{"id":736,"date":"2011-07-18T04:18:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T04:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcs.org\/archive-2017\/?p=736"},"modified":"2011-07-27T06:32:28","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T06:32:28","slug":"news-from-the-exec-revisioning-malcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2011\/07\/18\/news-from-the-exec-revisioning-malcs\/","title":{"rendered":"News from the Exec: ReVisioning MALCS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n

MALCS is an organization that supports Chicanas, Latinas, Native American and Indigenous women in higher education and community leadership.<\/p>\n

Our Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n

MALCS is an organization that initiates dialogue amongst our members and creates exchanges with other social activist organizations drawing on our histories as well as emerging cultural thought and practice in order to address new global challenges.<\/p>\n

Getting to Our Mission and Vision: Confronting Challenges to Mujeres<\/strong><\/p>\n

To evaluate where MALCS is, as an organization, we reflected on its role in social action, the purpose of our work and how it is linked to the movement for the transformation of our society.<\/p>\n

In past assessments, we have considered the effect of Chicana feminisms on the field of Chicano studies. MALCS has been a vehicle for bridging who we are and what we do\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven in contentious times. Thus, MALCS has been raising new questions, challenging assumptions, and exploring knowledges, introducing new ways of thinking about issues that confront our communities.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s Mujeres within NACCS addressed that it was not only an issue of inclusion. Questions of patriarchy, patterns, behaviors, and what was becoming custom and tradition had to be challenged and we needed to develop oppositional practices of Chicana and Chicano research. We needed a new language that spoke to the experiences of La Mujer.<\/p>\n

MALCS played a unique role in the process of transforming the study of our communities by becoming a central place for mujeres to explore and work out ideas; this brought to the fore the relations of our work to social change; therefore, re-constituting the radical and transformative to explore \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oppositional possibility.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

More recently, we developed a two-pronged response to the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona: we boycotted the state and found ways of supporting the mujeres that were hosting the institute there.\u00c2\u00a0 The response involved our membership in the decision-making process in a way it had never been done before.<\/p>\n

What was illustrated is that the membership has a commitment to the MALCS vision. Members were thoroughly involved in a series of tasks that included on-line discussions, surveys, individual e-mails forwarded to the board and other members, as well as discussion groups.\u00c2\u00a0 Such modes of communication proved that the organization moved forward in the incorporation of various voices and we formed a virtual community. In addition this demonstrated a need for an evaluation and assessment of the organization.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the executive board proceeded to compile and evaluate the information exchanged in order to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153do work that matters.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 There were passionate and powerful voices. We also recognized that there were some deafening silences.\u00c2\u00a0 To be an organization that responds in social action we considered all perspectives coming from its members.\u00c2\u00a0 However, a democratic process had to prevail in order to move through this challenging situation.<\/p>\n

Some of the representative points of discussion were:<\/p>\n