CSRC Newsletter — Latina Futures 2050 Lab, Summer 2025
Volume 24, Number 1
Director’s Message
(L-R) Elena Popp, Dolores Huerta, and Laura Esquivel celebrated with more than 250 guests at the opening reception for On the Side of Angels: Latina Lesbian Activism at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM), June 21, 2025. The exhibition was a collaboration between VPAM and the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, an initiative spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. (CSRC)
At a time when our communities face unprecedented and overlapping crises, we must be both strategic and thoughtful in our actions. This requires serious planning with our families, communities, and professional networks. For some, this means preparing emergency plans in the event of family separations; for others, it means taking steps to keep loved ones, neighbors, and coworkers safe, or shifting priorities to safeguard the survival and well-being of individuals and institutions. In this critical moment, we are witnessing Latinas — alongside other courageous community leaders — rise to confront authoritarianism and defend constitutional, civil, and human rights.
In recent months, the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, which is spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) and was created in 2022 in collaboration with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI), has remained steadfast in its mission, adapting to meet evolving challenges. We draw ongoing inspiration from — and actively contribute to — efforts that document and celebrate Latina history, facilitated by the work of the Chicano Studies Research Center Library. The legacies of past Latina leaders, who organized and made a difference during difficult times, offer us a roadmap for resilience and collective progress. They remind us that in the face of adversity, we resist and keep alive hope for a future where everyone has the opportunity to flourish in sustainable, healthy environments.
As we move forward, let us honor and learn from the actions of our ancestors, whose survival makes our presence and work possible. Like them, we must be resourceful, hold on to hope, and commit ourselves to building stronger institutions. We must also learn from the constraints faced by those who came before us, so that we are better prepared to improve the quality of life for all while caring for our planet.
In this spirit, Latina Futures’ cadre of experts work across disciplines — poignantly advancing knowledge, documenting history, and creating conversations across California and beyond.
To date, Latina Futures is working with experts across nine UCs, Cal State and community college systems, and grassroots organizations. The work helps us acquire new knowledge around topics such as mental health, young workers, and civic engagement.
Latina Futures 2050 Lab researchers. (L-R) Bernardette Pinetta, Daisy Verduzco Reyes, Sayil Camacho, Carla Salazar González, Krystell Jiménez, and Yesenia Román. (CSRC)
Today we use this opportunity to highlight researchers such as Bernardette Pinetta, assistant professor of psychology at UC Riverside; Daisy Verduzco Reyes, associate professor of sociology at UC Merced; Sayil Camacho, Latina Futures 2050 Lab Scholar in Residence and principal investigator of a recent study on COVID-19 vaccine access in all 50 states; Carla Salazar González, a Just Migrant Futures postdoctoral fellow with UC San Diego’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies; and our very own CSRC Library team, including Krystell Jiménez, Latina Futures librarian and archivist, and Yesenia Román, Latina Futures digital projects librarian. Learn more about the impact of their engaged research.
Our CSRC Library team’s expertise contributed to the well-received exhibition On the Side of Angels: Latina Lesbian Activism at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM). More than 250 guests attended the opening reception on June 21, including civil rights legend Dolores Huerta. As a closing day event for this popular exhibition, VPAM has organized a free, public screening of the PBS documentary UNIDAD: Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos on August 30, followed by a panel discussion featuring several speakers, including policy and civil rights advocate Laura Esquivel and tenant rights attorney Elena Popp.
Advancing leadership in environmental and climate justice efforts remains a priority for Latina Futures. We are pleased to help support Emily Viramontes, a 2025 California Freedom Summer Participatory Action Research Project student leader working with Unidos Network, Inc. in Kettleman City, California. Viramontes’s first assignment took her on a “toxic tour” of the Central Valley, led by Unidos leaders. The tour was “a powerful journey through unincorporated communities like Kettleman City, Lost Hills, Buttonwillow, and Oildale, each facing serious environmental threats and systemic neglect,” the grassroots organization wrote in a July social media post.
We are also happy to share the ambitious work our colleagues at LPPI are driving around the environment. In the past couple months they have released projects that shed light on Latinas in the workforce and celebrated an inaugural fellowship program with six students from the Luskin School of Public Affairs who are advancing work on housing, immigration, worker rights, and environmental justice. LPPI also launched the UCLA Latino Climate and Health Dashboard, the first tool to aggregate data on Latino neighborhoods, making local climate and health disparities visible and actionable. The dashboard is expected to serve a wide range of users, from government agencies and health departments to community advocates and environmental coalitions. It presents this information through county-specific factsheets, offering localized data to support planning, disaster response, and long-term resilience efforts.
This summer, Latina Futures was honored to support leadership programming for incredible leaders from California and beyond. I thank our invaluable partner, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), for ensuring that current and emerging decision-makers across sectors remain connected and learn from one another as they address the pressing issues that impact us all.
Spending time with many of you in our network has reaffirmed the power of staying connected as we confront the challenges before us. In moments of crisis, our collective strength lies in caring for the most vulnerable, supporting one another, and holding fast to the vision of a more just and hopeful future.
NEWS
EVENT
Founded in 1981, Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU) was the Los Angeles area’s first major Queer Latine organization. This documentary chronicles events surrounding GLLU at a pivotal time in the history of LGBTQ equality, women’s rights, and civil rights movements that shaped the destinies of GLLU’s communities for decades to come. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion. Speakers include policy and civil rights advocate Laura Esquivel and tenant rights attorney Elena Popp, whose archives are featured in the CSRC-curated exhibition On the Side of Angels: Latina Lesbian Activism at VPAM. The exhibition closes August 30. The event is free and open to the public. Visit VPAM online to RSVP.
Latina FUTURES IN THE NEWS
Latina Futures 2050 Lab, a research initiative spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), was created in 2022 in collaboration with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). Funded by a $15 million California state budget allocation, Latina Futures seeks to increase knowledge and insight through applied policy research on the contours of the economic, political, and social lives of all women and girls living in the United States over the next several decades.
The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.