Whistleblower: Family Separation Is 'Recipe For Disaster' | All In | MSNBC

At the 3:38 minute mark, this is a must-listen to whistleblower account  by Antar Davidson, who provides an insider perspective of the  trauma to which the jailed children—some as young as 5 years old—have been subjected.  Excuse me, the kids can't even hug each other?!  And they had to sleep on the floor?!

All of this took place at the Tucson location of Southwest Key.  They have several locations throughout the country, including the Casa Padre location in Brownsville, Texas, at the state's most southern tip.

This is a horrific narrative of "tired, under-trained staff" that purportedly treat these already traumatized children in a verbally abusive manner.

Southwest Key clearly has lacked capacity to address this humanitarian crisis of family separation resulting in the abuse recounted here.

Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman may have the most in-depth interview of Antar Davidson whose agonizing narrative transports the listener inside the facility at the point of contact with three traumatized siblings. 

In this interview, Davidson shares how CEO Juan Sanchez asks staff to contribute from their $15.00 per hour salaries to make up for additional costs that imprisoning kids means for the nonprofit.

Such gall!  Sanchez is a millionaire!  Prior to this, he was already in the "accompanied minors business," taking our hard-earned taxpayer dollars from the federal government's Office of Refugee Settlement to mete out this injustice. Then came Jeff Sessions' "Zero-Tolerance" policy issued on April 6, 2018 that brought—and continues to bring—chaos, anguish, and unspeakable treatment and suffering that has the country in an uproar—except, of course, for Trump's cold, callous base.

As you can read from this story from USA Today titled, Housing immigrant kids is big business for a non-profit paying its CEO nearly $1.5 million, this business is massively, if disgustingly, profitable.

Antar is actually all over the Internet and one learns a little bit more of this dreadful tale from each narration. For example, this piece in Mother Jones titled, "I Worked at a Child Migrant Center. What I Was Told to Do Was So Inhumane That I Quit where he elaborates a bit more on the personal trauma and distress that he experienced.

Juan Sanchez is an Austinite, by the way, and he also runs a charter school here locally by the same name.  Terrible optic.  If I were a parent of a child in his charter school—yet another business that siphons precious tax dollars from the public—I would take them out.

Juan Sanchez likes to think of himself and Southwest Key as the "good guys" in this story.  

This self-serving rationalization might only make sense if we think of evil as on a continuum with him being "less evil" or even a "victim" himself.  Pobrecito!  Poor guy!

Yeah, right.  Rationalize all you want, Juan Sanchez.  Like Antar Davidson, it could have made a massive difference for these children and their families if you yourself would have been a conscientious objector to draconian White House, obviously bigoted and hateful, policy.

I guess you, like Donald and Melania, can sleep well at night.

With parents in anguish...and their children who suffer beyond measure. 

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

Also from yesterday PM in the Los Angeles Times.  Readers, see my earlier posts, including this one where you can read the court decision on your own.

-Angela

Federal judge says Arizona's ban on Mexican American studies is racially discriminatory

Jaweed Kaleem Contact Reporter  

August 22, 2017 9:15PM

A federal judge in Arizona ruled Tuesday that the state’s controversial ban on ethnic studies was motivated by racial discrimination.

The decision from Judge A. Wallace Tashima, a federal appeals court judge sitting in the district court in Arizona, came in a lawsuit brought by students against the state's top education official. It is a major blow to a state law that resulted in the closure of a Mexican American studies program in Tucson.
Proponents of the program have argued that the 2010 law, which in part banned courses designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group, was effectively racist and targeted Mexican Americans and other minority groups.
Tucson dropped its Mexican American studies program in 2012 under threat of losing state funding.

“Both enactment and enforcement were motivated by racial animus,” Tashima wrote in his decision Tuesday. He said that the law violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution by discriminating against Latinos. He also said the law violated students’ 1st Amendment “right to receive information and ideas.”
Arizona’s law in general banned classes promoting “resentment toward a race or class of people.”
It was all the more controversial because it was passed the same year the state passed the widely protested SB 1070 law, which required police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there was “reasonable suspicion” they were not in the U.S. legally.
In his decision, Tashima railed against former Arizona state superintendents of public instruction who pushed to pass the ban, John Huppenthal and Tom Horne.

“Defendants were pursuing these discriminatory ends in order to make political gains. Horne and Huppenthal repeatedly pointed to their efforts against the [Mexican American studies] program in their respective 2011 political campaigns, including in speeches and radio advertisements. The issue was a political boon to the candidates,” the judge wrote.
“Both individuals conveyed an unfounded, yet uniform, distrust of … teachers’ and students’ accounts of what was taking place in [Mexican American studies] classrooms,” he wrote.
A former teacher in the Tucson program, Curtis Acosta, reacted to the ruling on Twitter.
“I just received word from our attorney, Richard Martinez, that we won our case against the state of Arizona. ¡Justicia!” he tweeted.
In an interview, Martinez said he was confident that the ruling meant the law would be dismantled. Martinez said the judge would hold a hearing in the next three weeks to determine how the ruling should be enforced.
Anita Fernandez, director of the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing in Tucson, said Tuesday that she was celebrating the decision.
“We’re very excited by the ruling, specifically that the court was convinced by testimony and evidence [that it] was racial discrimination,” Fernandez said. “Now it is up to the school district to decide what they are going to do.”

A Brief, Post-Trial Reflection on the TUSD Mexican American Studies Court Case

A Brief, Post-Trial Reflection on the TUSD Mexican American Studies Court Case

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

University of Texas at Austin

July 23, 2017

It feels like a long time since I've posted to this blog.  I was quite busy last week with the Mexican American Studies (MAS) court case in the state of Arizona's District Court, either preparing for, or actually serving as an expert witness on, the benefits of Mexican American, and Ethnic Studies, generally, in Acosta et al. v. Huppenthal et al.

Me, Luna Barrington, Nolan Cabrera,
Curtis Acosta, and Bob Chang

Before that, I was at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) teaching a three-hour, two-week course titled Multicultural Education—that I playfully referred to as a "Multicultural Education Boot Camp." 

It was a course for masters and doctoral students and a substantial portion of it involved the court case itself, giving my students a fairly intimate, inside look into what has been going on with Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona since it was dismantled on January 1, 2012. This happened a month after the law took effect that you can read about here.  Just Google it.  There's lots of pertinent stories—on this blog, included.

It was a great experience for my UCB students, I feel, and important do do before the trial.  As a college student once myself, I certainly would have appreciated  a course like this one that gave students a veritable "front-row seat" to a precedent-setting, historic case.

Trial notice (top line) from the Arizona
Federal Court House where
the trial was heard.

Journalist María Camila Montañez, who writes this post-trial piece below, importantly notes that Judge Tashima will rule on this trial in a matter of weeks. Yay!


I am still processing the whole thing so I'm not sure what to say at the moment other than that we shall know in a few weeks, whether the side of justice, due process, and Constitutional rights and protections were won by what truly turned out to be an extraordinary effort by the expert witnesses, witnesses, legal team, and community. 

I'll write more on this later, but for now, kudos to Attorneys Richard Martinez  and Luna Barrington from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in Manhattan, NY, with whom I most closely worked in preparing for this trial. They are exceptional attorneys and great human beings.
The entire team was, of course, truly outstanding!

I was in great company as an expert witness with Yale History Professor Stephen Pitti and University of Arizona Professor Nolan Cabrera. It was interesting to fully grasp the fact that all three of us are not only Mexican American, but also Stanford University Ph.D.s and college professors who only came to know each other as a result of the case.  Stephen and I even over-lapped at Stanford but we somehow didn't get to know each other at the time. There are just so few of us Mexican Americans in academia to begin with, that the universe surely conspired to make this happen.

I was in Tucson Sunday through Thursday of last week.  It was all very intense, as you might imagine.  This is the culmination of a protracted 6-year, or longer, struggle.  So the trial's ending is a much-awaited-for respite for all, at the very least.

There were so many moving, powerful moments throughout such that as grueling as the experience of testifying was, it was all worth it.  I feel even more confident than I ever have, that the work that we do in Ethnic Studies is not only life saving, but it is also just as potentially powerful and transformative for whites as it is for people of color.  And for our youth, it promotes college-going, to boot!

Some day, I hope that what we teach will simply be regarded as "good education," la buena educación.  Regardless of the outcome, I am convinced, we are in the dawning of a new age, a new consciousness that has heretofore existed, unfortunately, only as subjugated forms of knowledge located at the margins of state curriculum, policies, and practice. This historic, legal challenge illuminates the vital importance of educator, student, parent, grandparent, and community advocacy for curricular inclusion like this noble and well-conceived attempt.

For me personally, the whole ordeal was an amazing, truly worthwhile experience.  It was great connecting with my dear friends in Tucson, Dolores, Nanie, Natalie Carrillo with sister Cal State San Francisco State University Professor Teresa Carrillo flying in from San Francisco to attend the trial and provide moral support. It was also special having Drs. Barbara Flores and Esteban Díaz from San Bernardino present.

University of Arizona Dr. Francesca Lopez' work, friendship, and support was vital to the case, as well.  Dr. Cesar Cruz Teolol also regularly attended the trial with his beautiful eight-year-old son, Amaru Agape, who reported regularly on the trial in his "All Power to the Kids News" broadcast on Facebook.  His regular reports, as his father shared, provided much needed, "good medicine," to the entire effort.  What a heart-warming highlight to know that the next generation will keep humanity on track!  You can hear what he said about my testimony here on Facebook.  I was so very impressed with, and humbled by, his report.

I see a traumatized, but resilient community.  I have witnessed admirable strength, commitment, and resolve.  Their main "problem" was unapologetically disavowing bigotry in their pedagogy and curriculum together with challenging all forms of institutionalized oppression—in order for their students to live life confidently and intelligently as skilled agents of change in a democracy.  

This was a rigorous curriculum that helped students see themselves in an affirming way while opening their minds to a world of college-preparatory, intellectually stimulating texts and thought that spoke to their experience while helping them to simultaneously develop a strong, academic self-concept alongside an awareness of their own potentialities.  It helped them to feel part of the American story, nurturing that sense of belonging that is so woefully missing in so much of subtractive, K-12 schooling.

Arizona is the land of my maternal ancestors, my mother and grandmother with roots that go back to the Mexican Revolution and northern Mexico from the towns of Arizpe and Hermosillo, Sonora.  My family lived and worked in the mines of Bisbee and Morenci, where my grandfather worked by day, while working as a minister in a Baptist church in nearby Clifton by night, and on weekends.  My mother was born in Superior, Arizona, located north of Tucson near Apache Junction, where my grandfather also ministered.

My grandmother's grandmother was either Yaqui or Apache. Her name was Jesusita Yepes.  My grandmother graduated from Tucson High School as a fluent, English-Spanish biliterate that served her and her family well for the rest of her life. Our entire family is therefore a beneficiary of the great education that my grandmother received there in the early 1900s.

And Tucson is very much an indigenous space that renders it "contested terrain" even when things are going well—not unlike Texas and so many other places in the U.S. where we constitute little more, unfortunately, than a "demographic threat."  How lame this situation that we as a Latino community frequently find ourselves in, particularly when considering the amazing, indeed breathtaking, opportunities that are foregone with all that our communities and university-level, Ethnic Studies programs, have to offer!

On Friday, closing arguments were delivered and you may access the transcript here [pdf]. We are cautiously optimistic about this, but ultimately, it is Judge Tashima's decision.

Regardless, I will live the rest of my professional career and life with Arizona in my heart and mind. And I could not be more thankful or blessed.

Angela Valenzuela
c/s

#MASTrial #EthnicStudies #MASforTexas

#MASTejas

#decolonize
@NACCSTejasFoco 

The Mexican-American Studies Trial Ends in Arizona: Ruling Expected in Few Weeks

On Friday, the Mexican-American studies (MAS) trial in Tucson concluded without a ruling. U.S district Judge Wallace Tashima will make a decision in the next few weeks on whether the law was intended to discriminate against Latinos.

The 2010 law currently prohibits public schools to include ethnic studies in their curriculum that “promote the overthrow of the United States Government, promote resentment towards a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

This was the second part of the two-week trial.

Former Attorney General Tom Horne testified on Tuesday, maintaining his position to keep the 2010 law that bans the MAS program and hoping it eliminates all ethnic studies at Arizona public schools, according to a story by HuffPost’s Roque Planas.

Horne was one of the authors of the law, along with former Superintendent John Huppenthal, who testified in June during the first part of the trial.

Lawyers defending MAS argued that Horne and Huppenthal specifically targeted the program unlike other ethnic studies.

Former Deputy superintendent Elliott Hibbs also testified on behalf of the state.

During the trial, the state questioned the program and its teaching of Che Guevara, according to witnesses in the courtroom.

Academic expert Dr. Angela Valenzuela, a professor at the University of Texas, testified in support of the MAS program. She spoke about the benefits that the classes bring to students. She mentioned research, showing students who took the MAS program performed better that those who did not.

People from around the country went to Arizona to support advocates of the MAS program.

Dr. Cesar Cruz Teolol drove from Los Angeles with his eight-year old son Amaru. During a phone interview with Latino Rebels, he said that “these programs should be championed. As an educator, it matters that every kid has the opportunity to learn their history and where they come from.”

Judge Tashima did not specify how many weeks it will take to make a final decision on the ban. He will be ruling in the “next few weeks.”

***

María Camila Montañez is a journalism student at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s Spanish-language program. She is originally from Colombia and tweets from @mariacmontanez.

UA Professor of “whiteness” explains research that proves the success of Ethnic Studies in TUSD

The video is worth listening to.  Dr. Nolan Cabrera presents on the "Cabrera Report" that was recently used by the 9th Circuit to note the discrimination embedded in the (un)constitutionality of HB2281, the bill banning Ethnic Studies in Tucson USD.

 -Angela

 VIDEO: UA Professor of “whiteness” explains research that proves the success of Ethnic Studies in TUSD

Posted by Three Sonorans On January 22, 2015 0 Comment

Dr. Nolan Cabrera is a professor at the University of Arizona who studies “whiteness and white racism” in education. He is also the author of the famous “Cabrera Report” which applied advanced statistical methods to analyze the success of students who took Mexican American Studies in TUSD to see if there was any significant increase in standardized test scores compared to the other students.
We begin today’s introduction with what it means to study “whiteness” as a professor.
In a nutshell, according to Cabrera, he studies “the nature of white privilege, how it is maintained (especially within institutions of higher education), and how it can be challenged.”
For the more scholarly of our readers, Cabrera explains:

Whiteness was created to ideologically justify the elevated social position of people of European descent over all others. It maintained that whites were inherently superior beings and therefore entitled to these being at the top of the social hierarchy. Since then, whiteness has been challenged (civil rights movement) and re-articulated as the social norm by which people of all other racial groups are judged while still maintaining the unearned privileges of being white.

Dr. Cabrera was in San Francisco for the Ninth Circuit Federal Court hearing on the constitutionality of HB2281, the bill that banned Ethnic Studies in Tucson. He also attended the Ethnic Studies Now summit at Mission High School before the court hearing and described his study (video below) that proves the effectiveness of Mexican American Studies in closing the achievement gap for Chican@ students.

The study that Dr. Cabrera and his colleagues published was in the prestigious American Education Research Journal and was entitled “Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for All the (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson.”
What is amazing is that not only did MAS students do far better than all other groups of students in TUSD, but there was actually a selection bias where the lowest performing students took these classes. These students did bad their freshman year and did even worse their sophomore year. Then after taking MAS classes they outshone their colleagues on standardized tests, even in math!
Furthermore, the more MAS classes the students took, the higher they scored!
Nolan Cabrera explains his study in the video above, and we include excerpts from the federal court trial that cite some of the statistics.

1. MAS students were 108% more likely to graduate than non-MAS students.
2. MAS students passed the standardized math test 140% more than non-MAS students.
3. The writing test, 162%.
4. The reading test, 168%.

Keep in mind that these students came in with a major academic disadvantage after their sophomore year and became scholars after taking an MAS course, even in their mathematics classes. Even John Huppenthal’s independent study found zero violations of the state law.
So why is Arizona trying to ban classes that finally work in closing the achievement gap for Mexican Americans, and why do they think these young scholars are so dangerous that attempts to ban the classes were put into homeland security bills before become state law?
Perhaps the educated mind of a minority youth in America is the great fear to those in power?