"We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." —Justice Sonia Sotomayor

"...these attacks are not just distractions from the major issues; they provide the ideological justification for real material and legislative changes that will impact people’s day-to-day lives."

"...the Florida detention center name “Alligator Alcatraz” serves multiple ends: It provokes sadistic yuks. It mocks. It threatens. But most crucially, it dehumanizes. “Alligator Bait” suggests that Black people are worthless."

The US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said ... that habitat modification and destruction should not be considered “harm” .... Challenges to the legalese could... free industry to continue or begin activities that would impact habitat.

"In Texas, 20 institutions received funding from the IMLS in the 2024 fiscal year, including the Houston Public Library ($100,000), the Harris County Public Library ($10,000), and the Children's Museum Houston ($10,000)..."

"...prison staff “recreated” logs that were missing ....Two-thirds of the state’s roughly 100 jails and prisons in Texas are not fully air conditioned in inmate housing areas. Indoor temperatures over the summer can regularly top 95 to 100 degrees for days on end, the agency’s records show."

The University of Illinois Press published A David Montgomery Reader: Essays on Capitalism and Worker Resistance, a collection of essays, some of them previously unpublished, by the late historian & UE member. You can read the UE NEWS review of it here: www.ueunion.org/ue-news-feat...

"Las raíces de esta joven jalisciense tienen un prolongado historial en suelo estadounidense. Uno de sus abuelos cruzó la frontera gracias al Programa Bracero.... 'Nuestros ancestros han estado aquí por mucho tiempo y es donde pertenecemos., señaló la joven...."

✊🏼 Thank you for the shout-out, @msmagazine.com!!!!

Joan Flores-Villalobos: "They came from the islands of Barbados, Jamaica, Martinique and others, then plantation economies and colonies of European nations. It was these migrants who paid for the construction of the canal with their lives."

Tomorrow Trump will become President of the United States and we are promised to get one of the busiest immigration policy days in a long time. To provide a one-stop-shop of announcements and an historical record of the day...

On Inauguration Eve, a personal post about the importance of ritual and focus during times of political uncertainty. austinkocher.substack.com/p/the-spirit...

"Chávez created his first mural in Hartford in 1974.... his latest mural, “Sugar Beet Workers”, in 2009.... depicts migrant workers supplying food for the American Table.... The mural highlights his own migrant experience, showcasing his family through the generations...."

On February 25, my book “Texas: An American History” will be published, in hard copy and as an audiobook. Why would any sane person write another take on Texas history from the dinosaurs to the 21st century? /1 yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

“​​Saturday mornings, I used to get up every morning and watch ‘Underdog,’” he recalled. “And I set up one Saturday morning, just sat straight up and said, ‘No, you need to be a lawyer.’

"Santa Clara County is full of hotspots with hundreds of racially discriminatory covenants .... Oak Hill Cemetery has 41 covenants stating only a white person can be buried in certain plots."

"“Vacaville was one of the earliest agricultural communities. In 1895 it was the third-largest Japanese community in the U.S. after San Francisco and Sacramento,” said Shimomura, who also served as national president of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) from 1982-1984..."

"The threads of generational memory and cultural resilience weave powerfully through De Generación En Generación, reminding us how art preserves the stories of communities over time."

Wild #river news—a global survey looking at 3 million rivers over the past 35 years shows the annual flow of water dropped in 44% of the world’s largest downstream rivers while many headwater streams grew. The impact on everything from sediment to irrigation are vast www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Historian Gunther Peck: "the belief that white people suffer because of their race.... first emerged during the late 18th century, a byproduct of opportunism and the print revolution colliding with the material struggles of workers...."

“Who’s going to pick up the kids from school?” Garcia asked. "Payments on the house, car payments, house bills, the property title –– all of that has to be in your plan."

RIP. Good that the NYT wrote about this important person. But a better obit would highlight the obvious and longstanding racism and sexism behind forced sterilizations -- and not say only that they "occurred amid political hysteria about overpopulation" in the 1970s. What???

"We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world," said Kwame Alexander in the statement on the renowned Nikki Giovanni’s death

"police-made crack"

SEPARATED screens tonight in Toronto followed by a Q+A. Heading to Mexico City and New Haven for screenings later in the week. Grateful for this journey and to work with the legend Errol Morris. Especially at a moment when, as Captain Jonathan White says in the film, “it could happen again.”

Tepoztlán Institute 2025: Authoritarianisms and Crises of Authority: Alliances, Challenges, Futures. It's like summer camp, a grad school seminar, and Burning Man for nerds. Please consider applying. www.tepoztlaninstitute.org/2025-theme

RIP.

"For most people, conjunto and norteño are one and the same, completely indistinguishable from the other...." @fidel.bsky.social

"...undocumented Texans at the time produced about $1.6 billion in state revenues collected from taxes and other sources — exceeding the roughly $1.2 billion in state services, like public education and hospital care, they received."

Sandhya Shukla on how Vito Marcantonio "managed to advocate for everyone in his district. He communicated in Italian, Yiddish and Spanish. He focused on wages, housing, education and welfare assistance − issues that were as relevant to immigrants as they were to white and Black Americans."

State Sen. María Elena Durazo: “Expanding detention correlates with increased ICE raids and family separation, all of which has devastating social and economic impacts for California....”

"Wearing his signature red zoot suit and black fedora, the 73-year-old Reyes has been delivering Christmas presents to low-income children in and around Houston for more than four decades."

“It is deeply concerning that Ice would expand private detention facilities now – just months before the inauguration of a president-elect who has promised to terrorize immigrant communities by detaining and deporting millions of people,” the senator Cory Booker said in a statement to the Guardian.

I don't think that there has been any press coverage of the matter yet, but a recent lawsuit in Texas History has huge implications for academic freedom, free speech more broadly, and disciplinary associations. /1 www.historians.org/perspectives...

Earliest country music recording (so far) done in New Orleans by Louis Vansier, an African American musician and comedian. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

"William F Buckley penned a New York Times op-ed demanding that homosexual men with HIV be tattooed on the buttocks as a warning to others... it is important to remember the resistance, organizing and political cunning that sustained the community and made substantial progress on numerous issues."

Lori Flores on how "the horrific deaths of thirty-two Mexican guest farmworkers, or braceros, in California in 1963 helped unify Mexican American activists, shaping the nascent Chicano movement...." @loriflores.bsky.social

"The last documented wild wolf in California was shot in 1924 in Lassen County.... A 2016 state conservation plan estimated that the landscape north of Interstate 80 could support roughly 370 to 500 wolves."

Sandra Itliong-Bowman, daughter of Larry Itliong: "My father said, if he’s going to stay here, he’s going to make a better life for everyone else."

Happy Thanksgiving! Check out cartoon by artist Lalo Alcaraz: This #Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for farmworkers! #WeFeedYou Feliz día de acción de gracias. Vea la caricatura del artista Lalo Alcaraz: ¡Este Día de Acción de Gracias, estoy agradecido por los campesinos! #SoyEsencial

A list of great books curated by @austinkocher.bsky.social

Gustavo Arellano: "To the undocumented people who were and are my friends, my classmates, my interns and co-workers: Thank you for teaching me that citizenship is usually wasted on the ungrateful and not granted enough to those who deserve it."

***Job Opportunity*** Assistant Professor of Latino/Latin American Studies and Digital Humanities, University of Texas at El Paso 64/ www.higheredjobs.com/search/detai...

#Thanksgiving is around the corner. When you go shopping for your holiday table we encourage you to celebrate Thanksgiving by putting union food on your holiday menus. Here’s a list of UFW union label products: ufw.org/ul#Thanksgiving#WeFeedYou

Congratulations to author Joan Flores-Villalobos, whose book THE SILVER WOMEN has won the Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history from @ahahistorians.bsky.social! ow.ly/Mkk550UcgNN

"It’s already a huge lift for a farmworker to file a complaint in better times. Someone working in the field is not going to speak up about pesticides or heat when they’re worried about being deported or getting home safely to their children. It’s terrifying."

Agree 100% although I would extend the timeline back to the border's creation in the 1840s. The US-Mexico border from its very beginning was a locus for extralegal and vigilante violence--much of it originally aimed at enslaved African Americans and Indigenous peoples as well as ethnic Mexicans.