American Friends Service Committee

Can cultural organizing bring social change?

(originally published here)

In California’s diverse Central Valley, culture and art are tools for strengthening immigrant leadership and for building a sense of place and belonging.

Twelve years ago, Genoveva Vivar came to California’s Central Valley when she was 8 years old. Extreme poverty had forced her family to leave Copanatoyac, their hometown in the mountains of the Mexican state of Guerrero. Seeking better opportunities, they embarked on a migration journey that led them through the northwestern states of Mexico, including Sinaloa and Baja California, before they made their way to the U.S.

Genoveva’s family represents a recent wave of Mexican indigenous immigrants who began arriving in California’s Central Valley in large numbers in the late 1980s. The native cultural traditions and languages they brought with them have been instrumental in making the Valley one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse areas in the country.

Because it’s one of the largest agricultural and food production regions in the country, the Valley has attracted immigrants from around the world. Although the majority are Mexican farmworkers, families from Laos and Cambodia, for instance, also came seeking refuge following the Vietnam War.

In spite of immigrants’ contributions to the local economy, families like Genoveva’s have struggled with poverty, cultural discrimination, and alienation in their new surroundings. They work in harsh and isolated conditions, make less than the minimum wage, and live in constant fear of deportation.

Central Valley immigrants have a legacy of resilience and perseverance, working to maintain their language and cultural and artistic identities. They welcome compassion and empathy, but they long to be seen and heard as “seres pensantes” (thinking beings) capable of managing their own struggles as they have done throughout history.

In response to this changing immigration landscape, the American Friends Service Committee founded the Pan Valley Institute (PVI) in Fresno in 1998. Our basic mission was to give immigrants a place where their creative expression and cultural traditions could be validated, and their sense of dignity maintained. Since its inception, PVI has also provided immigrants with trainings and other leadership opportunities while accompaning them in their struggles for social change.

In 2002, we established the the biannual intercultural Tamejavi Festival to showcase the visual arts, theater, dance, spoken word and other artistic expressions from these diverse communities—it was the first time many indigenous immigrants felt welcome to share their cultural traditions in a public forum.

In 2011, we launched the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program to provide immigrant leaders like Genoveva the tools to form deeper understandings of their communities’ most pressing issues while opening opportunities for promoting social change. Through the program, fellows learn the basic principles of popular education, participatory action research, and cultural organizing.

Popular education is a community education effort that engages grassroots leaders in a process of learning from one another and analyzing the world around them, while exploring actions for social change. Like popular education, participatory action research (PAR) is an inquiry process in which a group of people collaborate in generating information and knowledge to change a problem or situation impacting them and their community. Cultural organizing opens opportunities for immigrants to practice their traditional culture and art as a platform for developing a sense of belonging.

To date, 20 grassroots immigrant leaders have participated in the 18-month fellowship program. Representing the Valley’s cultural diversity, the fellows have been Mexican Indigenous (Mixtecos, Otomies, Zapotecos, Purepechas), Salvadorian, Hmong, Cambodian, Iranian, Punjab, and Nigerian. With the support of volunteers and learning groups, they have expanded the Tamejavi Festival into a series of culture and art events around the state. These public presentations allow fellows not only to practice their newly acquired skills, but also to test their ability to mobilize and engage people in creative endeavors.

Genoveva, an alumni of the fellowship program, said this about her experience: “I now know how much my community desires to have an opportunity to show our traditions and cultures without feeling ashamed or embarrassed to express who we are, where we come from, or what we eat. This event truly opened doors for the people of my pueblo to be exposed without fear or embarrassment.”

Through participatory research, we continue finding answers to our questions about the impact of our work. For us, cultural organizing is ultimately a strategy that addresses issues of social exclusion, inequity, and the impact cultural colonization and social marginalization have had on indigenous immigrants. We use culture and art as a tool for strengthening immigrant leadership and for building a sense of place and belonging. The hope is that immigrants will ultimately be inspired to become active participants in public life.

Rather than leaving immigrants to feel judged, unwelcome, and excluded, we remain committed to supporting them in becoming leaders who will inspire a much-needed change in attitudes toward immigrants. Our success is measured in the confidence that we see in our fellows as they learn to reclaim their pride and identity, moving forward on their journey in becoming part of this society on their own terms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Myrna Martinez Nateras

Myrna Martinez Nateras is the program director for the Pan Valley Institute of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). In 1998 Myrna joined AFSC to found the Pan Valley Institute, a center with the goal of assisting immigrants in becoming active players in empowering their communities.

The Third Reconstruction: Moral fusion politics & working for justice

A few weeks ago Rev. Dr. William Barber spoke at an annual AFSC gathering about the “Third Reconstruction”–people working together across lines of race, class and religion, for a deep moral change. Here are a few short video highlights from his talk.

Bayard Rustin and a few other Quaker prophets: Rev. Barber recounts moments of courage in action among Friends.

The Third Reconstruction: In this excerpt Rev. Barber talks about his sense that we are in the midst of the Third Reconstruction where people of many faiths and none, across race and ethnicity, across gender identity, across sexual orientation, across class lines are working together for a deep moral change and how the resistance has worked in the past and is working currently to stop this movement of the Spirit.

Getting above the snake line: Rev. Barber talks about taking the moral high ground in order to transcend and work against the huge forces opposed to socio-political transformation. This excerpt of this talk is followed by a song sung by Rev. Gladwyn Uzzell.

Why was Mahmoud Shaalan, a 17-year-old Palestinian-American, killed by Israeli soldiers?

169 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October. The U.S. has a responsibility to find out why.

(originally published here)

On Feb. 26, 17-year-old Palestinian-American Mahmoud Shaalan was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near the Beit El settlement in the West Bank. The Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint shot Mahmoud several times, and later reported that he had tried to stab them.

The week after the incident, the Palestinian Ministry of Health released a statement saying that the teenager’s body was “riddled with bullets.” Witnesses said that the soldiers continued to shoot Mahmoud as he lay on the ground, left him bleeding on the road for two-and-a-half hours, and prevented a Palestinian ambulance from taking him to the hospital.

This is one of dozens of horrific stories of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in recent months—stories that should have the attention of the U.S. government, since the U.S. sends billions of dollars in military aid to Israel each year.

Numerous U.S. laws and regulations, including the Leahy Law, prohibit the U.S. from providing security assistance or training to foreign military units that violate human rights. Although organizations like Human Rights Watch have documented dozens of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, none of the units behind these attacks have been held responsible.

The killing of Mahmoud Shaalan—a high school student with hopes of studying medicine, who had returned from the United States three days before his death—is just one example of the unlawful killings that continue to occur. Even if Mahmoud had a knife, as the Israeli soldiers claim he did, the soldiers resorted to excessive and unnecessary force instead of attempting to disarm or apprehend him.

The media often only report Israeli accounts of violent incidents–which is usually that a Palestinian killed was about to commit a crime. This typical obfuscation of the entire story justifies ongoing human rights violations and discourages further investigation from taking place.

Since October 2015, Israeli security forces have killed at least 169 Palestinians, 112 of whom were alleged assailants like Mahmoud. According to Amnesty International, a significant number of those Palestinians were killed unlawfully through “extrajudicial executions.”

The United States cannot ignore these mounting numbers.

Although the U.S. Department of State confirmed that Mahmoud is indeed a U.S. citizen, the U.S. has not issued any official condemnation. The White House and Department of State have not even publicly called for an investigation into this incident to date.

AFSC is working with a coalition of organizations urging the U.S. to call for investigations into human rights violations committed by Israel. Together, we’re calling on the U.S. to stop funding Israeli military units that commit human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Mahmoud should still be alive today. The U.S. has a responsibility to find out the truth about what happened and to hold his killers accountable. Failure by the U.S. to call for an investigation into Mahmoud’s death—as well as dozens of cases like his—will continue to justify violent killings of Palestinians for years to come.

About the authors:
Lawrence Fleming, Olga Banaszkiewicz, and Carly Campbell are AFSC interns working with Raed Jarrar, AFSC’s government relations manager in the Office of Public Policy and Advocacy in Washington, D.C. Lawrence, Olga, and Carly are enrolled in Arcadia University’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution master’s program and are working on an advocacy project that looks at influencing public policy related to accountability for U.S. security assistance.