…After more than 50 years of fighting for what she and Chavez called La Causa (the cause), Huerta shows no signs of fatigue or cynicism. At one moment she speaks with the wisdom and affections of a grandmother (she has 11 children, 20 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren), and in the next with the fury of a warrior still on a lifelong mission.

Recently, she has been traveling the country, speaking at marches and $100-a-plate dinners on behalf of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. In These Times caught up with Huerta on the University of Illinois-Chicago campus where she spoke at a conference about the immigration movement in Chicago.

Article continues at In These Times online magazine (https://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3125/)

FRESNO, Calif. – When school officials announce the name of the Fresno High School prom king on Saturday, Cinthia Covarrubias will be wearing a tuxedo just like the six boys vying for the honor. Administrators agreed to reverse a district protocol this week that limited males to compete for the title after Covarrubias was nominated by her classmates.

“I would never have run for anything if I had to wear a dress,” said Covarrubias, who considers herself transgender, an umbrella term that covers all people whose outward appearance and internal identity don’t match their gender at birth.

Gay youth advocates called it a landmark victory for campus gender expression and said they believe it’s the first time in the U.S. that an openly transgender student has run for prom royalty.

Full story here

From a recent commentary by El Paso Times guest columnist Christine Granados:

When the guero is finished with his talk, I buy his book so I can ask him what role he thinks Chicano literature is going to play in American letters. And because I asked straight up like that, he couldn’t bring up Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who we both know ain’t Mexican-American. The pobre had to answer something, and you know what he told me? He just doesn’t see it having a big role in literature, such as other media and the Internet.

Read the entire article here

This post swiped directly from ysletapoeta 

The recently expanded and renamed Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Department at ASU focuses on U.S. and Mexican regional immigration policy and economy, media literature and arts, and transborder community development and health – areas that have a significant impact in the Latino community.

“In the first decade of the 21st century, 40 percent of the U.S. Mexican-origin population was born in Mexico,” says Velez-Ibanez. “Moreover, Mexican Americans now live in every state of the union, and large numbers of other Latino groups now live in close proximity to what were formerly nearly exclusive Mexican urban concentrations in cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and others.” [Read more…] about ASU renames dept: Transborder Chicana/o & Latina/o Studies

Sweatshop conditions, undocumented workers flown out of state stranding children, and government contracts….

“Mayor Criticizes raid for disrupting families” (LATimes)
“Massachusetts Protests Feds’ Immigration Flights”

Check out the newly revised website for the DC-based National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. The mission of NLIRH is “to ensure the fundamental human right to reproductive health for Latinas, their families and their communities through public education, policy advocacy, and community mobilization.”

Current sites includes info on the Roe v. Wade anniversary, updates on the Hyde Amendment in woc communities, immigration issues, and Latina leadership training series in Houston, Florida, and Minnesota. Also see their great selection of fact sheets and publications

• Rethinking Racial Classifications – An Education Department plan to change the way colleges collect and report data on their students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds is attracting growing criticism.
• MALDEF and the ACLU are challenging legislation passed in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas, that prohibits landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.
• Oaxacan women and their family members in California launch a $1.5 million nopal bottling plant in the town of Santa Maria Ayoquezco, Mexico
• Mexicana golfer Lorena Ochoa is AP Athlete of the Year