Wanting to learn about how to organize people and money, 350 students from fifty colleges and universities attended the Midwest Hispanic Student Leader
ship Conference on Saturday, Oct. 20 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. Association of Latin American Students from Black Hawk College sent five students and an adviser to the conference.
Opening key note speaker and writer of “What’s in Your Backpack?,” Jimmy Cabrera said the students should not have a fear of failure. He said that students should not have a fear of rejection, should not be afraid of a mistake and to always be optimistic.
“Who you are is where you draw your strength, being poor and Mexican is not an excuse,” he said.
After the opening speaker students were allowed to go to the morning session workshops. Students attending the “Who’s got the Power?” workshop were separated into four groups representing different parts of town. The four areas of town asked for building permits and one group was clearly favored with multiple schools while another had only a jail and a casino.
At the end of the session, Michael Rodriguez, Director of Field Operations for the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI) said with peaceful protests and strong activism Latinos could see a change in the immigration debate.
At lunch, the president of USHLI, Dr. Juan Andrade announced to the students that his organization along with Rock the Vote, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Democracia USA and Spanish television channel Telemundo were going to try to register 1,000,000 new voters for the 2008 presidential election. The television ads campaign in the Midwest that will air on Telemundo, were shown at the conference.
The luncheon keynote speaker, Dr. Angelina Pedroso of Northeastern University was very emotional. She was disgraced by the English only policies and Latino students who are humiliated by their Mexican parents.
“How many of you invite your parents to your school? Let them wear their boots to your school and they will be honored,” she said.
The second set of workshops followed the luncheon. President of the Alianza Leadership Institute, Rey Lopez-Calderon had a workshop on relationship building. He noted that the students should not be afraid to ask the tough question and to always treat people nice and well. Calderon said that Gandhi, former President Bill Clinton and Adolf Hitler were all good at relationship building.
The “Direct Action on Your Campus” workshop had students and recent graduates sharing what motivated them to get involved in their communities. Graduate Elicia Corral said she became involved with her community as part of her courses and by emphasizing her community’s assets. University of Illinois student Ricardo Lopez was motivated to help others by adjusting to life in Chicago after coming from Mexico at the age of eight and the death of his mother’s cousin when he tried to cross the border.
Bowling Green State University graduate, Raquel Colon said that the best way to get students to be effective was to get them to be responsible and committed in helping the university and community. The students were then separated into groups discussing how to coordinate with other groups in and out of campus, prejudice that those student organizations and Latinos face on campus and how to resolve them, and how to derive more recruitment and retention of Latino students.
Closing the session was “The Cuban Guy” Mr. Andres Lara who had the students believe in themselves and their dreams. He did a little of everything including a magic show and Chicago Taebo. He also introduced a new concept GOYA which for Latinos is a food brand. For Lara, it stood for “Get off Your…Anatomy and have action.”
For more information on the conference visit www.ushli.com or to reach speaker Jimmy Cabrera you can visit his website at www.jimmyspeaks.com. Speaker Andres Lara can be reached at www.thecubanguy.com.
Marco Gutierrez, William Hampes, and Christina Lange contributed to this report.
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