Award-Winning Journalist Tina Vasquez Joins Political Research Associates as Assistant Research Director

SOMERVILLE, MA – Political Research Associates (PRA) announces Tina Vasquez will be joining the team on September 9 as Assistant Research Director. She will lead PRA’s Reproductive Justice, Gender, and Sexuality program and expand the social justice research center’s relationships with newsmakers and advocacy groups.

Vasquez has been writing about the intersections of immigration, gender justice, and LGBTQ rights for 10 years. Since 2015, she worked as senior reporter at Rewire.News, a journalism nonprofit that specializes in reporting on reproductive rights and social justice issues, where Vasquez singlehandedly shaped the outlet's first immigration beat, authoring enterprise and longform stories focusing on marginalized communities targeted by immigration policies. She has forged successful media partnerships with NPR's Latino USA, The New York Review of Books, Wake Forest University's Anna Julia Cooper Center, and Press On, a southern collective for Movement Journalism. Formerly, Vasquez was an associate editor at Black Girl Dangerous and has contributed to Jezebel, The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, and Al Jazeera.

“As a journalist, PRA’s research informed my reporting and helped shape my understanding of anti-immigrant sheriffs and right-wing movements, and I now hope to do the same for journalists covering unprecedented attacks on reproductive rights and LGBTQ communities,” Vasquez said. “PRA is doing crucial work, especially in this political moment, and I’m thrilled to join the organization and help support movements that are fighting for justice.”

Vasquez is known for her enterprise reporting, specifically looking at harmful and often secretive federal agency policies. Recently, more than 50,000 people read her three-part series about the treatment of pregnant asylum seekers in U.S. Marshals Service custody. She was one of the first reporters at a national outlet to cover Scott Lloyd, the former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement who implemented a policy that blocked young people in custody from accessing abortion care, and her subsequent reporting about “anti-choice fanaticism” in the U.S. immigration system resulted in a 2018 Planned Parenthood Federation of America Media Excellence Award.

“Tina’s journalism combines muckraking with a passionate commitment to those who are targeted and abused because of their race, gender, sexuality, and/or immigration status,” said PRA Executive Director Tarso Luís Ramos. “Organized bigots beware – we look forward to unleashing her formidable talents on the right-wing movements currently shaping repressive government policies.”

Political Research Associates is a social justice think tank devoted to supporting movements that are building a more just and inclusive democratic society. Founded in 1981, Political Research Associates helps journalists, advocates, educators, scholars, and the public to understand and challenge the right-wing through briefings, investigative reports, articles, and a quarterly magazine, The Public Eye. For more information contact Greeley O’Connor at 617.666.5300 or g.oconnor@politicalresearch.org or visit www.politicalresearch.org.

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