Queridx comunidad,

We are calling out to all our community supporters, UCSB students, faculty, collaborators, community members, etc to support keeping LMC open! You are invited to sign this petition which will be sent to UCSB Deans of Social Sciences & Humanities of Fine Arts.

See below for petition...

*Please bypass the donations page, we are not fundraising, we are only collecting signatures.*

Dear Dean Berry & Dean Hale,

As a concerned group of students, faculty, and community members, it has come to our attention that Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Praxis is being asked to close down its multipurpose classroom, lab, and community center in South Hall at the end of the quarter. 

Since 2017, Las Maestras Center (LMC) has served as an integral space for both the UC Santa Barbara campus and the Santa Barbara community at large. Founded by two influential professors, teachers, and community artists, Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Cherríe Moraga, LMC has grown to become a dynamic intellectual incubator for some of the most innovative critical-creative research and art praxis emerging out of UC Santa Barbara. From being a creative writing lab, an art studio and theater centering Chicanx and Ethnic Studies pedagogies, to facilitating an expansive local, regional, national and transnational network of cultural workers, scholars, artists, activists, writers, healers, and spiritual practitioners from across California and beyond, LMC is more than just a classroom space but a cultural arts research center. UCSB is one of the only universities in the nation that houses such a center rooted in a queer, decolonial, and intersectional feminist vision. This is what makes LMC so special and makes it one of the many centers that contributes to the rigor and notability of the Divisions Humanities and Fine Arts and the Social Sciences.

Through this  cross-divisional, community-centered, and culturally-rooted platform, LMC generates a unique space that fosters student retention, supports critical-creative research, and strengthens the bridge between campus and community locally and worldwide. Countless students across departments and divisions (e.g. English, Spanish and Portuguese, Theater and Dance, Chicanx Studies, Black Studies, Feminist Studies, Sociology) have expressed that they applied to UCSB because of this center and consider LMC an intellectual home. It also serves as a central location for many affiliated professors to develop countless programs and projects centered around shared intellectual work on intersectional feminisms, non-western spiritualities, arts-based research, hemispheric Indigenous languages and transnational movements, amongst other areas. The center also continues to sustain countless collaborations with cultural centers and K-12 schools throughout Santa Barbara and California at large.

Losing this space would have a devastating  impact on this generative ecosystem that gives life to students, faculty, and community members. As the co-directors of LMC have recently retired, LMC continues to be stewarded by a dedicated circle of students and faculty committed to the vision of the center. South Hall 1415 continues to be crucial to so many of us, by sustaining our work and creating affirming spaces for marginalized communities on campus and in our surrounding neighborhoods. We urge you to keep our center open, which would support our important research and community projects!

As we approach the 10 year anniversary of our center, we invite you to become part of LMC’s legacy. We are looking forward to collaborating with each of you to envision its future. But first, your leadership, commitment and collaboration are pivotal to ensuring that we keep our beautiful center alive!

Keep Las Maestras Center Open!

https://www.lasmaestrascenter.ucsb.edu/