Help Luis get to UC Berkeley!!
Donation protected
Hola Compa!
My name is Luis Lopez Resendiz and I am asking for your support to help me attend Berkeley in the spring 2016 as a transfer student from San Diego City College.
I would like to start by thanking you for taking the time to read the letter below that came from a heart full of hopes to change the worlds of the oppressed peoples. I am a writer and writing is what I do to tell my story and the story of my people so we do not die in oblivion. Muchas gracias!
My name is Luis Lopez Resendiz, my roots; history and identity come from the 3,000 year history of the ñuu savi (People of the Rain-Mixtec) people from the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. Although I was born in Tijuana, I have always said that I am from the south due to the migration of my family to this city. Tijuana is a city were the native (indigenous) people from southern states of Mexico and Central and South America stop, settle, and most of the time prepare for a new journey to the United States to settle, again, after being displaced from their homeland.
As a student, son of a hard-worker-mujer in a maquiladora in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, a Construction worker in San Diego, I was given the opportunity to get an education in the United States of America after being forced to migrate seeking a better life here. Crossing one border is not enough when you are constantly fighting to preserve your culture, history and identity. In this country, to the people in power I am another “Latino” in the academia, but to the community that surrounds me and that have educated me, I am another native-Mixteco student, fighting, as I walk crossing borders of oppression in the academia. Education is the most powerful tool that my family gave me to fight structures of power and knowledge that keep subjugating our communities. That is why I value education with all my heart because when a door opens for me to be educated, it opens more doors for the community where come from. Today, it is my responsibility, as a first generation college student to, not only go to school and learn, but to teach other students the historical resistance of the indigenous peoples whose land we are stepping on, so that I can come back home and teach the community that did not have the opportunity to leave home to go to college.
Last April, while I was in New York, outside the United Nations, in a mid-night meeting organizing a march for the 43 missing bothers of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, I received an email from UC Berkeley saying that I got accepted as a transfer student to their school for the spring semester of 2016! I was shocked. I could not believe the fact that I was accepted to one of the best Universities in the United States and the world. It was a dream full of hardships coming true. I felt as if the hard work of my family was finally paying off. The 10-12 hour shift my parents struggled to feed my siblings and I were finally giving us the sweet taste of an opportunity for education. Going to college is the dream that my pueblo has for all the youth who migrate to the United States, sadly, due to the lack opportunities given to indigenous-migrant students and because of poverty, many of us are forced to leave school to work and help our familias.
Education in the United Sates has reached the sky with tuition increases in the last few years. It is so expensive to pay a decent education that our communities cannot afford to send their kids to college for lack of income to spare paying for college. Education then, has become a luxury for a few. It is not fair, I know. Our communities cannot pay for the education of our kids when we can barely pay for our rent and bills.
The prevalence of violence and inequality across political systems have propelled me on a mission: there is too much war, too much exploitation, too much destruction of mother earth, too much displacement of people, too many borders and not enough justice. Politics is the heart of society; my presence and sustained uphill struggles in this country without proper documentation serves as testament of the need for another way of doing politics. But in society, I solely want to discover and analyze the true nature of Political Systems; and I feel that a degree in Political Science can help yield answers. I want to study the American Political System and its effects on foreign nations. In particular, I want to explore the effects of politics on communities of color and communities along the U.S/Mexican Border. My objective is incorporating my lived experiences as a displaced indigenous migrant raised under a different form of political organization in order to understand what lessons can be reciprocally learned in each context. As an indigenous Mexican migrant and first-generation college student, I want to learn about the politics that transformed my home country and that brought me to this nation.
Today, I decided to ask for the economic support of those who can, to help me with expenses for finding a place and settling during my first year at Berkeley. My goal is reach $5,000 for overall expenses, including transportation, food, books, a laptop, and rent (I was placed in the waiting list at Cal for housing and I think I am going to have to look for a place to live in Berkeley or in Oakland). As I am writing this, I understand that not all people will be able to support me economically, but spiritually they will. It is hard for me to ask for money. I didn’t want to ask just for money like that. In my pueblo we give without expecting something back, but we also received without us being forced to give back. What I want to do is to recompense you with something from my heart. And I want to do that in a poetic way. So if you donate (and even if you cannot donate I can still send you something!) I want to send you a poem or a book for the help you are giving me. What you will have to do is send me an email with name and address so I can send you a poem on a struggle and resistance of the indigenous peoples, transnational solidarity, immigration, policy and border patrol brutality or love to the lucha that I have.
My goal is come back to pueblo as an educator and student of the indigenous peoples resistance, but first I want to work with the workers as an organizer because I believed in the power of the workers to change the world.
Please help me with whatever you can, every amount will help me!
I am thankful from the bottom of my heart with all your support!
May the rain bless you with water in the drought of life!
In solidarity Forever,
Luis Antonio Lopez Resendiz
My name is Luis Lopez Resendiz and I am asking for your support to help me attend Berkeley in the spring 2016 as a transfer student from San Diego City College.
I would like to start by thanking you for taking the time to read the letter below that came from a heart full of hopes to change the worlds of the oppressed peoples. I am a writer and writing is what I do to tell my story and the story of my people so we do not die in oblivion. Muchas gracias!
My name is Luis Lopez Resendiz, my roots; history and identity come from the 3,000 year history of the ñuu savi (People of the Rain-Mixtec) people from the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. Although I was born in Tijuana, I have always said that I am from the south due to the migration of my family to this city. Tijuana is a city were the native (indigenous) people from southern states of Mexico and Central and South America stop, settle, and most of the time prepare for a new journey to the United States to settle, again, after being displaced from their homeland.
As a student, son of a hard-worker-mujer in a maquiladora in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, a Construction worker in San Diego, I was given the opportunity to get an education in the United States of America after being forced to migrate seeking a better life here. Crossing one border is not enough when you are constantly fighting to preserve your culture, history and identity. In this country, to the people in power I am another “Latino” in the academia, but to the community that surrounds me and that have educated me, I am another native-Mixteco student, fighting, as I walk crossing borders of oppression in the academia. Education is the most powerful tool that my family gave me to fight structures of power and knowledge that keep subjugating our communities. That is why I value education with all my heart because when a door opens for me to be educated, it opens more doors for the community where come from. Today, it is my responsibility, as a first generation college student to, not only go to school and learn, but to teach other students the historical resistance of the indigenous peoples whose land we are stepping on, so that I can come back home and teach the community that did not have the opportunity to leave home to go to college.
Last April, while I was in New York, outside the United Nations, in a mid-night meeting organizing a march for the 43 missing bothers of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, I received an email from UC Berkeley saying that I got accepted as a transfer student to their school for the spring semester of 2016! I was shocked. I could not believe the fact that I was accepted to one of the best Universities in the United States and the world. It was a dream full of hardships coming true. I felt as if the hard work of my family was finally paying off. The 10-12 hour shift my parents struggled to feed my siblings and I were finally giving us the sweet taste of an opportunity for education. Going to college is the dream that my pueblo has for all the youth who migrate to the United States, sadly, due to the lack opportunities given to indigenous-migrant students and because of poverty, many of us are forced to leave school to work and help our familias.
Education in the United Sates has reached the sky with tuition increases in the last few years. It is so expensive to pay a decent education that our communities cannot afford to send their kids to college for lack of income to spare paying for college. Education then, has become a luxury for a few. It is not fair, I know. Our communities cannot pay for the education of our kids when we can barely pay for our rent and bills.
The prevalence of violence and inequality across political systems have propelled me on a mission: there is too much war, too much exploitation, too much destruction of mother earth, too much displacement of people, too many borders and not enough justice. Politics is the heart of society; my presence and sustained uphill struggles in this country without proper documentation serves as testament of the need for another way of doing politics. But in society, I solely want to discover and analyze the true nature of Political Systems; and I feel that a degree in Political Science can help yield answers. I want to study the American Political System and its effects on foreign nations. In particular, I want to explore the effects of politics on communities of color and communities along the U.S/Mexican Border. My objective is incorporating my lived experiences as a displaced indigenous migrant raised under a different form of political organization in order to understand what lessons can be reciprocally learned in each context. As an indigenous Mexican migrant and first-generation college student, I want to learn about the politics that transformed my home country and that brought me to this nation.
Today, I decided to ask for the economic support of those who can, to help me with expenses for finding a place and settling during my first year at Berkeley. My goal is reach $5,000 for overall expenses, including transportation, food, books, a laptop, and rent (I was placed in the waiting list at Cal for housing and I think I am going to have to look for a place to live in Berkeley or in Oakland). As I am writing this, I understand that not all people will be able to support me economically, but spiritually they will. It is hard for me to ask for money. I didn’t want to ask just for money like that. In my pueblo we give without expecting something back, but we also received without us being forced to give back. What I want to do is to recompense you with something from my heart. And I want to do that in a poetic way. So if you donate (and even if you cannot donate I can still send you something!) I want to send you a poem or a book for the help you are giving me. What you will have to do is send me an email with name and address so I can send you a poem on a struggle and resistance of the indigenous peoples, transnational solidarity, immigration, policy and border patrol brutality or love to the lucha that I have.
My goal is come back to pueblo as an educator and student of the indigenous peoples resistance, but first I want to work with the workers as an organizer because I believed in the power of the workers to change the world.
Please help me with whatever you can, every amount will help me!
I am thankful from the bottom of my heart with all your support!
May the rain bless you with water in the drought of life!
In solidarity Forever,
Luis Antonio Lopez Resendiz
Organizer
Luis López Resendiz
Organizer
San Diego, CA
