Does Protest Matter? Remembering the Student Takeover of the TUSD Board in Defense of Mexican American Studies and Liberation through Literacy, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Does Protest Matter? Remembering the Student Takeover of the TUSD Board in Defense of Mexican American Studies and Liberation through Literacy

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

October 5, 2026

I came across this remarkable video again thanks to my colleague, Arizona State University professor Dr. Carrie Sampson, who shared it as a reminder of the courage of Tucson students fighting to save their Mexican American Studies program. It is worth watching, especially now.

On April 26, 2011, students with UNIDOS—United Non-Discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our Studies—took over a Tucson Unified School District board meeting. They occupied the board members’ seats and chained themselves to the dais in an effort to stop a vote threatening their Mexican American Studies program. These were young people who understood very clearly what was at stake. They understood that what they had learned was precious—not only for themselves, but for future TUSD students and generations yet to come. Adults in positions of authority were making decisions about their education, their history, and their identities, and the students refused simply to sit quietly and watch it happen.

What stays with me as I watch the video is that, for a moment, these students actually took power. They disrupted the usual choreography of institutional authority, where officials sit above and the public sits below, where officials speak and students listen, and where adults deliberate while young people live with the consequences. The Tucson students turned that arrangement upside down by occupying the very seats from which power was exercised. There is something deeply democratic about that image. It reminds us that authority is never entirely beyond challenge.

It also makes me think about the late historian and Chicano Studies scholar Rodolfo Acuña’s (2012) powerful reflection on the purpose of Chicano Studies. Writing during the Tucson struggle in 2012, Acuña argued that he never understood the field primarily as an academic exercise or simply as a collection of disciplines. For him, its purpose was pedagogical: “to liberate students through literacy.” 

Drawing on Paulo Freire and a longer tradition linking literacy to citizenship, Acuña understood education as something that should enable students to read not only words, but the world around them—to understand their circumstances, develop a sense of themselves, and participate in transforming the conditions shaping their lives.

Seen through Acuña’s lens, the Tucson students’ actions were not separate from their education. They were one of its most powerful expressions. These young people had learned to read power. They could recognize what was happening institutionally, understand what was being taken from them, organize collectively, and act. Acuña himself described the Tucson Mexican American Studies teachers in Freirean terms, recalling that the word that came to mind when he encountered their work was “praxis”—the joining of reflection and action. The students occupying the boardroom were, in a profound sense, putting that praxis into practice.

Of course, we know what happened afterward. Their protest did not immediately save Mexican American Studies. Under tremendous pressure from the state of Arizona, Tucson Unified eventually dismantled the program in 2012. One could therefore ask whether the protest mattered at all, but that is too narrow a way to measure resistance. Protest is not only about whether a vote changes that day or whether an institution immediately reverses course. It also establishes a public record of dissent.

The Tucson students made certain that nobody could later claim that Mexican American Studies disappeared quietly or with the consent of those most affected. Their presence, their organizing, their walkouts, and even their bodies chained to the dais became part of the historical record. They made clear that they saw what was happening, that they objected, and that they refused to go along.

That matters because silence can so easily be rewritten as acquiescence. Over time, deeply contested decisions can come to look inevitable, even ordinary. Protest prevents that erasure. It leaves behind testimony, images, organizations, legal claims, scholarship, memories, and political language that others can later take up.

That is exactly what happened in Tucson. The struggle continued through community organizing, scholarship, teaching, activism, and eventually litigation. In 2017, a federal court found that Arizona officials had acted with discriminatory intent and racial animus in targeting Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program, violating students’ constitutional rights. The students’ protest was not the sole cause of that later outcome, of course, but it became part of a much larger record of resistance that refused to let the story end with the program’s dismantling.

This is why the Tucson example feels so important today. Students, faculty, teachers, parents, and communities continue to confront decisions about curriculum, academic freedom, books, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, diversity, and who ultimately has authority over knowledge in our public institutions, from K–12 schools to colleges and universities. 

Acuña helps us see that these struggles are about more than preserving particular courses or programs. They are also about what education is for. Is it primarily about producing conformity, or should it help young people become thoughtful, critically literate participants in democratic life? Acuña’s answer was clear: education should give students the capacity to understand themselves and their world—and to act upon that understanding.

Sometimes we protest because we hope to stop something immediately. At other times, the significance of protest becomes visible only later, when others inherit the record that was created, become inspired by it, and fashion new ways to build upon it.

The young people of Tucson left such a record. They made it impossible to say that everyone simply “went along to get along.” Their resistance became one part of a longer struggle, showing how an act of opposition can contribute to organizing, scholarship, litigation, and future movements.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson here. We cannot always know in advance what an act of resistance will accomplish. But when people publicly refuse injustice, they prevent power from telling the whole story. They leave something behind for those who come next. They contribute to an unfolding archive of resistance.

And Acuña helps us see something else: these students were not simply defending Mexican American Studies. In their courage, their critical understanding, and their willingness to act, they were showing us what Mexican American Studies had already given them: a critical consciousness and a hope for a better, more inclusive world—one open not only to diverse viewpoints, but also to different histories, forms of knowledge, cultural experiences, and ways of imagining our shared future. In that sense, their protest was itself evidence of the liberatory education they were fighting to preserve.

Many thanks to Dr. Carrie Sampson for sharing this video and reminding us of the courageous stand these young people took.

So, does protest matter? It absolutely does. Their protest mattered, and it still does.

#GrassRootsDemocracy #SaveEthnicStudies #SaveMexicanAmericanStudies

Reference

Acuña, R. (2012, June 13). The purpose of Chicano Studies was “to liberate students through literacy,” LatinaLista. https://latinalista.com/rodolfo-f-acuna-the-purpose-of-chicano-studies-was-to-liberate-students-through-literacy/