Disinformation Campaigns: A Discussion of Politics, Pandemics, and Chicana/x and Latina/x Communities

Too often, candidates are photographed eating tacos or practicing their high school Spanish as part of their staged campaign stops. This event focuses on the continuing lack of cultural and linguistically appropriate engagement by government actors to integrate and respond to the needs of non-white, non English-dominant communities. Targeted misinformation campaigns via social media channels such as What’s App and in political campaign literature reveal an uneven approach to Chicana/x and Latina/x communities. What actions are necessary to combat misinformation, especially racially motivated attacks? How can leaders restore trust in government decisions? What is the role of media across all platforms? What investments are necessary until these questions begin to be meaningfully addressed?

Sonja Diaz is the Founding Executive Director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, a comprehensive think tank that addresses the most critical domestic policy challenges facing communities of color in states and localities across the U.S. An attorney, voter rights activist, and co-author of The Power of the New Majority: A 10 State Analysis of Voters of Color in the 2020 Election, Diaz served as policy counsel to U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris during her first terms as California Attorney General Cristina Beltrán, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, works at the intersection of Latino politics and political theory. Her award-winning books include The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity and Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy. She is a former resident member at both the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M. She is also the occasional guest for MSNBC.

This event has been archived on our YouTube channel here.