(Image: Mijente)
This is a critical time. With the presidential election quickly approaching and injustices happening by the minute across our country, conversations around this nation’s future are at an all-time high.
Today’s activists and conscious communities are making sure those that are typically left out of said conversations won’t be this go around. But it starts with the conversation. Hence, Mijente, a new national political home, aims to tackle the concerns of the Latinx and Chicanx communities. Mijente, founded by Latinx and Chicanx organizers, activists, artists, and academics, emerged out of the #Not1More campaign against deportations.
On December 12-13, Mijente is hosting its inaugural conference, Lánzate, to discuss core elements of a radical Latinx agenda, which includes issues such as criminal justice, immigration, education, LGBTQ, race and ethnicity, and labor and climate. The end result will be an inclusive program of action for the 2016 Presidential Election beyond voter registration.
“Some of the inspiration is derived from our experience in the migrant rights movement and our assessment of where there are gaps,” says Mijente co-founder Marisa Franco, on launching the conference, to AintILatina.com. “Some of those things is just talking and realizing the criminalization that is happening to migrants in this country is happening to other people of color, and really seeing that gap in terms of mobilization and organization in the Latinx community overall around the issues and beyond in how it manifests for immigrant people.”
The Lánzate schedule is designed to foster conversations that address various issues. (Click here for the complete lineup!) Franco is looking forward to the conversations that’ll take place during the two-day convening.
“We’re breaking out of the boxes created for us as captive voters and single issue communities,” explains Franco. “As Latinxs we have so much power in this country but we have a leadership vacuum to fill if we want to realize it. To make transformative change will take more from us not just more of us. We all may identify differently but we have a shared fate that’s up to us to shape.
To learn more about Mijente and Lánzate, visit mijente.net/lanzate.
