Women’s History Month

Los 12 principios de El Centro de la Raza

Our Mission

As an organization grounded in the Latino community of Washington State, it is the mission of El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of All Races) to build the Beloved Community through unifying all racial and economic sectors; to organize, empower, and defend the basic human rights of our most vulnerable and marginalized populations; and to bring critical consciousness, justice, dignity, and equity to all the peoples of the world.

Our Vision

We envision a world free of oppression based on poverty, racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and discrimination of any kind that limits equal access to the resources that ensure a healthy and productive life in peace, love and harmony for all peoples and our future generations.

Our 12 Principles

The following are the twelve Principles that El Centro de la Raza “Familia” adopted in the fall of 1976, four years into our existence. It was a defining moment in our organization’s history for it clarified what we were determined to become as a new and innovative organization born out of the violent worldwide struggle to create a better world.

In essence these twelve principles become our “constitution” and have been critical in guiding us through the agony and ecstasy of our 37 years. They were adopted during a weekend statewide conference of students, farmworkers, academics, women, unemployed and organizers from Chicano/Latino, Black, Indian, Asian and White communities.

A special “Gracias” is reserved for the leadership of the exiled Chilean community for their extraordinary clarity and political maturity reflected in these principles:

1. To share, disburse, and distribute our services, resources, knowledge and skills to our participants, community, visitors and broader human family with all due dignity for their individuality needs and condition. To do so creatively with warmth, cultural sensitivity, fairness, enthusiasm, compassion, honesty and optimism in all areas of work.

2. To struggle to eliminate institutionalized racial, sexual, age and economic forms of discrimination which hamper the human potential in our society.

3. To support the majority of people in this country; i.e., all workers — including, but not limited to farm workers, factory workers, service workers and office workers in their struggle for collective bargaining rights, safety, benefits and just wages and salaries.

4. To promote the recapture of the culture, language and respect for the Chicano/ Mexicano/Latino community as a priority in all of our work, without falling into ethnocentrism; to strengthen and help the struggle to recapture the cultures of our sister communities.

5. To promote strong and positive working relationships with other minority communities in all areas of work, service, political and social activities.

6. To provide a collective, healthy, safe and friendly workplace for members of our community and all participants in our sphere of influence.

7. To struggle against all forms of racism, sexism, individualism, ageism, and violence in our work and our community center.

8. To struggle for the creation of programs and services which a society must provide for the development of our community and its people.

9. To struggle for a clean, safe, and nuclear waste-free environment for our people and future generations. To work for a rational use of natural resources in the interests of the preservation of Mother Earth and the peaceful development of humankind.

10. To support the rights of self-determination of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos, as well as our brothers and sisters in developing countries around the world. To promote the development of foreign policy by our government which puts into practice principles of sovereignty, justice, democracy, self- determination, international respect, and above all, peace with dignity.

11. To strengthen the family as an elementary formation of society which contributes to the development of society as a whole. To help each other and our community fulfill roles as parents, spouses, sisters, brothers, and children, based on the absolute equality of men and women. To respect and recognize the rights of children as full and privileged members of our society. To strengthen the extended family relations. To develop programs which fulfill our obligation as family members of the larger society to bring up the future generations with clear vision that leads us to recover our fighting spirit. To struggle to ensure that family life is nourished and respected. To protect the rights of women and children to live their lives free from any form of abuse: physical, psychological, or sexual.

12. To struggle for a dignified human existence for all people in our society; for health care, housing, and full employment in equal educational opportunity, democratic processes in political and social affairs, and an equitable economic system that eliminates the great differences in income which are the cause of poverty and deprivation.

Source: elcentrodelaraza.org

1190 – The Crusaders began the massacre of Jews in York, England.

1521 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines. He was killed the next month by natives.

1527 – The Emperor Babur defeated the Rajputs at the Battle of Kanvaha in India.

1621 – Samoset walked into the settlement of Plymouth Colony, later Plymouth, MA. Samoset was a native from the Monhegan tribe in Maine who spoke English.

1802 – The U.S. Congress established the West Point Military Academy in New York.

1836 – The Republic of Texas approved a constitution.

1850 – The novel “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published for the first time.

1871 – The State of Delaware enacted the first fertilizer law.

1882 – The U.S. Senate approved a treaty allowing the United States to join the Red Cross.

1883 – Susan Hayhurst graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. She was the first woman pharmacy graduate.

1907 – The world’s largest cruiser, the British Invincible was completed at Glasgow.

1908 – China released the Japanese steamship Tatsu Maru.

1909 – Cuba suffered its first revolt only six weeks after the inauguration of Gomez.

1913 – The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania was launched at Newport News, VA.

1915 – The Federal Trade Commission began operation.

1917 – Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne.

1918 – Tallulah Bankhead made her New York acting debut with a role in “The Squab Farm.”

1926 – Physicist Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket.

1928 – The U.S. planned to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.

1935 – Adolf Hitler ordered a German rearmament and violated the Versailles Treaty.

1939 – Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

1945 – Iwo Jima was declared secure by the Allies. However, small pockets of Japanese resistance still existed.

1946 – Algerian nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas was freed after spending a year in jail.

1946 – India called British Premier Attlee’s independence off contradictory and a propaganda move.

1947 – Martial law was withdrawn in Tel Aviv.

1950 – Congress voted to remove federal taxes on oleomargarine.

1964 – Paul Hornung and Alex Karras were reinstated to the NFL after an 11-month suspension for betting on football games.

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted a $1 billion war on poverty program to Congress.

1968 – U.S. troops in Vietnam destroyed a village consisting mostly of women and children. The event is known as the My-Lai massacre.

1978 – Italian politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas. Moro was later murdered by the group.

1982 – Russia announced they would halt their deployment of new nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

1984 – Mozambique and South Africa signed a pact banning the support for one another’s internal enemies.

1984 – William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by gunmen. He died while in captivity.

1985 – “A Chorus Line” played its 4,000 performance.

1985 – Terry Anderson, an Associated Press newsman, was taken hostage in Beirut. He was released in December 4, 1991.

1987 – “Bostonia” magazine printed an English translation of Albert Einstein’s last high school report card.

1988 – Indictments were issued for Lt. Colonel Oliver North, Vice Admiral John Poindexter of the National Security Council, and two others for their involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.

1988 – Mickey Thompson and his wife Trudy were shot to death in their driveway. Thompson, known as the “Speed King,” set nearly 500 auto speed endurance records including being the first person to travel more than 400 mph on land.

1989 – In the U.S.S.R., the Central Committee approved Gorbachev’s agrarian reform plan.

1989 – The Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee approved large-scale agricultural reforms and elected the party’s 100 members to the Congress of People’s Deputies.

1993 – In France, ostrich meat was officially declared fit for human consumption.

1994 – Tonya Harding pled guilty in Portland, OR, to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for covering up the attack on her skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. She was fined $100,000. She was also banned from amateur figure skating.

1994 – Russia agreed to phase out production of weapons-grade plutonium.

1995 – NASA astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to visit the Russian space station Mir.

1998 – Rwanda began mass trials for 1994 genocide with 125,000 suspects for 500,000 murders.

1999 – The 20 members of the European Union’s European Commission announced their resignations amid allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement.

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