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Remaking Citizenship

Stanford University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments..............................................................................................ixIntroduction.................................................................................................11 Conviviendo con Mujeres Unidas y Activas: Passing the Time with MUA........................................232 Law, Politics, and the American Dream......................................................................513 Learning the Ropes: Stories of Motherhood and Citizenship..................................................734 Autoestima y la Doble Misin del Grupo: Self- Esteem and the Dual Mission of the Group.....................1005 Desahogandose y Aprendiendo a Hablar: Speaking Up and Speaking Out.........................................1166 Convivencia, Necesidades y Problemas: Vernaculars of Belonging and Coalition...............................1337 Remaking Citizenship: Immigrants, Personhood, and Human Rights.............................................154Appendix.....................................................................................................185Notes........................................................................................................193References...................................................................................................209Index........................................................................................................225

Chapter One

THE WEATHER WAS UNUSUALLY WARM and sunny on May 1, 2006, as tens of thousands of white-shirted demonstrators filled the streets of San Francisco's financial district. The synchronized marching of the uniformed honor guard of the Longshoremen's Union elicited cheers. I recalled stories my father told me about how militant longshoremen led the last general strike in San Francisco in 1934. Labor activists and anarchists, among others, keep up the International Workers' Day tradition each May 1 in San Francisco. The marchers wear their union locals' T-shirts or jackets or carry red-and-black banners declaring "Value Labor, Not Capital!"

A celebration of organized labor's contributions to a proudly union city, the 2006 May Day had been recast as "the Great American Boycott." It was distinguished from other years' commemorations not only by its size, but also as one of many local manifestations of a national immigrant work stoppage and consumer boycott. Some Latino demonstrators who had never participated in a U.S. May Day greeted white radicals with smiles and thanks for joining in "their" march. Red, white, and blue signs proclaimed "AMERICA, we are your people!" Immigrant women pushed babies in strollers alongside older children boycotting school for the day and behind banners demanding equal labor protections for domestic workers. Men had draped Mexican as well as American flags around their heads, and the Nicaraguan consular officers hung their flag out the consulate's high-rise window. Signs ranged from the pragmatic "Stop HR 4437" to the pointed "You like our food, why don't you want our people?" The militancy of the marching male and female longshoremen was matched by the lighthearted spirit of protesters who squatted down and jumped up in concert to make long waves up and down Market Street from City Hall and the Civic Center to the Ferry Building at the Port of San Francisco.

The first national walkout of this scale for immigrant rights reclaimed the international celebration of organized labor for a new American workforce. If the contemporary global order denies the dignity of labor and seeks to define us by what we consume, these demonstrators embodied the message that not all workers are men, not all consumers are adults, and not all voters are white and native-born. In the words of one banner, "Today we march, tomorrow we vote." The marchers' actions echoed the tradition of each new generation of U.S. immigrants learning to wield influence in electoral politics. However, they also demanded recognition of their difference along with inclusion. By claiming equal rights and democratic protections for all, even for those excised from the body politic by law or by custom, they challenged fundamental assumptions of membership and belonging in this country.

Experiences such as these lead me to a very different conclusion from those who see Americans as increasingly "bowling alone" instead of building civic institutions (Putnam, 2000). Such formulations tend to erase the contributions, indeed the personhood, of the people who may be the most active in building community and social life in many parts of the United States. This book introduces one such group of new citizens-the members of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA)-and the processes through which they came to feel a sense of belonging and entitlement to rights and protections in the United States.

The Myth of the Sleeping Giant

Media coverage of the events of May 1, 2006, focused on the phenomenon of a sudden and spontaneous mobilization of millions of immigrants around the country. Pundits pointed to the power of Spanish-language radio to move people to march, invoking the image or specter, depending on your point of view, of the awakening "sleeping giant" of Latino political participation. However, this book argues that at least for one group of immigrants participating in the May 1 marches, and likely for many others as well, participation was neither spontaneous nor exceptional, nor could it be explained as a "post-9/11" phenomenon.

Activism by noncitizens is one piece of evidence that dejure legal citizenship and voting should not define the scope of de facto political contributions in a liberal democratic society. Understanding contemporary immigrant claims for citizenship, belonging, and entitlement requires an appreciation of the particular forms of grassroots immigrant organizing that have taken place over many years in different parts of the country, and that shape the contours of current events. Latino/a immigrant rights activism today has social and institutional roots in the community-based legalization and refugee-services organizing of the 1980s (Coutin, 2000), as well as in efforts by organized labor to reach out to the new immigrant workforce in the 1990s. Claims based on human rights and workers' rights draw on language from civil rights and women's rights organizing and social movements in the United States as well as in Latin America (Coll, 2004, 2005; Dagnino, 2003). Understanding how this group of women came to identify with and participate in these kinds of efforts highlights the complex processes underlying the dynamic notion of citizenship they laid claim to.

Public acts in the political realm, such as the naturalization ceremony described in the Introduction and the May Day demonstration, have long been understood to be constitutive of citizenship (Young, 1990). However, the women I interviewed focused their stories of politics on profoundly personal and intimate experiences that disrupted the dichotomy between the political/public and the personal/private that is central to cultural logics of racial, class, and gender exclusivity in American citizenship. Iris Marion Young traces the heritage, assumptions, and tensions within American...