THIRD WORLD LIBERATION FRONT ʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ˢᵗᵃᵗᵉᵐᵉⁿᵗ
The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) at UC Berkeley coalesced in 1969 to demand self-determination in education through the establishment of a Third World College, initiated by the Afro-American Student Union, who joined forces with the Mexican American Student Confederation, the Asian-American Political Alliance, and the Native American Student Alliance. TWLF’s proposed curriculum would be designed for, and taught by, people of color, address the traditional Eurocentric education and incorporate into academia conversations on identity and oppression.
TWLF at UC Berkeley didn’t arise in isolation. The story of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley is one of struggle and resistance. Since 1969, every generation of students has mobilized to keep Ethnic Studies afloat, to carve space in an institution that never had them in its imaginary.¹
TWLF struggle has never ended, and the video shown here, with Elysia Crampton's Tarqueadas Mix Ocelote DJ E² “connects the movement with themes that are still relevant today, from the fight for inclusion on college campuses to the struggle against police brutality.”³
Elysia Crampton is an indigenous Bolivian artist who grew up in California whose work centers the body, relationships, mestizo identity, and a mode of being that as she ascribes to her grandmother as on that “is so resistant to the colonized sovereign mode that it survives it without even any acknowledgment or any need for that resistance, because its resistance is already irreducible.”⁴
By pairing Elysia Crmapton’s current work with protest paraphernalia from the recent past, I am showing xyz This is not protest music, but the work of Elysia Crampton, the TWLF and youth to this day, are formally and theoretically protesting colonization and working to develop a sense of internal peace with one’s identity in relation with a colonial history.
The idea is basically that by studying documents of the past and present, current media are being engaged to make contents more accessible to the Spanish-speaking audience.
With recent protests, social media and open platforms like Google Spreadsheets and Docs were engaged by activists, but they were too often overpopulated with resources and links, and furthered the exhaustion compounded by the isolated, exhausting conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Google Translate works quickly, the protest resources were gathered quickly, it was all very overwhelming. Turning the investigation inward toward its own faults.
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