Nopal Award Recipient
Dr. Jose Zapata Calderon,
Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Chicano Studies, Pomona Pitzer
Tuna de Nopal recipient
Roxanne Mendez, ‘04
Executive Director, The Riordan Programs
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Kellogg West Conference Room, 6:00 P.M.
Cal Poly Pomona
RSVP by April 8th by calling (909) 869-2963 or
Visit http://hildasolis2013.eventbrite.com/# or
Email alumni@csupomona.edu — with Roxanne Mendez and Jose Z. Calderon.
This is to let you know of the 20th Anniversary of taking students to work and carry out educational advocacy with the farm workers. We had an exhilarating Alternative Spring Break in La Paz that included on Saturday: a service at Cesar Chavez’s gravesite, students making UFW flags and posters for an action on immigrant rights, carrying out service projects that included cutting weeds at a peace memorial site, an evening dinner (with Paul Chavez and key leaders of the UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation) that featured former alumni who had been part of the Alternative Spring Break in the last 20 years, the presentation of a 20th anniversary plaque to the Chavez Family, and a presentation by the La Paz hip hop group that includes the son of Dolores Huerta. On Sunday, the events included: a visit to Radio Campesina and a presentation by the grandson of Cesar Chavez (who is also named Cesar Chavez and is one of the directors of the radio station); an action with signs and flags in the Latino section of Bakersfield (the streets of Mt. Vernon and Nile) where we passed out 800 educational leaflets on the need for immigration reform (with Melissa Ayala and Maria Rodriguez taking the lead in gathering over 100 signatures in support of driver’s licenses for undocumented) and support for a march on Sunday, March 24th (covered by 4 different televisions stations and by local news media); and led on a tour of 40 acres, Agbayani, and other historic sites of the UFW in Delano by Marc Grossman. We had a really good dinner at a restaurant in Delano run by a former farm worker who supports the UFW. On Monday, the students made very moving teatro presentations of their experiences to farm worker organizers, staff, and community at a special luncheon in La Paz (Keene, CA). The place was packed like Saturday night — and especially attended by the grandsons of Cesar Chavez and some farm workers who came in from Arvin just for the teatros.
Here is some of the coverage:
Local leaders rallying for immigration change
An announcement on Youtube:
And an article with a picture of some of my students holding signs:
Francisco Sola writes:
demagogue: a political leader in a democracy who appeals to the prejudices and ignorance rather than by using rational argument in order to gain power
Marco Rubio… asserted, without offering any evidence, the president is opposed to free enterprise. He spent much of his time attacking that government programs cannot help address problems of economic inequality. But then he turned around and acknowledged that his own family has benefited from government programs such as Medicare, Social Security and federal financial aid.
The president can use an executive order to stop the unjust dividing of families — undocumented brothers and sisters — who contribute more than $70 billion to the economy and, through remittances, have held up the economies of other countries in Latin America (such as Mexico and El Salvador)
Do you know the quota for number of deportations each year? It’s the thing people aren’t talking about in immigration.
By the end of today, 1,100 more people will be deported.
Mr. President, actions speak louder than words. its time to announce a suspension on deportations.
With the promotion of standardized tests and quantitative methods that evaluate the performances of both teachers and students, there is a diminishing of the space for the 
creation of democratic bridges between what is being learned in the classroom and the challenges of democratic decision-making in our communities. This trend is characterized by the growth of for-profit charter schools and companies that are redefining the meaning of education.
Special Report: Class Struggle – How charter schools get students they want | Reuters
With the growth of a global economy, there is the need for a type of educational system that promotes civic engagement as a means of building new models toward a democratic society.
There is a trend emerging in our present educational system that wants to take us back to the days of reproducing individuals to fit a more authoritarian philosophy. This trend seeks to promote a managerial “banking” system where the power of disseminating knowledge is being transferred to the needs of the business and political establishments. This shift fits into the early 20th century industrial model of schools where students were socialized in assembly-like rows to be taught the status quo and not to be heard from. Continue reading
A column appeared today in the Daily Bulletin that I wrote before the charter school issue at Pomona Unified. To their credit, Pomona Unified school board members denied a proposal by one of these independent for-profit acadamies to open a K-12 charter school in the district. The article is timely since I will be speaking to these issues today at a Claremont Colleges’ conference of twenty liberal arts colleges from throughout the U. S. on community engagement. The link to my column is below:
http://www.dailybulletin.com/opinions/ci_22493361/education-that-advances-democracy
San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos sent a hand-delivered letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asking that pending immigration reforms include provisions allowing immigrants’ DNA samples to be cross-checked against the FBI’s database.
This is just another obstacle that is being created to criminalize, rather than support, our undocumented immigrant community. It is another form of advancing a mindset, not of how many billions our undocumented immigrant brothers and sisters have contributed to this economy, but that they are all criminals. At the same time, it is meant to add another requisite to placing our immigrant families at the back of the line, with so many requisites to meet, that they will be waiting “more years than life” to obtain a legalization that is just and equal.