Buenas Noches a TodosŠ
Mi nombre es Mercedes Castillo y es un gran honor estar aqui con ustedes
esta noche. It is my privilege to address you as the Chair of the National
Latina/Latino Law Student Association and on behalf of the National Board.
I wanted to talk to you today about a couple of things: 1) the importance of
corazon, and 2) the relation of corazon to the building and strengthening of
an organization or rather, the development of our communities in whatever
way we choose to define them.
But before I get into these two points I would like to ask all of you the
following question:
How many of you participated in the immigrant rights marches that took place
in March, April and May?
All of us are aware of the historical impact of these marches in the context
of the civil rights movements in the past and what many term to be the new
immigrant rights movement of today. Unprecedented numbers of people in
major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Denver, and
even smaller cities like Rochester, Sacramento, and Tuscon took to the
streets to protest the now infamous Sensenbrenner legislation that in one
fatal blow threatened to make members of our communities felons, attempted
to resolve the immigration question by increased militarization of our
border, and took away any forms of protection afforded to detainees.
This should come as no surprise to you. I mean, no les tengo que decir
esto. All of these horrible policies towards immigrants in this country
have been in effect since the conquest of the southwest more than 150 years
ago. I encourage you to read up on this in a new book by Mike Davis and
Justin Akers Chacon entitled "No One Is Illegal" for an awesome summary on
the immigrant struggle in the US.
So I think it is safe to say that we all know, at least all of us in this
room know, how poorly our country treats immigrants. To be an immigrant is
to be less than human. We all "know" this, but sometimes I think if it isn't
right in front of our face we can easily forget. We can easily forget that
immigrants are the backbone of our society, the people who clean our
schools, pick our vegetables, and build our houses. It seems easy to not
even look the janitor in the face when we get on an elevator and just ignore
the fact that he or she is a brown person just like ourselves.
Our law school education teaches us that while regular citizens of this
country are afforded rights in our legal system, ifŠ you choose to believe
that, immigrants are not deserving of those same protections and rights.
I am talking about this because anyone who participated and witnessed the
events on May 1, could see from the expressions on people's faces that the
frustration, anger, and sentiment of being treated like a second-class
citizen motivated many of these people to march. You could see this from
reading the signs that people carried and hearing the chants of YA BASTA!
This sentiment is the corazon of our gente. The choice that many people
made to go out to protest the legislation when in fact they were risking
losing their jobs, risking their status in this country, and many other
things that many of us who were born here take for granted is what
represents the corazon of our community. When you saw families, nuestros
abuelitos, students and everyone else walking for immigrant rights you
understand how big and how strong the corazon of our community really is.
I am sure I do not have to tell you about the esfuerzo that our parents make
so that we can be here, sipping wine and drinking beers talking about how
stressful law school is. Stress. Let me tell you what stress really is.
Stress is not knowing how you are going to feed your children because the
wage that you make is so low that you cannot afford to pay rent, let alone
provide for your family.
The courage that it takes to leave your family behind, travel thousands of
miles, risk death at our border in order so that your family can have a
Mi nombre es Mercedes Castillo y es un gran honor estar aqui con ustedes
esta noche. It is my privilege to address you as the Chair of the National
Latina/Latino Law Student Association and on behalf of the National Board.
I wanted to talk to you today about a couple of things: 1) the importance of
corazon, and 2) the relation of corazon to the building and strengthening of
an organization or rather, the development of our communities in whatever
way we choose to define them.
But before I get into these two points I would like to ask all of you the
following question:
How many of you participated in the immigrant rights marches that took place
in March, April and May?
All of us are aware of the historical impact of these marches in the context
of the civil rights movements in the past and what many term to be the new
immigrant rights movement of today. Unprecedented numbers of people in
major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Denver, and
even smaller cities like Rochester, Sacramento, and Tuscon took to the
streets to protest the now infamous Sensenbrenner legislation that in one
fatal blow threatened to make members of our communities felons, attempted
to resolve the immigration question by increased militarization of our
border, and took away any forms of protection afforded to detainees.
This should come as no surprise to you. I mean, no les tengo que decir
esto. All of these horrible policies towards immigrants in this country
have been in effect since the conquest of the southwest more than 150 years
ago. I encourage you to read up on this in a new book by Mike Davis and
Justin Akers Chacon entitled "No One Is Illegal" for an awesome summary on
the immigrant struggle in the US.
So I think it is safe to say that we all know, at least all of us in this
room know, how poorly our country treats immigrants. To be an immigrant is
to be less than human. We all "know" this, but sometimes I think if it isn't
right in front of our face we can easily forget. We can easily forget that
immigrants are the backbone of our society, the people who clean our
schools, pick our vegetables, and build our houses. It seems easy to not
even look the janitor in the face when we get on an elevator and just ignore
the fact that he or she is a brown person just like ourselves.
Our law school education teaches us that while regular citizens of this
country are afforded rights in our legal system, ifŠ you choose to believe
that, immigrants are not deserving of those same protections and rights.
I am talking about this because anyone who participated and witnessed the
events on May 1, could see from the expressions on people's faces that the
frustration, anger, and sentiment of being treated like a second-class
citizen motivated many of these people to march. You could see this from
reading the signs that people carried and hearing the chants of YA BASTA!
This sentiment is the corazon of our gente. The choice that many people
made to go out to protest the legislation when in fact they were risking
losing their jobs, risking their status in this country, and many other
things that many of us who were born here take for granted is what
represents the corazon of our community. When you saw families, nuestros
abuelitos, students and everyone else walking for immigrant rights you
understand how big and how strong the corazon of our community really is.
I am sure I do not have to tell you about the esfuerzo that our parents make
so that we can be here, sipping wine and drinking beers talking about how
stressful law school is. Stress. Let me tell you what stress really is.
Stress is not knowing how you are going to feed your children because the
wage that you make is so low that you cannot afford to pay rent, let alone
provide for your family.
The courage that it takes to leave your family behind, travel thousands of
miles, risk death at our border in order so that your family can have a
better life. That is our corazon.
In this same respect, corazon is what our mothers do when we don't have
enough to eat but they always make everything taste so good. Like, how many
of us remember eating huevos con weenies when we were little? The
resourcefulness of being a Latina and being able to make two eggs feed four
children. This is our corazon.
The pride in our parents and our families' eyes when they tell everyone my
daughter es una abogada or mi hijo is this big time lawyer now.
This is corazon. The pride instilled in us from the time we discovered that
we were different, we were beautiful, we were RAZA.
This is corazon. It is something that we all carry around with us and if
pushed enough we will let nuestro CORAJE out.
So I ask you nowŠ As I look around at all these amazing lawyers and soon to
be lawyersŠ Leaders of our community. What is our role?
I will give you an exampleŠ In Woodland which is a small rural town in
northern California, several hundred students who had seen what was
occurring on March 25th decided to walk out of their high school. The
Woodland Police showed up and started to harass the students, in some cases
hitting the students and arresting several.
As a law student I could not stand back and watch this happen. So, along
with several other law students we organized legal trainings for the
undergrad students, high school students and parents to educate them on
their rights as demonstrators and as workers. We went out to high schools
and to community centers and we provided educational workshops so that our
gente knew why they were marching.
We began to build a community structure, a community network, we began to
build something really beautiful.
This is what brilliant, creative minds, like all of you, can do if motivated
enough to do so.
This is an especially sentimental time for me, because it is the last time I
will be making a speech in front of you as your Chair. The reason why I
wanted to talk about corazon and now organization and community building, is
because I am about to step down after three years of being a student
involved with this amazing organization called the National Latina/o Law
Student Association.
And if I leave you with anything today, I want to leave you with this
important point. Corazon without structure will never effectuate change.
Let me pose the question here. What happens now that the immigration
marches are over?
It is the same as asking what happens to NLLSA once I step down? To me,
NLLSA has been a long struggle of development, a budding organization with a
lot of corazon. I have had the privilege to work with some of the most
amazing dedicated committed Latina and Latino law students in the country.
I am inspired to attend the conferences, find out what new person I am
pissing off, and delighted to hear that the conferences, the encuentros,
information that a student received on the list-serve affected them,
inspired them, awakened them, and challenged them to view their role as
future attorneys in a different light.
And all of what I am describing is the CORAZON of NLLSA. The commitment that
people such as myself, your present and past boards, the founders of the
conference and the alumni have shown is just one amazing example of what
NLLSA means to so many of us. We are that one Latina/o organization that
will stand up to say things like they really are, when no other will.
However, having a big corazon will not be enough.
In order to be an effective organization we need to continue to grow. And
by growth I don't mean, in quantative terms. But by growth I mean how we
continue to develop this organization, how we continue to give of ourselves,
how we continue to sacrifice of our time.
I hope that you will become a part of the growth of this organization. I
hope that you will get involved because so many people in our community need
you. I hope that you will understand that NLLSA as an organization cannot
grow without you.
But taking it a step further, our communities cannot grow without you. Our
role as future Latina and Latino lawyers, leaders and advocates of our
In this same respect, corazon is what our mothers do when we don't have
enough to eat but they always make everything taste so good. Like, how many
of us remember eating huevos con weenies when we were little? The
resourcefulness of being a Latina and being able to make two eggs feed four
children. This is our corazon.
The pride in our parents and our families' eyes when they tell everyone my
daughter es una abogada or mi hijo is this big time lawyer now.
This is corazon. The pride instilled in us from the time we discovered that
we were different, we were beautiful, we were RAZA.
This is corazon. It is something that we all carry around with us and if
pushed enough we will let nuestro CORAJE out.
So I ask you nowŠ As I look around at all these amazing lawyers and soon to
be lawyersŠ Leaders of our community. What is our role?
I will give you an exampleŠ In Woodland which is a small rural town in
northern California, several hundred students who had seen what was
occurring on March 25th decided to walk out of their high school. The
Woodland Police showed up and started to harass the students, in some cases
hitting the students and arresting several.
As a law student I could not stand back and watch this happen. So, along
with several other law students we organized legal trainings for the
undergrad students, high school students and parents to educate them on
their rights as demonstrators and as workers. We went out to high schools
and to community centers and we provided educational workshops so that our
gente knew why they were marching.
We began to build a community structure, a community network, we began to
build something really beautiful.
This is what brilliant, creative minds, like all of you, can do if motivated
enough to do so.
This is an especially sentimental time for me, because it is the last time I
will be making a speech in front of you as your Chair. The reason why I
wanted to talk about corazon and now organization and community building, is
because I am about to step down after three years of being a student
involved with this amazing organization called the National Latina/o Law
Student Association.
And if I leave you with anything today, I want to leave you with this
important point. Corazon without structure will never effectuate change.
Let me pose the question here. What happens now that the immigration
marches are over?
It is the same as asking what happens to NLLSA once I step down? To me,
NLLSA has been a long struggle of development, a budding organization with a
lot of corazon. I have had the privilege to work with some of the most
amazing dedicated committed Latina and Latino law students in the country.
I am inspired to attend the conferences, find out what new person I am
pissing off, and delighted to hear that the conferences, the encuentros,
information that a student received on the list-serve affected them,
inspired them, awakened them, and challenged them to view their role as
future attorneys in a different light.
And all of what I am describing is the CORAZON of NLLSA. The commitment that
people such as myself, your present and past boards, the founders of the
conference and the alumni have shown is just one amazing example of what
NLLSA means to so many of us. We are that one Latina/o organization that
will stand up to say things like they really are, when no other will.
However, having a big corazon will not be enough.
In order to be an effective organization we need to continue to grow. And
by growth I don't mean, in quantative terms. But by growth I mean how we
continue to develop this organization, how we continue to give of ourselves,
how we continue to sacrifice of our time.
I hope that you will become a part of the growth of this organization. I
hope that you will get involved because so many people in our community need
you. I hope that you will understand that NLLSA as an organization cannot
grow without you.
But taking it a step further, our communities cannot grow without you. Our
role as future Latina and Latino lawyers, leaders and advocates of our
communities is to take the corazon that was given to us by our parents and
USE IT. Use it when the marches are over, use it when this conference has
ended, use it when you find yourself in a situation where you are the only
one that looks like you and thinks like you, or cares about the things that
you do. USE YOUR brilliant minds in order to continue to effectuate change
in our communities. It has been a pleasure working for you, muchisimas
gracias de todo corazon.
USE IT. Use it when the marches are over, use it when this conference has
ended, use it when you find yourself in a situation where you are the only
one that looks like you and thinks like you, or cares about the things that
you do. USE YOUR brilliant minds in order to continue to effectuate change
in our communities. It has been a pleasure working for you, muchisimas
gracias de todo corazon.
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