Teachers for a Democratic Culture (TDC) and Workplace are pleased to announce one of the recipients of this year’s Graduate Employee Award. In 2001, the two organizations created this award to recognize the unique contribution of graduate employees. The first of 2002’s awardees is Alan Eladio Gomez. 

The colleague who nominated him stated that 

he taught me to uncover the guise of universities, to see them as dynamic landscapes on which community, students, faculty and staff attempt to open and let flow the universities resources and expertise.  As a historian, he allowed me to understand struggle as a continuum and made me see our movements, our activism as a contribution to a long and honored tradition.  This tradition is his motivation; it feeds his creativity as he links and weaves the struggle of students in Mexico City, graduate students and the custodial staff at UT.

He is a respected community activist, historian, and educator within and among the University of Texas-Austin community. Among his most significant accomplishments are the cultivation of relationships between striking UNAM students and faculty and staff at UT. Gomez has also provided critical organizing support to UT custodial staff. Beyond the manner of tangible support offered during an organizing campaign, Gomez has helped to develop analytical tools designed to understand the relationship between worker’s struggles, tuition deregulation and neoliberal policy.

posting by Nicole Meyenberg