11 am 

This talk by Maria Varela, community organizer, photographer, writer, lecturer, and adjunct professor, is part of educational programming related to People Powered: New Mexicans and Social Movements. She worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee from 1963-1967, primarily in Alabama and Mississippi, supporting civil rights organizers with photographs and educational materials. She has worked with Native and Hispano people in the Southwest to create culturally sustainable economic development ventures and to support their struggles around the poisoning of their land, water and communities due to uranium mining. Exhibits of her movement photography, “We’ll Never Turn Back” (1980), “This Light of Ours” (2013-14) and “Time to Get Ready,” are traveling extensively across the US. In 1990 Maria was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her work and she was one of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

People Powered: New Mexicans and Social Movements is open to the public from April 6-October 19, 2018, Wednesdays – Fridays, 10 am-5 pm, and the first Saturday of the month, 1-5 pm.