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MALCS Institute joins Arizona boycott

Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) condemns Arizona’s SB 1070, “Immigration; law enforcement; safe neighborhoods,” signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010. We join with the many academic, research, and activist organizations that have called for a targeted boycott of Arizona as a protest to this repressive and unconstitutional piece of legislation.

For the first time in its 24-year history, the MALCS Summer Institute was to be held in Arizona. It was scheduled for July 21-24 and organized by Arizona State University. After deliberating about the implications of the law with our members and receiving an appropriate response from them, we have decided the following.

MALCS joins the targeted boycott of Arizona and will not hold the 2010 MALCS Summer Institute as planned.

Instead, conference planners at ASU will proceed with a statewide conference to address the significant issues of human, women’s, LGBT rights violations, repression, and harassment facing Chicana, Latina, and Native people in Arizona.

The national organization will seek an alternative date and site for its next institute.

The national organization encourages all to take concrete action in support of the activists, academics, and artists in Arizona resisting SB 1070 and work to prevent similar legislation in other states. [Read more…] about MALCS Institute joins Arizona boycott

Latino Groups Urge Boycott Of Arizona Over New Law

By JULIA PRESTON, New York Times 5/15/10

Several large Latino and civil rights organizations on Thursday announced a business boycott of Arizona, saying that a tough anti-illegal immigration law there would lead to racial profiling and wrongful arrests.

The boycott call was led by the National Council of La Raza, or N.C.L.R., one of the nation’s biggest Latino groups, and was joined by the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Puerto Rican Coalition. The groups said they would ask members and supporters to refrain from planning conventions or conferences in Arizona and from buying goods produced in the state.

“The law is so extreme, and its proponents appear so immune to an appeal to reason, nothing short of these extraordinary measures is required,” Janet Murguía, the president of N.C.L.R., said Thursday at a news conference in Washington.

The organizations said they would collect signatures on a pledge committing supporters to pressure corporations to stop doing business with Arizona. Also participating were the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers union, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of about 200 groups including African-American and Jewish organizations.

The Arizona law would require the state and local police to question people about their immigration status based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they might be illegal immigrants. Adopted on April 23, the law has not yet taken effect and is facing legal challenges.

Story continues here

MALCS poll – Arizona

Queridas MALCistas,

MALCSistas!  Please click here to take the Summer Institute Arizona Poll!

The Summer Institute of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social is the highlight of the year for MALCS members. The yearly reunion of Chicana, Latina and Native American activists, scholars and artists from all across the country challenges our membership intellectually and creatively by sharing work and ideas; our presence at the Institutes have been the hallmark for creating and promoting our voices in the struggle for social justice.

Since the call for an economic boycott of Arizona has crystallized, the MALCS Executive Committee and members of the Arizona Site Committee for the 2010 Institute have discussed the various responses to the boycott. Many ideas have been raised (finding an alternative site outside Arizona, finding an alternative indigenous site in Arizona, utilizing technology, continuing with a re-structured Institute, etc.). Each of these ideas are our outcry of the passage of SB 1070 and other hateful legislation in the state of Arizona and nationally.

What is urgent is that MALCS support the people of Arizona who are holding the line at the state capitol, demonstrating, working on lawsuits, etc. We want to recognize that the struggle against the repressive legislation has been an on-going part of the MALCS members of Arizona.

As you know, the Executive Committee will work with utmost speed to respond to the membership, and therefore requires a quick response to the following poll.

Instructions for on-line poll:
1) To participate, visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SQCYF5V
2) Rank the four options provided “First,” “Second,” “Third,” or “Fourth”choice. Please use each response only once.
3) Please provide any comments you have in the space provided
4) Respond by: MAY 5, 2010, 5pm Pacific Standard time
If there are people who do not have computers, please invite them to write to malcs (address below) or share your computer with them so that they are part of our conversation

MALCS Membership
1404 66th Street
Berkeley, CA 94702

Thank you for your participation!

In solidarity,
Keta Miranda
MALCS National Chair

Official statement by MALCS on Arizona SB1070

Asserting our presence and our voice as a form of protest, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social—an organization of Chicana/Latina scholars, professionals and activists from across the nation—will hold its 2010 Summer Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. We take this stance in opposition to the hate-filled law that targets our collective community. This law is a direct attack on our quality of life and the safety of our communities.

On April 23, 2010, Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, making Arizona the first state in the nation to consider undocumented immigrants as criminals. Under the guise of “reasonable suspicion” state workers have the authority to police individuals “suspected” of being undocumented, as well as to verify status. This all-encompassing law mandates that state government agencies and employees “police” any person that law enforcement officers “believe” to be here without documents. Additionally, it authorizes to arrest, “without warrant.” Moreover, SB 1070 opens up the floodgates for capricious lawsuits against police departments by those who believe legal authorities are neglecting to enforce the law.

Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social protests the inhumane treatment of the un-documented. Additionally, we protest SB 1070 as a back door maneuver that erodes basic democratic principles that protect us from becoming a police state.

CFP MALCS 2010: Derechos Humanos: (Re)Claiming Our Dreams Across Contested Terrains

The 2010 institute…

Arizona State University, Phoenix Derechos Humanos: (Re)Claiming Our Dreams Across Contested Terrains July 21-24

The theme of the 2010 institute reflects our belief in the interrelationship between human rights and the urgent need to reclaim contested terrains and Indigenous homelands. In doing so, we recognize that dreams in our communities all too often go unrealized. The paucity of economic security compounded by limited access to education, health care, urban survival, and civil rights calls us to reflect, theorize, and organize to challenge the powers and inequalities prevailing in our communities and institutions. By contested terrains, we acknowledge the embattled contradictory borders and spaces of our everyday lives in geographical, spiritual, ideological, epistemological, political, and cultural arenas. We claim our rights to dreams, and to instill those dreams in our loved ones and to honor the dreams of those who preceded us. In order to fully learn from each other, we are creating a youth track that inspires and forges cross-generational ties. In the spirit of this institute we invite scholars, activists, cultural workers, artists, students, and community members to join us in envisioning the possibilities and actualizing social change.

Summer Institute website with full info is here

Call For Papers – click for MS DocDownload MS Doc format or pdf Download pdf

Call For Papers – Youth Track- click for MSDoc Download MS Doc format or pdf Download pdf

"Hispanics" and the Census – what "race" are we?

We had a good discussion about the “race” question on the census form on the malcs email list (let us know if you’re not on the list yet).  Here’s more food for thought:

From “Still Black or White: Why the Census Misreads Hispanics”
Tim Padgett, Time Magazine

Many, if not most, Hispanics in the U.S. think of their ethnicity (also known as Latino) not just in cultural terms but in a racial context as well. It’s why more than 40% of Hispanics, when asked on the Census form in 2000 to register white or black as their race, wrote in “Other” — and they represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so. (See the 25 most influential Hispanics in America.)

An even larger share of Hispanics, including my Venezuelan-American wife, is expected to report “Other,” “Hispanic” or “Latino” in the race section of the 2010 census forms being mailed to U.S. homes this month. What makes it all the more confusing if not frustrating to them is that Washington continues to insist on those forms that “Hispanic origins are not races.” If the Census Bureau lists Filipino and even Samoan as distinct races, Hispanics wonder why they — the product of half a millennium of New World miscegenation — aren’t considered a race too. “It’s a very big issue,” says Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy in New York City and a community adviser to the Census. “A lot of Hispanics find the black-white option offensive, and they’re asserting their own racial uniqueness.”

Read more

[“…half a millennium of New World miscegenation.” –?]

Summer Institute 2010!

What:  MALCS 2010 Summer Institute
Where:  Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ
When: July 21-24
Theme: “Derechos Humanos: (Re)Claiming Our Dreams
Across Contested Terrains.”