Speaker 1:	Good afternoon friends. Thank you so much for coming. Hi Katie. Thank you so much for coming. I'm going to introduce Dr. Edwin Mayorga. Edwin Mayorga identifies as a parent, educator and scholar activist. He's an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies here at Swarthmore and he's also affiliated with the program in Latin American and Latino Studies. His work centers primarily on cultural, political, economic perspectives on urbanism, urban education policy, Latinx education, digital social science, and teaching for social justice. He's founder and lead researcher of the Education in Our Barrios and Philadelphia project and also New York City, which is a youth participatory action research collaborative, whose goal is to work with and for youth and urban Latinx for communities. He completed his doctoral studies in urban education at the graduate center at the city of New York ... City University of New York, CUNY. And he has written articles and book chapters on the barrio and project school closures, and digital critical and participatory action research. He is also the co-editor of a volume What's Race Got to Do With It? How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality. 
	At Swarthmore, Edwin has created the Critical Education Policy Studies Group, which is a space geared towards encouraging critical discussions and writings within the field of education policy. He has taught a number of courses here including Introduction to Education, Teacher Narratives, Policy and Power, Urban Education, Education Policy, Urban Politics Policy and Education, Student Teaching Supervision and Ethnic Studies and Education. And he also ... I could just go on forever, but lastly I'll say that he's originally from Los Angeles and has a BA in history from UC San Diego, and an MA in education from Teacher's College at Columbia. So the title of his talk is La Politica Desde Abajo; Politics from Below, US Latinx Politics Following the 2016 Election in 2010. So, please join me in welcoming Professor Edwin Mayorga.
Edwin Mayorga:	All right. Buenas tardes todos. Good afternoon. Again I'm Edwin Mayorga, [inaudible 00:02:39] thank you for that wonderful introduction and for the invitation to have a conversation with folks about something that is actually not specifically a research project of mine at the moment. But it is kind of germinating in my head and how I'm thinking about it. It's really more coming from my politics and my engagement in different communities here in Philadelphia. So, I'm trying to what Michelle Fine, and Lois Weiss talked about it is having a kind of critical bifocals on where I'm looking at the local. And trying to pay attention to national and broader global structural things that are happening and all the little capillaries in between those things. Before I go on, I also wanted to ... it's a practice of mine also to recognize the land. This is Lenni-Lenape land and so as we are here just of gathering and having a dialog that we also recognize that the land is borrowed, or stolen. But that we are here and trying to do what I hope is some good work.
	So Latinx, let me just put this out the way quickly. I'm using it really as a recognition of it being born out of collective struggle and a sense of trying to move beyond the masculine-centric Latino, as well as binary notions of Latino/a. It's still a concept that I think I'm trying to still work through, but I am using it. I think also in standing in solidarity with the students here at the college who have also, for the most part embraced it, but have caused within our circles in terms of the scholarship, it has been a kind of controversial contentious discussion. But, I am using it and I just wanted to make sure that that was clear.
	So, I wanted to speak a little bit about my analytic framework. As I had said, I am looking at schools as these ... or I'm in educational studies and my concerns are related to urbanism. But I think about schools as these kind of geographical solutions to social, national, economic crisis; politically organized by a racial state that is in itself in crisis. To examine the school or more broadly, to be in the field of educational studies is a way to explore multiplicity of processes of development, economy, and social conditions, social relationships, and modes of resistance, or survivance. But also hold up the institution, I'm sorry. At the same time hold up the instructional dynamic of teaching and learning as primary. So, we're always teaching and learning. And it's not just individuals, but how our structures, our social relationships are conducted. The way our institutions and policies are conducted, implemented; are always teaching us something. And so, that means we are always in this process of learning. So that's kind of like my perspective or a key part of what grounds me in educational studies. Too many arrows.
	The other part that I think about too analytically, is this coupled notions of dominance and survivance. And so, what I'm looking at here is just really the notion that dominance is another way of thinking about social control, oppression, and the creating of vulnerabilities. For some it's a premature death. While survivance is a conceptualization of collective and individual practices to move beyond merely survival. Dimension of survivance is what Clowered and Piven have talked about, or what I think about as power from below. Or engaging in a politics from below. So, how might those seen as marginal politically in relation to state power engage in efforts to disrupt structures of power and move policies in the society towards some more different notions of just social conditions? So those are just kind of the framing pieces.
	Another important part of this ... can people still hear me okay? Another important part of this is just understanding that by focusing ... so, I'm always grounded in education. But I also am thinking specifically about Latinx communities and how historically it is a fraught relationship that the United States as a state has had with the Latinx community. And so here, I just pulled some historical pieces. So, this in 1847 right around the moment as the end of the U.S. Mexican War was ending and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was being signed. A fair amount of land was being given from Mexico to the United States. And so, this was description of what happened to the eagle pre and post that war. And so, there was a gutting and a plucking of feathers. The other part though is that, when I'm talking about Latinos, I don't want us to equate that with just Mexicans, or Chicanos, or a Mexican American community. I'm also thinking about the variety of Latinadades, the mosaic of different Latino communities that hemispherically and globally make up what we describe as U.S. Latinos in very contentious ways. 
	So this is from 1898 and looking at the relationship between Puerto Rico. And so, Uncle Sam is giving these little articles of red, white, and blue clothing to ... or stars and stripe clothing to this young Puerto Rican boy who is apparently not wearing clothes. I think it speaks to how historically there's this image and depiction and cultural kind of framing that is infused in policy. It is a very hemispheric, and if people are familiar with that big stick image of Teddy Roosevelt, I'm carrying this big stick. And there's a picture of the Caribbean around him as he's stomping through. And so, it's a lot of these kinds of images that I think are in many ways still with us today as we're thinking about policy and practice. 
	Now, I also want to recognize with Puerto Rico, part of my ongoing thinking is paying attention to what's happening both on the island as well as here in Philadelphia and what we might describe as mainland U.S. Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are the second largest population on of Latinos in the U.S. What's happening around their economic conditions on the island as well as the different issues that are affecting people here in the U.S. are things that I am paying attention to. For today's talk though, this given time, I'm going to be focusing on immigration. Which again, also is not a Mexican story, right? Immigration is a global issue, but I'm looking at it from a Latinx kind of perspective. Okay?
	So, just some quick statistical, please make sure you're able to read all of that. I just pulled out a few of these just to, you know. The Mexican population, this is 2014 data, so there are 35,371,000 roughly Puerto Ricans being the second largest, folks from El Salvador, and Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, are three, four, and five respectively. So, just a few quick other statistical things. The share of the Latinx population has been increasing over the last 50, 60 years. One thing to note though, is that the numbers are ... so since 2007, 2008 ... Well okay, since 2000 the majority of the Latinx population is actually comprised of U.S. born Latinx community individuals, rather foreign born or migratory communities. That is something to take note of because we kind of conceptually think about this historically as; Oh, this is a perpetual foreign invasion kind of phenomena that's happening. But, in fact it's actually been in reverse and so that's in the 21st century. And since 2007, 2008 the number of people who are immigrating into the U.S. from Latin America actually is on the decline. I mean, it's still the significant majority of who is coming to the U.S., but the actual number is steadily on decline. And it looks like it's going to be plateauing, I don't know maybe 2062, I think I was reading somewhere; or 2026.
	This is just a more local perspective to give you a little bit. The Puerto Rican community actually is the largest Latinx community here in the region. And there are really less than 1 million in this southeast regional, kind of the Wilmington, Philadelphia, Camden area. The Mexican population in particular, as well as the Central American populations have grown significantly over the years. And they're both in the city, but also out in the rural regions. And I know, Swarthmore's had a long relationship out in Kemet Square. And so, those populations have been long standing, but have been continuing to grow. The focus is really thinking about immigration. The other part then is just thinking about the other question that's often on the table is unauthorized immigrant populations. This was back in 2014, 2015, the bulk of the 11.1 million and that number is to be determined, the bulk of that population actually lives in these 20 urban centers or metro regions, so that's about 6.8 million people. In the Philly, Camden area that's about 160,000 people who are unauthorized immigrants in the Latinx community. 
	I actually, in thinking about this, I think it's important for us to look back on the Obama administration and how we are the election became this point of inheriting a very fraught, complicated set of circumstances that were then debated about and framed in various ways. And so, both Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, and the other potential candidates who were running for president really had to define themselves in relation to what Barrack Obama's policies had ultimately become with respect to immigration. Now, different people will give you different perspectives on it, of course. I think about it as a mixed bag. The critics have called Barrack Obama the deporter in chief, because of the number of people that were either returned or refused when they were coming or trying to immigrate. 
	Now, one thing to ... I think we need to have a nuanced perspective on that because yes ... or one of the things to be mindful of is that when we define and think about deportation, it's actually not the legal term that we use. It's the one that's used in media when we're saying; "Oh, this person was deported". And we actually think about it in terms of return. When you're actually looking across time across different presidencies, the polices have actually changed. The language that we use has actually changed. So, it's really important to look at those statistics with a critical eye in making sense of ... And really anything pre 1996, which Clinton, Bush senior, and so on and so forth, there was major changes in legislation. And then again during the George W. Bush regime, you're looking at the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. And so, the language again, is continually shifting. So, I think it is important to come at it from a balanced perspective. 
	At the same time, Obama also instituted DACA, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, supporting that population. So if you came here as a child, you would not necessarily be returned and so, you created this population. And so, from the people who are weary of immigration and unauthorized immigration, this was seen as like kind of completely opening the borders, or it was a message about being soft on immigration. The other piece that I think that's important and particularly to the local conditions, is the phenomena around unaccompanied minors. And a related aspect of that is family detention centers. 
	So, one of the things that happened in the Obama administration is actually a growth in detention centers for families. One of them is not too far from here in Berks County. There were three that were grown. It had existed for a long time and it was supposed to be a child detention center, but then it was converted into a family detention center. There were a lot of issues that were raised around it because of families were being detained for significant amounts of time, looking at months, where it was initially described as maybe a one week, a few days, a few weeks. It was turning into six, seven, eight months for some of the families. And so, it was mothers and children that were at Berks. 
	A lot of the organizing that happened during the Obama administration in his later years, locally was targeted at trying to close Berks down. I think for me this is kind of what signals a mixed bag set of circumstances. And I think if we are mindful of politically, who was in Congress basically for the duration of the Obama administration, I think it was a complicated issue for him to handle because he had to come out looking tough or forceful with respect to the borders and border security. But at the same time, I think he was conflicted in terms of how he was addressing the needs of the Latinx community. As a counter example, in education he had a Hispanic Excellence in Education Committee that was formed and he came out talking about the need to fund a number of educational initiatives to support that community. And talked about and framed it as the Latinx community goes, so goes the nation. And so, really kind of thinking about how it was inextricably bound. And so, you see this kind of polarity to what he was trying to do.
	So, the election, good times. The interesting thing is that from my perspective, the Latinx community actually beyond immigration becomes this invisible population yet again in some ways across the political spectrum. And so, what happens is that a lot of the Latinx political leadership nationally really gets involved, as well as the media. Univision is a major player, Jorge Ramos, and so what you're seeing is this focus on just getting on the docket to be paid attention to. And so, immigration is just one of a very few number of openings to actually talk about what's happening with respect to Latinos in the U.S.; despite the fact that it actually in both pre and post the election, immigration was not even one of the top five ... it's been on the top five issues for Latinx communities. But it's not been in the top three for some time, it's actually education, jobs, and protecting the country from external terrorism that were these three major issues in terms of the Hispanic Study Center and one of their thousand people surveys were finding. So, I think it is important to think about how that then plays out here. 
	I don't have a lot of time, so I'm just going to ... I did just want to show a little bit of Donald Trump's perspective here. 
Donald Trump:	We need strong borders. We need absolute, we can not give amnesty. Now, I want to build a wall. We need the wall. The Border Patrol, ICE, they all want the wall. We stop the drugs, we shore up the border. One of my first acts will be to get all of the drug lords, all of the bad ones. We have some bad, bad people in this country that have to go out. We're going to get them out. We're going to secure the border and once the border is secured, at a later date, we'll make a determination as to the rest. But, we have some bad hombres here and we're going to get them out.
Edwin Mayorga:	I'm sure some of you have seen that. My apologies. 
Speaker 4:	You alluded to the topic that I want to ask you about ...
Edwin Mayorga:	I'm going to try to scoot up just to ...
Speaker 4:	... for you to do, is to walk us through the steps. How will you get immigration reform, something that President Obama was not able to do, so that Latinos can believe that something is going to happen? That their vote again, is not being taken for granted, considering that the House, at least the House will remain under Republican control?
Hillary Clinton:	It's a great question and it's one that I obviously have given much thought to because I am determined that we are going to achieve comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. So, here is how I see it. First of all, we're going to start immediately. I want this to be a clear high priority for my administration. We will be prepared to introduce legislation as quickly as we can do so. I am hoping that the outcome of the election, which I am working hard to insure [inaudible 00:23:59] will send a clear message to our Republican friends. It is time for them to quit standing in the way of immigration reform. If you remember after the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee did what they called an autopsy of their loss and concluded that they could not continue to deny the importance of immigration reform. And they urged Republicans running for office to get on board. Now, that hasn't turned out the way that they seemed to have hoped. We have instead a Republican nominee who has been virulently anti-immigrant. But, there's nothing like winning to change ...
	If we move in the Senate, and then we demand that there be a vote in the House, because I'm convinced that if the bi-partisan bill ...
Edwin Mayorga:	Sorry I'm just trying to skip ahead a little.
Hillary Clinton:	... favorable to us making this happen. I will also defend the president's executive actions. I like you, was disappointed with the Supreme Court decision, but remember what it did. It sent the case back to be tried. It did not determine the case, so [inaudible 00:25:18], DAPA are still alive. So, Trump has said one of his first acts as president would be to eliminate every executive order that President Obama has signed including those on immigration issues. So, I will defend DACA and DAPA while I work vigorously for immigration reform.
	I have proposed an office of immigrant affairs for the White House so that we are able to answer questions and provide information and help people. I will take a very hard look at the deportation priorities. My priority are violent criminals, people suspected of any kind of connection to terrorism. Not hard working mothers and fathers, and people who go to work, help support this economy, pay $12 billion a year into social security. So, we will take a hard look at that. We will close private detention centers just like I want to end private prisons. We're going to close private detention centers. So, I have a very active agenda.
Edwin Mayorga:	All right. Sorry that was a little long. So, one of the things that I find interesting here is the way ... well, a couple things. First actually, with respect to Hillary Clinton's position. So, she's taking a position that actually ... and the media was picking up on it as actually breaking off or breaking away from the Obama administration here. And so, she got from the more conservative perspective, she got pummeled because she was ... now, we thought Obama was opening up borders. Well, Hillary's about to open the flood gates. And so, that was the kind of framing and one of the things that she did come out strong on is the idea of closing the detention centers; including the family detention centers. Because part of her kind of platform was to say that we can't ... she didn't want to participate in the breaking apart, ripping apart of families, and the kind of violence that was happening and poor conditions that were happening in these detention centers.
	At the same time, she is also seen as actually flip flopping on her perspective on that. Because a few years before that she would often talk about the same kind of get tough, having secure borders kind of stance. And so, she was definitely shifted both before the election. I'm sorry, on the campaign trail both in the primaries and then later in the national election. The other thing that I picked up here, is just the framing of Latinos in this. Because when their saying immigration and immigration communities, for me it's a coded way of talking about Latinos here. And Clinton in particular is speaking directly to associations that were Latino focused in this little clip. But in both cases, this kind of pejorative framing of Latinx communities as ... now the words are different. Right? Because it's bad hombres for Donald Trump, but the kind of focus on violent criminals that Clinton is also using that in that case is parallel or a connection to the Obama administration. Because that was one of the things that Obama really focused on was trying to narrow it down to that kind of conception of who deserves to be deported, to use media popular language.
	So, fast forward. We have our election. Locally, when we're looking at the DNC, the Democratic National Convention, there was a lot of protest and an articulation of the different kinds of issues that were still seeping out. So even though conservative critics might have been framing Clinton's position as being one of opening the borders, these kind of more critical activist stance was ... who I think about as communities and different engaged local people. They were framing it as still not far enough, in terms of supporting immigrant communities in general and Latinx communities in particular. And so, there one of the things they frame it as ...
Speaker 6:	Pennsylvania.
Group:	Si se puedes. Si se puedes.
Erika Miron:	My name is Erika Miron, I'm the executive director of Juntos and we're marching today with groups across the country with the Not One More Network, with Mi Gente. And we're here to make sure that Hillary understands that she needs to be the anti-Trump. And that means that she needs to shut down our family detention centers, like the one that's an hour away from here, called Berks Family Detention Center; where there are children that are locked up right now. We're also here to tell them to put a moratorium on deportations and making sure that she understands that it's not enough to make promises, but she needs to take action.
Group:	Hey pueblo unido. [inaudible 00:31:14] Hey pueblo unido. [inaudible 00:31:18]
Edwin Mayorga:	So, my reading of what's happening here is this I think for me indicative of not the factor, but one of the factors I think with respect to how this election turned out. Because the activists are trying to put pressure on the Democrats to take a stand that is really this position of the anti-Trump. And so, what would that actually look like in terms of policies, practices, ways of engaging different local communities in these conversations? And ultimately, for me I read it as a kind of call for deeper relationships and organizing work on the part of the democrats that wasn't happening. Not in the way that it needed to particularly, in disenfranchised and marginalized communities. And so, for me kind of thinking about this and listening to Erika Miron who's where in south Philadelphia as the director of Juntos, I think it's an important framing to consider as we're thinking about where do we go from here, and how do we think about some of the work that lies ahead.
	Okay so, a few quick things. The elections happened. The three pillars of the Trump administration are a nation without borders is not a nation; so border security, building the wall. Also going along the lines of his law and order stance, how we're going to hold accountable people, particularly the bad hombres. Because apparently, entire nation states are just filled with these kinds of people. And that the nations doesn't serve its citizens so, an immigration plan must really be connected to jobs and wages and [inaudible 00:33:30] the kind of development.
	The other piece to pay attention to here is more state level issues. So, we have declared ourselves a sanctuary campus here, as have other institutions. And so, in terms of legislation a couple things that we need to pay attention to that are being put out in the state legislature. One, is a bill that proposed by Metcalf on sponsoring the use of e-verify. So, if you're going to apply for jobs, it's going to require you, as well as institutions ... you know in education, because we have people working out in the field we're also asked to participate. We do background checks and clearances so that students can go out and work or work out in the field. And so, that creates problems and issues if we ever come up with students who are undocumented, which we do have here at the college. So, these are one of the issues that's coming up.
	And then the other pieces that Jerry Knowles has proposed, HB14, which is ... now this would probably not affect us directly as much as the public institutions in the state of Pennsylvania, but anyone that has been declared a sanctuary campus, or university, or school district would be facing some kind of state funding cuts or penalties for taking on that stance. So these kinds of things are in process and are happening. Now, I'm kind of running out of time. Let me just say, so this is again going back to the PEW Research Center and some of the survey work that they've been doing in these first few, what are we at? 81 days of the Trump administration? So, here's some initial work. 
	The Latinx community's actually quite divided about their conditions and their plight. But still 54 percent, I'm sorry. They're divided about how concerned they are about their particular situation and whether or not it's changed since the shift over in political regimes. So, while being divided, the important thing to note, to go back to the immigration conversation and as I had mentioned; it's the fifth issue. The things that they're more concerned about are improving the educational system, defending the country from terrorist attacks, and strengthening the nation's economy are the top three. And then reducing healthcare costs. 
	So all of these issues, what's interesting is to pay attention to how all of these issues aside from immigration are framed almost as not Latinx issues, but they're actually the ones that people most care about. And so, where I wanted to end and pushing us to think about is what kind of work needs to happen. The other thing I wanted to pay attention to is the kinds of trauma the policy changes have led to. While people feel generally divided, one of the things going back to education that people are experiencing are ... so people are not ... so ICE isn't allowed to go into schools to go and round up anyone that's suspected. But what we need to pay attention to is what happens actually right around outside of the schools. 
	And so, in this case for example, earlier this year one of the students doesn't have a social security number, most likely unauthorized as a person here. But has been living with their mom in the Philadelphia area since the age of six months. And so, the young person gets into a fight and the local police have to pick him up. And then, the younger sister's there watching this happen. And then he ends up being in there for two weeks because he's considered a flight risk. Now, in Philadelphia because it has declared it is a forth amendment city, they are working with the police not to necessarily be forth coming to ICE in terms of picking up the young person. 
	At the same time though, there is the issue in terms of trauma. What kinds of mental health issues are happening for young people as their trying to navigate both being in school? And often, many of these young people, when they're in high school are working jobs and are trying to attend school, and trying to complete school. And so, there are a variety of different factors that are happening on the ground that I think we also need to be paying attention to.
	Okay so, the way forward. And this is where I think about the idea of a politics from below. So, throughout I think, or I've been trying to tell this layered story, but I think part of it is paying attention to how the local on the ground communities actually navigate and try to go beyond survival in terms of the conditions in which they're facing. And so, one of the emerging ... so there are a couple of things that are emerging right now that I'm looking at and looking at very closely, both politically, but also in terms of my scholarship and thinking about social movements. One is trying to rally around the notion of expanding sanctuary. So, really moving away from, and this straight from the document that I just shared the front cover of.
	So, the term sanctuary most recently refers to the local police. Let me get out of the way. That limit when and if law enforcement communicates with or submits to often unconstitutional requests. But here's the thing, right. In a country where we're over-policed, one in three people being arrested at least once by the age of 23. We need to think about going beyond this notion of sanctuary in terms of just information and communication between different kinds of enforcement agencies. What this for me really points to is this idea of solidarity and a kind of intersectional kind of solidarity. And by that I mean, and what they're pushing for in this statement is that pushing sanctuary and expanding it to think about what are the variety, the consolation of institutions within civil society that have an impact on young people and vulnerable communities? 
	And so, the idea of tying immigration issues to criminalization to the relation with the police, to racial profiling, all of these are Latinx issues. These are immigrant community issues, as often these are framed as like black issues. Or when we look at the tremendous work that the Black Lives Matters movement has contributed in terms of just our consciousness and thinking about police brutality and those kinds of issues. This move to expanding sanctuary for me, speaks to this idea of how do we think about these issues as interconnected rather than operating in silos, which is often from my perspective and my research one of the death sentences of any kind of social movement is when we do operate in silos, we may put out small fires, but the house itself is still on fire. And so, how do we really try to address all of those things.
	The last thing I'll say here is a number of organizations have rallied around the idea of expanding sanctuary and connecting it to the Black Lives Matter movement and a number of other organizations and movements, including the Dakota Access Pipeline, and so on and so forth. And they've rallied under the hash tag beyond the movement. And so, Beyond the Movement is actually a campaign that started on April 4. Does anyone know why April 4 is important in terms of social movements? In 1967, yup right. So, the idea was to actually take, so for the Latinx community and some of the activist organizations there's an organization called Mi Gente, based out of Chicago but is a small growing national organization amongst the 50 have started to put out beats; these kinds of images. And so, it's going from April 4 to May 1 as this kind of first initial wave. And so, May 1 being a Day Without rallies, as well as Black Lives Matters rallies, all being under the umbrella of Beyond the Movement rallies. 
	What they've been trying to do is actually take from Dr. King's speech in 1967 around Vietnam and translating them into Spanish as ways to engage the Spanish speaking community to really frame these issues as these are not just black issues, or brown issues, but they're actually everyone's issues. And so, how do we engage? How do we move each other in ways to get out and to protest in the variety of ways that we are capable of? And using protest as a way to, Fran Piven said also ... or Frances Fox Piven talked about as like, we're at a moment where we need to just kind of throw sand everywhere, in all the gears to try to disrupt. But also to inform and imagine these other kinds of possibilities. That kind of ends my talk and thanks for your time.