For a country girl who never heard the word Chicano until her second decade of life, imagining something like Mijente, a new political home for Latinx and Chicanx people, never would have occurred to me as a possibility . I didn’t grow up down for La Raza, shouting Brown power, or reading about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. What I did have was an unhealthy obsession with Selena and singing Blue Moon over and over again with my sisters. I had hoop earrings, soda-pop bangs, and ponytails slicked back with limón. I had chicarrones, tamales and Jarritos on the side of dusty fútbol fields. I had my father’s deep belting renditions of rancheras on Sunday mornings. I had a fear of the police taking away those I loved, of bosses withholding pay, of white children taunting us with their racist jeers.
Readwas in Phoenix when Mijente officially launched in June of this year. It is important to me to be part of building a new Latinx/Chicanx political home because for too long undocumented trans women’s voices have been ignored and left out of critical life changing decisions in the world and in our movements. I see […]
ReadThe older I get that more that a particular quote from Audre Lorde speaks to me in my everyday life. In 1982 she delivered her address, “Learning from the 60’s” as part of the celebration of the Malcolm X weekend at Harvard University. Halfway through the address she says the following, which has resonated within […]
ReadBelow is the reflection of Fernando Lopez (organizer with the Congreso de Jornaleros) on why he is attending the founding convening of Mijente. More information and the application form for Lánzate – The Jump Off in Chicago December 12th & 13th is available here. irst of all, I want to acknowledge a few things. The first […]
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