March Roundup
César Chávez, the Cruz family, birthright citizenship, and a nine-year-old who just wanted to spell.
Knowledge and community are our greatest strengths. I curate these 3–5 stories every month because staying informed isn’t just about headlines—it’s about understanding the forces shaping our lives and the resilience that keeps us here. This month: the price of silence, the specific weight of leaving, and the small wins that prove we are still here.
OUTRAGE: The César Chávez Revelations
The co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union sexually abused young girls and women — including fellow civil rights leader Dolores Huerta. The revelations have sent shockwaves through Latino communities and movement spaces, forcing a reckoning with how we hold complicated legacies, how survivors get silenced inside the very movements built to protect the vulnerable, and what we owe Dolores Huerta—who gave decades to a cause alongside someone who was harming her.
The Takeaway: There are no easy answers here. But looking away isn’t one of them.
Read The New York Times investigation (gift link).
LIVING IT: The Family That Left
Rachel is a public school teacher with 17 years in NYC. Irvi worked double shifts, bought a Bronx townhouse, and coached his daughters through panic attacks about ICE. They did everything “right.” And then, two days before Christmas 2024, they decided to leave—together, before the choice was made for them. Caitlin Dickerson at The Atlantic spent a year with the Cruz family as they dismantled their life and relocated to rural Oaxaca, Mexico.
The Takeaway: What makes this essential reading isn’t the politics—it’s the specific, accumulated weight of what a family loses when a country decides it doesn’t want them.
WATCH OUT FOR: Birthright Citizenship
The legal fight over birthright citizenship is moving through the courts and is landing in the Supreme Court for oral arguments on April 1st. From Wong Kim Ark in 1895 to Japanese American internment, the through-line is the same: citizenship, even when constitutionally guaranteed, has always been fragile.
The Takeaway: Before the ruling comes down, catch up with my piece on the backstory of who this country decides “belongs.” I’ll send a full explainer on the ruling next week.
Read “Born in the U.S.A., But Who Belongs Here?”
STILL HERE: A Boy, a Spelling Bee, and Ms. Rachel
Nine-year-old Deiver Henao Jimenez was being held in an immigration detention center when he got on a video call with children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel, begging to be released to compete in his state spelling bee. This week, he and his family were finally freed.
The Takeaway: This isn’t a “happy ending”—a child being released from detention shouldn’t require rejoicing. But Deiver got to go. And in this world, that matters.