TUSD “un-banning” of MAS books fails.

by David Safier

So much for my predictive powers. Yesterday I wrote, "most probably the book ban will be lifted." Today I read Stegeman pulled his proposal to lift the ban because he knew he didn't have the support. Members on both sides of the MAS aisle, Adelita Grijalva and Michael Cuevas, opposed the measure.

Whatever the reasons, it's a good decision. Ending the book ban would have been little more than a fig leaf over the naked aggression against the Mexican American Studies program begun by extreme right wing legislators to further their political ambitions and picked up by political naifs like Mark Stegeman who don't know when they're being played — or maybe just don't care. Though lifting the ban made some sense, it would have made no difference. There are no longer classes which would use those books regularly, and any teachers who passed them out to their students would be under immediate scrutiny from the HB2881 crowd. Lifting the ban would have looked like a sign of progress where there was none.