She would say,’ you will be beautiful but you will also need to be smart’. She would look at me and laugh, mussing my little curly head. She would say, ‘you’re like your uncle, face always buried in a book. Learn all you can, know as many things as you can know, never be afraid to try anything, because then no one can tell you otherwise, you will know what is true’.

I grew up with grandparents that operated within a space of two absolutes. First, that hard work would pay off. Second that nothing was more important than getting an education. It would be my mother that would tell me, ‘you can be anything you want, anything is possible for your life’.

This morning when my alarm clock went off, the first song played was Whitney Houston’s rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. I remember when Ms. Houston first sang this, to the troops during Desert Storm. I thought, here is a black woman singing our National Anthem, to soldiers standing watch to defend my freedoms. And now, here is a woman singing the song of my country that will today now have a black man in charge. As a nation, how great have we become?

It was then that I realized why these days leading up to this tremendous moment have been so emotional for me. Up to this day, all the times my family repeated the mantra that anything is possible, I would believe it, up to a point.  I would believe that, on a smaller, local, manageable scale I could be anything I wanted to be. I could achieve great things in my life, within reason.

I believed it within reason because I was working  toward a standard of excellence that did not reflect me. It might reflect my ideologies, my political opinions, but it didn’t reflect any part of my culture. I couldn’t entirely believe it because I had nothing in common with that standard, other than a similar biological makeup in that I bled red, digested food, felt pain and used my brain to think in the same ways.

This has changed. I now reflect that standard because the man being sworn in today looks like me (we are both bi-cultural), and has had his formative years during a time of great upheaval and change, the 1960s (we are a year apart in age). The leader of the largest democracy on the planet and one of the last superpowers in our world, looks like me and while we’ve had vastly different experiences as adults, he has never lost sight of his race, his culture and his responsibility to good citizenship.

Today, for the first time in the 236 years this nation has been in existence, we all breath the clean, crisp air of first class citizenship. We have taken on the responsibility of our government, no longer dismissed to PACs and other special interests. We have exercised our fundamental right to choose who will lead us and he just happens to be a black man.

Mr. Obama has shattered a glass ceiling with a message of hope and hard work that allowed all of us the chance to help him break it. We, as people of color, have earned a special and precious opportunity. It is the opportunity to help him create a new standard that includes all of us of all colors, genders, persuasions and beliefs to work towards a common goal of excellence. A new standard that we are now privy to but also must be responsible for developing and tending and maintaining.

I make a promise today, to myself and all that know me and will know me. I will be an active citizen of this great land where freedom is measured by the character of each of us and our actions toward one another. I will roll up my sleeves and willingly work hard  to do my part to fix the wrongs that still exist, but exist in a very different paradigm. I will sing my nations anthem with pride as a newly minted, first class citizen of this, my United States of America.

The program is quite intense. The process operates between two absolutes: overwhelming and productive. You are always producing something and a good day is when you are not entirely overwhelmed. I can count the number of good days on one hand without my thumb.

We are ten very different people. Different ages, circumstances, geographic locations, cultures and genders. The one thing we all have in common is a great talent for telling stories. Columbia’s grand plan is to take that talent and make it better.

Roundtable Discussion: Chicana Foundations, Generations, Transformations: a Mother-Daughter Dialogue 

Multigenerational Roundtable Discussion featuring Chicana activists and their daughters. The long and short of which we all discovered, was that we daughters survived the years and struggles of our activist mother’s lives. We not only survived, we seemed to be thriving, finding our own way down our own activist paths.

She would always say that the most important influences in her life were the love of her family, her mother and her God. And he was her God, her ‘boss’ (she had one), her ‘JC’ and often spoke of him as though her work in the Mission district of San Francisco was a collaborative effort between the two of them.

So when Margaret did finally pass away at the beginning of February I was sad but pretty sure she was not only giving her ‘JC’ a few ideas, she was spending quality time with one of the three great loves of her life, her husband Frank, or ‘the saint’ as she had always called him.

Every once in a while, when I’m a bit too tired or frustrated with all the work it takes to make this film, I remember Margaret. I can even hear her saying ‘c’mon, let’s go, let’s get this done!’

I do miss my friend.

Virginia Martinez: First Chicana to pass the bar in the State of Illinois

Maria Mangual: Founder of Mujeres Latinas en Accion

Evette Cardona: Founding member, Amigas Latinas 

Juanita ‘Jane’ Gonzales (deceased),Muskegon Heights, Michigan: First Latina elected to government office in the state of Michigan. Founding member, Midwest Council of La Raza.

Alicia Hernandez aka ”Mama Moses” of Toledo Ohio: Director Ohio Hispanic Abstinence Outreach, The RIDGE Project. For 30 years an advocate for migrant housing, resources and rights in Northwest Ohio/Southeast Michigan.

Emily Torres: First Latina on ISO 9000 team for Ford Motor Company, Detroit Michigan

Carmen Velasquez: Founder of Alivio Medical Center, a community health care center serving the predominantly Mexican neighborhoods of Pilsen, Heart of Chicago, Little Village and Back of the Yards on Chicago’s southwest side.  

Mary Gonzales-Koenig: Founder, Spanish Coalition for Jobs

Teresa Gutierrez: One of the first Latinas on local network television

Margaret Lujan (deceased): Founding member, LULAC chapter 313

Irene Hernandez (deceased): First Latina elected to city government, Cook County Commissioner

Susan Alvarez: First Latina to become board certified mortician, State of Illinois

Linda Coronado: Activist, helped to help get Benito Juarez High School built and designed by a Mexican architect

Nancy ‘Rusty’ Barcelo: First Chicana to attend University of Iowa, founding member of MECHA at University of Iowa.

So as I picked up the drive, plugged it back in, listened to the platens not spin and watch my monitor for the drive now not appearing in Windows Explorer because it was no longer actively processing, I knew I had lost almost a year of work. Work that had not been properly backed up.

I would have to take a week of vacation and make my way across California and Texas to rescan all those documents. There were a few nice things about this trip, the first was that I got a great deal on five plane tickets (495 round trip from Chicago, to San Jose to LA to El Paso to Chicago). The second was that I got to spend another day with Margaret, scanning at her kitchen table and eventually making her some dinner. She would be gone less than a month later.

I also got to spend more time with Pauline in San Jose and since I wasn’t interviewing her, we got to talk about so many other things. My family and hers, San Jose and real estate. When I left her and her husband Gilbert, I really felt as though I had made a friend amongst my mother’s friends.

In Los Angeles I got to finally meet Yolanda Retter Vargas and experience the tremendous online cataloging system the Chicano Studies Library at UCLA has. Mike Stone, archivist has done an amazing job with the catalog so much so that searching for materials is excellent.  Mike all of us to lunch at the university cafeteria where we were all able to enjoy Lupe’s stories of the movement and Sylvia Morales’ stories of working in Hollywood.

Yolanda was nice enough to keep the library open a little later so that I could finish my work. It was nice to finally meet Yolanda and hear about her work with the Chicano Studies Library.

I was able to end my trip with a visit to El Paso for my mom’s 81st birthday, where we shared a lovely evening and cake with two of her closest friends in EP, Connie and Estella.