Mónica Novoa is coordinator of the Drop the I-Word public education campaign, a platform for people nationwide to drop the dehumanizing, racist slur “illegals,” and to ask that the media do the same. Ms. Novoa is a seasoned communications strategist and organizer and has implemented campaigns across issues, including immigration, preventive healthcare, technology and early literacy with the Matea Group in Washington, D.C., and Cause Communications and Ruder Finn in Los Angeles. Ms. Novoa is on the board of Homies Unidos, an organization dedicated to gang prevention and intervention with families and youth in Los Angeles. She has a degree in English Literature from California State University at Northridge, where she also helped establish both the nation’s first Central American Studies Program and research institute. Ms
The AP’s policy updates are hopeful, because they articulate all of the evidence necessary to stop calling people “illegal.” Now the organization just needs to take its own advice.
An important new study has confirmed many of our hunches about how negative media narratives and portrayals of brown people play out in the minds of non-Latinos.