Memorandum to the US Department of Justice

Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001


Dear Sir:

It has come to our attention via reports in the media today that the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be opening up an office of community ombudsman to address issues of concern by the public relevant to the scope of law enforcement policies and operations of the agency.

We were also informed this morning that officials of the Justice Department are meeting with community leaders and organizations to discuss the current status of the US Justice Department Letter of Findings regarding the investigation of the office of the Maricopa County Sheriff, J. Arpaio.

The long march in defense of civil rights for All Peoples which began with the dismantling of discriminatory racial profiling practices that benefit the European American "white" constituencies with ethnic preferences in electoral, educational, economic, and legal systems has many chapters, but it begins with the basic recognition of universal Human Dignity and compassion.

The crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge and the anguish of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965 are significant mileposts in this journey, and must be recalled now to contextualize the actions of yet another Sheriff in yet another state, for as Martin Luther King said after Selma in 1967 and before his assassination in 1968: "We have emerged from the era of Civil Rights to the Era of Human Rights."

Human Rights are inherent.  The United States of North America is a signatory of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  These two facts are realities that must be brought to bear to evaluate the scope of the issues mentioned at the beginning of the memorandum, but there is more.

On September 13, 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  The US was one of four governments that opposed the declaration including the anglophile states of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who as derivatives, represent immigrant sovereignties that are residuals of the colonies of the British Empire.

Governor George Wallace of Alabama and Sheriff Clark of Selma also opposed the tides of justice,  and in the name of the "Rule of Law" committed acts of atrocity and brutality that have left lasting wounds on the visage of the the concept of America as "Land of the Free".

Therefore, in light of the fact that the issues of racial profiling and discriminatory policing that have begun to be addressed in the US Justice Department Letter of Findings regarding the Maricopa County Sheriff's office and the Melendrez vs. Arpaio decision by the US Court of Justice HAVE NOT mentioned the systematic practices of racial profiling against Indigenous Peoples in particular as fundamental to the overall violations of Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Indigenous Rights within the scope of law enforcement operations in Maricopa County:

We now request a meeting on the ground with the representatives of your department to discuss and explore venues to address this ongoing and pervasive pogrom of "ethnic cleansing" under the guise of the "Rule of Law."

Please contact me at your convenience to discuss this proposal.

 Sincerely,


Tupac Enrique Acosta. Yaotachcauh
Tlahtokan Nahuacalli
TONATIERRA

*******

La Familia

Charcoal and Pencil portrait by Joaquín Chiñas

"Stopping Mexicans to make sure they are legal is not racist.  If you have dark skin, you have dark skin! Unfortunately, that is the look of the Mexican illegal."
 
Files of Maricopa County Sheriff J. Arpaio,
quoted on page 28 of US District Court Case 2:07-cv-02513-GMS
Document 494 12/23/11

Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name: Censorship in Tucson

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

                                             

For the past six years or so I have heard constant threats from Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (Canada) and Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal (Indiana) that they were going to ban, destroy and wipe out Mexican American Studies, as well as Occupied America. Now after disregarding a $177,000 report that refutes their charges that the program and the book are racist and un-American, the nativists carry out their threats.  They destroy MAS and snatch the books from on looking students. Their stupidity exposed them, so they now say it wasn’t so.

The problem is that witnesses saw Tucson Unified School District Superintendent John Pedicone’s (Illinois) swaggering thugs “remove” the books from MAS classes as students looked on.

Their cowardly behavior reached new lows when blogger Jeff Biggers wrote that the books had been “banned.” They protested that they were not “banned” but only “removed.”

Let me see if I understand: If the books would have been put on a prohibited list of readings they would have been banned, or better still censored. But, because they were already there and ripped from the sight of students, they were removed.

I have been visiting Tucson for the better part of my life.  I could always understand white folk there, although I did not always agree with them. For example, Barry Goldwater was my ideological opposite, but he had an affinity for Arizona that few of the carpetbaggers such as Pedicone have today.  He knew many of my relatives, and recognized that you better talk the talk.

Not so with the Arizona carpetbaggers (as distinguished from those of the 1860s who had a purpose). This recent bunch has moved there for the sun and the cash. They do not respect the environment, its traditions or the people. Witness the systematic destruction of Mexican American barrios.  What is Old Town Tucson but a pseudo replica of Disney Land?

It is difficult to dumb down language to the level of the locust. So to start with, censorship is thought control.  The First Amendment reads,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances…

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that this freedom was critical to a free society.

What is happening in Tucson is a political act designed to control what students and the community read and think. It is not a question of good taste or what is true or not. It was the intentional use of naked political power to suppress a particular people.

Huppenthal was elected on the platform of "stopping La Raza [the people]."

On May 12, 2010 Horne said, “The bill [HB2281] was written to target the Chicano, or Mexican American, studies program in the Tucson school system.”  According to the Los Angeles Times, “He singled out one history book used in some classes, ‘Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,’ by Rodolfo Acuna, a professor and founder of the Chicano studies program at Cal State Northridge.”

Horne continued, "To begin with, the title of the book implies to the kids that they live in occupied America, or occupied Mexico." Horne’s language was pretty clear. He did not say remove but targeted the book and MAS.

As with Horne, others have labeled the book Marxist.  A prominent scholar of European history labeled Occupied America, a Marxist book. When pressed on what he based this assumption, he fumbled around and finally said in a deposition that I used the term “hegemony” several times in the text.

In Horne’s case, he did not like the title because, according to him, it “implies” that the United States invaded Mexico – a historical fact. Evidentially, Horne has not read the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant or Abraham Lincoln’s take on the war.

The truth be told, Occupied America does not refer to occupied Mexico; it refers to occupied America. If Horne had a grasp of Latin American history or geography, he would know that Argentines, Peruvians, Cubans, Central Americans and Mexicans are Americans. Indeed, U.S. secretaries of state have exploited the notion of Pan Americanism for economic advantage. Thus the occupation began in 1492 not 1836 or 1848.

The touted Cambium Audit, which Horne’s successor Huppenthal ordered and the citizens of Arizona paid for, said,

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos is an unbiased, factual textbook designed to accommodate the growing number of Mexican-Americans or Chicano History courses. It is the most comprehensive text in this market according to Amazon. The Fifth Edition of Occupied America has been revised to make the text more user-friendly and student-oriented., while maintain its passionate voice. This text provides a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the major historical experiences of Chicanos that invokes critical thinking and intellectual discussion.

The curriculum auditing team refutes the following allegations made by other individuals and organizations. Quotes have been taken out of context. Therefore, the ‘controversial’ aspects are indicated in italics to demonstrate the claims made by concerned constituents.

Thus the nativists’ hypocrisy gives opportunism a bad name. They care nothing about the truth, they care nothing about Latino students, what they care about is controlling thought by “removing” books and killing a highly successful program.

They want to specifically suppress the thought of Latinos. The reason that they have not targeted Native, African and Asian Americans is that these groups are smaller and consequently more manageable.  Latino public school students comprise 43 percent of the public schools, and they want to genetically engineer them.

Everyone in this country should be concerned about the removing or banning of books. They are euphemisms for censorship.  What happened in Tucson constitutes an attack and constraint on everyone’s freedom.

The locust have a history of trying to control Mexican American Studies through prior restraint. When this did not work, they demolished the program and banned the books. This banning will have a chilling effect on the publication of future books. Usually, there is the opportunity to dispute the charge in court. This has not happened in Arizona – there was no trial.

Aside from Occupied America,  Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez,  Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales.   Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, more than a dozen other books have been banned.

   

The charges of censorship have shaken the administration. After acting brazenly they are drawing the distinction between “banned” and “removed.” However, the record is the record. The banning of the books did not occur in a vacuum.

I have personally never experienced this level of hypocrisy in over fifty years of activism. It seems as if the locust and I do not speak the same language. It is also frustrating because up to now no one seemed to be listening. How do you deal with people who lie with such impunity?

As for me, it is a badge of honor to appear on the same list as the other banned authors. But what I resent is the draft dodgers, Pedicone, Horne and Huppenthal questioning my patriotism. I volunteered draft during the Korean War although I had a student draft deferment.  They should check the records; they will learn that Mexican Americans served at a much higher ratio than any group in Tucson.

So my advice to them is not be so be opportunistic and hypocritical. The Tucson cabal is giving these words a bad name. Horne said that 2281 targeted Mexicans and specified which books it was going to get rid of.  Huppenthal has not listened to facts and pressured the TUSD to ban MAS and the books. As for Pedicone, he is the bagman. 

From Africa to Abya Yala, from Alabama to Arizona, from Selma to Phoenix: Building Understanding and Solidarity

YouTube:

Press Conference at NAHUACALLI

The "1st Freedom Rider" Attorney Bruce Boynton speaks out against AZ HB2281 and AZ SB1070

 January 26, 2012

“Their understanding of history is based completely on falsehoods.  There is an effort I understand to cut out in Tucson, Arizona and state-wide the teaching of Mexican history, of culture in the schools and that is very similar to what we experienced in Selma, where there was a tracking system that was instituted by the Board of Education where black student were allowed to integrate into the formerly all white schools but when their kids got to the sixth grade they were directed and scheduled for classes that led to vocational work vocational schools but not to a college education…

The majority of back kids were trapped in that system until we actually campaigned for weeks and weeks: The campaign on the taking over of City Hall, of taking over the mayor’s office, and it was a very active type of rebellion that the Black Community did in order to bring about a change but it did happen.

And I know that that is really the same kind of philosophy that is behind the cutting out of these kinds of classes for the students.

It is a denial or an attempt to deny as much as possible a knowledge of one’s own history, and if one does not know his history, one does not know his own self.”

From Africa to Abya Yala, Selma to Phoenix, from Civil Rights to Human Rights, Indigenous Rights and the Rights of Mother Earth!

“Justice is always compelling,

not always popular.”

TONATIERRA

 

US Human Rights Network Statement of Solidarity

The US Human Rights Network (USHRN) stands in solidarity with TONATIERRA and Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio in the struggle against Arizona’s SB 1070 and other laws that seek to re-enshrine white supremacy and justify colonial conquest.

We will not compromise with the peddlers of racism and the promoters of colonialism. We defend the gains of the Indigenous, Chicano, and Black Liberation movements of the 1960’s and 70’s to dismantle dejure racism. However, the resurgence of racial discrimination and the persistence of racial inequity, clearly demonstrate that more needs to be done to fulfill the dreams and aspirations of these liberation movements. Conditions demand that progressive social movements press for the full recognition and fulfillment of the human rights of all, including the right of oppressed people to self-determination, to overcome these inequities and provide restitution for the centuries of crimes against humanity that Indigenous, Chicano, and Black peoples and communities have suffered at the hands of European settlers and the United States government.

We further applaud TONATIERRA and Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio for taking the bold step of adopting the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Adoption of this declaration is a fundamental and necessary step towards implementing restorative justice for oppressed peoples throughout the world and the beginning of the journey towards creating social systems that will enable the restoration of ecological equilibrium between humanity and “all its relations”.

We applaud your foresight and your courage. And look forward to supporting your ongoing efforts in the struggle for justice, human rights, and liberation.

Kali Akuno

Acting Co-Director, US Human Rights Network

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Bruce Boynton speaks out Against AZ SB1070 in Phoenix

Activist Bruce Boynton speaks against SB 1070

Civil-rights pioneer tells of 1950s efforts

by Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Jan. 27, 2012 10:12 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com

Bruce Boynton and Betty Boynton at Freedom Riders Press Conference

One of the nation's eminent civil-rights activists was in Phoenix this week, lending his name to an old cause with a new cast: human rights.

Bruce Boynton, 74, an African-American attorney, became a national symbol in the fight for equality when he was arrested in 1958 for refusing to leave the Whites-only section of a restaurant in an interstate bus terminal in Virginia.

His case, Boynton vs. Virginia, led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that his arrest violated the Interstate Commerce Act, effectively desegregating interstate transportation facilities. That inspired a group of men and women known as Freedom Riders to ride buses from Washington, D.C., into the Deep South to test the enforcement of desegregation in interstate-travel facilities.

 

Boynton this week attended several events hosted by TONATIERRA, a Phoenix human-rights group, to show his support for activism and share his experiences fighting for civil rights and defiantly disobeying desegregation laws.

"It's consistent with my professional life since law school that I have been an advocate for human rights," Boynton, an Alabama resident, said in an interview explaining why he accepted the invitation to visit Phoenix.

At various events this week, Boynton spoke out against Senate Bill 1070, Arizona's immigration law, and encouraged activists to fight discrimination.

"I had an opportunity to look at the law," Boynton said. "Coming from Alabama, which just recently enacted a very strict anti-immigration law, both of the laws have one thing in common, and that is the dehumanization of people."

In 1958, Boynton was a 21-year-old Howard University law student traveling home to Selma, Ala., for winter break when he sat in the White section of a restaurant in the Richmond, Va., bus terminal in direct defiance of segregation laws. It took the civil-rights fight in a new direction: from litigating cases of racial discrimination and segregation in the courts to directly confronting segregation laws, he said.

"I refused to move, which I knew was against the law," Boynton told a crowd of about 100 at a Thursday screening in Phoenix of the movie "Freedom Riders."

"My arrest on December 18, 1958, occasioned something that had not been done in the history of fighting racial segregation, racial discrimination in America."

The Freedom Rides in 1961 began with a group of 13 men and women riding in two buses. They were attacked and jailed. The movement expanded, eventually involving hundreds of riders traveling in various parts of the South. The riders were White and Black, men and women, whose occupations ranged from jazz musicians to ministers.

Boynton's wife, Betty, told one Phoenix group about her participation in Bloody Sunday, the first of the 1965 civil-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery to urge voting rights in Alabama.

Betty, then 15 years old, was sent to check for potential attackers at the bridge before the group of about 600 people started their march. She saw nobody and told the group the coast was clear, she recalled.

The group did not get far. The marchers were attacked by people in hiding who beat and tear-gassed them, she said. Betty, 63, recalled being pummeled, along with Boynton's mother, also a civil-rights activist, who had a rib broken.

Boynton on Wednesday shared his and Betty's stories with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

"The knowledge of oneself and one's history is important," Boynton told the board, explaining his family's history of fighting for civil rights. He presented to the supervisors with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, which prohibits discrimination against Indigenous Peoples.

Boynton was greeted with a standing ovation at Wednesday's board meeting, which drew various county officials and immigration activists.

"We've had this big immigration fight," said Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who invited Boynton to attend the meeting. "He so eloquently put in wonderful words that in America, anything can happen."

Links:

The Boynton Legacy

Freedom Riders

Nationhood and Sustainability
YouTube:
Bruce Boynton at the Carver Center 

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Nationhood and Sustainability

Our Nations

Have been put on reservations,

Our Nations are in the hood,

It’s done by robbin’

It brings the throbbin’

Of my heart up to my brain

And the thought

Of what ought

To be done

Is what I say,

Is what I mean:

It’s not about

WHAT 

We want,

It's what

We WILL.



TupakHuhuecoyotl

FREEDOM RIDERS: NATIONHOOD and SUSTAINABILITY

FREEDOM RIDERS

NATIONHOOD and SUSTAINABILITY

“Freedom is not a free ride, you got to get out and push.”

La Familia by Joaquín Chiñas

After Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King said: “We have emerged from the era of Civil Rights to the era of Human Rights”.  He said that in 1967 and in 1968 he was assassinated.  Five days before his death, in an intimate conversation with Harry Belafonte, he shared his concerns over the trajectory of the US civil rights movement, revealing, “I am afraid we are integrating into a burning house.”

Today we know it is not just the house that is burning, but due to global warming driven by industrial greenhouse gas emissions and the failure of the recent global UN Climate Change Conferences (Catastrophe of Copenhagen 2009, Collapse of Cancun 2010, and the Disaster of Durban 2011) we are plunging headlong past the brink of planetary Climate Chaos.  In this “we” there is no “they”.

Without meaningful mechanisms of control and elimination of industrial carbon emissions by human society into the atmosphere which we share with all life, the global environment and the continent of Africa especially is doomed to suffer from the devastating effects of global warming and extremes of environmental degradation.

Today we recall the lessons learned and know that lessons still have not been learned since that Bloody Sunday crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.  Today we know that we have overcome much, yet much remains to be done in our quest for liberation and self-determination. We know that the great strides of the US Civil Rights movement were steps in the longer journey of liberation and self-determination for All Peoples.  We also know by having lived the experiences of the Environmental Justice movement of the present generation, that we must make the connections to link our Civil and Human Rights campaigns to the global fight by Indigenous Peoples to defend the Rights of Mother Earth.

“Justice is always compelling, not always popular.”

As Nican Tlacah, as Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, Mother Earth we today we are speaking of TERRACIDE: the willful and premeditated crime against Humanity and the Rights of Mother Earth that results in the destruction of the capacity of Earth to be a Mother to the Future Generations.  

As Indigenous Peoples, we are called to engage human society at the planetary level in order to put in place the necessary communications platforms and strategic alliances to BRIDGE the MOVEMENTS of CLIMATE JUSTICE across cultures, continents, and Peoples.  There is only a single Sea, and the oceans of Mother Earth do not separate us, but instead unite us in Spiritual and Ecological responsibility to protect the Natural World for the Future Generations: World Water ONE (www.www.www)

The Bridge is before us.  We shall pass.  Here in Arizona, we shall pass through the gruesome and dehumanizing Nightmare of Manifest Destiny disguised as the “Rule of Law” and continue on our journey to achieve our global humanity.

Today we awake not in dream but in realities that command that the injustices of Environmental Racism be addressed and responses from the grass roots communities most impacted be articulated and implemented as public policies of Sustainability, Environmental Justice, and Climate Justice. 

We have come a long way.  Yet, we have a long way still to go.  Let us begin once again, Building Understanding and Solidarity, let’s all GET ON THE BUS!

From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Indigenous Rights and the Rights of Mother Earth!

Local - Regional – Continental – Global

TONATIERRA

NAHUACALLI EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION

Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio

US Human Rights Network

Black-Left Unity Network

*******

Nationhood and Sustainability

Our Nations

Have been put on reservations,

Our Nations are in the hood,

It’s done by robbin’

It brings the throbbin’

Of my heart up to my brain

And the thought

Of what ought

To be done

Is what I say,

Is what I mean:

It’s not about

WHAT

We want

It’s what we

WILL.

Tupak Huehuecoyotl

Attorney Bruce Boynton Joins the Fight Against Racial Profiling in Maricopa County

TONATIERRA

Press Advisory

Date: Tuesday January 24, 2012

Contact: Tupac Enrique Acosta  (602) 466-8367

Email: chantlaca@tonatierra.org

1^st Freedom Rider Arrives in Phoenix Today

Attorney Bruce Boynton Joins the Fight Against

Racial Profiling in Maricopa County

Attorney Bruce Boynton

Phoenix, AZ – The battle for Civil Rights in the deep south in the 60’s and the fight in Maricopa County against racial profiling and discriminatory policing will link up this week here in Phoenix when Attorney Bruce Boynton arrives to take part in a series of community events organized by TONATIERRA and Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio.

Atty. Bruce Boynton is considered the 1st Freedom Rider when he was arrested in 1958 for refusing to leave a  "white only" lunch counter while traveling home on a break from law school. His case Boynton v. the Common Wealth of Virginia (1960) desegregated all interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals. This case was the basis of the Freedom Rides of 1961 organized to test the enforcement of the Supreme Court Decision.

Speaking to the issue of AZ SB1070, Attorney Boynton stated today: “The law is an invasion of the jurisdiction of federal immigration powers and it dehumanizes and criminalizes anyone who is subjected to its enforcement, and that is ridiculous.”

Wednesday January 25, 2012

6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

COMMUNITY RECEPTION AND DINNER

Comités de Defensa del Barrio

NAHUACALLI

802 N. 7^th Street

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Thursday January 26, 2012

PRESS CONFERENCE

10:00 AM

NAHUACALLI

802 N. 7^th Street

Phoenix, AZ

*******

Free Community Screening of the PBS Documentary Film

FREEDOM RIDERS

Thursday January 26, 2012

6:00-8:00 PM

North High School Auditorium

1101 E. Thomas

Phoenix, AZ

###

From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Indigenous Rights and

the  Rights of Mother Earth!