altercation, witnesses told police that one of the students, an 18-year-old senior, walked over to a backpack, pulled out a handgun and opened fire.

A teacher and two students were wounded; no one was killed. One of the teens spent two weeks in the hospital recovering. The accused shooter was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

At a town hall meeting two weeks later, Bruno Dias, the school district’s director of safety, security and threat management, gave a presentation outlining Mansfield’s efforts to prevent classroom violence. That included a threat assessment and social emotional learning program implemented under a 2019 Texas law that was passed with broad bipartisan support and signed by Abbott following a mass shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston.

“It is a requirement, it is a mandate, and we are excelling at it,” Dias said of the program. “It is important to note that we’ve been able, in multiple cases, to turn what could have become a pathway to violence as it relates to students into a pathway to hope because of this threat assessment process."

Volunteers pray with crosses to memorialize the victims of a mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas on May 21, 2018.Scott Olson / Getty Images file

Under the program, a team of educators, administrators and counselors are tasked with assessing threatening or self-destructive student behavior and, when appropriate, providing resources to help them cope with underlying issues — such as mental health struggles, instability at home or food insecurity — instead of simply doling out punishment.

Conservative opponents of social emotional learning say those ideas sound good on paper, but they worry that applying these approaches to discipline means that schools will stop holding students accountable when they misbehave. Adding fuel to those fears: School districts often struggle to articulate exactly how these academic philosophies work in practice. 

NBC News asked to speak with Mansfield administrators to learn how the school system’s social emotional learning efforts work, both in terms of education and discipline, but the district declined. In a written response to questions, district spokesperson Donald Williams denied that Mansfield had stopped disciplining students under the programs.

“Students who violate the student code of conduct face disciplinary consequences,” Williams wrote. “Restorative practices (i.e. writing a letter of apology, community service, etc.) may be implemented as part of that process.”

Little is known publicly about the events that led up to the Timberview shooting, including whether any of the students involved in the fight had previously been disciplined or counseled as part of the district’s social emotional learning programs.

But that didn’t stop a conservative political action committee from tying those issues together ahead of school board elections this spring.

Patriot Mobile Action, a PAC run by a Texas-based cellphone company that markets its products to Christian conservatives, spent more than $400,000 backing 11 school board candidates in the suburbs surrounding Fort Worth who the group said would “protect our children” and “keep critical race theory out of our classrooms.” That included four candidates running for the Mansfield school board: Craig Tipping, Keziah Valdes Farrar, Bianca Benavides Anderson and Courtney Lackey Wilson.

All four candidates were pictured and named on the back of the Patriot Mobile flyer that blamed the Timberview shooting on district disciplinary policies, along with the words: “Give our kids a safe education, not a ‘woke’ education.”

Patriot Mobile Action and the four board candidates did not respond to interview requests. 

All four went on to win seats on the seven-member Mansfield school board this spring, giving them a majority.

Seth Garza and his daughter, Lilly, pause at a memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults killed during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.Brandon Bell / Getty Images file

‘Our kids will pay the price’

The tactic of tying anti-racism and emotional education programs to school violence was echoed in the reactions of some national conservative figures to the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, which killed 19 students and two teachers. 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, blamed the shooting on critical race theory, “wokeness” and a failure to teach values in schools. That same week, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that schools should get rid of “gender studies or critical race theory ‘teachers’” and replace them with armed guards.

The political shift can also be seen in school safety proposals from some Texas Republicans since Uvalde. Rather than prioritizing school-based programs to support the emotional needs of troubled students, as was the case in 2018, some Republican lawmakers in Texas have argued that the state should focus on implementing harsher disciplinary policies.

“I’m going to make a statement that’s gonna get me hate mail,” state Sen. Charles Perry, a Republican from Lubbock, said during a recent legislative hearing focused on the Uvalde shooting. “Not all kids belong in the classroom anymore.”

And at a news conference at the Texas GOP Convention last month, state Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican from the Houston region, suggested that what happened in Uvalde might have been prevented if not for school disciplinary policies that he said have been pushed by the “woke left” — including a Texas law passed with bipartisan support in 2013 and signed by former Gov. Rick Perry that limits the ability of school police officers to issue criminal citations to students.

Flanked by teachers and parents who say restorative disciplinary initiatives have made their schools less safe, Toth said he plans to introduce a bill that would appoint a committee composed of educators, prosecutors and local law enforcement officials to review reports of student misconduct. That way, he said, authorities will have an opportunity to identify patterns of dangerous behavior before it’s too late.

“Look, I don’t want to see a kid go to jail for being caught with some pot,” Toth said in an interview. “I don’t want to see a kid go to jail because he gets into a fight with another kid. That’s clearly not the intent here. But if you’ve got a kid that is violent and is consistently violent, and they’ve been violent towards other children and teachers, then we either have to reach that kid or we have to remove that kid. They shouldn’t be in the classroom. Period.”

It’s not clear whether school disciplinary practices were a factor in the shooting in Uvalde. The Texas Education Agency announced in June that it is reviewing “every aspect” of the 18-year-old gunman’s educational history, looking for signs of misconduct and missed opportunities to intervene.

Last month, Abbott and other state leaders announced that they had reallocated about $100 million to improve school safety in response to the shooting. About half of the money was set aside to equip school police officers with bullet-resistant shields. The second-largest expenditure, about $17 million, is for school districts to buy silent panic alert technology to notify law enforcement during emergencies.

Another $10 million was set aside to increase teen access to mental health services in schools and expand a rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders.

“The State of Texas is acting swiftly to ensure our schools are secure and that children, teachers, and families across Texas have the support and resources they need to be safe as we work to prevent future tragedies like the heinous crime committed in Uvalde,” Abbott said in a statement. 

His office did not respond to questions about whether the governor continues to support social emotional learning as part of the solution to school violence. 

Judge Angela Downes, chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Gun Violence, said she’s disturbed that one of the few bipartisan approaches to addressing school safety in recent years has become so politicized.

Downes has been an outspoken advocate for social emotional learning and restorative disciplinary practices, both in her work with the bar association and while dealing with juvenile defendants as a municipal judge in a North Texas town. 

“What I found is that kids really did not have coping mechanisms or tools in order to navigate some of the things that were happening in their lives,” Downes said. “And so I really saw as a judge that social emotional learning, whether it’s in an educational setting or in the community, could provide some tools to help them deal with challenges and adversity in a healthy way.”

Her support isn’t based only on firsthand observations. Downes noted that dozens of academic studies have found that social emotional learning programs have resulted in better academic outcomes and lower rates of student misconduct. 

Despite the evidence, she worries that state officials in Texas and elsewhere might roll back social emotional learning requirements, or that local school districts will eliminate or water down their programs. 

“Our kids will pay the price,” she said.

‘Fearmongering at its worst’

Karen Marcucci, Mansfield’s school board president from 2018 until 2020, said she was outraged when she found the Patriot Mobile flyer in her mailbox. For years, Marcucci, a lifelong Republican, said she and her fellow board members had overseen efforts to improve educational and disciplinary outcomes for students from all backgrounds.

Social emotional learning and restorative discipline were important components of that work, she said. Those programs, she said, were designed and implemented with input from parents and community members.

"It makes me angry," former Mansfield school board president Karen Marcucci said of the mailer that blamed the Timberview shooting on school disciplinary policies.Zerb Mellish for NBC News

Marcucci stepped down from the school board in May, deciding not to run for re-election after nearly 10 years on the board. She noted that Patriot Mobile Action is based in Grapevine and has close ties to conservative activists in Southlake — two nearby cities with no direct connection to Mansfield schools.

“The people that are making these allegations aren’t part of our community,” said Marcucci, whose daughter attends classes at Timberview. “All they tried to do was try to incite people and make them anxious and angry. It was fearmongering at its worst.”

Without mentioning the PAC or the mailer, Mansfield administrators addressed the controversy at a school board meeting last month.

During a presentation about disciplinary outcomes, David Wright, Mansfield’s assistant superintendent of student services, acknowledged that the district had heard criticism of its restorative disciplinary practices. 

But he denied that administrators had stopped disciplining students, noting that the district had issued more out-of-school suspensions in 2021 than in 2018.

“It’s about healing, it’s about justice, it’s about redemption,” Wright said, referring to the district’s efforts with social emotional learning. “What it’s not about is, it’s not in place of discipline. It’s not a substitute. It’s not an either-or — it’s both, really.”

Stonecipher, the mom who has spoken out against social emotional learning programs, said she doesn’t know anyone who disagrees with those goals.

“On the surface, it teaches the students to take responsibility for treating others with respect, empathy and compassion,” Stonecipher said. “Many of us would not argue these points."

Mindy Stonecipher, a mom who has criticized Mansfield's social emotional learning and disciplinary policies, also shared concerns about the Patriot Mobile mailer but agreed with its underlying argument.Zerb Mellish for NBC News

But in practice, Stonecipher said, she believes that Mansfied’s social emotional learning programs have become a vehicle for liberal ideas and that the initiative is taking up time that would be better spent teaching children the basics of math, science and reading. 

She said her group has heard from current and recently retired Mansfield teachers who say the initiatives have added to their workload and left them at times afraid to discipline students for unruly behavior — ultimately leaving classrooms less safe.

“Many of them don’t want to teach the social emotional learning lessons,” Stonecipher said. “And they know this sort of discipline is not working. The teachers know that, and I think we have to listen to the teachers.”

Marcucci said she’s also heard feedback from school employees — though like the current teachers who spoke to Stonecipher, Marcucci said none were willing to speak to a reporter because of the tense political climate at Mansfield. Teachers and counselors have told her that social emotional learning does require more work, Marcucci said, but that ultimately it leads to better outcomes for students.

Now she worries that those programs could be rolled back under the new school board.

“It makes me angry,” Marcucci said. “The district shouldn’t be done with the work in this area, because there’s still a lot more work to do.”

CORRECTION (July 18, 2022, 3:07 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated when Karen Marcucci’s term as president of the Mansfield school board ended. She was president from 2018 to 2020, not 2018 to 2022.