Honoring a Chicana Activist Dignity Warrior: The Life and Work of Alicia Escalante

A reception honoring Alicia Escalante, life-long community activist.

Please join us in recognizing the life-long activism of Alicia Escalante, the founder of the East Los Angeles Welfare Rights Organization (ELAWRO), who recently donated her papers to the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at the UCSB Library. Escalante organized the ELAWRO in 1967 after tiring of the indignities poor, single mothers of color like her secured at the hands of local authorities. Focused on economic justice and human dignity, Escalante’s social and political activism sheds new light on the multiple insurgencies and inter-organizational dynamics across a wide berth of movements, including welfare rights, women of color and white women’s feminist struggles, and Chicano battles for self-determination. Today, Escalante and the ELAWRO carry tremendous historical insight for the current struggles for human dignity, as they teach us the critical role of individual as well as collective, grassroots activism and leadership in furthering movements for social justice.

Speakers to include: Alicia Escalante; Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, History; & Rosie Bermudez, PhD Candidate, Chicana/o Studies. Reception to follow.