“Unite and Overcome!” An Interview with Activist and Educator Elizabeth Martinez

Writer, activist and educator  has been working for social justice for more than 30 years. She grew up in Washington, D.C., and, as the daughter of Mexican American teachers, was exposed at an early age to issues of cultural identity. Martínez’s experiences during the Civil Rights Movement as a full-time staff member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heightened her social consciousness and laid the groundwork for her role in the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. In 1982 she ran for governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket — the first Chicana on the ballot for that office. Concerned about the distortion of Mexican American history, in 1976 Martínez edited the bilingual book 450 Years of Chicano History in Pictures and in 1995 produced the videoand-text kit ¡Viva La Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History. Running through her work of the last three decades is the conviction that, in the fight against racism, “we must celebrate all of humanity’s great stories of struggle.” Read full interview here…

from iwspace http://bit.ly/1HZWYUu