Latinos in Texas are directly impacted by policymaking at the local, state and national level.
An upcoming policy symposium will bring together lawmakers, community members, and organizers from across the state to coalesce ideas to strengthen the bienestar, the wellbeing, of Texas Latino families.
The Texas Latino Policy Symposium is Dec. 2 and 3 at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.
The symposium will focus on strengthening three issues in particular: electoral power, policy research, and messaging. or taking control of the often-negative narrative that surrounds Latinos.
“How do people talk about us?” asks Juan H. Flores, coordinator and policy analyst with the La Fe Policy Research and Education Center. “How do we translate our issues into our own message as opposed to someone translating for us? For example, the obvious one is how people talk about immigrants and how that gets translated into poor policies.”
The issues the TXLPS highlights are education, employment, housing, income, health, neighborhoods, incarceration, immigration and voter suppression. These are all issues that interconnect.
Belinda Román is a professor of economics at St. Mary’s University.
“I think that's what this symposium is actually highlighting…the necessity to look at the trajectory of the Latino lifecycle all the way through from start to finish and how we can help effectuate change in that way,” Román said.
Register for the Texas Latino Policy Symposium here.
TXLPS 2021 Agenda by Texas Public Radio on Scribd
