With Local Elections Looming, Group Calls on Community Partners to Hold National Voter Registration Day Drives

Washington, DC – In advance of this year’s municipal and statewide elections, 2,000 groups
across the country will mobilize to celebrate National Voter Registration Day on September 26,
2017. The National Voter Registration Day Steering Committee is calling on libraries,
universities, community organizations, and businesses to partner in this effort by hosting a local registration drive.  “These local elections have a direct impact on people’s day-to-day lives,” said Judd Choate,  President of the National Association of State Election Directors and member of the National Voter Registration Day Steering Committee. “They affect our parks and transit systems, the schools our kids attend, police and fire protection, as well as local taxes and the public investments they support.”  Every year millions of Americans don’t claim their right to vote because they miss a deadline, move, change names, or don’t know how to register in the first place. With over a quarter of Americans not voting at all, National Voter Registration Day is an occasion for community institutions, voters and election leaders to build a more representative democracy. “Election officials like myself are largely focused on making the polls run smoothly and tabulating the results accurately,” Choate added. “We count on community partners, who have trust and established relationships in their respective communities to help ensure that voters are registered and informed about the voting process.”

https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/documents/2017/08/august-28th-press-release-for-national-voter-registration-day.pdf

The Center for Mexican American Studies and Library Services presents “José de la Luz Saenz Veterans Lecture Series” an author talk followed by a book signing with Dr. Selfa Chew.  This event will take place, Thursday, November 10 at 1:00pm in G-191 Mid-Valley Auditorium G-191 & at 6:00 pm at the Pecan Campus Library Rainbow Room.

Selfa Chew holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Science from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She received an MFA in Creative Writing, and her PhD in Borderlands History from The University of Texas at El Paso. She was Interim Director of the African American Studies Program in 2015-2016. Dr. Chew was an editor for Border Senses Literary Review and translator for Memorias del Silencio, a migrant workers publication. She coordinated the Mexican Contemporary Literature Journal and Conference from 1999 to 2012. She published Mudas las Garzas in 2007, released in English as Silent Herons by San Francisco, Berkely Press, in 2012.  Her play “Night Stalker: Mi hermano siamés” was included in the National Theatrical Exhibit (Mexico, 2013).  In 2015, the Universidad Autónoma de Cd. Juárez awarded her the Voces al Sol Publication Prize for her book Cinco Obras de Teatro. Currently, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of Texas at El Paso. She is completing her second doctoral degree in the Sociocultural Foundations of Education Program at the same university.

Dr. Chew’s research focuses on racial relations and the Asian and African diasporas. Her book, Uprooting Community: Japanese Mexicans, WWII and US-Mexico Borderlands (The University of Arizona Press, 2015) was finalist for the International Latino Book Award in September 2016. She currently teaches United States History, Afro-Mexican History, Contemporary Latin America, and African American History at the University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University.

Dr. Chew presented “The Japanese Mexican Expulsion from the U.S./Mexico Borderlandsby special invitation from the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.  (Un)Silencing the Past: Narratives of Trauma in Comparative Perspective, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Symposium, University of New Mexico, October 24-25, 2013. Among her academic publications are: “The Japanese Mexican Community During World War II: Mexicanidades de la Diáspora Asiática,” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of MALCS, 2015; “Recovering Afro-Mestiza Identities in a Borderland Classroom”in Intersections in the Latina and African Diasporas, ed. Marion Rohrleitner and Sarah Ryan. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, December, 2012; and, “Re-Imagining Collectivities: The Mexican Japanese During World War II,” National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Proceedings, San Jose State University Scholarworks, 2008.