[ACLU-CU ALERT] Censorship in Tucson: A program at the Urbana Free Library

[Champaign County ACLU Announcements]

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Freedom to Read: Ethnic Studies Under Fire
Thursday, October 18 at 7:00pm at the Urbana Free Library
A special program for Banned Books Week

 
Last year Arizona passed controversial legislation which essentially outlawed the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. In January while classes were in session, seven books (including Re-Thinking Columbus and Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement) were "cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage,” and teachers in the MAS courses were reassigned and instructed by district administrators to refrain from using books in which “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.”

Intense debate and public protest followed. Prominent writers, teachers, librarians and activists for intellectual freedom say the case highlights issues of censorship, discrimination, multicultural education, and the targeting of immigrants. As part of this special program for Banned Books Week we will host three guests –

Debbie Reese – Publisher of American Indians in Children's Literature and author of articles published in library and education journals, Debbie studies racism and stereotypes in literature for young people. An activist scholar and blogger, she played a key role in calling attention to what happened in Tucson. 

Barbara Jones – Barbara Jones is the Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, and the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation. For her entire library career she has focused on free speech issues as her specialty. She is currently working with several library systems in the United States on the issue of immigrant privacy rights and the role of librarians in supporting those rights. 

Francisco Baires - Community Programs Director at the University YMCA at the University of Illinois, (where he works with Champaign Urbana Immigration Forum, and is the Director of La Linea Help Line and Advisor to La Colectiva, a University of Illinois student organization). Francisco moved to Illinois from Tucson, Arizona, where he was deeply involved in this issue.
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