Programs
The Resource Center’s innovative educational programs
serve distinct groups and populations, ranging from preschoolers to
university professors, from labor organizers to faith-based activists,
from teachers to social workers, from community members who speak mostly
Spanish to those who speak mostly English. At the same time, our programs
help connect everyone in a growing movement for human rights.
Since the Resource Center’s first days
in 1983, community members have gathered for our weekly “coffeehour”
series. Speakers in 2000 included organizers and educators visiting from
Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Peru, as well as Minnesotans
reporting on their work in more than a dozen countries. The program
attracts crowds as large as 120 people. Before and after each event, we
designate time for the participants to contact government and corporate
officials about topics such as U.S. military aid to Colombia and labor
violations under the North American Free Trade Agreement. For upcoming “coffeehours,”
see the schedule.
In four eight-week sessions, we offer English pronunciation, Portuguese and seven levels of Spanish. And
we organize seminars and workshops such as “Looking at the World: Media
and Foreign Affairs,” “The United Nations and Women’s Human Rights,”
“Working with Immigrants: Rights, Responsibilities and Risks,” “Z2K:
Zapatistas in the Year 2000” and “Resounding Voice: Latin American
Women Poets.” For children and families, a variety of interactive
classes focus on learning Spanish through art, music and games. And,
with help from Tapestry Folk Dance Center and Patrick’s Cabaret, we hold
Latin-dancing courses. Almost 800 people enrolled in these community-education classes
in 2000. To learn about upcoming courses, see the schedule.
This free program enables community
members to practice language skills and exchange ideas on important social
issues. The movies range from La Ciudad by David Riker to El Super by
Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal. The films and corresponding
discussions alternate weekly between Spanish and English, combining
education and entertainment, and bridging gaps of culture and language.
For upcoming movies, see the schedule.
This 20-hour course serves teachers, librarians,
social workers, clergy members, human-resources managers and other
community members. Co-sponsored
by Hamline University Graduate School, the course provides participants
with practical tools for responding positively to the rapid growth of the
state’s Latino population, now more than 125,000 strong. The
instructors, Octavio Ruiz and Meredith Sommers, co-authored the 350-page
Resource Center curriculum Many Faces of
Mexico. To learn about upcoming courses, see the schedule.
Taking advantage of the meeting rooms in
our new building, we have expanded our conference répertoire beyond “Latinos
in Minnesota: Developing Cultural Understanding” to encompass
immigration rights and risks in the context of globalization. With
accreditation from the Minnesota Board of Social Workers and Minnesota
Board of Nursing, we organize several daylong events each year, attracting
hundreds of social-service, health-care professionals, educators and librarians.
Speakers include immigrants, Resource Center staff members, immigration
lawyers and social workers. To learn about upcoming courses, see the schedule.
We hold educational tours of
south Minneapolis neighborhoods where the city’s fast-growing Latino
population is concentrated. Co-sponsored by El Mercado Central, just down
Lake Street from our new building, the tours introduce high-school and college students to Latino churches, businesses, community
groups and murals. A grant from Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights
enabled us to write a curriculum to help teachers prepare the students for
the experience. To schedule an encuentro, call 612-276-0788 or
write to info@americas.org.
In addition to events and programs
specified elsewhere in this report, Resource Center staff members and
volunteers speak to dozens of college classes and community groups each year, reaching thousands of people. The topics
include
sweatshops, child labor, immigration, global education, arts and culture,
the global economy, classroom resources and specific countries. To
schedule a presentation, call 612-276-0788 or write to info@americas.org.
Our original productions include award-winning bilingual videos,
classroom curricula books, and the 60-page Latino Voices,
a collection of stories about immigrants in Minnesota. Learn more about
these resources and order them by clicking here.
In his Brazilian literacy campaigns, the late Paulo Freire pioneered
the notion that education requires action. From our Thursday Night Movie discussions to the fair-trade coffee
that our café serves, the Resource Center adheres to this principle. Additionally,
we sponsors
three organizing projects:
This project educates and mobilizes for justice in the global economy.
We take on global sweatshops directly by organizing the Minnesota
component of national anti-sweat campaigns and by actively participating
in the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, which unites Mexican,
U.S. and Canadian organizations. We confront broader issues of justice in
the global economy by coordinating the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition,
participating in the national Citizens’ Trade Campaign, and organizing
Minnesotans to participate in national and international protests. We
address globalization at home by supporting immigrants’ workplace
rights. Each year we make dozens of educational presentations to grade schools, high schools, colleges, churches and unions.
We began preparing for this new program
in June 2000, envisioning a hub where Latino immigrants would learn about
their workplace rights and become empowered to organize themselves. An
advisory group of 25 Latino workers soon began meeting regularly to
discuss the issues and to educate themselves and the general Latino
community. The work included months of interviews with Twin Cities
immigrant workers to identify the extent of workplace discrimination and
other abuses. It also included meetings with community leaders,
organizations, churches and unions, as well as visits to workers centers
in New York. Led by Director Teresa Ortiz, Organizer Jorge Flores and the
advisory group, the center formed officially in January 2001. The first
projects included a 16-week program—funded by the Minnesota Department
of Children, Families and Learning—that combined English language
instruction with training in labor rights and leadership.
The Resource Center’s youth organizing
project reached a milestone in 2000, bidding farewell to the student
organizers who had led the project since its 1998 founding. After the
founders graduated from high school and left for college, the peer
education and organizing continued, thanks to the hard work of a new crop
of volunteers and part-time staff members, all students at area high
schools. Each year, the project gives dozens of presentations at schools, colleges
and community groups. The organizers also hold speaker’s trainings and major educational workshops for students. And the
project’s Minnesota Sweatfree
Schools Campaign helps students pressure their schools to quit
purchasing sweatshop-made apparel and equipment.
Organizer Kasia Paprocki, a St. Paul Academy 10th grader, won a Twin
Cities International Citizen award in October 2000. Get the latest news
about the project here.
Featuring the best new fiction and
nonfiction about the Americas—English, Spanish and bilingual editions
for children, youths and adults—the bookstore has reached new heights in
its beautiful space in our south Minneapolis building. We attracted
a much more diverse base of customers than it had in our old location, a
church basement near the University of Minnesota. And we could carry a
much larger selection of books and fair-trade crafts. As a result, sales
for 2000 topped $200,000, almost double the 1999 amount. In addition to
walk-in sales, we serve educators across the country by providing
catalogues for mail orders. The bookstore offers bilingual “Saturday Morning Storytimes” for parents and
children two times a month, holds monthly discussions of literature from
the Americas, organizes “Theme Weeks” to showcase special topics, and
publishes an e-mail bulletin to announce new books. Almost everything in
the store is available through AMERICAS.ORG. 612-276-0801.
612-276-0898 (fax). bookstore@americas.org.
Click here to see the bookstore hours.
Each monthly edition of our 20-page membership magazine
includes an in-depth section on a theme, a digest of 50 news reports from across the hemisphere
(including Minnesota news), listings of dozens of Minnesota community events,
and news on Resource Center programs and volunteers. We circulate 2,200 monthly copies, including 1,500
mailed to our members. To subscribe to the Connection, become a
Resource Center member.
Our Web site has emerged as the
world’s most comprehensive and dynamic medium focused on Latin American
human rights and social justice. The site’s original analytical reports
attract links and plaudits from observers as diverse as the Financial
Times and the Utne Reader. Eye-opening daily essays explore the
date’s history. Serving as a Web portal and
database-powered news provider, the site includes a “lens” page
for each of 22 countries and six subjects (drug
war, environment, global
economy, immigration,
indigenous and sweatshops), including content from the New
York–based Weekly News Update on the Americas and the Pittsburgh-based Mexico
Labor News and Analysis. The site’s bookstore offers the best new fiction and
nonfiction about the Americas, in English, Spanish and bilingual editions
for children, youths and adults. AMERICAS.ORG
attracted 84,000 visits (arrivals) in the last quarter of 2000, almost
triple the number for the same period in 1999.
The library, named after the late
journalist, offers more than 10,000
books, documentary videos, periodicals, lesson plans and curricula for
public lending. Topics include globalization, U.S. foreign policy, Latin America and U.S.
Latinos. In 2000, added a section of books on
popular education and community organizing, including the complete works
of the late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Each year we also host dozens of visits by college, high-school and
grade-school classes and fulfill hundreds of educator requests for
classroom materials. 612-276-0898. 612-276-0788 (fax). Click here to see
the library hours.
Our 30-seat café serves fair-trade
coffee, homemade baked goods and wholesome food, including Latin American
favorites. Sales for 2000, the first full year in our new building, topped
$150,000, including $30,000 in catering. The delicious food, bright colors
and warm atmosphere makes the café a favorite meeting place in the
neighborhood and a wonderful asset for other Resource Center programs. For catering,
call 612-276-0803. 612-276-0898 (fax). Click here to see the café hours.
We hold art exhibits on
themes as diverse as “Memories of Forgotten Campesinos” and
“Honoring Women.” Displayed in our building’s atrium, public meeting
rooms and main corridors, the work includes photography, silk-screened
prints, oil paintings, acrylic paintings, sculpture and Day of the Dead
alters. For outside the building, we have launched a cross-border collaboration
between Mexican and Minnesota muralists that will lead to a tile mosaic in
the summer of 2001.
Making the most of our five meeting
rooms as well as our café, bookstore and library, the Resource Center
hosts gatherings for community groups ranging from the
Hispanic Health Network to Minneapolis school psychologists, from
Spanish-speaking Toastmasters to the National Writers Union, from the
Center for Victims of Torture to Longfellow Seward Healthy Seniors.
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