Marco Antonio Flores
University of California, Berkeley
Class of 2012
Program of Study: Gender & Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies
Intended profession: University Professor

“I am honored to receive the Campus Pride Voice & Action National Leadership Award. After receiving the award notification my immediate response was to contact my recommenders and share the wonderful news with them. I continue to be inspired by many community activists and scholars before me who have been able to create spaces of advocacy for social justice at UC Berkeley. Estoy lleno de alegría to receive this award and share it with those who continue to move me.” ~ Marco Antonio Flores

Marco, an undocumented student, has been active in organizing efforts to bring awareness to the experiences of his peers. He serves as an undergraduate student organizer for Berkeley’s Queer People of Color (QPoC) and an AB540 student representative for the Immigrant Student Issues Coalition. In the summer of 2010, Marco was chosen to attend Princeton University’s Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship. He is also a current participant in the Haas Scholars Research Program, working with faculty mentors to guide his theoretical contributions to community activism and advocacy for queer, undocumented immigrants.

We feel that Marco shows great courage to talk about his undocumented status in such detail. His cover letter expressed his personal experience as well as what drives him to be active in the intersections of being both a member of the LGBT community and undocumented residents. Below is an extended excerpt of Marco’s cover letter, so you can understand firsthand the power we felt as we learned about Marco through the award review process.

“I am a queer undocumented student. I would like to share this with the selection committee because my queer identity and undocumented status have significantly influenced my contributions as a student activist. As you may have read within my application, I have been able to work with various under-represented communities that are very close to me: LGBT and immigrant communities of color. Within this letter I would like to focus the growth of my education trajectory and academic interests.

“As a first generation undocumented college student I have experienced the difficulty of attending college without the financial assistance to pay for educational expenses. Because of my inability to fund my education I have experienced limitations from registration blocks, auditing courses, and being homeless for a full academic year. Yet, despite such limitations and constant experiences of discouragement, I have been able to maintain a firm interest in my educational aspirations. I have had to overcome various obstacles stemming from the complications of my undocumented status in applying to research programs, scholarships, and many other enriching educational programs.

“But despite all the difficulties of my undocumented status, I have been able to maintain my academic focus toward my academic aspirations as an aspiring graduate student. I would like to convey that my community activism with queer undocumented immigrant youth has been highly influential towards my current research work. In the summer of 2010, I had the opportunity to attend Princeton University’s Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellowship. This program allowed me to bring my community activism with queer immigrant communities to the attention of public policy implementations. In addition, as a current member of the prestigious Haas Scholars Research Program, I have been working with various faculty mentors to guide me in my theoretical contributions to my activism. And most recently, my research work has been exploring the arts as a realm to theorize the body as a site of home for queer undocumented immigrants.”

Marco continued to discuss the challenges that “queer undocumented youth” face on an ongoing basis. Here is Marco in his own words:

“Through my community activism there have been several issues that have taken precedent over my years of organizing with queer undocumented youth. I have encountered an array of difficulties that self-identified queer undocumented immigrants, myself included, experience: bullying, harassment, xenophobia and ostracization from their family. Yet, within my efforts in social justice movements I continue to witness the complexities of ‘coming out’ as queer and undocumented. While many of my national social justice efforts, such as passage of the California DREAM Act, are focused on equal educational opportunities for undocumented (AB540) students I have further expanded my understanding of growing up as an immigrant within the United States. Through my community work I have witnessed the hindering of the lack of visibility towards the queer identity of undocumented immigrants in various efforts for immigration reform.

“In my engagement with queer undocumented immigrant spaces, it has become evident that sexual orientation and undocumented status are seen as two seemingly unrelated experiences; and the gap that is left is meant to be filled by undocumented queer youth themselves. For myself, and many of the youth I organize with, we are left to engage in immigration movements that target 'one single struggle,' that of only being undocumented immigrants. But we continue to struggle with our efforts to create visibility to our queer identity within our various efforts towards equal rights. Most recently, I have been able to work closely with other community organizers to create a space for us to engage in conversations and movements that provide us with a collective understanding of our experiences as queer undocumented immigrants. Through our collaborative efforts we seek to document our lives as queer and undocumented, to create visibility and provide the possibility of our multi-layered existence by creating a national movement that begins such important dialogues among the various communities of which we are part of.”

Each of us on the committee took a step to gain a deeper understanding of what Marco was trying to covey to us (and you). If our movement is going to ensure all of our community members are fully protected we, as the movement, are going to have to step more than we are already in advocating for the undocumented citizens of our country!

As part of the application we ask the applicants to have letters of recommendation written on their behalf. One of these letters was to be from a fellow student leader

Melissa Ramirez-Medina wrote: “I have had the pleasure of knowing Marco as both a fellow leader and friend for many years. And I realize now that it is his best qualities as a friend that makes him such an amazing activist, advocate and community leader. He is thoughtful, kind and so deeply invested and committed to the communities he serves. His extraordinary efforts to bring visibility to LGBTQ students in a space where queer youth have been largely invisibilized are profound and exemplary. It is only unfortunate there are so few leaders out there as authentic as Marco.”

In addition to the student leader letter we asked for two letters to come from faculty and staff.

Juana María Rodríguez, associate professor of gender and women’s studies and director of Berkeley’s LGBT minor program wrote: “There are a lot of things about Marco that make him exceptional—as an queer undocumented Mexican immigrant, Marco found a way to make it from a working class community college in Riverside California to the University of California, Berkeley, and most recently to a summer institute at Princeton University. As an emerging scholar, he is one of the most hardworking students I know, a student who is always willing to write and revise, a student who will research any subject well beyond any course requirements. But what makes Marco truly exceptional is that he manages to do this (and do this well) while remaining one of the most active campus leaders I have ever encountered. Marco doesn’t just share his time, his energy, his knowledge and his scant resources, he shares his corazón. He has earned the respect, admiration and love of his teachers, fellow students and all that have been touched by his courage, grace, and generosity of spirit.”

Thoughts from the Voice & Action Selection Committee: “extremely insightful and revealing, and clear about the need for self-care to fuel activism,” “Sustained commitment to work not embraced by leaders outside the immigration equality movement,” and “he proved that undocumented students are not only undocumented, but comprised of a multiplicity of intersecting identities.”

We are so proud to be able to recognize Marco Antonio Flores as one of the 2012 Campus Pride National Voice & Action Leadership Award recipients.

Edited and written by: Christopher Bylone, Voice & Action Selection Committee, Chair in collaboration with Matt Comer, Communications & Program Director.

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