Page 7 - Studies Research News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Lydia Lopez was demonstrating in a picket line in 1968 to support Mexican American educator and activist Sal Castro, who was removed from the classroom after participating in the historic student walkouts, when UCLA professor Juan Gómez-Quiñones told her of a party at the Church of the Epiphany. Lopez loved parties so she decided to go. The Episcopal parish, located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Lincoln Heights, was embellished with papel picado. Lopez could hear mariachis playing. She recalled being overwhelmed with emotions as she saw how a place of worship emb...

On a summer day in 2007, Jillian Hernandez made her way to North Miami City Hall to grab her weekly copy of New Times. Laura Di Lorenzo and Mimi Davila, the two Miami girls behind the viral "Chongalicious" YouTube video, graced the cover wearing oversized hoops, dramatically gelled hair, long white acrylic nails, and heavily applied brown lip liner. Splashed across their bodies was the headline: "Chongas!" "There was just something really powerful for me in that image," Hernandez says. "It was very much this moment of bringing the chonga into the sphere of Miami popular culture, but very cle...