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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Remember Them."

I'm Steve Adubato with Jacqui Tricarico, our co-anchor, executive producer.

Jacqui, we recognize, we honor the Latino community in New Jersey.

The book "Over My Shoulder's" important because the co-author of this book, Aldo Lauria-Santiago, a professor of history over at Rutgers University in Caribbean studies, he tells a story, and by the way, over 20 authors, they contributed to this book.

It's a complex community that is not monolithic in any way.

Your turn.

- (laughing) Right, and we thought it would be really important to just understand the overall history of Latinos here in New Jersey.

1/4 of our population is made up of the Latino community, the Latino population here.

And Aldo, along with so many colleagues, mentors, friends of his, took over five years to collaborate and put this book together so we have a better understanding of the history.

And he lays out some of that.

And on the backend, we also get to hear from someone that you knew personally, or know personally, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago.

So you speak with her too, to hear her perspective.

And we honor her husband who was really important here in New Jersey when it came to education.

- Yeah, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago is, by the way, they are not related.

Aldo and Gloria, not related.

But the one thing that struck me about Gloria, who you'll see in the second interview, she's based down in Camden, totally dedicated to the education of young Latinos and Latinas in urban communities.

And the focus is on education as a pathway.

Important, compelling interview with two leaders in the Latino community making a difference.

We honor, we recognize them, but I'm fascinated by it.

But one of the reasons, Jacqui, and I'm no expert on this, is that the Latino community is complex, to say, "Oh, Puerto Rican, you know," well, you got Cubans, you got people from Dominican Republic, you got all kinds of folks, Mexicans, all kinds of people with different ethnic, cultural, racial, historical backgrounds.

Complex stuff.

Let's check out Latinos, Latinos in New Jersey.

Important stuff.

Here we go.

(upbeat music) - We're joined by Professor Aldo Lauria-Santiago, who is co-editor along with well over a dozen, I think there are over 20 contributors to this book, "Latinas, Latinos in New Jersey: "Histories, Communities and Cultures."

Professor, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure.

- You got it.

Why the book?

- The book was a long overdue product, in part the results of the different works of our department over the years, the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers New Brunswick, our teaching practice, our need for research, some of our small projects, some of the projects that we had our students do.

And as we developed that over the last 20, 25 years, we realized that there was nothing like this.

And there was an expanding kind of arena of Latino stories and issues as Latinos themselves became more diverse and complex within the state.

So that originally what started as questions about Puerto Ricans became questions about lots of other groups as well.

- Including, we got Puerto Ricans, Peruvians, Cubans, Mexicans, so many others, folks in the Dominican Republic.

Let me ask you this.

How the heck do you and colleagues write this book about a community that on some level is not really a community, it's many communities rolled into the larger Latino community and they're all different, politically, ideologically, culturally, et cetera.

Please, pick it up, professor.

- This is something that over the development of Latino studies in the US we've grappled, because Latino studies originally came from individual ethnic groups or migrant groups, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans in a culture that was separate, right?

But as a communities become complex and as academia become complex, we felt as part of our ethic of inclusion to address these different groups.

And now the dilemma is that in many parts of the US, it's not just that you have to study them separately, but also study them together as Latino communities that are mixed.

And it depends, right?

In some places, there are very distinct Mexican areas, Mexican spaces, Mexican experiences, and Puerto Rican ones that are different.

And in other places, their kids are growing up together or their kids are marrying, right?

So it's very rich and it's a tremendous challenge.

And in a sense, we were trying to bring New Jersey into the field, so to speak.

- Okay, so let's be clear, 22% of New Jersey's population, Latinos make up 22%.

That's over 2 million people.

That's based on the 2020 Census.

But I'm curious about this.

Politically, and I was looking in the book for this, and obviously things are shifting and changing, but I'm fascinated by the discussion of how more Latinos voted for Donald Trump than was expected.

And there's a shift going on, and I'm thinking to myself, "Is it really across the board "in the entire Latino community "or is it in certain sectors of the Latino community" "disproportionately Cuban?"

But I don't understand.

I'm Italian American, I don't get it.

Help us understand.

This is not a monolithic political community, is it?

- Absolutely not, correct.

It's a community that is racially diverse, class diverse, that is mostly not even immigrant that is US born.

- That's right, Puerto Rico.

- And so tremendous diversity.

And we are missing a chapter on politics, right?

And on our website, we have- - Intentionally?

- No, we couldn't find somebody to do it.

This is how the scholarship works, right?

We had so many things to cover and we did a lot of work trying to identify scholars, the team that you mentioned, right?

That would contribute their research.

But we could only do what is out there and what may be a little bit, we were able to do ourselves as authors from within the department.

And we have multiple people from faculty from the department, former faculty from the department, former undergrads who then became PhDs and professors at Rutgers who contributed this one wonderful example that we're very proud of.

And many other people, some of whom were finishing dissertations, had finished dissertations and maybe didn't have academic jobs.

But you can't make up for the pieces that are not there until the second wave where maybe somebody picks it up, right?

- Well, one of the chapters that is in here, and I want the professor to talk about this, "Latino Segregation in New Jersey."

What do you mean segregation?

- Well, the authors of that chapter are sociologists and they use fairly quantitative based, technical, even definitions of what is segregation and segregation as measuring concentration of a given population in a given space.

And also distance from other populations.

- Are Latinos segregated today?

I'm sorry for interrupting, professor, are Latinos segregated in the state?

- They find significant segregation in certain areas in relation to purchasing of houses especially.

And also a lot of it correlates with the density of the Latino presence in the state, I'm sorry, in that region.

And also class and income variables, right?

Which you can see in the book are very present from people that made it into suburban housing areas with middle class status and perhaps higher to others that are in work, former Italian or European ethnic working class neighborhoods, that are now mostly Latino, right?

- In the book, what I'm curious about is this, I talked about how diverse the Latino community is, but how, I'm curious, from your perspective and talking to all the other contributors to this very important book, you see over my shoulders, "Latinas, Latinos in New Jersey: "Histories, Community and Cultures."

To what degree do you believe, professor, that there is a Latino community that is on some level united for any particular cause, issue, agenda?

I know that's a loaded question, but I- - No, it's a very good question.

It's a very good question.

We in general, we consider those sorts of questions as contingent.

In other words, they might or might not happen depending on many different things.

In New Jersey, there was a Puerto Rican political moment, perhaps in the late 20th century with some political activism, with some mayors, with some lobbying groups.

And my sense is that they didn't achieve as much as they would've liked, and then the state became even more complex and they have not been able to build a Latino lobby, so to speak, which does exist in other cities like New York or other states like California, right?

- Sure does.

Not in New Jersey.

- But not in New Jersey, no.

- Even though Latinos have succeeded politically, and that includes our former United States Senator Bob Menendez, who obviously faces a very different fate right now, but that's not a coalition, that's not a unify- Even though there's been success, a lot of success by Latinos, Latinas, including Teresa Ruiz, who is a second ranking person in the State Senate.

Pick up that point.

Individual success of people who happen to be Latino, Latina is not the same as having a coalition.

- That's right.

And New Jersey, as we know, that we deal with this in the introduction a little bit, is a kind of an unusually structured state in terms of its places and spaces.

It doesn't have a dominant city like New York City.

- Right.

- The cities in which Latinos live or have a significant majority are not that politically important at the state level.

New Jersey's small, but it's a very unusual and strange place.

And Latinos have had difficulty, and I'm a little bit more familiar with the Puerto Rican experience, but in general and building those coalitions and also that we cannot take for granted that Latino leaders can automatically fall into a dialogue that it's necessarily easy, right?

Sometimes the interests are not the same for communities that have very large numbers of their people without papers or undocumented as immigrants versus Puerto Ricans that are by definition US citizens.

Well, it's work to bring those communities together, depending on the themes and the goals and the movements.

Now, I should mention that there is a longer history of Puerto Rican activism, which is part of the material that I cover a little bit in the chapter, and also with some additions on our website within a larger civil rights type movement in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, a lot was done in the Puerto Rican community with the Puerto Rican community, and often bringing in perhaps even as a training ground for others who learned along the way, right?

- And by the way, there's another segment we have coming up after this that follows up on this theme of Latinos, Latinas in New Jersey.

But I also wanna acknowledge this, that the book is dedicated to a former mentor of mine, Professor Hilda Hildalgo, who was out of Rutgers Newark, who I taught with early, early on in my career.

And you should look up Professor Hilda Hildalgo, check her out.

She matters, and so do you, professor.

I cannot thank you enough for joining us, you and your colleagues, this important book.

Thank you, Aldo.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Professor Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, who is Rutgers Board of Governors distinguished service professor, and someone who I've known for many years and has made a meaningful contribution in the world of academia for many, many years.

Good to see you, professor.

- Good to see you.

Thank you so much for having me.

- You got it.

Gloria, let me ask you this.

What would you argue is the most significant contribution made by the Latino community in the state?

How would you describe it?

- I would say that the most significant contribution, at least in terms of the work I've done, has been to be able to transform education, to be able to pass a law in the state of New Jersey to create charter schools, so that we could transform public urban schools that were really abysmal during the 1990s.

And so that bill created now what we call about 90 charter schools.

- Charter schools, right.

- And I lead one of the oldest, the first one and the largest, and now I actually upscaled that work to Puerto Rico.

So the ability to really produce graduates that have graduated with 100% graduation rate for 20 years and 100% college placement is actually something that I take a lot of pride because we've been able to save many lives of young people.

- Along those lines, and you know that I know a little bit about charter schools, given the work that my dad did in creating one of the first charter schools in the country at the Robert Treat Academy in Newark, which the disproportionate number of students are Hispanic.

- Right.

- Question.

The connection between education, urban education, and Latino community, why is it so critical to the success and the vitality of the Latino community?

- Well, it is critical because Hispanics, as you know, continue to be the largest minority in this country, growing fastest, but yet still, the educational gap among Latinos still very, very large.

And so you still have today many thousands of Latino students attending college with being first generation.

- That's right.

- And that first generation tells you everything.

If you look at the achievement gap and the challenges that Latinos have traditionally, it's critical that the only... I will say one of the most important avenues for Latinos to get a higher education degree and to be able to go to college, be able to finish and get a job.

And so breaking poverty one child at a time is really the way that I see this change of the achievement gap closing.

And so it's still many, we still have many challenges because the poverty levels among Latinos in the states are still continue to be very high.

And so as we continue to increase graduation rates, you're gonna see that the poverty levels will decrease, people, families will get better.

Because if one goes then every generation, the whole family goes.

And so the impact of the work is critical.

And that's why going to college is critical.

Not going to technical schools, but getting a degree that will offer them a job and the training that they can really break out of that cycle.

- Stay on this, because obviously I know that education, particularly advanced, your advanced degrees, your advanced education has a big role, has played a big role in your success, but talk about your late husband, Alfredo Santiago, and his meaningful contribution, please, professor.

- Yes.

Alfredo was an incredible leader.

He used to be an ASPIRAnte and then of course he worked for Rutgers many-- - ASPIRAnte you mean from ASPIRA?

- ASPIRA, exactly.

- Tell, folks.

Growing up in Newark, I learned about ASPIRA.

- And I grew up in South Jersey.

So I was not in ASPIRAnte.

I actually was first generation to go to college, but I really never knew what an as ASPIRAnte was until I met my husband.

- Tell folks what an ASPIRAnte is.

- ASPIRAnte is a student... They're really ambassadors of the ASPIRA program, which was a nonprofit that was created in the 1970s by Antonia Pantoja, which was an incredible leader to really provide opportunities for young people to go to college.

- That's right.

- They did a lot of pre-college access early on, and that she was a visionary in that.

And so that was for urban cities.

Of course, in my case, I came from a migrant worker background, so I was a South Jersey child.

And so I never was an ASPIRAnte.

So Alfredo was a that and he always believed that education was the way out of poverty.

And so he actually, when we got together, we were actually icons in promoting education for our children.

And when he died, actually I was almost ready to get that law passed in New Jersey.

He died in 1996 and December 30th, and the law was signed January '97, a month after he passed away.

And so as soon as we opened this school, I was able to create an endowment at Rutgers with insurance money that he left me.

To create an endowment for all graduates of LEAP schools to go to college and to go to Rutgers.

And so today that endowment is about $7 million.

And the interest of that endowment pays for every kid that wants to go to Rutgers at any Newark, New Brunswick or Camden.

- Sorry for interrupting Gloria, why did you do that?

- I did that because I wanted to pay tribute to Alfredo's mission and vision about education.

I wanted his legacy to be alive.

I wanted his dream, because he believed in my work and he supported me so much, and I believed in the kids.

And I just thought this will be a great way to honor his legacy as a Latino in the state.

So in perpetuity.

So as long as Rutgers is there, there will be an endowment always available for Latino kids to go to Rutgers.

- Let me ask you this.

You talk about the great contribution of your late husband Alfredo, but you are known as the patron saint of Cooper Street in Camden.

- [Gloria] Yes.

- I thought I knew you.

You were the patron saint of Cooper Street in Camden because?

- Well, that was just an article that was written by-- - I know.

- (Indistinct) Magazine, of course.

But they call me that because I was able to take a block.

It wasn't just building a school.

I took a block of many houses that were empty and homeless living in them, and was able to transport that whole Cooper Street into an educational corridor along with Rutgers, and we're able to purchase the old buildings and turn those buildings into educational houses now.

And that whole community has transformed.

So if you come down to Camden and you go around Cooper Street, it's a whole new view of incredible buildings, kids with uniforms, college students.

It's a whole different view of what it used to be.

And so that's why they call me a patron of Cooper Street.

- Awesome.

Lemme try this.

I'm curious.

The Latino community in New Jersey and the country, but particularly New Jersey, deeply impacted and affected by immigration policy.

- Correct.

- What are your greatest concerns, if you have any at all, about the current immigration policy in this country and its impact on the Latino community?

- Yeah.

It's incredibly impacting young people at the high school level.

For example, we have 400 plus kids that are undocumented in our schools.

- [Steve] And the charter schools that you're involved in.

- Schools that are involved.

So it impacts them and their families.

And we need to fix immigration.

We definitely need to fix it, but we cannot fix it by being punitive.

And we know immigration has always been an issue in this country.

And illegal undocumented immigration always have been an issue.

And so we gotta find ways to fix it.

The children are victims of that.

And so for us, the most important thing is to create safe environments for those children to be sure that if their parents are taken back, that the children are gonna have safe homes and they can continue to be here.

So the most important thing is that we need to legislate for responsible immigration policy to make sure that we get the help to a lot of the students that are here, that are born and raised here, who've never been in their country, in Mexico or Guatemala or Dominican Republic.

But that they wanna be here, they're citizens, they're part of the US and figure out ways to help them become stable.

And then those students that are just young here, the parents brought them that are undocumented, figure out ways to get them the paperwork that they need in a legal way to get them to become residents and then US citizens.

- Professor Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, Rutgers Board of Governors distinguished service professor down in the southern part of the state in Camden has made a huge difference, continues to make a difference every day.

Gloria, it is great to see you.

My friend I wish you all the best in the work you continue to do.

Thank you, professor.

- Thank you so much, Steve for having me.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

This has been Remember Them on behalf of Jacqui Tricarico, our entire team.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Newark Board of Education.

Johnson & Johnson.

United Airlines.

RWJBarnabas Health.

NJM Insurance Group.

And by The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- NJM Insurance Group has been serving New Jersey businesses for over a century.

As part of the Garden State, we help companies keep their vehicles on the road, employees on the job and projects on track, working to protect employees from illness and injury, to keep goods and services moving across the state.

We're proud to be part of New Jersey.

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