Unlike the preceding chapters, which focus on the democratic and fiscal costs of state government, Chapter 5 addresses the offsetting direct benefits that states and/or federalism have been claimed to bring. The two most popular such defenses tend to be the diffusion of government power and the ability of states to tailor laws and policies to the demands of their respective populations, but there are several others as well. The discussion here evaluates those defenses. It concludes that, despite their facial appeal, the various defenses turn out to be either very minor or, while significant, replicable at least as well by the national government in some cases and local governments or inter-government partnerships in others.

Chapter 6 is a history of emancipation in New York that stresses the combined importance of economic and legal pressures on slavery in areas of Dutch control. The gradual legal freedoms slaves gained after the Revolution served as a foot in the door towards eventual emancipation. When slaves were routinely given the ability to choose new masters, to seek work on their own, and to make money on their own (with some repayment to the slave owners), they made a crucial first step into a world of freedom. Voluntary slave manumission and self-purchase emancipations were the result of a process of negotiating the terms of slavery’s demise one person at a time. This dispersed, on-the-ground struggle was shaped by statutory law, as others have recognized, but, arguably, it was the common law that demonstrated and determined New Yorkers’ changing attitudes about slaveholding. Courtroom decisions about interpreting the states’ laws on slavery guaranteed that the freedoms won through slaves’ negotiations with their enslavers would be protected by the courts.

The Introduction summarizes some relevant works on the topic of Dutch American slavery and presents the main argument of the book. It contends that slavery in New York was primarily rural, that it was profitable, and that the slave population grew mainly on account of its own domestic growth. It will show that New York’s slaves were controlled, bullied, and punished severely, but many were also given a surprising latitude to move around on their own, especially after the American Revolution, when New York’s slaves gradually gained legal freedoms and negotiated, through their own initiative, more room to operate.

The 9th Circuit ruled the MAS ban to be constitutional, but with a twist. They kicked it back to Judge Tashima giving more explicit direction about potential constitutional violations that state representatives may have engaged in while creating the legislation and banning the program. At this point in time, there was a huge change in the legal team as Wallstreet firm Weil, Gotshal & Magnes LLP agreed to take the case pro bono. It was the first time that MAS supporters would have more legal resources than the state.

In addition to discussing the testimony of “bit” players as well as “missing” witnesses – witnesses the state planned to call but didn’t – this chapter examines closely the testimony of two witnesses for the state, Kathryn Hrabluk and Elliott Hibbs, who were instrumental in showing that the superintendent’s finding of violation was prejudged and predetermined, revealing that the reasons offered by Horne and Huppenthal were pretextual. While there were not as many fireworks as the testimonies of Horne and Huppenthal, these were critically important in establishing the factual basis, which eventually led to the final ruling.

UNIDOS was the center of the youth movement in support of MAS, and their takeover of the TUSD school board meeting (4/26/11) made national headlines. The students engaged in civil disobedience because the state found TUSD out of compliance and the school board was going to take the first steps toward eliminating the program without substantive public input. This chapter details those events from a firsthand account, the massive militarization of subsequent school board meetings (e.g., 150 armed officers, many in riot gear, at a meeting of 500 people), and the subsequent conspiracy theories that rose to prominence (e.g., that former Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill orchestrated the whole thing).

The MAS court case moved to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and one of the premier First Amendment scholars in the country, Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, Bolt Hall, UC Berkeley), agreed to do the oral arguments. Meanwhile, back in Tucson, co-founders of the MAS program Sean Arce and Auggie Romero got into a public fight that almost came to blows at the annual NAME (National Association of Multicultural Education) conference with multiple MAS teachers in attendance. Finally, John Huppenthal again found TUSD out of compliance with state law even after the elimination of MAS citing hip-hop legend KRS-One’s lyrics as evidence.