Photos by Jack Liu
Click on photos to advance slides

University of Oregon, March 12, 2015—The first ever CLLAS Symposium featured keynote addresses by two young Dream Act activists, four panels representing the four CLLAS Research Action Projects, a reception, and a dance and music performance by Puerto Rican Bomba & Proyecto Union. Between 200 and 300 people attended the day’s series of events, which moved across campus between the Knight Library Browsing Room, the Gerlinger Hall Alumni Lounge, and the Frohnmayer Music Building. In attendance were teachers from Salem and Woodburn, a principal from Eugene School District 4J, community representatives  from the Eugene/ Springfield area, several of the people interviewed in the original Latino Roots class, community activists and leaders, and many UO students, faculty, and administrators. Some people came for the music, some for the panel discussions, others for the lively and intense keynote talks, and some attended the full day of activities.

Symposium schedule:

Featuring:

  • Lizbeth MateoDream Activist; co-founder, National Immigrant Youth Alliance. Born in Oaxaca, Mexico Lizbeth Mateo moved to Los Angeles with her family at the age of 14. She is an undocumented second year law student at Santa Clara University School of Law. A few weeks before starting law school, Lizbeth and three other organizers from NIYA voluntarily left the US in order to return with six other youth who had been deported to Mexico. All nine successfully returned home in the US after spending 17 days in detention. This marked the beginning of the Bring them Home Campaign, a transnational effort that seeks to reunite families that have been deported under the current administration.
  • Marco Saavedra, Dream Activist & Artist; an undocumented poet & painter currently seeking asylum after participating in the Dream 9 & Bring them Home campaigns. He has self-deported, infiltrated detention centers & gone to jail to help bring about migrant justice. For more of his art & writing please visit harvestwonderful.com.
  • Erasmo Gamboa, specializes in Chicano, Mexican, and Latino history at the University of Washington and is the author of Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947.
  • Alvaro Huerta, teaches Urban & Regional Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies at Cal Poly Pomona and is the author of Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm (2013).
  • Pablo Luis Rivera, is a dancer, musician, and scholar who specializes in bomba, an Afro-Puerto Rican dance form in which the dancer challenges the drummer to follow and accentuate his or her movements. As an artist, he promotes bomba as a participatory community practice. Rivera is a founding member of Restauración Cultural, an organization dedicated to the promotion of Afro-Puerto Rican culture through concerts, workshops, and other educational programming. Since 2009 he has also served as co-director of Proyecto Union, a performing and educational group that travels internationally and promotes communication between diverse music and dance practitioners in the African Diaspora.
  • Marisol Berrios-Miranda is a Puerto Rican ethnomusicologist who researches and writes about popular music in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States and teaches at the University of Washington.

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