MEChA Press Conference and Action: Ethnic Studies - Anniversary of East LA Walkouts

PRESS RELEASE

WHO:      Movimiento Estudiantíl Chicanx de Aztlan (M.E.Ch.A.)

WHAT:    Press Conference & Action re: Ethnic Studies on Anniversary of East LA Walkouts

WHERE: SE Corner of Campbell & Central Ave (in front of PUHSD Offices), Phoenix

WHEN:   Thursday, March 7, 5 pm

WHY:     To demand M.E.Ch.A.’s full inclusion in PUHSD’s Ethnic Studies development

CONTACT: Rafael Reyes (480/518-5500)

On March 6, 1968, students from East LA high schools began walking out of classrooms to demand a better education.  In part, students were asking for Chicano Studies classes to be instituted into the district’s curriculum.  By week’s end, over 20,000 Chicana/o students were part of this mass-mobilization at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. 

It was the different Chicana/o student organizations who facilitated the walkouts, and a year later, regenerated into the birth of M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantíl Chicano de Aztlan/Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan).   

The walkouts were an unqualified success, as evidenced by the countless number of M.E.Ch.A. chapters still active to this day, as well as the numerous Chicano Studies classes, departments, and college degree programs being offered. Of special note was Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program, a nationally-renowned program but since banned due to Arizona’s House Bill 2281 in 2010.  In 2017, a federal judge found that racism was the cause of the Ethnic Studies ban.  

On March 12, 2012, the Nahuacalli Educators Alliance presented a letter to then Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, demanding that the United Nations Preliminary Study on the Doctrine of Discovery be implemented by the Arizona Department of Education into all levels of its services.  This is especially relevant to M.E.Ch.A.’s demands of PUHSD, with the board’s recent adoption of an Indigenous Peoples Day at its October meeting.

Fast forward to March 7, 2019, 51 years after the aforementioned student-led movement, Phoenix Union High School District does not offer Chicano Studies classes, or even broader Ethnic Studies classes. 
 

This is a crisis, in a district with an 84% indigenous student population (81.7% “Hispanic”, 2.4% “Native American”).  This, in a time when research confirms that students who enroll in Ethnic Studies courses out-perform students who don’t, and enroll in post-secondary schooling at a higher rate than their peers. 

Although the district has begun a process to implement Ethnic Studies, it has failed to include M.E.Ch.A. as part of its development.
 

Therefore, on this day, M.E.Ch.A. students, teachers, parents, and community stakeholders will gather in front of the PUHSD’s offices on Thursday, March 7, 2019, to conduct a press conference and rally before attending the PUHSD School Board meeting at 6:30 this same evening.

Both at the press conference and at the school board meeting, M.E.Ch.A. will read a statement that explains and elaborates on our actions and demands.

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In Imiuh Tenamaxtle: Communiqué to Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction J. Huppenthal (March 12, 2012)
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United Nations Preliminary Study on the Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery 
2010 

Ancestral Trade Corridors of the Tolteca