First published on apaforprogress.org.
Forty years ago, the students of SF State joined in solidarity with the Third World in demanding inclusion in institutions of knowledge. For too long, the histories of people of color have been deliberately omitted from official narratives. Stories transmitted through oral tradition within families but never recorded in the texts that lined the libraries of learning. Languages were a private code, spoken, within the walls of your home, but forgotten when interacting outside in the world. People of color were the invisible labor, unseen and unheard, which fueled the engines of global capitalism to expand.
The struggle at SF State successfully opened up spaces for the Third World, domestically and globally, in the academy, to represent and record our histories and stories. This opened the way for applied research and policy organizations to elevate the importance of race and its centrality in socioeconomic issues when advocating for equitable policies and practices. Groups like the Applied Research Center, inspired by the success of SF State, sought to “race” policies and programs, so that the impact of communities of color were laid explicit. Narrative frames that concealed race behind a color-blind curtain were thrown open to reveal how they served to reproduce the subordinate status of communities of color.
The Applied Research Center will survey the successes of ethnic studies, both in theory and practice, in a panel Ethnic Studies Beyond the Academy: Theory and Action at the Grassroots this Friday, October 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 1:00pm, in Rosa Parks C, at “Ethnic Studies 40 Years Later: Race, Resistance, and Relevance”, a conference to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Third World students’ strike and the both the birth of ethnic studies as a field and a college at SF State. This will be an interactive panel, not just two hours of talking heads, where presenters will explore their effect of ethnic studies on their ideas and strategies, as well as the impact applied research has had on the academy.
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.*
Nikke Alex, the youth organizer for the Navajo Green Jobs and the Black Mesa Water Coalition, talked with us for a few minutes while she was at the Navajo Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock, Arizona, celebrating 
Here’s my review of Harry Potter that I promised Channing for 
China extends 3,400 miles from the west to the east and falls into five different time zones. Yet, the country operates on a single standard of time, eight hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, all year round based on the time zone for Beijing, the country’s capital.
Coal Mining Curbed on the Black Mesa, Paving Way for Navajo Green Economy
A shorter version of this post first appeared on RaceWire.
Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie. Sign held by a Hopi youth at a protest against Peabody in Denver, Colorado.
The indigenous environmental justice movement celebrated a victory, early January 2010, when a judge ruled that Peabody Energy cannot expand its coal mining operations on the Black Mesa in northern Arizona. Former president Bush Jr. approved a permit for Peabody in the twilight of his outgoing administration—not surprising, when you consider that Peabody’s parent holding company was Bechtel, a defense contractor with strong political ties—a permit that failed to fulfill all administrative requirements. Groups including the Black Mesa Water Coalition filed a petition in early 2009, charging that prerequisites, such as filing an Environmental Impact Statement, were ignored, thereby making the approved permit invalid.
For many Navajo, life in the past thirty years has been inextricably linked to coal mining. As a small girl, Enei Begaye, knew to be quiet when visiting her friends’ houses. Everyone in the small town of Kayenta, Arizona worked in the coal mines, which operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Some worked night shifts, so Begaye and her friends would play quietly to not disturb the sleeping elders. Most of the population of over 4,900 residents in Kayenta were employed by Peabody Energy and lived in the trailers the company setup for its workers.
As an adult, Begaye, now co-director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, questioned the coal mining that sustained her family and hometown, and devastated and torn apart Navajo and Hopi communities. Energy demands increased in the late 1970s during the oil crisis and large corporations such as Southern California Edison casted about for other sources of fuel. When the corporations spied the black gold underfoot the Navajo lands, the energy companies colluded with the U.S. federal government to raise questions about Navajo claim over the lands. The land was transferred to the Hopis and 12,000 Navajo families were displaced from their ancestral homes. Uprooted from their homes and traditional ways of subsistence, many Navajo fell into poverty and despair, forced to accept any jobs that came their way, including coal mining.
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