Read the whole thing. It’s good.

In the aftermath of the suspension of the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American studies department, TUSD has confiscated and continues to confiscate MAS teaching materials. Besides artwork and posters etc, that includes books. This move came in response to an unconstitutional measure, HB 2281, which was specifically created to dismantle the highly successful MAS-TUSD department.

Amid a massive backlash, TUSD officials have backpedaled, claiming that the confiscation of the books that took place after the 10 January MAS suspension does not constitute a banned books list. While TUSD claims that only seven book titles were ordered boxed and carried off, the fact is that the confiscation - in some cases, in front of the students - involved more than the seven titles. But the seven books that are “not banned” (but merely “confiscated”) are:

Critical Race Theory, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, edited by Elizabeth Martinez

Message to Aztlán, by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales

Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement, by F Arturo Rosales

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow

The MAS-TUSD curriculum comprises some 50 books. All have been or are being removed or confiscated from every classroom; teachers are being told to turn in the books that have not been “confiscated”. This might strike the average person as odd: it’s as if the presence of these books inside classrooms constitutes a distraction or bad influence. Apparently, students should not be able to even see those books in the classrooms.

Officially, the 50 books (listed at the end of the independent Cambium report (pdf), which actually gave the MAS-TUSD program a big thumbs up and recommended that it be expanded) are not banned. But it could be said that their apparent status is now that of “undocumented books”.

[…]

In a development typical of Arizona, the students who walked out on Thursday, protesting the elimination of the district’s Mexican American studies program, have – without a hearing – been directed to perform janitorial duties this Saturday: an amazing message, right out of Newt Gingrich’s playbook (he has been campaigning in the GOP presidential nomination race, proposing the idea that students should be hired as janitors to teach them a work ethic). Apparently, TUSD administrators are paying attention.

[…]

The link in the bill number above (HB 2281) goes to an article in Mother Jones from May, 2010, when the bill was passed. Good background is provided there.