******************************FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE****************************

 ETHNIC STUDIES STUDENTS HOLD INTERNATIONAL MEETING IN ARIZONA

            Palestinian Youth Travel 10,000 Miles to Meet with Local Ethnic Studies Youth in Tucson

Media Contact – AZ Jewish Voice for Peace / UA No Más Muertes
Gabriel Matthew Schivone: 520-302-6006 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

TUCSON AZ—Tomorrow (April 21), Arizona youth whose cultural studies programs remain targeted for eradication by state legislators will be hosting a presentation with fellow students also facing cultural destruction 10,000 miles away in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

Local university and high school students have invited fellow Ethnic Studies youth activists from Birzeit University in the Palestinian West Bank -- under a 44-year military occupation by Israel -- to share and exchange experiences in their common struggle for “Right to Education”.

AZ House Bill 2281, passed last May, outlawed such programs as Mexican-American and La Raza Studies in public schools throughout the state.  Local high school students in UNIDOS, an activist group dedicated to the preservation and defense of Ethnic Studies, have been among those leading a youth movement in Arizona, centered in Tucson.  18 year-old Asiya Mir, a junior at Tucson High Magnet School and an organizer for UNIDOS, founded the Tucson High School Students for Justice in Palestine.  According to Mir:  "As a student living in a racist state attempting to rob my ethnic studies education from me, I feel a close, personal affinity with my fellow students in Palestine who live under and struggle against Israeli  aggression, terror, and cultural theft.  I embrace these students as my own; they are me, their struggle is mine."

Palestinian students Hanna Qassis and Mira Dabit, both born in Jerusalem, will speak beside Mir and Pima Community College student Leilani Clark about their local education struggles they describe as so far apart yet irrevocably intertwined.  Clark, a Tucson High graduate and Ethnic Studies alumnus, was one of the “Capital 9”, the first individuals arrested for protesting notorious SB1070, passed last April, criminalizing people in Arizona without documentation.

Stated Clark: “Not only must we be informed on our own local battles but we must be able to see and strengthen the connections we have with all international communities who are fighting today for the inclusion of our forgotten and hidden stories of the constant struggle for a better tomorrow.  As all peoples, Arizona to Palestine -- we can't move forward if we don't know our past.”

Tucson’s largest paper, The Arizona Daily Star, reported this past Sunday (April 17) of a delay in the recent audit of Tucson Unified School district (TUSD), which state authorities say is violating the Ethnic Studies law by not dismantling programs such as Mexican-American Studies.  Former Arizona Schools Chief, now attorney general, Tom Horne, “has long said the program promotes ethnic chauvinism,” according to the Daily Star,” and “gave TUSD 60 days to come into compliance or have state funding withheld.”  The AZ Department of Education doesn’t expect to provide results of its investigations on TUSD before mid-May, the Star reported.

Native Tucsonan and Chicano-Jewish student majoring in English, Gabriel Matthew Schivone, is coordinator of campus Jewish Voice for Peace.  Said Schivone:  “We’re standing with our fellow high school students who are the prime target of these attacks on the cultures of Latina/o and indigenous communities.  We in university also know that, although state authorities have always been targeting our fellow students in TUSD -- they will come for us next.  Our cherished Ethnic Studies programs remain in peril.”

The event will be held at 7pm in the Integrated Learning Center (ILC), Room 120.

UA Associate Professor of History and esteemed author, Dr. David Gibbs, who is the faculty advisor for the University of Arizona (UA) student group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), will help introduce the talk.  The U.S. advocacy group, Jewish Voice for Peace, of which the UA group is an affiliate, has been coordinating a U.S. “Right to Education” tour of Palestinian students since March 28.  The tour is in support of the JVP-led campaign calling on the pension fund giant TIAA-CREF -- the world's premiere retirement fund for educators -- to divest from several companies profiting from the Israeli occupation.  For two years, students at the UA have been demanding their university divest from Caterpillar and Motorola (both in which TIAA-CREF also invests).  Last month, coming out in support of UA students massive mock apartheid wall erected across campus, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu publicly called on the UA to divest Caterpillar and Motorola.