The State of the State, Professor Apostolidis, community partners, legislators and advocates all cited in the Guardian’s new piece on Latino politics in Washington State.

Read it here at Guardian World News.

“In the apple- and grape-laden Yakima valley in southern Washington state, Latinos drawn here by fruit-picking jobs have become the fastest growing sector of the population over the last decade. Politically, however, the Hispanic families who make up the majority of this archipelago of 10 towns stretching 40 miles southeast from county seat in Yakima have virtually no voice….”

Read about it here at the Seattle Times

Date: Thursday, May 3rd

Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm

Location:

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Date: May 5th

Time: 11:30 am

Location: Walla Walla Police Department (54 E. Moore St.)

It was an honor to represent our State of the State program before a national audience of professionals, academics and activists at the 15th Annual Latino Law, Policy and Business Conference. I was encouraged that every issue our program addresses this year, from poverty and education to immigration and voting rights, are all among the most salient issues for the Latino community nationwide.

Adam and Cynthia presented their research on ELL programs in the Walla Walla Public School District. Pedro Galvao, a State of the State alum who graduated from Whitman College in 2010 found their research to be crucial piece of discussion at the conference:

Their insights into Washington State’s ELL learners helped push the conversation forward here at Harvard about inclusion of Latino students in the classroom and on campus. This research must continue to be supported and make its rounds to other conferences in the country as well.

Pedro is a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and had helped to organize the conference. Adam and Cynthia were proud to join pedro in representing the cause of social justice for Latinos. As Adam put it,

It was an honor to represent our State of the State program before a national audience of professionals, academics and activists at the 15th Annual Latino Law, Policy and Business Conference… I will look with great interest towards the direction of the State of the State program in the years to come, as this is just the beginning.

Pedro de Valdivia (aka Mr. V) is here in Walla Walla painting the mural at Garrison this week as the capstone event in our Walla Walla School District 2011-2012 partnership. Our partners Diana and Bill Ericson of Walla Walla School District and Club Latino have worked countless hours with six Whitman students to explore efforts to improve cultural competency and programs for English Language Learners at Wa-Hi, Garrison and Blue Ridge. This effort has benefited from the support of leaders and teachers in those schools including Gina Yonts, Pete Peterson and Kim Doepker. Pedro’s work was recently featured in the Walla Walla Union Bulletin.

State of the State first learned about Pedro’s exciting and inspiring art through our participation in the early convenings in Olympia of Hispanic-Latino Legislative Day (HLLD), where we shared our research findings and recommendations with state and local leaders in 2006-2009. In 2006, Pedro received special recognition from HLLD for his artistic talent and promise.

Pedro has done an extended series of some fifteen paintings in collaboration with our community-based research project. Whitman is proud to own his 2008 work “¡Vamos a Votar!” which was featured on the cover of our Spring 2008 report on Latino Voting Rights and Political Participation, and which now hangs on display in Maxey Hall.

Our partnership with Pedro has notably included a 2009 joint exhibition at Walla Walla Community College of all the paintings (then) in the series as well as a sound installation produced by Whitman student researchers. At the Community College’s annual Cinco de Mayo festival, we staged a “Public Art” presentation about connections between the dreams for a stronger, fairer and more inclusive community that animate both Pedro’s artistic images and our research reports.

Our relationship with Pedro’s art is one of mutual inspiration and motivation. Our “State of the State” program strives to deepen and extend this artistic dimension because it helps us reach more people in more ways — especially on the levels of emotion and the senses — to provoke people to think about the aspirations, problems and potential solutions treated in our studies of education, immigration, political representation, poverty and other pressing issues. Pedro’s work, with its bold affirmation of new possibilities and the dawning of a better world for our community’s children and youth, also reinforces our program’s commitment not only to analyzing the forces that marginalize Latinos in Washington State but also to charting pathways to overcome them.

Pedro stresses that through his art he wants to inspire the young to take ownership of their future and to invigorate their communities. Pedro has told me repeatedly that he hopes the new mural at Garrison, which the kids are helping to create, yields this kind of long-lasting impact, and my students and I emphatically share that hope. More immediately, we also hope the mural project will help spread word throughout the community about our new research findings and recommendations regarding ELL education and cultural competency in our local schools.

• Voting rights and political representation. As the Legislature debates the Washington State Voting Rights Act, we find vast under-representation of Latinos in local government statewide. Electoral reforms, bilingual outreach, and leadership development hold the promise of change for Latinos and other minority groups as well as all who believe in democracy.

• Safe communities. Latino residents in Walla Walla, Tri-Cities, and Yakima tell us they fear for their own and their families’ safety because counties are cooperating with federal immigration control authorities. County jails should only allow federal detention of those arrested on criminal charges.

• Access to human services. As Washington residents tighten their belts in this tough economy, we hear inspiring stories of neighbor-to-neighbor connections that help people access help they need. They also say our state needs to keep vital utility, food and medical services from being slashed.

• K-12 education for English-Language Learners. Language barriers keep many of our children from achieving their dreams of high school graduation and college.

• Culturally accepting schools. Our Legislature has identified improving schools’ abilities to handle cultural difference as a key strategy to reduce the achievement gap. Cultural competency training and strong leadership from principals are the keys to making schools work for all kids and families.

Christinia Costantini of the Huffington Post responded with an article available to all: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/time-magazine-cover-asserts-latinos-will-decide-next-president_n_1294615.html

While skeptical of the claim that Latino voters will decide the next presidential election, Costantini acknowledges that Latinos are force not to be ignored by either party in 2012.

-Andrew Ryan