Welcome to my fundraising page for Wave! Please help me meet my individual fundraising goal of $1,500 <3
It’s hard to pinpoint when this work became such an integral part of my life. Part of me feels like the work has been there since I can remember. As a queer immigrant kid growing up in Texas I was pulled between the expectations imposed by my Mexican family and the wider societal expectations to assimilate into an English dominant culture. Like many people raised as the eldest “daughter” in an immigrant household I was also expected to interpret and translate at a young age. Can you imagine little me sight-translating bank notices? How could I succeed in those scenarios when I was just discovering the horrors of U.S. capitalism for the first time myself?!
I feel like this 🥹when I look at this picture of me in the third grade, around the time of my oldest memories of me interpreting.
My queerness, however, was my ultimate motivator to pursue language work. I wanted to be able to understand my queerness in my native language, I wanted to be able to talk about it and interpret in queer spaces and I wanted to do it in a Spanish that honored my trans non-binary identity. Because I’m not ella or él, I’m elle (they/them). I reap the rewards of my efforts when I interpret and people say things like, “I like that this session was in Spanish inclusive language!” It lets me know that my work as an interpreter has an impact.
Now, with my work at Wave, we support language workers who come from the communities most directly impacted by exclusionary policies. People who are closest to the issues are deserving of taking on this role and being compensated for it. We also work alongside organizations and institutions to help them build an infrastructure and culture that practices Language Justice principles beyond important services like interpretation and translation. Your support means funding for Language Justice programming to build the multilingual liberatory future of our dreams.
Please make a donation to my campaign today, and don’t forget about the original print artwork by a compa and language justice practitioner Li Sierra!
A gift that keeps on giving!
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All donors are entered to win a framed Language Justice Print created just for this campaign!
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$50+: Receive a limited-edition sticker of the artwork.
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$100+: Get a free 8.5x11 poster of the art!
You can also support in the following ways:
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⏩ Forward this campaign or share with others who could support
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📣 Promote Wave’s Language Justice Capacity Building Lab with orgs in your community or network!
If you made it all the way down here, thank you 🥲
Gloria
P.S.Your gift to Wave is tax-deductible. Wave’s federal tax Employer Identification Number is 33-4435759 (Wave - A Language Liberation Hub).
