Kim Dominguez

K. Dominguez: Yeah. So, um, the ethnic... The banning ethnic studies actually started much earlier, like as early as 2006. So before there was, um HB 2021. I'm like, what is the bill? Before there was HB 2021, there was two previous iterations of that that also sought to ban ethnic studies, and one was 1108 and one was 1069. Um, maybe a Senate bill or a House bill. 1069, 1108 they both sought to ban ethnic studies. And so there was, um, trying to think of the timeline chronologically if there was like HR 4437 in 2006, and then maybe right after was like 1108 or in 1069. They both sought to ban ethnic studies at the state level, including colleges, and neither of those bills passed. We did a lot of organizing and a lot of protesting around 1108 and 1069, but a lot of people don't know about that because they died. Those bills died. Um, so I... If it truly felt like from 2000. Maybe actually it was 2005, but it really felt from like 2006 all the way until 2012. Six years of just fighting nonstop. The three ethnic studies laws and then the two immigration laws, which were very interconnected because a lot... Well, because we're a predominantly Latine community, so many of our students are mixed status families. And both pieces really felt like anti Latinx legislation because it was specifically targeting Mexican American studies. It wasn't coming after, you know, black studies or PITA studies. It was specifically this K-12 Mexican American Studies program. So it really felt like we were fighting against Latine, anti-Latine legislation for like six years. Um. Yeah.

K. Dominguez: Well, so when it was, like, on desks and hadn't actually passed, I believe we had a lot of vigils. We had a lot of actions. Tom Horne. Tom Horne had planned to come here, and we had a walkouts. He was supposed to visit 1010, which was 1010 East 10th Street, the headquarters for Tucson Unified School District. So that's where like school board meetings and things like that would take place. And he was set to visit 1010. Um, actually, I think the morning had passed. I was at Tucson High. He had... He was set to come to 1010 or maybe the day after it passed, and we were going to do a huge walkout. And it was like multigenerational, like middle school, high school, college-age organizers. 21010, ten and we all went to 1010. And he decided not to come to 1010 because we formed a human chain around the building. Um, instead, he went to the, I don't think the federal building, maybe the state building. He went to the state building downtown, and we marched to the state building, and he was holding a press conference, um, with pictures of some of us, you know, like he had a picture of, um, Tanya's daughter, who was in the Brown Berets at the time, like at a Tucson High event. And he had a picture of her and the Brown Berets and just talking about how radicalized the students in the program were. And so he was doing a press conference there. We got word that he was doing a press conference. We did have connections politically to folks like in the gravel camp, you know. So our, uh, representative is Grijalva here, Raul Grijalva, and his daughter was in the school board. Now she serves in Pima County.

K. Dominguez: So we had some political connections, Democratic political connections too, like Chicanos who had organized, like in the 60s and 70s. And so we would be getting updates and communication and things like that. And I think maybe Adelita called or texted Luis and said, like: "Tom Horne is going to be at the state building instead of 1010." So we marched, we ended up marching to the state building, and we tried to go. We were protesting outside of the state building, which we had done many times, and I was like, this makes no sense. Like he's inside, and we're out here and we need to interrupt that press conference. So we went inside. We, you know, rushed the building and went inside. Security guard like, pushed us, tried to push us down the stairs, tried not to let us in the building, tried to take away our mics. Um, and there was kind of like this little, probably not very big, like maybe one and a half of these rooms. And it was just at the top of the stairs, and it was like a walk, really like an egress area to get into this, where the press conference was held. And literally as we're running up the stairs and security is pushing us, they're shutting that door and locking it and locking us out of the press conference. And we decided to do a sit in and and stay there until, you know, he was willing to meet with us. Um, and he wasn't. And we got arrested. And, um, so that was that day.

M. Tellez: There's so much, um, so, you know, it sounds like SJEP, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, is... Was sort of your political avenue to get involved into organizing? Would that be correct to say that?

K. Dominguez: Yes and no. Um, it feels so important for me to say that, like, also my socialization. And growing up, I was very politically conscious because at the time when I was a teenager, I would really allow, like Julio, Augie, or other people to say like: "Oh, this is our protege. And we radicalized her. And, you know, she has..." You know, as if everything is owed to Ethnic Studies, which a lot is right, like 80%. But also, I grew up poor, working-class, experiencing gender-based violence, with a single teen mom, with no transportation, food insecure. Um, I had, like, political thoughts as early as elementary I can remember, because I would think about how hot it was to walk and how I wish I could organize like a rideshare transportation for moms, because we would have to push our laundry, like in a stroller and walk really far. My school was far. Um, so I was thinking about those things, and I was very much aware that, like, I was poor working-class, I had no transportation, and that moms and kids were really the ones who suffered in poverty. Because moms are the ones grocery shopping. Moms are the ones doing the laundry. Moms are the ones taking care of the kids. And I was seeing my mom suffering and, you know, as a young person. And so... I can't give the cismen all the credit. No, I mean, I was a baby feminist. Um, and and yes, ethnic studies. And the SJEP continued me on that path. Um, but I always knew right from wrong politically and thought about injustice and was very solutions oriented as early as elementary age. Um, but of course, you know, ethnic studies changed the trajectory of my life. And the people like SJEP, like the people in SJEP, um, who I could imagine, you know. I never imagined they would not be in my life. So. Yeah, that, of course, is like a different political, you know, when you're like, so in solidarity with somebody and you love them and you're so entrenched and enmeshed and it's like their struggle, you know, you hear, you see quotes like: "Oh, your struggle is my struggle." And it's like, you can... Anybody can say that. But when you really feel it, and you love somebody so intensely that you're like, know your struggle really is my struggle, regardless of my immigration status, like your struggle is my struggle. And that was really what was like fostered amongst the young people I went through SJEP, in my experience, right? Because [inaudible] did us dirty. Um, but for me it was like, this is... These are my people. Like, I would die for them. Like, I'm here getting arrested for y'all. Like, um, I pushed college aside. I had my kid all in the street all the time. Um, so it was like, that was... I think that's a different political charge than... Um, but the awareness, like the consciousness and things like that, I wouldn't credit entirely to to. Yeah.

K. Dominguez: So we started the Mujeres Encuentros um series, and the Mujeres Encuentro space and series really evolved into MalintZINE, because the folks that were coming to the Mujeres Encuentros, a cohort of people formed from there that were really tight and they weren't all SJEP. It was like, um, Dora, who was like a community organizer and a farmer and now does everything under the sun, like abortion doula, you know, repro justice, like everything, um, like a machista who's now in city council, like, we just had a wide array of, you know, mostly fem folks, some queer and non-binary folks that came together. And we, at the time that that was happening, Sean Arce, who was the director, who we had like protected and protested for, was going through a divorce and had done domestic violence in public at a bar, including to one of the Machista student, like one of his former students, was shoveled into the domestic violence incident. And I had woke up, and I got all these text messages from people in the community of like, what had happened the night before at La Cocina. And I didn't happen to be there that night. But Sean was violent to his his wife, and they were going through a divorce process. And from that kind of unravelled that he had a history of domestic violence, and he had like broke her nose. And the attorney who was overseeing the ethnic studies case had also got him off for breaking his wife's nose. And we decided that we at the time there was like supposed to be the Mayan New Year, like in December in 2012. And we decided we wanted to publish something that was going to, like, signify the end of the world, and how we knew it to be at the time of all the violence that we had been experiencing. Um, so we formed MalintZINE, um, which was a collective and a zine, and it launched by publishing an article to Sean. It was an online; it started online. So a digital zine and collective, and we launched on December 21st, 2012 with a letter, public letter to Sean. Um. And then we had a core group and we started getting in things like we would take submissions and we started publishing. And we started publishing all these narratives of like gender based violence and, um, folks, fem folks histories in Tucson and like what they had experienced in, in the movement. Um, and we got traction, and then we eventually... We put out three iterations of the zine, or I don't know what they call publishes.

K. Dominguez: Yeah, we did, we did one, and it was just like 100; and we didn't think very much of it. I mean, we ended up getting like 78,000 reads like on WordPress. Um, and we now distribute like hundreds of copies, like, all over North America. Um, and we printed it. We had to print three times. I think the second time we did 200, the third time we did 200. Um, and... Yeah, we were an anonymous group. We kind of borrowed that from the Zapatistas, although people knew who we were because people already, like, associated me with being a feminist and a bitch. Mm. Huh. Um, and when that letter launched, I got invited to Doctor Lee's house. I got invited to one of my professor's house, and I was like, all elders and me and Lane. So, um, my comadre Lane, who's in the city council, who was like, one year older than me and was in Mexican-American studies and was John's student and was a machista. So me and Lane get invited and it's like all elders. It's like, uh, Dr. C, uh, Lorena Howard, Amy, the teacher from Pueblo, um, Jose Gonzalez, uh, me, Lane, and maybe Raquel, but I can't remember. And it's like this emergency meeting. We don't really know this, what it's about. And we go, and they pull out a print out of the letter to Sean, and they read it, and they're like: "Do you know anything about this?" Yeah, yeah.

K. Dominguez: And Jose, who was my American government teacher, he loses it and he's like: "You hate men. You hate men." He's screaming at me that I hate men. And I'm like crying. I'm like: "No, no, no, like I love you. This is why I'm giving you feedback." Like... And Lane's like: "Yeah, we do fucking hate men." And [inaudible] "I love you. I literally will die for you. But, like, can you just stop breaking our noses?" Um, yeah. So, and MalintZINE was active from December. It was active maybe like a year. We had a huge party. We did all these things. We, uh, we presented a couple times, like in the community and at National Women's Studies and, um, but I had to set it aside, and I had to finish my bachelor's degree, and organizing had taken up pretty much my whole 20s. Um, and I was going to turn 30, and I really, really wanted to finish my bachelor's degree, um, which I got in Mexican American Studies. And I was like the main editor, organizer, founder of the zine. And it took over my life after I stepped in and I was like, I can't do this again, because SJEP had already taken over my life for ten years. And, um, there was also a lot of healing to be done. And. Yeah, I set it aside, and I finished my bachelor's. And I had my youngest daughter. Yeah.