In Search of the ‘Tomato King’: Finding a Mexican Migrant Politician, Rooted in California Soil, by Prof. Adrían Félix

Ethnic Studies professor Adrían Félix recently published an essay, titled “In Search of the ‘Tomato King’: Finding a Mexican Migrant Politician, Rooted in California Soil” in Zócalo Public Square. Here is an excerpt:

I am writing a biography of Bermúdez, and I am drawn equally to this complex and contradictory figure by his larger-than-life character—in his signature all-black cowboy ensemble—and by the unprecedented transnational movement he ignited. Bermúdez gave migrants a voice in the politics of their homeland. He also reproduced the strongman tendencies and political bossism he fought against, not to mention machismo.

He is both rule and exception: so much like millions of fellow Mexican migrants who anonymously toil in this country, but also remarkable for transcending strictures of citizenship and borders. Tracing his California path through rural swaths of the state is a reminder of how Bermúdez, and others, have made it their home while maintaining lifelong ties to their ancestral motherlands.

You can read the full article on Zócalo Public Square. Image above: Tomato King Andrés Bermúdez by Be Boggs.

Desert X 2023: A contemporary art exhibition featuring the work of Professor Gerald Clarke.

by Keith Miyake Events Faculty News

Desert X is an international contemporary art exhibition that takes place in desert locations and features site-specific installations by acclaimed artists from around the world. The exhibition is produced by The Desert Biennial, a California-based not-for-profit organization with a mission to present public exhibitions of art that engage with the desert, the environment, and indigenous communities. Eleven artists from Europe, North America and South Asia will present poetic and immersive works that span sculpture, painting, writing, architecture, design, film, music, performance and choreography, education, and environmental activism in the exhibition curated by Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-Curator Diana Campbell.

The exhibition examines social and environmental themes with a focus on the changes that give form to a world increasingly shaped by climate crisis, globalism, and the political and economic migrations that follow in their wake. In the exhibition, which builds on social and environmental themes explored in earlier editions, newly-commissioned works make visible, as instruments of self-awareness and devices of wonder, the forces that we exert on the world: how we design our environments, how we live, and the messages we send that reinforce systems that might or might not be beneficial for us. From the local to the global, from schools and roads to global trade routes that define the ebb and flow of goods and many things in-between, infrastructure has subsumed creative ways of being that are inconvenient to forces of power.

Desert X 2023 features the work of Professor Gerald Clarke, who presents a unique piece called Immersion. The installation takes the form of a traditional Cahuilla coiled basket or ‘chi-pat-mal’ scaled to become a giant game board. The goal of reaching the center can only be achieved by correctly answering questions relating to the traditions and histories of the Cahuilla Indians and other sovereign cultures. By gamifying history Clarke sublimates prejudice. At the same time, he reminds us how unattainable these same goals have become for those for whom such knowledge has been forcibly withdrawn.

The exhibition will be on display at sites across the Coachella Valley from March 4–May 7, 2023. Don’t miss this opportunity to see the work of Professor Gerald Clarke and other world-renowned artists. Visit desertx.org for more information.

Grade Withholding Statement in Support of the Academic Workers Strike

by Keith Miyake Announcements

December 12, 2022

The faculty of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside supports the academic student workers who remain on strike during this historic and unprecedented statewide action. These academic workers, scholars and teachers in their own right, are asking the university to make good on their requests for a living wage to support their communities and families in the state of California, a state with the historically highest costs of living. They deserve not only a living wage, but equitable coverage of other academic and living expenses. They are also entitled to workplace protections in which exercising their right to protest is not met with threats of police intimidation and violence.

We affirm the right of academic student workers to engage in strike activity, which may include picketing, cancellation of sections, and stopping grading. The ETST Senate faculty overwhelmingly expressed their support to stand with the striking workers and heed their call to withhold grade submissions until the strike ends. Additionally, we assert that it is the university’s responsibility to develop contingency plans to ensure that student degree completion, eligibility, financial aid, and good standing are not impeded by struck labor, including grade submission.

We encourage faculty in other departments at UCR and UC-wide to take a similar stand. Systemic changes within the UC system are long overdue, and we support an imminent future in which this is possible.

Edward Chang
Gerald Clarke
Adrián Félix
Emily Hue
Wesley Y. Leonard
Keith Miyake
Jennifer Nájera

Statement of Support for the UAW Academic Workers Strike

by Keith Miyake Announcements

As faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies we stand in solidarity with UAW graduate student workers and postdoctoral fellows who are on strike.

We recognize that the university could not fulfill its mission without the labor of its graduate student workers who perform key research, teach classes, grade papers, and provide invaluable support in teaching and mentorship for undergraduate students across the University of California.

Especially given the rapidly rising costs of living around UC communities, graduate student workers deserve a contract that secures a living wage, basic needs, as well as increased job security. We value their demands for a fair contract that is attuned to international workers’ rights and student parents’ rights as well as for greater disability and climate justice.

Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners are particularly attuned to the critical role that organized labor has played for communities of color to access rights that might otherwise not have been available to them because of their race, gender, language, and/or immigration status. Labor rights have often been the precursor to other kinds of legal rights.

We affirm the right of student workers to engage in lawful strike activity, which may include picketing, cancellation of sections, and stopping grading. We will not engage in retaliation against graduate students based on their participation or non-participation in strike activities in all matters under our direct control, and we oppose unlawful retaliation measures against either striking students or faculty respecting the picket line.

We will respond to undergraduate concerns about the disruption of their education with compassion while affirming the right of graduate students to strike for adequate benefits and compensation. We urge the university to take all measures to protect international students, and we will take all measures in our power to protect our international student workers.

We urge the university to bargain in good faith with the union so that a just and adequate solution may be reached.

We hope that this strike starkly demonstrates to the university administration just how integral graduate student labor is to the UC system.

Edward Chang
Gerald Clarke
Adrián Félix
Alfonso Gonzales Toribio
Emily Hue
Wesley Y. Leonard
Alfredo Mirandé
Keith Miyake
Jennifer Nájera
Andrea Smith
Jasmin A. Young

Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Award Recipients!

by Emily Hue Announcements Student News

Michelle Rawlings & Darielle Martin – Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award: Competitive scholarship presented annually to a student who best demonstrates their writing aptitude and familiarity with Ethnic Studies concepts

Madison Garcia – Katherine Saubel Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness

Bibiana Canales – Barnett Grier Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness

Christopher Valdez – Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

Michelle Rawlings & Katianna Warren – Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award: Presented annually to the Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Manuel Zarate & Bibiana Canales – Sumi Harada Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies joint major with the highest overall GPA

Violetta Price & Alana Pitman -Maurice Jackson Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Naomi Waters – Ernesto Galarza Award: Presented annually to a junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

Ethnic Studies Statement in Solidarity with the UCR Student Demands to Administration Call to Action

by Emily Hue Announcements

Ethnic Studies, as a field and as a department, was born of struggles against racial violence, settler colonialism and imperialism. It was only institutionalized because of Third-World student-led organizing efforts to hold universities accountable for their histories of exclusion, discrimination, neglect and intellectual erasure. Drawing on generations of radical thinkers, we are committed to centering racial justice in our teaching, research and community engagement. We stand in solidarity with UCR Demands to Administration-Call to Action as well as the international Movement for Black Lives. While the current crisis exposes the violent realities of systemic anti-Black racism in the United States, we recognize that institutions of higher learning have reproduced and legitimized laws, policies and practices of anti-Blackness in society.

We therefore call on UCR administration to not only address the Demands’ specific concerns regarding the current crisis, but also critically confront anti-Black racism in institutional policies, programs, practices, and all aspects of university life. The UCR Ethnic Studies Department has expanded its community engagement focus and is actively working to support existing and new-found grassroots organizations that seek to end anti-Black racism and racist systems of policing, criminalization, and detention. We call on the UCR administration to institute substantive policy changes coupled with sustainable commitments to academic resources to proactively combat systemic racism and support ongoing struggles for a better future for all peoples. This would include defunding UCPD and establishing community-led safety programs.

The Ethnic Studies Department welcomes continued engagement with the student organizations that have created the UCR Demands to Administration in order to build strong collaborative relationships towards eradicating anti-Blackness within our department, university, communities, and in the world, as we amplify Black voices and Black scholarship in all programming. We call on the UCR administration to affirmatively commit greater institutional resources and funds toward these efforts under the guidance of Black students, staff, faculty, and community members. We further call on the UCR administration to adequately fund and support Black Studies by dramatically increasing the number of Ethnic Studies hires in Black Studies with the goal of educating our students and producing knowledge for the world to contribute towards the eradication of anti-Black racism.

*Photo from homepage is a “Black Lives Matter” mural in Palo Alto, CA. Courtesy Benny Villarreal Photography.

June 16: Tranformative Justice Book Discussion

by Emily Hue Events

Join ETST’s Critical Antiiviolence Research and Action for its monthly Transformative Justice book discussion, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom

June 16, 5-6:30pm pt.

If you would like to be on CARA’s listserv to receive information on events, email CARA at criticalantviolence@gmail.com

Ethnic Studies Statement of Solidarity with UC Graduate Students

by Emily Hue Announcements

UC Riverside Ethnic Studies Department
Statement of Solidarity with UC Graduate Students
May 11, 2020

We, the faculty of UC Riverside Department of Ethnic Studies, stand in firm solidarity with graduate students across the UC system in their demands for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) and the unconditional reinstatement of all UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers who were summarily terminated and disciplined in retaliation for their participation in a wildcat strike. We support the students currently engaged in a wildcat strike, as well as future strike actions that may be authorized by UAW Local 2865.

We further express our continued support of the graduate students should they vote to authorize an Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) strike. We urge the UC to engage in good-faith collective bargaining directly with UAW Local 2865 to avoid a system-wide graduate student strike that would severely impact every aspect of UC operations.

We condemn the UC administration’s use of militarized policing and violent force in responding to graduate student strike and protest actions. These measures demonstrate that the UCSC administration and UC Regents set little value on the health, well-being, and labor of precarious graduate student workers, particularly those vulnerable to deportation, detainment, or imprisonment because of their citizenship status.

Graduate student workers are essential to the collective mission and success of the UC system. They should be granted compensation that recognizes their contributions to the educational and research mandates that maintain the UC as a preeminent public university system, in a state with some of the highest costs of living in the country.

We urge the university to make every effort to curtail the ongoing and potential future disruptions this is causing for UC undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as campus-wide research activities, by engaging in good-faith negotiations with the UC graduate students and UAW Local 2865.

To learn more about the UC graduate student strike visit: https://payusmoreucsc.com/

Image by Woody Carroll.

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