The United States is about 13 months away from the next presidential election, but the campaigning for future candidacy began late spring, went on all summer long and will continue until the election of the U.S.’ 45th President.  While the Democratic Party (for now) appears to have two clear frontrunners (Clinton and Sanders), the Republican Party has been a chaotic circus, having already had multiple public debates with their multitude of potential party candidates. The most recent Republican Debate in September had a total of eleven candidates on the stage.  The one who has (un)surprisingly been receiving a large amount of media attention has been Donald Trump, a man who infamously made his debut on the national campaign stage by disparaging the Mexican, Latino and immigrant communities.  In recent days, at a rally in Las Vegas there has been a video going around of a Latina woman yelling to the crowd “I’m Hispanic and I vote for Mr. Trump!” The body language in the video not only makes me uncomfortable but the manner in which Trump handles the woman (slapping her sides, kissing her, holding her hands up Rose and Jack style à la Titanic) leaves a bit of a bile taste (I’m not the only one who has noticed this).

As an educator I try to keep up with the most up-to-date world events, seeking connections I can bring into the classroom, share with my students and hopefully help them see themselves and others in a more holistic light.  The Republican Presidential candidates’ discourse and rhetoric was at the forefront of my mind. During my summer class, “Introduction to Chicana/o Studies: Social Structures and Contemporary Conditions”, my wonderful T.A., had assigned for our students to incorporate their artistic skills with our course readings, lectures, films and discussions; I have to say my summer students were amazing! They not only impressed me with their photography skills, creative fiction, and poetry but the use of technology has become such an important resource for students and scholars alike.  One of the student assignments turned in that really impressed both my T.A. and I was the meme in this post.  The student had followed up on our conversation regarding Trump characterizing Mexican migrants as rapists along with the historical overtones of such hate speech. It clearly triggered something with her as she searched for an online picture of the candidate himself and created a meme that encompasses what most Chican@s and Latin@s have felt since he spewed such vile language. As we had studied and discussed in our course, history tells us time and again that the Mexican (and by extension the Chicano/Latino) ethnic and cultural identity has been vilified many times over. Helping students understand how a community can be disparaged so often even though their presence has been documented on this land before the United States became the nation we now know it to be, is challenging to say the least. But what has been a motivating factor is witnessing how students discuss the various ways they feel empowered by this knowledge and their university education. While the woman in the Las Vegas rally video is screaming out “We love you all the way to the White House!”, I heard my some of my students saying “Bring. It. On.”