Elizabeth Betita Martínez

Elizabeth Betita Martínez is a Chicana feminist and a long-time community organizer, activist, author, and educator. She has written numerous books and articles on different topics relating to social movements in the Americas. Her best-known work is the bilingual 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, which later formed the basis for the educational video ¡Viva la Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History. Her work has been hailed by Angela Y. Davis as comprising “one of the most important living histories of progressive activism in the contemporary era … [Martínez is] inimitable…irrepressible…indefatigable.”

Martínez began her political work in the early 1950s. She worked in New York for the United Nations Secretariat as a researcher on colonialism and decolonization in Africa. During the 1960s, Martínez served full-time in the civil rights movement with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the South and as a coordinator of its New York office. In 1968, she moved to New Mexico to start a newspaper to support the Alianza Federal de Mercedes. Along with lawyer Beverly Axelrod, Martínez founded the bilingual movement newspaper El Grito del Norte, and co-founded and directed the Chicano Communications Center, a barrio-based organizing and education project. Since moving to the Bay Area in 1976, Martínez has organized around Latino community issues, taught women’s studies, conducted anti-racist training workshops, and worked with youth groups. She ran for governor of California on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket in 1982 and has received many awards from student, community, and academic organizations, including Scholar of the Year 2000 by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. She is the author of De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (1998), and editor of SNCC’s Letters From Mississippi (1964). In 1997, she and Phil Hutchings co-founded the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, which “aims to strengthen the struggle against white supremacy by serving as a resource center to help build alliances among peoples of color and combat divisions.”

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Praise

“When we sang out ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ in Montgomery and Selma, we were committed to our unshakeable unity against segregation and violence. This important book continues in that struggle—suggesting ways in which we need to do better, and actions we must take against war and continued racism today. If the human race is still here in 2111, the War Resisters League will be one of the reasons why!”
—Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist

“The rich and still evolving tradition of revolutionary pacifism, effectively sampled in these thoughtful and penetrating essays, offers the best hope we have for overcoming threats that are imminent and grim, and for moving on to create a society that is more just and free. These outstanding contributions should be carefully pondered, and taken to heart as a call for action.”
—Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist

“One of the biggest stumbling blocks to building a successful movement against war has been our inability to cross racial and cultural lines, bridging the divides created and maintained by the powers that be. Since the 1960s, there have been some hopeful signs—in grassroots groups and in educational efforts—but the road forward is still long and difficult. The contributors to We Have Not Been Moved, with extraordinary scope and vision, have given us an indispensable tool to fight oppression, resist war and injustice, and create powerful new coalitions for lasting social change. This volume should be required reading—alongside of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States—in every sociology and political science class.” 
—Connie Hogarth, life-long peace and justice activist and inspiration for Manhattanville College’s Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action; cofounder and former executive director of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition

“While it is nearly impossible to agree, or to disagree, with the totality of this or any other book, I applaud the ways in which We Have Not Been Moved helps us sharpen our understanding of these moral and social imperatives. This book is in the best tradition of civil and human rights movements and a welcome addition to the literature on these crucial issues.”
—Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez, (D-IL)

“In an era of rampant militarism, growing anti-Islamic sentiment and racist violence, the essays in We Have Not Been Moved provide us with urgently needed analytical frameworks and on-the-ground strategies for challenging structural injustice. The wide range of voices in this collection, spanning generations and social movements, remind us of the interconnectedness of our struggles against racism, militarism, violence, and injustice, and collectively urge us to build a unified, principled movement to resist intensified empire.”
—Angela Y. Davis, author, activist, and professor emerita, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz

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Book Events

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Reviews

• A Stronger Movement Against War
• Resisting Racism and Militarism in 2013
• We Have Not Been Moved in PeaceNews

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Interviews

• Matt Meyer & Mandy Carter Present: Intersectional and Intergenerational Organizing

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Mentions

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Blog