In The Community
Originally published in The Latino Newsletter–reprinted with permission.
Opinion for The Latino Newsletter
Well before November’s election results came in, LatinoJustice PRLDEF sketched out various scenarios for what a new administration might bring, just as many of our colleagues in the nonprofit and civil rights world did. And now, on the cusp of a new reality, we’re bracing for impact.
We know that the incoming administration has extensive plans to roll back progress and do harm to Latinos and millions of other people in this country, not just because they’ve announced it, but because we saw what they did last time they were in power.
Much of the scare-mongering threats are not just directed at immigrants, people of color and LGBTQ+ people, but at the institutions and people who resisted in the first go-around.
Corporate leaders, Big Tech, finance and media companies are all signaling that they will go along to get along, kissing the ring at Mar-a-Lago. And after much bluster, Congress seems to be blithely endorsing questionable candidates to head federal agencies and already voting in favor of anti-immigrant legislation like the Laken Riley bill.
We’re supposed to look at the mounting pressure to conform and let our fear and exhaustion lead us to “obey in advance.” But we’re not going to throw in the towel before the bell is rung to start the first round.
We’ve learned a great deal since 2017, and even with a move to more hostile courts and politics since then, we are prepared to support immigrants, and fight for Latinos access to jobs, education and housing, in the courthouse, in the legislatures and in our communities.
One of our biggest priorities is to limit local and state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. We just won a class action suit we filed in 2017 on behalf of 650 people who were illegally detained and turned over to ICE, and expect to have to take similar action in this term. And we’re supporting bills like the NY4All Act and Dignity not Detention Act in New York to help grind down the gears of the detention machine.
We’re prepared to litigate and advocate against attempts to deny public benefits for immigrants, such as an expected push to deny public housing to mixed status households, and to support state and municipal laws that expand benefits for immigrants, including those undocumented, who are shut out of federal benefits. For example, we’re leading the campaign on the NY CARES Act, which would extend critical temporary assistance and medical help to undocumented victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and torture.
We expect to also have our hands full in Florida and Texas, where we have offices and staff.
The list of proposed legislation that harms immigrants and Latinos in those states is long, including pending legislation in Texas to detain and fingerprint schoolkids suspected of being undocumented.
Hand in hand with community organizations in the places where we work, we will share our legal expertise through trainings and legal clinics to inform people about their rights at home, in the streets, at work and in schools. And we’ll help undocumented parents prepare for the worst, so their U.S.-born children can be taken care of here if they are deported.
We will also continue our efforts to fight the anti-DEI backlash in schools and in workplaces that imperils equitable access to education and employment. After the 2023 anti-affirmative action Supreme Court decision, we’ve seen attacks on scholarships to help Latinos, on race-neutral admissions criteria for K-12 schools, and on corporate DEI programs. Since last year we’ve been informing and supporting Latino-serving nonprofits concerned about possible attacks and loss of funding, and we will continue that work.
We’re not under any illusion that we can solve these issues quickly or completely. After all, we’ve been at this for more than 50 years. But we know that moments like this are why we’ve kept at it so long. And we will prevail. There is no other option.
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I am always shocked when I hear someone say they’re not a feminist or even say that the feminist movement is this crazy new world ideology. It isn't a "trend" or something that is done to be "edgy."
The feminist movement is fighting for human lives and for the rights that we should all have when we’re born.
Events like the overturning of Roe v. Wade are more than enough proof of that. If a human being losing autonomy over their own body doesn't alarm you, I don't know what will.
In simple terms, feminism advocates for equality between men and women in all aspects of life. The concept has gotten lost for many that choose to not educate themselves on the subject and not only believe, but also spread the false notion that feminism is fighting for the superiority of one gender.
The feminist movement is not an attack on men, far from it. Feminism views all people as human beings deserving of a quality life as it fights against social injustices prevalent in our society.
There's nothing out of this world about the feminist movement; after all, one would think that there’s no reason for one gender to be lesser than the other in our society when we are all humans. But our world was built upon patriarchy, and men have been the ones in positions of power for far too long.
And yes, the movement is flawed, mainly where it concerns women of color and non-cisgender women. Women of color, queer, and trans women fight for more than just gender equality, and we can't be truly equal if we solve one issue but not the others.
The effect of poverty, racism, systematic oppression, and homophobia on women of color is also why the concept of intersectionality in feminism was introduced. Coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, she introduces the concept as "a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other." When different forms of discrimination overlap, we can't just ignore one for the other, because if we do no equality has been achieved.
The feedoms and struggles of women in the U.S. look different for women in other countries. We need feminism because young girls and women are still fighting for fundamental human rights in many parts of the world.
In most countries in Latin America, for example, abortion is still heavily penalized, and reproductive rights for women are practically nonexistent. With some of the highest poverty rates in the world, access to contraception and sex education is not a given.
Femicide prevails across the world. About 66,000 women and girls are violently killed annually, accounting for approximately 17 percent of all victims of intentional homicides. A report published in 2016 by the Small Arms Survey, showed that "among 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 14 are from Latin America and the Caribbean."
El Salvador and Honduras stand out with rates of more than ten female homicides per 100,000 women. The level of violence affecting women in El Salvador and Honduras exceeds the combined rate of male and female homicides in some of the 40 countries with the highest murder rates in the world, such as Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Tanzania.
Body autonomy and violence are just a few of the issues in the fight for equality. Phrases like, "I'm not one of those crazy feminists" or "women aren't oppressed," need to be used as teachable moments rather than just brushed off casually as just another knock on women. The more we destigmatize the word, the more we can actually achieve understanding from those who are willing to listen and learn.
Originally published in The Latino Newsletter–reprinted with permission.
Opinion for The Latino Newsletter.
The Republican Party campaigned for power by threatening to rip the lives of 20 million people from the fabric of this country. As horrifying a premise as it is, this act of political depravity has happened before.
Beginning in the 1930s, an estimated 1 million people —Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals— were expelled from this country. Following the Great Depression, Mexicans were targeted and scapegoated for taking jobs from “real” Americans and exploiting social welfare resources. The Hoover administration, scrambling to stay in power, gave cities and states authority as to how they would rid themselves of these “undesirables.” The smears used against this demographic have embedded themselves into the historic and now daily discourse of immigration.
In Los Angeles and the state of California, individuals, including families with children, were raided and rounded up through door-to-door knocking, threats, intimidation, withdrawal of social welfare benefits, and collusion with the Mexican government. A conservative estimate suggests that 600,000 of those people were U.S. citizens. That is right, 600,000 people who had the legal right to live in this country were thrown out or “expatriated.”
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The incoming Trump administration and its nativist allies clearly got their ideas from our little-known, forgotten history. There were few if any, concrete repercussions to Hoover’s action or that of the following FDR administration. There has been no federal acknowledgment and certainly no reparations. Only the devastation of families and communities.
To this very day, we as a nation remain troubled and confused by who is a “real” American. From the inception of our country, we’ve created and sustained outrageous “immigration policies.” Indigenous Native Americans were labeled “domestic foreigners” and didn’t have the right to vote until 100 years ago. In 1923, the Supreme Court ruled that “the intention of the Founding Fathers was to ‘confer the privilege of citizenship upon the class of persons they knew as white.’”
Citizenship and whiteness are still closely linked in the minds of many, which is precisely why there’s a fence on the southern border and not the northern border. Nobody tends to be worried about a “mass invasion” from the north.
This is all about skin color.
At California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), I teach this history, along with other hidden histories, to future elementary teachers. We reflect on how often K-12 education has omitted the United States-led crimes of the past. I teach these topics not because I am unpatriotic but precisely because I want to build a better country through the teaching of difficult truths.
The only way to plan for a better country in the future is to acknowledge our past, not the fairy tale creation myth, not the white-washed propaganda, but our actual history, with all its blood and sinew.
It is challenging to imagine the catastrophic damage to the lives of people who were removed and those who remained. How can we recognize what is not there? What does it take to notice the missing, the invisible, and the irretrievable?
And how dare we consider doing this again?
In 2018, after years of teaching about expatriation, I began writing Dispossessed, a novel about the 1930s mass expulsion of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals.
Months after I started the book, the U.S. government began separating families at the border.Our unvarnished history forces us to confront the present. Slander and scapegoating persist, fueled by white racial identity politics and nativism. Project 2025 threatens to denaturalize U.S. citizens.
My novel traces the life of one boy separated from his family during the 1930s expulsion. The Republican Party seeks to return us to an era where Brown U.S. citizens were abandoned by their own country.
The connection is chilling, real, and undeniable.
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