Free Republic

So these TUSD [Tucson Unified School District] students that walked out of class to protest the end of MAS [Mexican American Studies] studies went to an event organized by UNIDOS and UA [University of Arizona] professors. TUSD Superintendent John Pedicone wrote a letter to the head of the UA MAS program, Dr. Tony Estrada, asking him to not have his professors encourage kids to cut class for free food, entertainment and MAS. Link to the letter: http://content.clearchannel.com/cc-common/mlib/667/01/667_1327931624.pdf

Mexico City – The bodies of 26 men were found inside two SUVs and an automobile abandoned on a busy avenue in Guadalajara, one of Mexico's largest cities, prosecutors said Thursday. The vehicles, which had Mexico City tags, were left at an intersection in the Vallarta San Jorge section of Guadalajara, the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, the state Attorney General's office said. Investigators initially said 23 bodies were at the crime scene, but they later found three more inside the vehicles, Jalisco Attorney General Tomas Coronado said. The crime scene is near a supermarket and the...

One of Bill Ayers’ courses at the University of Illinois includes Pedagogy of the Oppressed as required reading. Author Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist, declared: “This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.” It turns out that the Freire book is required reading in “Raza Studies” or Mexican-American courses in the high schools in Tucson, Arizona, where students have been protesting Arizona’s new immigration law. Other required books are Occupied America by Rodolfo Acuña, a professor emeritus of Chicano studies at California State University in Northridge (CSUN), and...

Many readers have responded with sympathetic, er, vigor to my Tuesday posting about Assistant Professor Katynka Z. Martínez. Several of these outraged readers have directed me to the wbsite for SFSU's Raza Studies Department. Prof. Martínez is not toiling away there alone: there are thirteen profs and assistant profs on the faculty. What goes on in a Raza Studies Department? Let them tell us. Roberto [Rivera] is presently finishing a book on Liberation Discourse which examines the semantics of counter-hegemony in the philosophies of Gustavo Gutierrez and Paulo Freire [Prof. Tomas Almaguer] is currently completing work on a book manuscript...