Several independent bookstores have joined the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and other organizations to protest the banning of books used for the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District, Bookselling This Week reported. The decision is being challenged in court. Among the Arizona booksellers protesting TUSD's actions are Changing Hands, Tempe; Antigone Books, Tucson; Atalanta's Music & Books, Bisbee, as well as the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association. The TUSD board had ordered the books removed after John Huppenthal, state superintendent of public instruction, "threatened to withhold state funding pursuant to a recently enacted Arizona law, which prohibits public schools from teaching anything that promotes racial or ethnic 'resentment,' or that is designed 'primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group' or advocates 'ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,' " BTW wrote.
"We do not think the students of Tucson should have to wait for a federal court order to get the education they deserve," said ABFFE president Chris Finan. "Regardless of the outcome of legal proceedings, this is harming students, whose education should be the primary concern of elected officials. Instead they are putting politics and ideology ahead of the well-being of young people."
Earlier this week, the groups released a statement calling on the appropriate authorities to reverse their actions, and a petition calling on the TUSD to reinstate the books in the classrooms is being hosted by Change.org.