Statement from the Dean
Compañer@s,
I want to send a message of support and solidarity on the anniversary of last year’s massacre in El Paso. Far from a senseless act, this was a planned and racially-motivated attack on defenseless people, which reflects the hatred of a real but hopefully declining section of the population of this country.
I am struck, in the remembrances of last August 3, by several things. One is the high proportion of elderly neighbors among those who were killed. Abuelas y abuelos. Another is the love and compassion with which the people of Paso del Norte came together after the outrage, as we always do.
Yet my abiding anger is against the absurd claim by the shooter that he was part of a war against "cultural and ethnic replacement" and a "Hispanic invasion".
What “invasion” could be carried out by a population that has been here not for hundreds but for thousands of years, as many of those who were attacked were not just “Hispanics” but descendants of the original indigenous human inhabitants of these lands?!
On this occasion, let us recommit to our struggle against racism. Let us make the College of Liberal Arts a center of education and action for justice and against racism. Let us follow the example of John Lewis and make some “good trouble.”
In solidarity with you all,
Denis O’Hearn
Dean of Liberal Arts