Queer and Undocumented: Opening up the Dialogue on Queer Immigrants

The Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition invites you to join Juan Rodriguez and Felipe Matos on their talk titled: “Opening up the Dialogue on Queer Immigrants: Reclaiming the Sum of our Parts.” This will be a round table conversation about the intersection between different …systems of oppression as they play out in people’s personal lives. Felipe Matos and Juan Rodriguez, both organizers for the immigrant rights movement had to face a personal struggle in reconciling their experiences as queer couple in a patriarchal and homophobic movement. Juan and Felipe will talk about ways to open up space for the expression of different experiences and identities in movements as well as key strategies to open up dialogue in general. They will achieve these goals by engaging participants in discussions about their identity and their vision of a social movement.

Sponsored by: The Queer Alliance Community Committee (ComCom), Coordinating Committee, and Queer Politics Action Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Office of Institutional Diversity, Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the LGBTQ Center.

http://www.facebook.com/events/323746267682408/
___________________________________________
Short bios of Felipe and Juan:

Felipe Matos:
A graduate from the Honors College at Miami Dade College, he was born to a single mother in the slums of Brazil. Felipe was sent at age 14 to the United States where he first dreamed of becoming a teacher, following the lessons of his mother that ‘Education is the only path out of poverty’. Felipe is currently studying Business and Administration at St. Thomas University and hopes that one day he will be able to teach young people. Currently, he serves his community in finding leaders to speak for the contribution of immigrants in the state of Florida in collaboration with Presente Action. He has served in the Board of Directors of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, a core leader of Students Working for Equal Rights, was Southeast Regional coordinator for United WE DREAM in 2011. Felipe is also one of four students that walked 1,500 miles from Miami to Washington, D.C. to highlight the plight of migrant families and the need for humane reform. This project was called the Trail of DREAMs.

Juan Rodriguez:
Since high school, Juan Rodriguez has been an organizer and advocate for minority, displaced, low-income youth raised in the United States. In 2008, he coordinated undocumented youth to engage over 3,000 of their citizen peers to register and go out to vote with the “Vote for Me campaign” and co-founded the Social Justice Scholars Fund at the Florida Immigrant Coalition. In 2009, Juan was one of four youth from Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER) that led a national mobilization called the “Trail of Dreams” which engaged more than 60,000 active participants through social networking, media appearances, and a mobile action network. Juan is a proud graduate in Business Administration from Miami Dade College and is currently completing a Sociology and Anthropology Degree at Florida International University.