LATINA & LATINO STUDIES PROGRAM

June 1, 2020

 Dear Black, African American, and AfroLatinx Northwestern family,

 We write as a collective of Latinx faculty and staff who work across the many areas of Northwestern University—faculty, researchers, librarians, and staff at all levels. Over the many years we have witnessed the ways in which our Black, African American, and AfroLatinx friends, colleagues, and students have experienced erasure, silence, and brutality at the hands of the police, our government, in institutions, and yes, sometimes at the hands of Northwestern. Many of us have registered our anger, frustration, and horror in those years. Today we again offer our outrage; we are full of sorrow and compassion with our Black compañerxs.

 We stand with our Black friends, family, and colleagues and acknowledge the terror that you feel in knowing how frequently and callously the pain and suffering is wrought on Black folks.  We bear witness to your suffering.  We stand with you at this time of tremendous worry, fear, anger, and uncertainty. You are not alone. We denounce the xenophobic, racist, and fearmongering tactics that have long created our nation of inequalities. We name those tactics and stand with you in condemning them.

 We say the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Laquan McDonald, Tony McDade, and countless others who were brutally murdered by a police state that does not value Black lives. We say the names of Nina Pop, Muhlaysia Booker, and other trans folk who are tormented and killed at extraordinary rates. We stand with you exhausted and spent by weekly shootings in Chicago and Evanston. We hold your fear and demand change.

 You are not alone in your fear. We hear your demand for change, restitution, and reparations.  Black and Latinx histories are intertwined and we stand in acknowledgment of the particular way in which anti-Black racism plays out differently, perniciously, and exhaustively in US society and all too often within our Latinx families. We commit to naming anti-Black racism, fighting against it, and calling it out here at Northwestern and in our communities. 

We ask all Northwestern family to join us:

• Stand with us in mourning Black lives ended too soon.
• Stand with to demand full dignity and humanity for Black lives.
• Stand with us to and decry the treatment of those bodies who have been deemed both essential workers and expendable in the name of profit.
• Stand with us to use this moment of upheaval to imagine a Northwestern that cares for and centers the voices of those most marginalized—staff as well as students and faculty.

 This time is not normal. This is not okay. There is pain, suffering, and human loss. May we imagine a transformed Northwestern family linked together more closely even as we open our arms. May our love for each other be the solace and the salve.

 With love,

 Northwestern Latinx faculty and staff