This meeting focused on what the immigrant rights movement and related policy challenges and opportunities means for the work of URBAN LA. Node members also discussed how to balance research, teaching, and activist work. (more…)
This meeting of URBAN LA featured a presentation by Enrique Ochoa about the formation and ongoing work of an initiative called Educators for Immigrant Rights (EIR), discussion of specific examples of connections between research and action, and more! (more…)
This meeting of URBAN LA included a presentation by Jorge Gutierrez of Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP), updates about Dream Summer, discussion about next steps in creating online communication tools, and discussion about inviting members of student groups whose work focuses on access to opportunity for immigrant youth. (more…)
A major focus of LA-URBAN is to help build social movements. This meeting featured presentations by Alma Castrejon and Sofia Campos about the Dream Act student movement, Dream University, and Dream Summer. Sofia shared her story as an immigrant from Lima, Peru. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and became part of student groups fighting for undocumented student rights and mobilizing efforts for the California DREAM Act. Sofia presented a history (and the strategies used) of efforts to pass the California DREAM Act and the Deferred Action Policy. She described the “intersectional work” that led to the development of the CIRCLE project, the Dream Resource Center, the Dream Summer Program, and the publication of “Undocumented and Unafraid.” With a recent conference that drew 47 affiliated organizations, the organizing efforts are continuing to advance a national movement for immigration reform. (more…)
My survival in higher education has its roots in the connections between my lived experience as the immigrant son of farm worker parents and the lessons learned in overcoming systemic obstacles as a community organizer and intellectual activist. Whenever the road in academia got rough I had to face another hurdle, I always remembered the difficulties that my immigrant farm worker family had to face. In this way, the problems I encountered in academia appeared smaller and more manageable. My struggles with learning English and growing up in a poor immigrant farm worker family became the foundations of language, labor, and immigration issues that I passionately took up in my organizing, teaching, and research as an activist intellectual in academia. (more…)