Black Lives Matter
Solidarity Statement with Black Lives Matter Heading link
From Latin American and Latino Studies, Latino Cultural Center, Latin American Recruitment Services, and the Hispanic Center for Excellence
We are in the middle of a historic moment confronting systemic inequities. The combinations of a pandemic, senseless murders at the hands of the police, and general uprisings in large and small cities across the United States but also in different cities of the world point to conditions that have been with us for centuries. What motives and tortured logics have we used to close our eyes for so long? The urgency for new ways of seeing, new kinds of interpretations, and new kinds of actions presses upon us—why is it that the poor and marginalized have the highest rates of disease, why is it that the state concentrates its monopoly of violence on these same populations, how is it that these same conditions are borderless, part of the same fabric of many nation-states?
The Latinx communities at UIC praise Black Lives Matter for opening up the systemic nature of America’s central tragedy. Together let us examine how economies work, how race works, how gender works, and so on, not only in our city of Chicago but also across the United States. Let us also understand how power is always vulnerable and how the vulnerable can suddenly become powerful here and around the world.
So, Black Lives DO MATTER in the United States, in Latin America, and throughout the rest of the world. LALS, LARES, LCC, and the Hispanic Center for Excellence see you, we hear you, we are here for you and with you! We stand together always.
Estamos con ustedes siempre.