2026 Ramona Arreguín de Rosales Lecture with Dr. Jacqueline Lazú

Event Date and Time

Thursday, Oct 15, 2026

5:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Event Location

Northrop, Best Buy Theater

Free and Open to the Public (Registration Required)

The Department of Chicano & Latino Studies Presents “Where Do We Go From Here? The Young Lords Speak and the Protracted Struggle for Liberation”

“Where do we go from here?” remains one of the defining political and moral questions of our time. In this lecture, Dr. Jacqueline Lazú (DePaul University) draws from her book The Young Lords Speak: Building Revolution on the Streets of Chicago (Haymarket Books 2026) to examine how the Young Lords Organization in Chicago emerged from conditions of migration, colonial displacement and collective survival to transform itself from a street gang into a grassroots human rights organization whose legacy continues to shape activism today. Through oral histories, movement archives and the memories of former members, the book also reflects on political remembrance and the ways communities preserve histories too often excluded from public memory.

Against narratives that frame the Midwest as politically peripheral, this talk positions Puerto Rican Chicago as a critical site of radical thought and organizing. In the face of urban renewal, racial exclusion and state violence, the Young Lords linked struggles in Chicago to broader fights for Puerto Rican self-determination, Black liberation and anti-imperialist solidarity while developing survival programs rooted in political education and care.

Revisiting the Young Lords’ visions of community control, internationalist solidarity and collective survival, this lecture reflects on what continues to draw activists, organizers and communities back to these histories in the ongoing work of collective liberation.

This free, open-to-the-public event will be followed by a reception and book signing. For additional information about the 2026 Ramona Rosales Lecture, visit the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies.

For accessibility accommodations, please contact Tamara Hageman ([email protected]).

Presenter

Jacqueline (Jacqui) Lazú is a writer, public historian, archivist, and community collaborator whose work bridges scholarship, cultural production, and grassroots activism. Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, a multiracial, working-class city where Puerto Rican communities were a vital part of the urban fabric but often excluded from cultural and political power. That reality informs her longstanding commitment to documenting Latinx and Afro-Caribbean life, exploring how people build community, resist marginalization, and assert identity through cultural expression. Grounded in Latino studies, Puerto Rican studies, and critical race theory, her research examines diaspora, racial justice, and the intersections of literature, performance, and public history across the Americas.

A central focus of Lazú’s work has been the Young Lords Organization, a grassroots Puerto Rican group that emerged in Chicago during the late 1960s and became a national force for community empowerment and racial justice. Originally a street gang, the Young Lords transformed into a political movement that fought against displacement, police violence, and inequality through direct action, radical education, and coalition building. Lazú has collaborated closely with former members to preserve and interpret their legacy. She helped establish the Young Lords Special Collections at DePaul University, curated public exhibitions, and has published works that document their history and cultural significance. Her forthcoming anthology, The Young Lords Speak: From the Streets of Chicago to Revolutionary Organization (Haymarket Books), brings together archival materials and firsthand accounts. She is also completing Stone Revolutionaries: The Origins of the Young Lords Movement, under contract with Duke University Press, which offers the first full-length critical history of the Chicago chapter’s transformation and political thought.

Beyond her scholarship on the Young Lords, Lazú’s research and teaching engage a wide range of themes in Latinx, Afro-Caribbean, and diasporic cultural production. With a background in literature and cultural studies, she examines how writers, performers, and artists articulate questions of identity, race, memory, and belonging. Her publications examine Nuyorican theater and the decolonial visions of contemporary Latinx authors. She has taught and written about Afro-Caribbean religions, transnational feminisms, and expressive culture as sites of political imagination and survival. Across this work, she highlights the ways that Latinx and Afro-Caribbean communities in the U.S. and the Americas navigate colonial legacies, cultural erasure, and structural inequality through creative forms and everyday acts of resistance.

Lazú has also helped shape academic programs and public initiatives at DePaul University that reflect the core themes of her research. She co-founded the Department of Criminology and served as Acting Chair, integrating her work on racial justice, social movements, and state violence into curriculum and faculty development. Her scholarship on the criminalization of Latinx communities informs this work, as does her long-standing commitment to scholar-activism. As Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, she supported interdisciplinary collaborations across the college, and during her time directing the Community Service Studies Program, she helped launch the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, deepening her commitment to education as a tool for critical reflection and institutional change.

Moderator

Dr. Jimmy Patiño seeks to critically excavate alternative imaginings of democratic practice among aggrieved communities in the midst of global capitalism. Concentrating on Mexican-origin and broader Latino/a/x communities at the U.S. Mexico Border and in major U.S. urban settings, his work attempts to dialog about the ways that concepts of race, gender and nation create hegemonic class disparities and formulate an array of identities that mobilize social movements and initiate class struggles on multiple fronts.

His first book, “Raza Sí, Migra No: Chicano Movement Struggles for Immigrant Rights in San Diego” asserts that important contingents of Mexican-origin activists in the U.S. engaged, across generations, the crisis over the “illegal alien“ through attempts at organizing the Mexican-origin community across differences of national affiliation and citizenship status.

Land Acknowledgment & Lecture Introduction

The land acknowledgement and lecture introduction for the 2026 Ramona Arreguín de Rosales Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Gabriela Spears-Rico.

Dr. Gabriela Spears-Rico is a P’urhepecha and Pirinda cultural anthropologist, poet,and Critical Indigenous Studies scholar who completed her B.A. in Comparative Ethnic Studies from Stanford University (Honors) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the same field at U.C. Berkeley. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Chicano Latino Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Event Co-Sponsors

American Studies; Anthropology; CEHD’s Family Social Science & Youth Studies; CLA’s Office for Diversity, Inclusion, Community Engagement, and Equity (CLA DICEE); Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature (CSCL); Geography, Environment & Society; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS); History; Institute for Advanced Study (IAS); Immigration History Research Center (IHRC); Katherine E. Nash Gallery; Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS); The Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, and Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS); Sociology; Spanish & Portuguese Studies

2026 Ramona Arreguín de Rosales Lecture with Dr. Jacqueline Lazú

Institute for Advanced Study

Contact

Affiliation

UMN Campuses

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2026 Ramona Arreguín de Rosales Lecture with Dr. Jacqueline Lazú

Institute for Advanced Study

Connect

Contact

Affiliation

UMN Campuses