Faculty Feature: From Classroom to Community: An Educator’s Struggle for Liberation

“What I do in my classroom and what I do in my union work are all the same. It’s about justice for the people, solidarity, love, and the belief that we can all create something better,” said Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, CFA member and lecturer at CSU Northridge. 

Cardona has been teaching K-12 since 2000 and began lecturing in the CSU system since 2018, starting with CSU Long Beach, then CSU Los Angeles, and now CSU Northridge. She helped create the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program on her campus, which offers a graduate level certificate through the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department upon completion. 

For Cardona, her father’s activism paved the way for her class consciousness and solidarity-building with all oppressed people. She loved who she was and where she came from, and her father taught her to never sell out her own people but to always fight for them. 

Her father was very active in the Chicano Movement and deeply invested in healthcare for the people. His interest in environmental racism compelled him to establish a low-income healthcare clinic in rural New Mexico, which still exists after his passing.

He also campaigned to stop the construction of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the rural areas just outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, knowing that the plant’s existence would heavily impact the Comanche people, Black people, and poor migrants in those rural areas. 

“I grew up around that,” said Cardona. “My dad was always fighting for the rights of people.” 

Cardona’s journey took a pivotal turn when she attended Oxnard College, where she was first introduced to Chicano Studies. She continued her studies at UCLA, where she immersed herself in the history of activism and various civil rights movements, both of which shaped her commitment to social justice work.  

Although her trajectory was to become a lifelong educator in K-12, Cardona was forced out of her teaching positions multiple times because of her activism.  

“I taught about the movement, and I was loyal to the people’s struggles,” she said without regret, acknowledging that this often put her in a vulnerable position. 

Cardona was never pushed out by her students or their parents, who overwhelmingly supported her pedagogy. Instead, attacks were always politically driven.  

In one instance, an assistant principal accused Cardona of harboring anti-American sentiments for merely responding respectfully toward a student’s inquiry about the U.S. war on terror. Not long after, she was dismissed from her position. 

“What I do in my classroom and what I do in my union work are all the same. It’s about justice for the people, solidarity, love, and the belief that we can all create something better.”

– Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, CFA member and lecturer at CSU Northridge. 

In another instance, her school principal blamed Cardona for organizing the 2006 “Day Without Immigrants” march in California, and the school’s administrators wanted to criminalize some of the students and suspend them from attending school events for their participation in the march.  

“I stood up in defense and said, ‘You talk about students not being actively engaged in their education. This is an opportunity to educate them on what is going on in their communities, in the state, and in the country. We should be turning this into a teachable moment.’” Cardona was again let go from her position. 

In a third instance, Cardona was caught in a political crossfire. She had created a project called “Parent Ethnic Studies.” Though well-received and praised by parents and administrators, the school board, made up of mostly right-wing individuals and others who were intimidated by them, voted not to bring her back before she could receive tenure. 

In this last case, however, Cardona had been actively involved in grassroots organizing, and the communities she worked with quickly came to her aid. This is what landed her back in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), where she has continued her work ever since. 

Organizations like the Association of Raza Educators and Unión del Barrio were central in shaping Cardona’s activism.  

“Being able to work with others rather than alone really changed everything about who I am. It also helped me acknowledge my own biases and misunderstandings that I never confronted and be with people in a way that is more authentic. The solidarity is real; we’re all under fire and it brings you together,” she said. 

In 2018, Cardona, along with other ethnically and geographically diverse individuals, were given advisory positions for the California Department of Education’s (ED) Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. They tried to craft a curriculum that was authentic to what Ethnic Studies was about, though they were ultimately unsuccessful. Disappointingly, the ED, governor, and State Board of Education acquiesced to well-resourced outsiders who were not experts on the subject. 

These attacks on Ethnic Studies persist, with Assembly Bill 715 being the latest example, Cardona said. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill on Tuesday and in an interview before then, Cardona said it will decimate academic freedom at all levels of education in California. She added that AB 715 is about censorship, not Ethnic Studies. She also raised concerns over how the bill allows anyone to file a grievance against a teacher.  

Cardona explained that there has been a lot of manipulation around what the Ethnic Studies’ model curriculum should look like. “The whitewashing of it… the propaganda that has been created to discredit Ethnic Studies to the point where a lot of teachers and schools are really afraid of implementing it correctly.” 

Beyond the classroom, Cardona continues her work to safeguard various racial and ethnic groups. Since the 1990s, Unión del Barrio, an organization Cardona joined in 2015, has been monitoring the presence of immigration agents in Southern California neighborhoods. 

When Trump was elected to his second term as president, thousands of people and 65 organizations immediately signed on to Unión del Barrio’s request to form the Community Self-Defense Coalition to protect community members. 

“Kidnappings are happening,” Cardona noted. “But the more eyes you have on the activity, the less chance they’re going to steal somebody. We know this because we’ve seen it and we’ve lived it.”  

As Cardona explained, even though the federal government poured so many resources into ICE terror in Los Angeles, more kidnappings happened in other states like Florida and Texas because the community was not as well organized. 

“The narrative also makes it seem like this is a Latino, Mexican, or Central American issue, but it’s not,” said Cardona. “On one of our patrol days, it was a Chinese neighborhood that was being targeted. I think it’s really important that this narrative gets out there because it’s not just Indigenous Latin American people under attack or living in fear.” 

Because of ICE’s looming threat, Cardona warned about the sense of fear of repression and restlessness that many families experience. “The fear that something might happen to their families or themselves puts an already underserved community in an even more precarious position, because now they can’t get the education they deserve.” 

In a disturbing instance, Cardona describes what happened to one of their LASUD students who had been detained. The 12th grader was walking his dog in the morning when three men in plain clothes and phony police vests approached him. They misidentified him, handcuffed him, and said that agents would sort out the confusion at the station.  

They then unleashed his dog and scared him off onto a busy street. After having a laugh, they thanked the boy for the $1,500 he had earned them for their weekend of partying. ICE agents then showed up to take the boy downtown.  

“This kid doesn’t have any background knowledge about mercenaries, but that’s what he witnessed and shared with his teacher. What’s worse is that mercenaries aren’t beholden to the same laws,” Cardona explained. 

Unión del Barrio has been handling round-the-clock calls about ICE sightings, though many these calls are from people saying they don’t have food, are scared to go to work, or that their spouses have been abducted. Cardona stressed that the psychological toll has been overwhelming. 

To assist, the Association of Raza Educators—in conjunction with members of the Community Self-Defense Coalition—created the Revolutionary Mutual Cart, where donations pour in from the community, and vetted individuals deliver groceries to those in need. Just this summer, $16,000 worth of groceries were provided to over 160 families. 

In one story, Cardona recounts how a freshman at CSU Los Angeles was working at Shakey’s Pizza to help pay for his tuition. But when his mother could no longer work due to immigration concerns, the student had to redirect his earnings to pay for rent instead. Upon hearing this, Cardona turned to social media to ask colleagues for support and—because of their generosity—the student is able continue his education. 

“It’s about connecting people with resources and providing a model for others. It could be you. Anyone could be doing this,” expressed Cardona. 

Cardona has three children herself, and her oldest son’s college experience is grounded in activism. His studies focus on sustainability at the human and environmental levels. Her younger children attend marches and rallies with her, though she keeps them away from her ICE patrols in the morning.  

“They are very much rooted in love and solidarity, and they are very respectful of other people’s rights, culture, ideas, and religion. They’re my little activists,” she said proudly.