Dearest friends and colleagues, I am writing to ask for your support for my friend, my hermano del alma, colega, and spirit-restoring community member, Meño Santillana Blanco.

 

Meño just earned his PhD from the University of Minnesota, and he is getting ready to move back to California to start a post-doc at UC Davis in the fall. As he points out, getting a PhD is a struggle for first-generation working-class scholars. We don't have the financial privilege to tide us over until we get paid once the new job starts. He is about to face huge costs, including the cost of moving cross-country, finding a new place to live, and supporting himself and the folks around him in need, all the while waiting to get paid in October.

 

Let us honor his mother and father's immigrant struggle, his commitment to healing and creating community everywhere he goes, and his will to keep going even when life is overwhelming. If you want to buy him a graduation gift or help him celebrate, contribute to the cost of his cap & gown (they're expensive!!), or want to help him get out of Minnesota before the winter starts again, please consider a small or large donation, whichever is in your capacity.

 

"For some of us, this Ph.D. thing is a struggle. An ancestral struggle. Against all the violence, I want to honor my apa Manuel Santillana, who as an indigenous migrant farmworker in this country, has given me the will to do the work I do. And to my ama, who was with us in spirit, and who as a Mexican migrant woman, taught me the value of searching for healing. To both of them who made me the person I am today. Who inspire my work. This is for us ama and apa." -Meño Santillana Blanco