“Ethnic Studies is liberation studies …
That goes against all of our institutional structures, which are based on colonization and oppression.
So we shouldn’t be surprised, and
we need to be ready for these attacks.”

Courage is as contagious as fear, and we are here to spread courage for our students. At the same time, we want our resistance to be strategic and sustainable. In that spirit, this article provides an overview of students’ and teachers’ free speech rights in and out of the classroom. Please keep it close at school so you can share it with other teachers, administrators, and parents.

“What we are seeing here in Los Angeles and in the United States right now is a settler colonial government that is doing a modern-day Indian removal. The core population of LA is from what is now Mexico, Central and South America. These are peoples who have been on these lands, who have been migrating across these lands, for thousands of years. The archaeological, anthropological, historical record proves that there have been thousands of years of migration here. These are peoples who have been following these routes on Turtle Island for millennia, and now they’re being criminalized, dehumanized, and removed.

Ethnic Studies gives you a lens to see that, to understand that. That’s why we see an attack on Ethnic Studies, because by understanding that history you are going to understand what is happening now, and you will be more apt to be against this Indian removal that is occurring right now in our very lifetimes—in the US and in Palestine. ” - Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona