Please take a minute to go to the form at the link below and help flood the Az lege with messages, to help stop them from taking a lot of people down the tubes back into the nineteenth century.
Here's the deal: Those of you who live in urban areas and who have experienced a multiculturally enlightened sort of environment (realtively speaking) have little idea of how destructive a pre-civil rights era society can be. There are some so-called "conservatives" in the Az legislature who think that Homeland Security is an opportunity to turn back the clock, and essentially delete some of the social progress America has been making (to the extent it can be said to be making some.)
Here is a link (I hope) to an action page by the United Farm Workers:
http://www.ufwaction.org/...?
SB1108 is a bill in the Arizona Legislature that got voted out of committee.
The idea is basically this: If you are a student who came from one of Arizona's 22 Indian reservations, or has an Hispanic background, and you want to join or start a support group so you can get help from students in your same predicament, this bill would make that illegal.
The bill's language says it would ban any activity "deemed contradictory to the values of American
democracy or Western civilization."
It would also ban such courses as Native American Studies or Chicano Literature, as "race-based."
It happens that I live on the grounds of Dine' College, which is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its founding at the nation's first tribal institution of higher learning.
This was founded because bright kids coming off of the reservation could not attain a college education due to the legacy of the missionary schools and federal boarding schools.
When you meet someone who is in their fifties, who is a bright and energetic person, but who has had to live by menial labor because the educational system they were brought up in was based on that being their full potential, you are faced with a living tragedy. By dint of hard work, a lot of these people have been able to get kids ready for college. The pride these people have at graduation is a mixture of joy and defiance.
But a generation of kids have gone off to get an education and begin to create a professional class of lawyers, doctors, business leaders and educators. Think of it. The first generation to get this kind of education isn't yet retirement age.
Now there are primary schools led by teachers and principles who came up through indigenous educational systems that teach native language and cultural legacy as a basis for giving kids the pride to believe that they have as much potential as anyone.
What the Arizona legislature might do if they vote this bill into effect, is to reverse a lot of progress and return the state to the bad old days of the nineteenth century.
Essentially what they are doing is using Homeland Security as an excuse to equate "terrorists" and "savages." Please use the link, send a letter to the AZ
lege and try and keep Az from slipping back into darkness.