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Prophetic Naming As Informal Adult Education - Decolonizing The Imagination With Boston's New Majority PDF
Prophetic Naming As Informal Adult Education - Decolonizing The Imagination With Boston's New Majority PDF
340 - 363
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Prophetic naming as informal adult education:
Decolonizing the imagination with Boston's New Majority
2009
UMI Number: 3393907
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1
for
My heartfelt thanks go first to the people of the New Majority who inspired me and this
research. Special appreciation to Lydia Lowe, Shelia Martin, Mel King, David Ortiz, Chuck
Turner, Gloribell Moto, Gloria Fox, L'Merchie Frazier and Joyce King for patiently
answering my questions, extending support, trust and kindness.
Most worthy of the highest praise and gratitude are Mica Pollock and Wendy LuttrelL my
wise and (blessedly) patient advisors. Thinking with you was a beautiful gift. You pushed my
work. You gave good direction with your feedback. You taught me by your example what it
can mean to be both a woman and a scholar. I will never be able to repay you for your
generosity of intellectual spirit. I will never forget how you communicated your respect for
me and insistentiy expressed your belief that I was a scholar, especially when I could not
believe it myself.
I wrote to ask Grace Lee Boggs and asked her to sit on my committee because her biography
had changed the way I looked at my life and research. It was a special day in my life when
she agreed. Grace Lee Boggs, you are a bright light in the Detroit and the world and to me.
You inspired me to grow my soul and my dissertation. Thank you for reading this long tome
once at age 93 and yet again at age 94 and for holding me accountable. Your comments and
academic advices gave me the courage and determination to both step up and dive deeper.
I would have given up on this research long ago without the encouragement, steady guidance
and intellectual companionship of Mel King who read and gave me thoughtful comments on
my drafts and planted ideas when I was stuck. He also cooked me fish and gave me bags of
vegetables to keep me going while I was writing. He never let me forget that my research
and ideas were worthy and important, even on the days when I felt most discouraged.
I would like to thank Angela Yarde from the Roxbury District 7 for looking me in the eye
and challenging me to give back to the community, instead of just observing and recording
field notes. However in the work I do to serve, I feel that I still receive far more than I give.
My "critical friends" HGSE doctoral cohort group have been my intellectual and spiritual
family since 2000. You have helped me grow as a scholar and extended your love to me in
ways as numerous as the stars in the sky. And hurrah I am the last of us to graduate. Thank
you Jae-Eun Joo, Charlene Desir, Deidra Suwannee Dees, Polly Attwood and Jimmy Seale-
Collazo.
Linda Stoker responded to chapter drafts with such memorable intellectual vigor that we
always talked for hours longer than was necessary. She saw me through in ways above and
beyond. Thank you and apologies again for making you read about Derrida, Foucault and
Habermas all on the same page.
Eva Kerr line edited endless drafts of this dissertation and only charged me an ice cream
soda.
Thanks to George Long (1951-2001) who told me to go, to Elizabeth Crump who is the best
kind of friend and, to my father Joseph John Klimczak who I love.
Ill
Struggle
It's a struggle
Developing Solidarity.
It's a Struggle
5eing positive.
It's a Struggle
Making Common Unity.
I f s a Struggle
Shaping Reality.
It's a Struggle
LIVING.
It's a Struggle
because it's slow
But if we Struggle
A t developing Solidarity,
Being Positive,
Shaping Reality,
Malcing Common Unity,
We will all Grow.
Because to struggle
Is t o work, f o r Change,
and Cha nge is the focus of Education,
and Education is the 5asis o f Knowledge,
and Knowledge is the Basis for Growth,
and Growth is the Basis f o r
Being Positive and Being Positive
is the Basis f o r Building Solidarity.
Building Solidarity is a wau t o shape
Reality and Shaping Reality is Living
And Living is Loving,
So Struggle.
Me! King
IV
Table of Contents
page
Chapter 1 "We've got the numbers! We are the New Majority!: 1
An ethnography of informal education in social movements
Chapter 7 Purpose and vision for a new and informed humanity 151
Sources 369
Vita 384
V
An analytic model for identifying and analyzing radical conversation in social movements is
proposed and applied in this study: five interrelated learning tasks that decolonize the
imagination.
1
1
"We've got the numbers! We are the new majority!":
An ethnography of informal education in social movements
T h e education of the individual, in addition to promoting his [or her] own innate
abilities, would attempt to develop in his [or her] a sense of responsibility for his [or
her] fellow [men and women] in place of the glorification of power and success in
our present society.
Humanist and scientist Albert Einstein, 19491
These are deeply troubled and troubling times that at the same time offer great opportunity
for us turn our collective energies towards uncovering new sources of ideas and ways of
learning that make another world possible, a world that works for everyone. Visionaries like
Albert Einstein, Eduard Lindeman, Grace Lee Boggs and Mel King give clues to the kind of
education and learning that can lead to making such a new world possible. Their vision
inspired my intellectual curiosity to turn towards finding and carrying out an ethnographic
research study a group of people who engage in the kinds of education that offer people
1
Albert Einstein, "Why socialism?" Monthly V^view 1, no. 1 (May 1949),
http: / / www.monthlyreview. org/59 8einstein.php.
Eduard Lindeman, "Building a social philosophy of adult education," in Learning Democracy: Eduard
Undeman on adult education and social change, ed. Stephen Brookfield (Wolfeboro, NH: Groom Helm,
1987), 129-130.
Grace Lee Boggs, "A paradigm shift in our concept of education," (transcript of talk given at An
Educational Summit on the Urban Crisis, State Theatre, Detroit, Michigan 20 August 2002),
http: / /www.boggscenter.org/p aradigm- shift, shtml.
2
their communities and even to catalyze change in our collective imagination about what is
My research curiosity has particularly been drawn toward urban communities in the United
States where the most troubling effects of our imperfect democracy are disproportionately
felt and experienced through inequities in housing, education, job opportunities, political
participation and environmental health. Yusef " Bunchy" Shakur, w h o spent the past few
weeks giving out school supplies to children in his Detroit neighborhood, expresses the
focus on those approaches where people struggle to learn how to better "put the neighbor
back into the h o o d , " where we see all people as o#r neighbors, all children as our children and
Where can research energies b e directed to identify and uncover those forms of education
with the potential to locate these kinds of ideas and ways of learning that can change our
cities and world in positive ways? My community organizing experiences suggest that one
difficult to define 5 and the many definitions generated since 1960 seem incompatible o n their
surface. However, Mario Diani conducted a survey of these definitions and argues that three
common threads exist: networks of relations across a plurality of actors, collective identity,
Grace Lee Boggs, "A new school year begins," Michigan Citizen, September 13-19, 2009.
There are a number of reasons for this ambiguity in definition. The vast breadth of social
movement scholarship which stretches across many disciplines. Scholars have not always been aware
of the work of scholarship in other disciplines. The result is that a wide range of social phenomena
has been designated as social movements. Another complicating factor is that scholars have
generated definitions particularly tied to incompatible approaches to social movement research.
3
and conflictual issues. Focusing on these common components, Mario Diani ptoposes that
Moreover, adult educators agree on one thing for certain: community organizers in social
movements learn together while they talk and act. Community organizers most often
address the thorniest problems of our times, not in research journals or scholarly books, but
people thinking and acting together in social movements have historically catalyzed social
change by introducing ideas, social innovations and new ways of organizing public thinking.7
For example, Charles Webster contends that the very idea of science itself grew out of people
Many core ideas about adult education have also emerged from social movements. John
Holford points out that, during its principle growth time, adult education, "at least on
philosophical, epistemological and theoretical levels, was shaped by social movements, [and]
political activism."9
Mario Diani, "Chapter 9: The concept of social movement," in Readings in contemporary political
sociology, ed Kate Nash (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell 2000), 155-176.
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social movements: A cognitive approach (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991): 3, 55-59; Alberto Melucci, Challenging codes: Collective action
in an information age (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1996): 4-8, 77-80.
Eyerman and Jamison, 54; They specifically reference the work of sociologist of science Charles
Webster and his 1975 work The great instauration: Science, medicine and reform 1626-1660 (London:
Duckworth).
John Holford, "Why social movements matter: Adult education theory, cognitive praxis, and the
creation of knowledge," Adult education quarterly 45, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 110.
4
A survey of adult education literature 10 reveals that researchers are beginning to identify
social movements as important sites t o study h o w people engage in critically reflective and
social learning, 11 and h o w people shape and generate knowledge. T h e results of these
largely preliminary studies have been promising enough for some leading research voices to
predict that new concepts in adult education will emerge from future research into learning
and social movements. 1 3 Research o n social movements also has the potential to further the
J o h n Hoist even goes to far as to suggest the possibility that social movements are places
where "we can likely find a parallel 'field of adult education,' with its own pedagogical
Susan Klimczak, "Decolonizing the imagination: Some thoughts on education and social
movements" (Qualifying Paper, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2006); Appendix A has a list
of the education and social movements literature reviewed in my Qualifying Paper is in Appendix B.
Michael R. Welton, "Social revolutionary learning: The new social movements as learning sites,"
Adult education quarterly 43, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 152; Jack Mezirow, "Transformation theory and
social action: A response to Collard and Law," Adult education quarterly 39 no.3 (Spring 1989): 172;
Matthew Finger, "New social movements and their implications for adult education," Adult education
quarterly 40, no. 1 (Fall 1989): 15, 21; Peter Mayo, "Synthesizing Gramsci and Freire: Possibilities for
a theory of radical adult education," International journal of lifelong education 13, no. 2 (1994): 39;
Stephanie Rutherford, "An alternative consciousness: Knowledge construction in the anti-
globalization movement," Proceedings of the ACEEA/ CASAE 21st Annual conference on adult education
and the contested terrain of public policy (Toronto, Canada: May 30-31 and June 1, 2002),
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/CASAE/cnf2002/2002_papers/mtherford20002w.pdf; Griff Foley,
"Radical adult education and learning," International journal of lifelong education 20, no. 1-2 (January-
April 2001): 77; Deborah Kilgore, "Understanding learning in social movements: A theory of
collective learning," International journal of lifelong education 18, no. 3 (May/June 1999): 199.
Rutherford, "An alternative consciousness"; Holford, "Why social movements matter," 101; Linda
Christensen-Ruffrnan, "Introduction," in The globalfeminist enlightenment: Women and social knowledge, ed.
Linda Christensen-Ruffman (Madrid, Spain: International Sociological Association), 11,15.
Finger, "New social movements" 16, 18, 21; Holford, "Why social movements matter," 105;
Mezirow, "Transformation theory and social action," 170,172, 174; Welton, "Social revolutionary
learning," 152.; Foley, "Radical adult education and learning," 77.; Paul Ilsley, "The undeniable link:
Adult and continuing education and social change," New directionsfor adult and continuing education 54
(1992): 26,31-33.
14
Rutherford, "An alternative consciousness"; Holford, !CWhy social movements matter," 101; Linda
Christensen-Ruffman, "Introduction," in The global feminist enlightenment, 11,15.
5
15
tradition yet to b e discovered by those of us called adult educators." However the
challenge persists in identifying the m o s t promising social movements for a study of adult
education from a m o n g the m a n y social phenomena that have been identified as social
movements.
Grace Lee Boggs suggests that ideas and approaches that can give birth to a new society can
be found in social movements that are "transforming a struggle for rights into a struggle that
social movements, as well as adult education, 17 carry the legacy of some of the world's m o s t
ambitious human rights-based social movements and the iconic events associated with them
such as when people developed the ideas in the Magna Carta and the Declaration of the
the heart of these social movements is seeking change rooted in democratic impulses,
spiritual convictions, and enlightenment ideals that moves us toward affirming and
Some of the most interesting and innovative of these social movements in the late 20 th and
early 21 s t centuries offer systems approaches that increase connections across groups
John D. Hoist, Social movements, civil society and radical adult education (Westport, CT: Bergin and
Garvey, 2002), 5.
Grace Lee Boggs, "The beloved community of Martin Luther King," Yes! Magazine No.29 (Spring
2004), http://www.yesniagazine.org/issues/a-conspiracy-of-hope/the-beloved-conimunity-of-
martin-luther-king.
17
Budd Hall, "Chapter 19: Social movement learning: Theorizing a Canadian tradition," in Contexts
of adult education: Canadian perspectives, eds. Tara Fenwick, Tom Nesbit and Bruce Spencer (Toronto,
Canada: Thompson Educational Publishing, 2006).
John Lofland, "Charting degrees of movement culture: Tasks of the cultural cartographer," in
Social movements and culture, eds. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press), 1995, 203.
working on separate issues, joining movements with other movements, forging coalitions of
"radical reclaiming of the c o m m o n s , " which have .been privatized and in which control is
across the United States, there is evidence of community organizing centered on reclaiming
urban commons because so "many of the most important decisions affecting p o o r and
middle-class residents get made without [city] residents having any say in the matter." 2 1 "The
city belongs to all of us!" is a rallying cry and unifying message coined by Rev. J o e Jackson,
the director of a faith-based organization in Milwaukee, which captures the spirit of these
from its embryonic stage through its first five years of growth. That people in the N e w
Majority with their innovative set of social change learning strategies would emerge from
Boston's landscape of struggle and difference is at the same time surprising and not so
surprising. Boston is a city that has been "historically a place that sends out new thoughts" 2 3
Some examples of movements that encourage solidarity across other movements are the anti-
globalization movement and the 1999 World Trade Organization Protests in Seatde, the Zapatista
movement that began in Chiapas, Mexico and the anti-war movements associated with the
beginnings of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of them has drawn participation from multiple streams
of issue-based groups, such as labor, environmental, ethnic- and culturally—based, women's and anti-
poverty coalitions and movements.
Naomi Klein, "Reclaiming the commons," in A movement of movements: Is another world really possible"?,
ed. Tom Mertes (London, UK: Verso, 2004), 219-229.
Philip Cryan, "The city belongs to all of us: New organizing on economic issues is fueled by the
idea of an urban commons," OntheCommons.org library, February 27, 2009,
http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2399; On the Commons (formerly Tomales Bay
Institute) is a a network of citizens, scholars and organizations that champion the cause of the
commons.
22
Philip Cryan, "The city belongs to all of us."
Chuck Turner Interview in Susan Klimczak, Fieldnotes
7
with a concentration of 74 institutions of public and private higher education, a veritable
'Tetri dish of educational experimentation." 24 Boston is still a highly segregated city, yet it
for People of Color. 26 Yet, Boston also has a spirited people's history of organizing around
seeks to address an egregious obstacle to democracy that in and of itself is worthy of serious
study. Though People of Color are n o w a majority of the population in Boston, that majority
fails to be reflected in many social and political institutions, and in m u c h of the cultural and
T w o qualities made the N e w Majority a promising choice for the study of adult education in
of many movements." 2 8 T h e N e w Majority not only joins together established Boston social
movements based on ethnicity and culture as they organize across the Asian, Black, Latino
and Native American communities; they are also organize across Boston's issue-based
4
The Boston Foundation, "Education" in A time like no other: Charting the course of the next revolution, A
summary of the Boston Indicators TLeport 2004-2006,
http://www.tbf.org/IndicatorsProject/Education/Default.aspx.
25
Doug Most, "Divided we stand," Boston Magazine, November 2002,
http://www.bostonmaga2ine.corn/articles/divided_we_stand/.
26
Don Aucoin, "The Discomfort Zone," Boston Globe, 22 June 2005; the first in an Boston Globe
occasional series on the experiences of blacks and Latinos in Greater Boston.
2 7 i-r-n
The Boston Foundation, "Boston's Civic Community," The Boston Indicators Project,
http://www.tbf.org/indicatorsProject.
28
Naomi Klein, ""Reclaiming the commons."
8
movements such as those for fair housing, increased civic participation, and justice in jobs.
majority" in Boston — and that learning itself is worth documenting and analyzing. Further,
the N e w Majority are a group of people engaged in struggle w h o practice what Grace Lee
Boggs calls, "two-sided transformation." 30 They are attempting to change from within —
trying "to be the change they seek in the world" — while they take action to change the
world around them. A n d what could be more encouraging to an education researcher than
studying a group of people who engage in reflective practice about their own learning as they
struggle to find out what it means to be "the new majority" and the kind of vision and action
Since 2003, the N e w Majority has sought to help individual ethnic and racial communities in
Boston to "move from isolation to the N e w Majority." 31 Their stated purpose "is to create a
common agenda for Boston's communities of color and . . . establish ongoing mechanisms
recognized that:
The Census 2000 revealed that the city of Boston is at a turning point with people of
color n o w comprising a majority of the population in the city. W h a t the data cannot
tell us is h o w communities of color can work together at this historic m o m e n t to
29
A short and partial history of Boston coalitional organizing is offered in Chapter 4.
Grace Lee Boggs, "Introduction to the New Edition," in Revolution and evolution in the twentieth
century, James and Grace Lee Boggs (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974, 2008), xiv.
Susan Klimczak, Harvard Graduate School of Education S710b Course Field notes, keynote
speech by Mel King.
From "The New Majority Agenda" (part of the materials assembled for the 18 October 2003 New
Majority conference) on the website www.iaas.umb.edu/newmajority/agenda.shtml.
9
recreate our social and political institutions, cultural and economic life in order to
reflect this diversity.33
This New Majority Initiative Steering Committee came together as a response to the new
2000 Census data and organized the 18 October 2003 New Majority Conference. This
conference brought together some 300 People of Color "with a demonstrated commitment
to change" at the University of Massachusetts at Boston as "a first step toward forging a
common agenda for Communities of Color in Boston." 34 The outcome of this conference
was the formation of the New Majority as an ongoing coalition of individuals and
organisations from Boston's Asian, Black and Latino communities inspired by the potential
for People of Color to become a real social economic and political force. This involved
learning primarily through the process of developing a collective identity that characterizes
From 2003 — 2008, people in the New Majority put their learning into action as they came
out in support of a number of local political Candidates of Color in Boston. This action led
to the successful election of two New Majority participants to the Boston City Council.
Felix Arroyo became the first elected Latino city councilor in 2003 and Sam Yoon became
the first Asian American city councilor in 2005. They joined longtime African American city
councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey on "Team Unity," an informal alliance of
Boston's City Councilors of Color. With Sam Yoon's 2005 election to the council, Team
Unity represented four out of the thirteen members of the Boston City Council for a few
New Majority Initiative Steering Committee, "What we hope to accomplish today," from The New
Majority Uniting Boston's Communities of Color: 18 October 2003 New Majority Conference
Brochure, University of Massachusetts at Boston.
New Majority Steering Committee, "The New Majority: A Proposal for Base-Building and
Action," Concept paper submitted 15 December 2008 to the Jobin-Leeds Partnership for
Democracy and Education.
10
years. Andrea CabraL whose family has roots in Cape Verde, was also offered support by
the N e w Majority and became the first woman to be elected as Suffolk County Sheriff in
2004. 35
This ethnography explores the possibility that people like those in the N e w Majority, who
organize together to make change in their communities, are also visionary adult education
innovators demonstrating that "community is more important to learning than any other
Exploring this broad research question was brought into sharper focus by the three other
focus questions that guided this ethnographic study. Since organizers in the N e w Majority
learn both through and #£<w/relationships with each other, with institutions and even with
F o c u s 1:
What kinds of relationships d o c o m m u n i t y organizers in the N e w Majority create
and maintain?
Since many prominent social movement theorists consider the process of collective identity
to be the main intellectual activity of people in social movements 3 7 like the N e w Majority,
F o c u s 2:
H o w do c o m m u n i t y organizers m a k e m e a n i n g of "the N e w Majority" over time?
This is Boston, with its reputation as one of the most political cities in the country. So it is not
surprising that people in the New Majority have faced struggles in the midst of their learning. A
number of political tragedies had impact on Boston Communities of Color during the years between
2007 and 2009.
Ralph Peterson, Life in a crowdedplace: Making a learning community (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
1992), 2.
Alberto Melucci, Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age (Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 1996); Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social movements.
11
Finally, the third focus question addresses the connection between action and learning in
action.38 Moreover, education theorist Griff Foley found action to be so central to informal
learning in social movements that he gave his book the tide, Learning in social action.
Organizers in the New Majority prepare for "action," take that action, evaluate the action,
and apply what is learned to future actions, so the third question used to focus this
Focus 3:
How do community organizers go about taking action together in the N e w Majority?
Participant observations of New Majority gatherings and actions that focused on agenda
building and organization building proved to provide the thickest and most interesting
insights for exploring these research questions. People in die New Majority engaged in
agenda building right from the beginning. For example, the purpose of the founding 2003
New Majority Conference was to gather community organizers and leaders from the Asian,
Black, Latino and Native American communities together for discussions toward a common
In 2004, participants in the New Majority organized a series of grassroots community Street
series of agenda discussions among New Majority members and participants in 2004-2005
shaped the ideas gathered from the Street Talks into the 2005 New Majority Policy Platform.
The New Majority has used this eight-point policy platform as the basis for a New Majority
City of Boston candidate survey and a series of successful candidate forums focused on
"highlighting priorities in Communities of Color for successive local elections from 2005-
2007."40
My participant observations also focused on the learning that took place in processes of
organization building. From 2006 until 2009, people in the New Majority immersed
themselves in organization building in a quest for legitimacy, permanency and funding. The
organizations. Two New Majority retreats in March 2006 and December 2007 were held in
support of building vision, values and organizational development. People in the New
Majority worked vAthpro bono lawyers to develop by-laws and articles of organization, which
were successfully filed with the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in
early 2009. A series of conversations about whether or not to pursue nonprofit 501 (c)(3)
between 2006-2008 provided rich insights as the people in the New Majority explored both
the strengths and perils of building on organization structures used in the past and imagining
new kinds of organization structures that address the conditions of the present.
New Majority Steering Committee, "The New Majority: A Proposal for Base-Building and
Action," Concept paper submitted 15 December 2008 to the Jobin-Leeds Partnership for
Democracy and Education.
13
However, what makes the work of the people in the New Majority most compelling for
education research is that another much more radical learning project is going on that cannot
activities. This is the story that can be uncovered only through those persistent and ongoing
interactions over time, through what anthropologist John Jackson calls die "deep hanging
out" of ethnographic work.41 What becomes clear in the conversations and actions involved
in agenda building and organization building is that people in the New Majority are engaged
humanity. If Grace Lee Boggs is right when she says of the present moment in history,
"these are times to grow our souls," people in the New Majority are doing that work. They
are forging this path, slowly, steadily, and even stumbling at times; they are learning how to
grow a collective soul for the city of Boston. I believe along with James Baldwin, that the
world is held together, and the city of Boston is held together by the love and compassion
and clarity of thought of a few individuals like those in the New Majority who struggle to
learn how to find a good direction for moving through a city and world in such distress.
Almost all the participants in the New Majority are community organizers tirelessly working
who are deeply affected by the physical and emotional suffering of people and the
inequalities that people face. Something about the particular form of their empathy
motivates them not only to strive to make the small concrete changes that alleviate suffering;
they also join together with die New Majority to learn together and, as part of that learning,
do the hard work of imagining a new and informed humanity. They believe they can find a
John Jackson, "Some thoughts about ethnography," Brainstorm Blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education
(May 17, 2008), http://chronicle.com/blogPost/some-thoughts-about-ethnography/5943.
14
way to remake Boston into a city where not only is everyone is welcome; they also believe it
possible for Boston to become a city that belongs to all the people, not just those who have
power in the present political machine. They go beyond making a long list of "all the
bads;"42 they are thinking together in order to get at the radical roots of what prevents
Boston from working for all people. They are fiercely protective of their own
neighborhoods, cultures and groups; yet they see that this is a time to build bridges between
neighborhoods, and build bridges across cultures and languages. They are learning together
to add another layer of identity that is based on their conviction of a shared humanity; but
this New Majority identity is one that allows their other layers of identity to stay intact and
The New Majority began with the act of throwing off a demeaning name, "minority," and an
act of renaming themselves "the New Majority." People in the New Majority are trying
together to learn how to live the new name they have given themselves. They are struggling,
stumbling, falling short of their vision all the time, yet still they go on — which takes grit, a
certain kind of moral courage to keep coming back to learn together that is remarkable and
compelling. The people in the New Majority are engaged in collective learning that is
Early preliminary research analysis for this ethnographic study uncovered a formidable
obstacle: the absence of "guiding or emerging theory"43 that can be applied to understanding
42
The advice to go beyond "all the bads" was given by a facilitator of the education breakout session
at the October 2003 New Majority conference.
Boyd E. Rossing, "Patterns of informal learning: Lessons from community work," International
journal of'lifelong education 10, no. 1 (1991): 45. 47.
15
44
the informal and incidental learning that goes on in social movements. This lack of
guiding and emerging theory has had an impact on the direction that research into education
and social movements has taken thus far. Much of this education research has focused on
"structured and intentional learning" in social movements; social movement learning has
been imagined as classroom-like formations with "teachers" and "students" who mimic the
way that learning takes place in schools and universities.45 But, what about the less
community meetings or in collective action? Where can guiding and emerging theories be
found to help understand these more informal forms of learning and education in social
movements?
One answer uncovered in the preliminary research for this study was to use insights from
social movement theorists to inform the work of critical adult education theorists. Social
movement theory is a vast field of study that crosses multiple disciplines, but those theorists
who brought a cultural and cognitive focus to their social movement research provided
invaluable insights. These insights provided the basis for identifying and mapping the
learning in strategic social movement conversations onto a model of five learning tasks that
people use to decolonize their imaginations, to imagine a new world that is possible.
The result of this research is an ethnography that provides a detailed description of one
particular form of informal education, prophetic naming, that describes the approach to
learning in the New Majority. The main intellectual activity at the heart of this informal
education environment or associative life, the purpose and values that guide and delimit the
process, and the fostering of collective learning through conversation, action and learning
strategies. I hope that the reader of this ethnography will be inspired by the example of
people in the New Majority to decolonize where and how they imagine informal adult
education takes place. But more importantly I hope that readers are inspired to organize
other radical forms of informal adult education that "put the neighbor back in the hood,"
"solve the real problems in our communities" and ensure that the cities where we live
2
The audacity in researching organizing
and organizing research
situated learning and collective identity 46 within a community of practice where participants
are largely community organizers with the N e w Majority. 47 Researchers who study the
cultural processes involved with situated learning and collective identity in communities of
practice often choose ethnography as a method 4 8 because ethnography is well-suited for the
study of the ongoing learning activity of a group in a range of everyday contexts. 49 Social
scientists who practice ethnography have also found the method particularly suited for
A literature review in support of the design of this ethnography that included adult education,
social movement, and anthropology of knowledge theory suggested that situated learning and
collective identity were useful concepts for understanding informal education in social movements.
Preliminary field observations in support of the design of this ethnography supported this rinding;
Susan Klimczak, "Decolonizing the imagination: Some thoughts on education and social
movements" (Qualifying Paper, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2006).
Situated learning involves a cultural process where learners interpret, reflect and form meaning
through social participation in the activities of a community of practice; Jean Lave and Etienne
Wenger, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheralparticipation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
Douglas E. Foley, Learning capitalist culture: Deep in the heart of the tejas (Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); S. Brice Heath, Ways With Words. Language, life and work in communities and
classrooms (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press: 1983); Rosemary C. Henze,
Informal Teaching and Learning. A study of everyday cognition in a Greek community, (Hillsdale, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992); Philip H. Henning, "Ways of learning: An ethnographic study
of the work and situated learning of a group of refrigeration service technicians," journal of
Contemporary EthnographyTl', no. 1 (1998): 85-136; Keith Basso, Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and
language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); Lave
and Wenger, Situated learning.
Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, "ethnography," in The social science encyclopedia, eds. Adam Kuper
and Jessica Kuper (New York: Routledge, 1996): 263; Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology: Theoretical
practice in culture and society (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2001): 6.
Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology: Theoretical practice in culture and society (Maiden, MA: Blackwell,
2001).
18
People who participate in the New Majority also serve in a wide variety of professional roles
in the Boston community. For instance, occupations of the New Majority steering
committee members for the October 2003 New Majority founding conference included:51
Also, the steering committee for the founding 2003 New Majority Conference reflects how
the New Majority purposefully seeks out the participation of people with diverse cultural and
neighborhood roots by recruiting activists from the African American and Pan-African,
North, Central and South Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native American
communities.
In this ethnographic study, the research site was truly the entire city of Boston. I attended
meetings and events in most neighborhoods of Boston, including Roxbury, South End,
Dorchester, Mission Hill, Roxbury, Grove Hall, Upham's Corner, East Boston, Columbia
Point, Beacon Hill, and Government Center. The research site included environments such
as residential homes, health centers, university and college classrooms and halls, community
This ethnographic study was designed to organize my intellectual curiosity and fieldwork
"What and how do organizers learn together by participating in the New Majority?"
51
Susan Klimczak, HGSE S710b Participant Observation Field notes.
19
Then, three other questions were used to further focus the fieldwork:
evidence using three common ethnographic strategies: participant observation, informal and
As a participant observer in the New Majority, I attended meetings, forums, conferences and
other activities associated with the New Majority including general business meetings,
committee meetings, social gatherings such as picnics or cultural events, and community
social and political forums. I paid special attention to the situated discourse of community
group processes that involve activities such as agenda building, forming ideas, reflecting on
experience and developing brochures and other written communications. I listened closely
peripheral assistance, finding ways to make a range of contributions, but steering clear of any
participation that involved leadership or decision-making in the New Majority. Among the
I recorded what I observed and learned in a dozen small notebooks and in annotated field
notes.
To ask clarifying or in-depth questions, I engaged in informal and formal interviews with
organizers in the New Majority. For instance I asked impromptu questions during meals,
engaged in informal extended conversations with small groups of people, and conducted
audio taped formal interviews. The informal conversations that take place within the natural
(i.e. conversation at the meals that take place after meetings or while preparing for or while
convincing me that these are the very contexts in which speech is most likely to be "imbued
21
convincing m e that these are the very contexts in which speech is most likely to be "imbued
with force and meaning." 5 7 1 recorded impromptu questions and what was said in informal
taped formal interviews were transcribed and annotated with my observations, reactions and
I also systematically collected documents and other artifacts that were passed out or
generated in meetings, published, and sent out in electronic and postal communications
related to the N e w Majority and incorporated them chronologically into my field notes.
These artifacts provided new information and added knowledge that I would otherwise be
flyers buttons
handouts programs from activities and forums
meeting agendas and minutes budget reports
drafts of by-laws membership information
emails newspaper articles about and by N e w Majority
reports from Street Talks brochures
website planning documents photographs
transcriptions of whiteboard and poster board notes taken in meetings.
T o understand and communicate what and how organizers learn together by participating in
practices 58 for thinking critically about the information and evidence. 59 1 used the well-
57
Charles Briggs, Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science
research, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Appendix A of this dissertation has a list of the ethnography and research theory I reviewed and
applied as references for following established anthropology practices.
22
60
established fieldwork approach of "funneling" (progressively narrowing down the
fieldwork lens), building upon what qualitative researchers commonly refer to as the
"grounded theory" that came out of my qualifying .paper and prior fieldwork.611 read and
reread field notes and interviews, adding layered annotations, engaged in journaling for
understanding, developed concept maps to identify salient themes and express emerging
feedback on emerging findings from critical scholar friends, academic mentors and even the
grounded theory and the ethnographic story of the N e w Majority came into an intellectual
light.
Ethnography inevitably involves acts of audacity, acts of aggressive boldness and effrontery
that can sometimes be redeemed by those individual with gifts of intellectual brilliance. For
Michael Agar, The professional stranger. An informal introduction to ethnography (New York: Academic
Press, 1980).
Joseph Maxwell, Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1996).
Stephen Dunn, New and Selected"Poems1974-1994 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1994):
229.
23
other researchers, myself included, hope for redeeming our audacity is often rooted in a self-
conscious and dogged application of appreciation and deep love for humanity during the
research process that all too often is comically insufficient and imperfect. In that spirit, I
will try to redeem my own acts of audacity by taking a page from poet Stephen Dunn, by
uncovering enough of my masks to allow the reader to decide where this ethnographer and
ethnography falls along the continuum of convictions that audacity can inspire between
foolishness and distrust at one end, and confidence and competence at the other. I believe
that an ethnographer should reveal enough of her masks so that the reader can form an
opinion about both the strength and the limitations of her study and be able to understand
among People of Color, committed to creating spaces for People of Color to be experts
about their own lives without interference from the "new minority." One example of this
commitment came from a response to mainstream news reporters at the 2003 New Majority
Conference. These reporters repeatedly asked the question, "Why didn't you reach out to the
'old majority' in organizing this conference?" New Majority Steering Committee member
Paul Wantanabe answered this question pointedly with another question, "Why can't the
New Majority be experts about our own lives?" Yet these same People of Color in the New
Majority also possessed the generosity of spirit to patiendy tolerate the contradictory
presence of a White ethnographer perched in the corner furiously writing what they said and
being a both a White woman and a researcher learning from and with a community of
confidence in the validity of this study.64 A n array of serious criticisms have been made on
behalf of communities who have experienced oppression, against "outsider" research into
their experience, "that outsiders cannot properly understand their experience and are
'disempowering' [sic]."65
However, a strong argument can be made that, with careful attention paid to establishing
competence, mutual understanding and purposeful effort, outsider research can "contribute
to the betterment of the research, the community engaged in the research and the wider
researcher contributes to the quality as well as the validity of the information and data that is
used for analysis. In fact, nearly all the recommended practices for credible outsider
Morwenna Griffiths, Educational research for social justice: Getting off the fence (Buckingham, United
Kingdom, Open University Press, 1997).
David Bridges, "The ethics of outsider research," journal of'philosophy of education 35, no. 3 (August
2001): 371-376; also as chapter in The ethics of educational research, edited by Michael McNamee and
David Bridges (Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).
Bridges, "The ethics of outsider research."
Bridges, "The ethics of outsider research," 1.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (London, United
Kingdom: Zed Books, 1999); Basso, Wisdom sits in places; Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without
weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992); Mary
Waters, Black identities: West Indian immigrant dreams and American realities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999).
25
Among the commitments and qualities that make for a credible outsider researcher are
of the terms of engagement between researcher as participant observer and participants; and,
especially in the case of studying a social movement, attempting to promote social justice
My particular White experience and ethical choices have increased my intelligent self-
awareness and awareness of issues relevant to the New Majority. I grew up with working
class bilingual parents and immigrant grandparents from Poland who supported their large
families as coal miners and steel workers, yet my parents insisted that I speak only English.
deepened and expanded my awareness. My Aunt Karen was a Sister of Saint Joseph who ran
Buffalo's Hope House for years, providing a home and livelihood to men released from
incarceration and support to families who lost loved ones to gun violence; three years ago
she was murdered by one of the men she served. These relationships and experiences have
provided me with some insider experience and intelligent self-awareness about some issues
of language difference, immigration and class. They has made me an insider among those
who have lost a loved one to the kind street violence present in some Communities of Color
in Boston.
I have also had a steady lifelong engagement in a wide variety of social movements and
speculums in a women's health clinic, organizing a "Take Back the Night March" on a
college campus, participating in a spiritual rap group with men incarcerated in prisons,
fasting on Thanksgiving at a "day of mourning" at Plymouth Rock, doing street theatre with
my graduate student teacher-activists in Harvard Square for "Buy Nothing Day," leading a
two-day Council of All Beings consciousness-raising ritual for environmental activists among
spring flocks of migrating birds on Utah's Green River, organizing a gay rights Listening
Project in a small town in Maine and getting arrested for civil disobedience on the day of the
invasion of the United States into Iraq are all things I have done as a community organizer
Another way I have tried to increase my intelligent self-awareness and awareness of issues
relevant to the New Majority has been to take the advice of ethnic studies scholar George
Lipsitz. He suggests that White people make ethical choices about their lives and practice to
actively "disinvest and divest themselves of their investment in White supremacy."69 First
among such choices I have made was my commitment to being a participant observer
among the New Majority for over five years from October 2003 through August 2009. And
while I did not have access to or attend every single meeting and event over all those years
(especially in the early years), I did attend every conference, forum, annual meeting,
celebration and retreat. I did attend a large number of monthly steering committee
meetings, committee meetings and planning meetings. I read the list serve faithfully and for
the past two years have been on the steering committee email exchange list. That represents
a fairly formidable accumulation of hours, documents, and field notes that have supported
George Lipsitz, The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profitfrom identity politics
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998): viii.
27
my confidence that solid grounded theory has emerged fairly characterizing the perspective
During preliminary research years, I visited many Boston community meetings that
addressed a wide variety of issues, in order to gain an understanding of the scope of city-
Roundtable, City Council Aide Angela Yarde offered me challenge that I took to heart. She
said, "I hope you are not just going to come here to record what happens and take from the
community. How are you going to give back, to the community, too?" What Angela Yarde
was pointing out was that I had an opportunity to make a moral choice to promote social
justice and actively seek social change outside the research environment, another
A few months after the 2003 New Majority Conference, I had an opportunity to meet Mel
King, one of the founders of the New Majority and a keynote speaker at the New Majority
Conference who also served as one of the readers for my Qualifying Paper. Since Spring
2004,1 have worked along side Mel, assisting at the South End Technology Center @ Tent
City, located in a housing development built on the site of a 1968 "Tent City" encampment
including those from the New Majority, flow through the Tech Center every day because
At the South End Technology Center @ Tent City, I have done nearly five years of work
that has built on the 15-20 years experience I brought as a formal and informal experiential
28
and alternative education worker. I help coordinate the Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn
Program that offers about 40 teenaged Youth of Color an opportunity for meaningful work
and community service as they teach emerging technologies and sciences to about 600
elementary and middle school youth in over 18 different community organizations in Boston
each year. Negotiating and renegotiating relationships with these youth under my care has
been an education. From those experiences, I bring very practical and painful growing
Majority participate with my Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn Program work because each year
I ask them to recruit teenage youth teachers and community organizations for the program.
We have hired quite a number of youth and provided free summer and after school
Majority members.
During 2005, I moved into the YWCA building in Boston's South End, with an ethical eye
toward becoming an insider. Living in the neighborhood where I work and do research has
increased opportunities for me to become more of an insider and to better understand the
My work and home in the community also increased my ability to create loops of
work at the South End Technology Center @ Tent City to speak informally with New
Majority members outside of New Majority organizing activities. This has allowed me to not
only develop fuller relationships and more credibility with New Majority participants, but
29
also has provided me with opportunities to engage in "member checking," to have informal
I have positioned myself in very particular ethical ways as a participant observer within the
New Majority. Having been involved in leading community organizing for much of my life,
under other circumstances, I might have been more in the thick of the sort of organizing
done by the New Majority. To be candid, I held back not so much because of any deep
personal loyalty to research objectivity, but because I really struggled to find ethical ways to
make contributions to the New Majority that did not interfere with my shared commitment
to the mission of growing People of Color leadership and increasing political, economic and
social power in People of Color Communities in Boston. I lived with the understanding of
the positive strategy of practiced exclusion of the "new minority" from some kinds of
participation and was fairly vigilant in reminding myself that at any moment conditions in
the New Majority might change in a way that would end my participant observation. That
said, I did find many ways to make the kinds of quiet and necessary everyday contributions
mentioned earlier, such as taking on tasks like helping to set up and clean up after gatherings,
taking and transcribing meeting notes, doing typing and layout for programs, and recruiting
That is not to say that the research relationship with New Majority participants has been
without struggle because I am White. There have been many struggles and moments when
the possibility that it would become necessary for me to withdraw from this research was
very real and tangible because the interference of my presence was beginning to overshadow
30
the possible benefits of my research to the N e w Majority's community of practice. There
have also been struggles because I made mistakes linked to the fact that I have n o t yet
"disinvested and divested" myself from the stubborn habits of whiteness I learned while
young. Indeed, some of these tense moments are recounted later in this ethnography.
engagement between researcher and participant. I tried to maintain transparency and mutual
understanding by sending formal letters and periodic informal emails to inform members of
my research progress and extend invitations to read chapter drafts of this dissertation. O n
occasion, I was even able to share relevant parts of preliminary data finding when they
H o w I "researched organizing and organized research" for this study has been the subject of
this chapter's discussion. T h e intent is to allow the reader enough information to make a
community member and a community worker doing my part to catalyze positive cultural
change. The next chapter goes on to describe the intellectual genealogy that informs the
For example, in 2008, when the New Majority steering committee members were at a critical point
in organization building, trying to decide whether "to be or not to be a 501(c)(3)," I distributed some
preliminary drafts of the charts in Chapter 10 of this dissertation. These charts pulled together
insights and quotes from the many discussions at New Majority gatherings over the years about the
positive and negative impact of creating nonprofit organizations within Communities of Color.
31
3
An intellectual genealogy that maps a path
Theory is a dangerous word, one that should not be used lightly. Acting o n what
they believe are accurate theories of human nature or political development, people
have started wars, committed murder and sanctioned torture. As [historian Howard]
Zinn observes, " H o w we think. . . is a matter of life and death."
Stephen Brookfield, The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching71
Any intellectual genealogy 72 has impact beyond the research at hand because how we think
and who we think with shapes h o w we live and h o w much humanity we can express together
through our living. This chapter begins to introduce a lineage of scholars to think with while
trying to understand how people learn together as they work for change in their
its salt should impact the scholar as well her research. Theories should help scholars identify
and overcome their own oppressive socializations. 73 In this spirit, the intellectual genealogy
presented in this chapter and reflected in later chapters also aspires to map some intellectual
paths that can serve those scholars who strive to change the way they think; who strive make
their own "evolutionary/revolutionary leap toward becoming more socially responsible and
Stephen Brookfield, The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching (San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass, 2005).
72
I was introduced to the term "intellectual genealogy" by professor and mentor Marcelo Suarez-
Orozco at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In the same way that a person can trace her
biological genealogy through her family, a scholar can trace her thinking and analysis through
advisors, professors, disciplines, schools of thought and "ancestor scholars" whose ideas have had
lasting impact. This concept was useful to me because my intellectual habit is to study all the work
of authors who interest me to the point where they become akin to "intellectual companions." I
often conduct thought experiments where I examine, what one or another of these "intellectual
companions" would advise me about solving the problem at hand. That said, of course this chapter
can be considered to be a literature review as well.
Michael Albert, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Linda Sargent and Holly
Sklar, Liberating theory (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1986), 5.
Grace Lee Boggs, "Introduction," in Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, Grace Lee
Boggs and Jimmy Boggs (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008 edition).
32
That said, any human intellectual genealogy is, to paraphrase Cornel West, indispensable yet
also predictably insufficient. This chapter traces only one branch of an intellectual genealogy
of intellectuals who are useful to think with when trying to understand how people learn
I made three conscious choices about the intellectual companions, ideas and tools that carry
potential for liberatory thinking about the New Majority and informal education in social
movements. First, this genealogy reflects a critical social theory foundation. Both social
movements and critical social theory share a common goal: to critique and to change society
approaches that have potential for expanding the dialogue about education and social
movements. Finally, I chose to give added weight to the contributions of women and
People of Color who theorize issues relevant to the New Majority because I believe they
offer an insider and often lived perspective that enriches analysis. Lifting their theories up
also seems to harmonize with the mission of the New Majority to create spaces for People
of Color to be experts about their own lives. It is my personal conviction that when the
theories of women and People of Color are not actively sought to inform any analysis, that
The chapter begins with a section on origins, locating a likely place to begin this intellectual
project by exploring learning in social movements within the discipline of education and
more specifically adult education, "activities intentionally designed for the purpose of
33
bringing about learning among those whose age, social roles, or self-perception define them
as adults."75
The second section identifies and revisits education and a set of likely education
environment and associational setting, commitment informed by values and vision, and an
intention to foster learning. Since collective learning rather than individual learning is lifted
up in this research, the third section explores situated learning in a community of practice
as the primary analytic approach for understanding the informal education that takes place
within social movements. A process of collective identity and its roots in education and
the social sciences is explored as the heart of that informal education. The chapter ends by
describing how the remaining chapters in this dissertation attempt to define the informal
education undertaken by people in the New Majority, synthesizing insights about informal
Where does an intellectual journey that seeks to better describe and study social movements
as locations where vital and important adult learning takes place begin? The obvious branch
of education theory to start with is adult education and particularly some areas of adult
education that are off the well-traveled trails. Back in 1928, Eduard Lindeman said
from this insight, a rich history of association exists between social movements and adult
75
Sharan Merriam and Ralph Brockett, The profession and practice of adult education (San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass, 1997), 8.
34
education. 76 In fact, during its principal growth time, J o h n Holford argues that adult
education, "at least o n philosophical, epistemological and theoretical levels, was shaped by
Adult education theorists have contributed a number of important insights about social
movements. A survey of adult education literature 78 reveals that many researchers identify
reflective and social learning. 79 Research on social movements also has the potential to
further our understanding of how people shape and generate knowledge. 80 In this
ethnographic study, I consider the even more expansive possibility, along side adult
education theorist J o h n Hoist, that social movements might just be places where "we can
likely find a parallel 'field of adult education,' with its own pedagogical tradition yet to be
Since the late 1960s, adult education has often been described as having several forms of
familiar m o d e of education that takes place in schools and universities and can be defined as
There is no clear consensus on the definitions of the types of education beyond formal
education in current adult education literature. Some research in adult education simply
labels all education that falls outside formal education as informal education. However in
studying education in social movements, it is useful to think with a group of adult education
researchers who suggest that two categories of adult education exist outside of formal
education. In 1974, Philip Coombs, Roy Prosser and Manzoor A h m e d proposed the
summarized in Figure 3.1. 84 These two categories also outline two different approaches to
It is interesting to note that this three-part understanding of adult education was conceived by
group of international educators largely in response to what was understood as a "world educational
crisis." Its adoption as a convention in adult education was promoted by planners and economists
from the World Bank and UNESCO. An interesting discussion of the politics and history can be
found at http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-nonfor.htm.
Coombs et. al, New paths to learningfor rural children andyouth, 11.
Coombs and Ahmed, Attacking ruralpoverty.
36
Adult Education
"Activities intentionally designed for the purpose of bringing about learning
among those whose age, social roles, or self-perception define them as adults"
Sharan Merriam and Ralph Brockett, The profession and practice of adult tdumtion
I
Formal Education
I
Nonformal Education
". . . the hierarchically structured, involves "any organised educational
chronologically graded education activity outside the established
system running from primary school formal system - whether operating
through the university and including, separately or as an important
in addition to general academic feature of some broader activity -
studies, a variety of specialized that is intended to serve identifiable
programs and institutions for full- learning clienteles and learning
time technical and professional objectives"
training"
Coombs, R03' and Ahmed,
Coombs, Prosser and Ahmed, New paths to learningfor rural children and youth
New paths to learningfor mral children andyouth
Informal Education
"the truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes,
values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative
influences and resources in his or her environment - from family and
neighbours, from work and play, from the market place, the library and
the mass media". . . and from participation in social movements
Coombs, Prosser and Ahmed,
New paths to learningfor rural children and youth
37
formal institutional systems and is most often associated with community groups and other
organizations.85 According to Philip Coombs, Roy Prosser and Manzoor Ahmed, nonformal
. . . any organised [sic] educational activity outside the established formal system -
whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity -
that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives.86
Much of the territory commonly associated with adult education research, such as vocational
training and other types of skills training, falls under this definition of nonformal education.
For the most part, education research on social movements has also focused on nonformal
education efforts such as popular education, teach-ins and workshops organized around
• Cultural Cafe film and discussion series on Assata Shakur to educate the community
about Africana womanism, held at the African American Master Artist Residency
Program building in Jamaica Plain,
• English language, citizenship and voter Education classes and activities organized in
Chinatown by the Chinese Progressive Association,
• Popular Education workshops held all over Boston on "War and the Economy," the
"Massachusetts Budget Crisis" and "Closing the Racial Divide" offered in the
community by trainers from United for a Fair Economy, and
Boyd Rossing suggests that much of adult education research has focused "almost
Mark Smith, "Informal education," Infed: The Informal Education Homepage (London:
infed.org, 1996, updated 2009), http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-nonfor.htm.
Coombs et. al., New Paths to Learmngfor Rural Children and Youth.
38
that Boyd Rossing's observations also apply to education theory and case studies involving
social movements. Because so many of the in-depth studies of social movements from the
opposed to informal education), a number of calls have been made by education theorists
for research on informal education social movements, especially research that could yield
promising new analytical methods .89 T h e present research study on informal education
. . . the truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills
and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in
his or her environment - from family and neighbours [sic], from work and play, from
the market place, the library and the mass media. 9091
87
Rossing, "Patterns of informal learning," 45, 47.
Klimczak, "Decolonizing the imagination," Appendices A and B.
Finger, "New social movements and their implications for adult education," 15-16, 18, 21; Rossing,
"Patterns of informal learning: Insights from community work," 47-50; Mezirow, "Transformation
theory and social action" 170, 172, 174; Welton, "Social evolutionary learning: The new social
movements as learning sites," 152; Foley, "Radical adult education and learning," 77; Paul Ilsley,
"The undeniable link," 26, 31-33.; Holford, "Why social movements matter," 95, 105.
Coombs et. al., New Paths to Learning/or Rural Children and Youth,.
For those interested in a thought-provoking and fascinating collection of historical and
contemporary documents and essays on informal education, I highly recommend the informal
education homepage, www.infed.org. The informal education homepage is an open, independent and
non-profit site established in 1995 by a group of educators to explore the theory and practice of
informal education, social action and lifelong learning.
39
In this research, social movements are under consideration as one social location where
informal education takes place. A number of adult education researchers 92 have expressed a
renewed interest in informal education, which they believe has been largely ignored or
undervalued as an "inferior form of learning whose main purpose is to act as the precursor
of formal learning." 93 Instead, these scholars, like Frank Coffield, see informal education as
In surveying the literature, o n e issue in need of clarification for the present research effort is
that informal learning and informal education are often mistakenly conflated and applied
interchangeably. Informal learning and informal education are n o t the same thing. O n e way
to remedy this is to more clearly define informal education and the place of learning in
informal education.
J o h n Dewey famously defined education as, "the process of development and growth." 95
knowledge." 96 So one working definition of education that can b e useful for examining
92
For instance: Tom Bentley, Learning beyond the classroom: Education for a changing world (London:
Routledge, 1998); Charles Leadbeater, Living on thin air. The new economy (London: Penguin, 2000);
Victoria Marsick and Marie Volpe, "The Nature of and Need for Informal Learning," in Informal
Learning on the Job, Advances in Developing Human Resources No. 3, eds. Victoria Marsick and Marie Volpe
(San Francisco: Berrett Koehler, 1999); Veronica McGiveney, Informal learning in the community
(Leicester, UK: NIACE, 1999).
Frank Coffield, The necessity of informal learning (Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, 2000), 8.
95 Coffield, The necessity of informal learning, 8.
John Dewey, On education, ed. Reginald Archambault, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1964), 4.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/education.
40
Informal education theorists Tony Jeffs and Mark K. Smith suggest that three characteristics
mark out any type of education as a process: a concern with the environment or setting, a
commitment informed by purpose and values, and the intention to foster learning. 98 In
exploring the kind of informal education efforts that are sustained over a long period of
movements involves those social formations that invigorate community change efforts such
as organizations and voluntary association in groups. 99 There is a phrase in French that does
not translate well but can help people gestalt (or more fully and imaginatively experience)
where the informal education in social movements takes place, la vie associative. h,a vie
associative recognizes "the importance of association in the widest sense of the word and
97 • . . .
Of course this tragically underdetermines a whole history of education theory tracing the
importance and the development of ever more nuanced definitions of education. Robbie
McClintock has been doing some interesting work in this area, which he presented at the Lawrence
A. Cremin Seminar sponsored by the Department of International and Transcultural Studies on
October 16, 2007 at Teachers College, Columbia University. A wiki that documents the developing
text on his work can be found at http://www.studyplace.org/wiki/On_(Not)_Defining_Education.
98
Tony Jeffs and Mark K. Smith. What is education? Informal education homepage,
www.infed.org/foundations/f-educ.htm; also Tony Jeff and Mark K. Smith, Informal education.
Conversation, democrag and learning (Nottingham, UK: Educational Heretics Press, 2005).
99
These three educational modes are suggested in Coombs and Ahmed.
41
£
informal education characteristic informal education characteristic
1 2
c o m m i t m e n t to
environment
purpose & values
la vie associative is the setting
shaped by the purpose and
"association in the widest sense of the
values generated by the
word and the effect which this can
people who gather to create
have both on the life of the individual
change in their communities
and on the life of a village, town,
region or country."
Mark Smith
I
uncovering what is
T
uncovering how learning
being learned happens
through conversation and
through making what is
reflection
implicit more explicit
through exploring and enlarging
experience and action
42
the effect which this association can have both on the life of the individual and on the life of
The link between informal education and the "associations" that are part of social
movements have been recognized for over a century. As early as 1860, English adult
educator J o h n Hole wrote about the "educative tendencies of such associations." 101 Another
early recognition is found in the famous British adult education treatise commonly known as
"The 1919 Report," 102 which discusses "the informal educations which come from sharing in
a c o m m o n life" and specifically lifts up the educative power of social movements and
voluntary associations. A more recent example comes from the 1990s, when Konrad Elsdon
and his colleagues undertook a large scale study of voluntary associations in Britain. H e
potential of such voluntary groups. 103 T o describe informal education in social movements
involves understanding the setting of their "association," exploring who is gathering, where
Choices about education processes involve purpose and values, be they implicit or explicit.
Mark Smith, "association, la vie associative and lifelong learning," Infed: The Informal Education
Homepage (London: infed.org, 2000, updated 2008), http://www.infed.org/association/b-
assoc.htm.
Referenced in Mark Smith, "Association, la vie associative and lifelong learning," the encyclopedia of
informal education (2002, revised in 2008), http://www.infed.org/association/b-assoc.htm.
British Ministry of Reconstruction, Adult Education Committee Final Report (Chaired by Arthur L.
Smith and commonly known as 'The 1919 Report') Cmnd 321 (London: HMSO, originally
published in 1919, reissued in 1956).
Konrad Elsdon, John Reynolds and Susan Stewart, Voluntary organisations: Citizenship, learning and
change (Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education (NIACE), 1995).
43
The purpose and values of formal schooling have been so well established that they often go
unquestioned as common sense. However, in informal education, exploring what people say
about the purpose and values in that process can allow researchers to better describe the
process. Generally, what runs through la vie associative, the "life in association" is a
"concern to build the sorts of communities and relationships in which people can be happy
and fulfilled."104 Because people in social movements are often seeking a transformation in
community values, observing what people seeking social change say about their vision for
community and relationship can be a starting point for understanding how they learn.
Furthermore, examining how well the learning in informal education reflects the purpose
and values of a social movement can be one approach to evaluating the effectiveness of the
process.
usually a detailed description of learning expectations that may include syllabi, lesson plans,
teaching methods, objectives and outcomes. These describe what (e.g. content in syllabi and
lesson plans, objectives, outcomes) is being learned and how it is being learned (e.g. lesson
plans, teaching methods). Most notably, descriptions of the intention to foster learning in
The intention to foster learning in informal education is often not as easily categorized or
explicit. Mark K. Smith claims that all informal education has two approaches to learning in
common. First, informal education works through and is driven by conversation. Second,
Mark K. Smith, "introducing informal education," informal education homepage (London, UK:
infed.org, 1997, last updated March 2009), http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm.
44
as people talk together and act together to address problems in their community, the
learning and knowledge generated through their conversation and actions is often implicit,
not deliberate and often is hard to express. One challenge for research in informal education
is to identify strategic conversations and experiences whose analysis can make learning and
informal education in social movements, the focus is on the intention to foster collective
informed by purpose and values, and the intention to foster learning — are necessary
elements in describing informal education in social movements, then what analytic approach
Two social scientists who work on educational problems offer a promising analytic approach
ethnographic research. Jean Lave is a social anthropologist with a strong interest in re-
conceiving learning, learners, and everyday life in terms of social practice. Etienne Wenger
first approached education from his computer science training and his earliest work
practice, "situated learning." 106 Situated learning represents n o t an educational form nor a
understanding learning. According to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, the formal definition
Breaking down the problem that these two social scientists are attempting to solve and
unpacking some of the terms in this definition will show h o w this analytic viewpoint is
Recentering the individual. The intellectual problem Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger
addressed together exactly mirrors one of the central problems in studying collective learning
in social movements: how to focus beyond the individual learner as the center of analysis to
more fully address learning's social character. They began by acknowledging that most
cognition emerged in the last half of the twentieth century that suggest cognition is not
confined to an individual but rather distributed across the teacher and student relationship or
across wider social groups engaged in learning. 109 O n e important example is in the work of
Lev Vygotsky, who proposed that learning occurs in socially mediated collaborative
processes. 110 However Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger found that these kinds of
constructivist theories were of limited use because in them, the focus was still centered on
individual learning and the social character of learning "represented only a "limited input for
the process of individualized internalization." 111 Seeking to develop theory that puts social
relationships at the center of learning, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger looked beyond
education theory.
T o place learning in the broader context of the social world, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger
chose to root their theory in the long Marxist tradition that exists in the social sciences.
They claim situated learning as a critical theory, one that sees learning through the historical
that Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger refer to falls m o r e into the education tradition of
criticality described by pragmatic constructivism, which examines "the way people construct
and deconstruct their own experiences" with an emphasis on the "importance of continuous
experimentation to bring about better social forms. 113 Situated learning was developed from
these roots as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger distilled the contributions that past
Here I refer to Lev Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development: Lev Vygotsky, Mind
in society: The development of higher psychologicalprocesses (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1978).
Ill
Lave and Wenger, Situated Learning, 47-48.
112
Lave and Wenger, Situated learning, 50-51.
Many educators might not be aware that criticality is a highly contested idea in education theory
with different meanings claimed by different groups of social scientists for different purposes. Even
within this dissertation, I will draw from different traditions of criticality. For an interesting
discussion of the four traditions of criticality as they apply to education, I suggest Stephen
Brookfield's The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching (San Francisco: Jossey Bass,
2005), 10-18.
Etienne Wenger, Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 11.
47
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger concluded that, to understand learning through participation
in social practice, there is a need to first decenter 115 the meaning of "individual" to include
the "multiple relations through which people define themselves." 116 For studying the
informal education that takes place through people's participation in civil society, this is n o t
simply an abstract idea and actually reflects a practice of recentering what it means to be
human.
The imperative for people to think with definitions of themselves that include a diverse field
citizenship and social change in the United States and beyond. For instance, from Barack
Obama's earliest days on the presidential campaign trail to his description of the qualities
necessary in a United States Supreme Court Justice, he often lifts up a pressing need for b o t h
citizens and public servants to cultivate empathy, the capacity to recognize or understand the
state of mind or emotions of others. Barack Obama highlighted this especially well in a
You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think
we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in
someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different
The word "decenter" is a technical term in post-structural theory most often attributed to the
fascinating but often opaque writings of philosopher Jacque Derrida. Jacque Derrida criticizes the
mental habits that cause people to think in oppositional binaries such as Good/Bad, Black/White or
even Individual/Community. He believes that when we think with these binaries we limit what we
can imagine and what we can think about. To decenter means to both break down our mental
resistance to abandoning the comfortable structure of binaries and to rebuild how we think from a
position that welcomes multiple understandings. This decentering allows a more "playful" and
expansive exploration of meaning. In the case of die binary opposites of "individual" and
"community," this means re-centering the meaning of "individual" to include and be indivisible from
"community." Colloquially, decenter has come to refer to the ability to be able to see from more
tiian one point of view.
Lave and Wenger, Situated learning, 53.
48
from us — the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been kid-off, the family
w h o lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you
think like this — w h e n you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize
with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers - it
becomes harder not to act; harder not to help. 117
Here he claims that the recentering of the individual to include an awareness and concern for
other individual human beings is necessary for assuming the adult citizen responsibilities at
Nelson Mandela, South African statesman and a leader in the struggle to replace the
apartheid regime of South Africa with a multi-racial democracy 118 offers an international call
for recentering individuality when he speaks about the need for people around the world to
cultivate what the Zulu 119 call "ubuntu." Ubuntu was a quality and philsophy present among
those who participated in the South African anti-apartheid movement that expands what is
meant by the awareness and empathy inside an individual beyond the interpersonal to
Ubuntu does not m e a n that people should not address themselves. T h e question is
how are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you . . . to b e
able to improve [that community]. . . 12°
So thinking with ubuntu, recentering what it means to be an individual suggests that one
117
Barack Obama, Commencement speech given on 16 June 2006 at Northwestern University.
118
The And-Apartheid or Boycott movement was active from the late 1950s until the 1990s.
119
The Zulu are the largest ethnic group in South Africa.
120
Nelson Mandela, "What is ubuntu?" 96 second YouTube video interview with Tim Modise (June
1, 2006) uploaded by spackofatz, http://video.google.com/videoplayPdocid—
3292332486849787667#.
49
O n e last example that suggests yet another possible means for recentering the individual in
social movements is offered by Grace Lee Boggs. At 94, she has been a social m o v e m e n t
activist for over seventy years. She often speaks about the need for people in social
movements to recognize Martin Luther King's insight that "we are tied together in the single
garment of destiny, tied to an escapable network of mutuality" 121 and then p u t Martin Luther
King's Beloved Community 1 2 2 at the center of their living, thinking and organizing. T o be
. . . we need to expand our uniquely human powers, especially our capacity for agape,
which is the love that is ready to go to any length to restore community. . . we begin
with the needs of community and with loving relationships with one another and
with the earth, [emphasis mine] 123
Here Grace Lee Boggs echoes the understanding of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger when
they say that a recentering of the individual also includes the "living relations between
persons and their place," 124 be it their neighborhood, their city or even the whole planet
earth.
So any analysis of learning as a social practice in social movements should include thinking
with the idea that people can learn together by recentering their individuality to include not
only a deeply held empathy with other people, but also a sense of their interconnectedness
121
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham JaiL" April 16, 1963, paragraph 4.
"Dr. King's Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of
the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated
because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of
discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and
brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-
resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph
over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict." From "The
beloved community of Martin Luther King, Jr.," on the King Center (Atlanta, Georgia) website,
http://www.thekingcenter.org/ProgServices/Default.aspx
123 .
Grace Lee Boggs, "Introduction to the new edition," xvi.
This is a point also mentioned by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger., Situated learning, 53.
50
with a human community and the geographical place where they live. Grace Lee Boggs'
insights further suggest that agape, or our experience of love in the broadest sense, is the
force that moves people toward experiencing themselves and their learning through these
relationships.
Situated learning through a community of practice and its activities. Starting with
their notion of a decentered (or more precisely, a recentered) individual engaged in social
practice, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger theorize learning as the process of joining and
acting with a community. Put another way, learning is conceived of as social participation in
negotiated by members,"125 who function as a social group and share a repertoire of ideas,
from two kinds of relations that evolve over time, relation to a social community and
Relation to a social community. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger claim that situated
learning cannot be understood without defining and understanding the evolving community
what do they mean by "community of practice" and "participation"? Although their original
1991 work on Situated learning only sketched an outline of what was meant by community
of practice, Etienne Wenger's later work on learning in organi2ations and businesses, 127
Being alive as human beings means that we are" constantly engaged in the pursuit of
enterprises of all kinds, from ensuring our physical survival to seeking the m o s t lofty
pleasures. As we define these enterprises and engage in their pursuit together, we
interact with each other and with the world and we tune our relations with each
other and with the world accordingly. In other words we learn.
Over time. . . collective learning results in practices that reflect b o t h the pursuit of
our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the
property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a
shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of communities,
communities of practice. 128
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger propose that joining and acting with a community of practice
involves what they called "legitmate peripheral participation." 129 Simply put, in legitimate
peripheral participation, people learn by being allowed to take part in the ongoing activity of
a community, beginning at the outskirts. As their skills and knowledge develop through
participation and activity over time, people increase the degree and complexity of their
participation and involvement in the ongoing activity of the community. Eventually people
move toward the center of the community and play m o r e influential roles in shaping the
participation and activity of people in the community. Therefore, describing the patterns of
understanding learning.
127
For example: Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William Snyder, Cultivating communities of
practice: A guide to managing knowledge (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2002). Some of this
later work focusing on business is of better use to people trying to apply the insights of situated
learning rather than those who seek theory for education research.
128
Wenger, Communities oj"practice, 45.
129
Lave and Wenger, Situated learning.
52
Here, learning is the process of becoming a member of a community and participating in its
activities, with the continuous process of identify development at its center. Jean Lave and
Etienne Wenger conceive of this process of identity as the "long-term living relations
between persons and their place and their participation in a community of practice." Since
in contemporary social movement theory, the next section maps some of this territory.
T h e British "1919 Report" on adult education 132 did n o t use the phrase "collective identity"
to describe what they identified as valuable about the adult education that occurs when
people gather to work toward some goal in a community. But what they describe as the
corporate spirit of such community learning that includes "a definite point of view, a
process of collective identity. While many education workers and researchers have become
convinced of the relevance and usefulness of the idea of identity for the analysis and practice
of education, those same educators and education researchers may not be as familiar with
the idea of collective identity or recognize the history of its importance both inside and
outside the discipline of education. This discussion is an attempt to locate and map some of
the familiar and unfamiliar territory of collective identity for education workers and
researchers.
The idea of identity, along with the idea of collective identity, has roots in some
understanding of interactions between social actors. Scholars use at least three overlapping
ideas about identity: personal, social and collective. Personal identity is the set of meanings
attempt to situate a group of social actors in some social space and to assign that group of
social actors with positive, negative or neutral points of social orientation. For instance,
identity can be different yet overlapping and interacting. A researcher might assign the
category of "Black" to a participant, but the participant herself might self-identify as "Afro-
Latina" with the emphasis on "Latino/a" as the social identity of personal choice.
The idea of collective identity often overlaps and interacts with personal and social identity.
For educators, the work of John Ogbu offers perhaps the most familiar bridge toward
understanding the way that collective identity is used in wider social science disciplines. J o h n
Ogbu thinks of collective identity as a group's cultural model, their understanding of the
social and physical "universe" they belong to and the way they act in this "universe." H e
believes that people use this cultural model of identity not only to guide their expectations
and actions in the "universe" (for instance in schools) but also to learn and organize their
knowledge. 134
Sociologist David Snow's excellent survey of how various social science scholars apply the
concept of collective identity shows that, while there is n o truly consensual definition,
Echoing the recentered individuality of situated learning, collective identity lifts up the sense
of what is common among a group of people and their shared agency, an ability to act or
John Ogbu, "Cultural model, identity and literacy," in Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative
human development, eds. J.W. Stigler, R. A. Schweder and G. Herdt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press 1996), 3.
13S
David Snow, "Collective identity and expressive forms," 2.
Admittedly, this is a rather simplistic definition that belies the far more complicated understanding
of human agency discussed in social science. For those who are interested in an excellent survey and
recommendations for research directions on agency, I recommend: Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann
Mische, "What is Agency?," American Journal of Sociology 103 (1998): 962-1023.
55
As suggested in the quotation at the beginning of this section, collective identity is an idea
that has had an impact on broad social science discussions in the past thirty-five years,
especially in the sprawling study of social movements that spans discipline literatures in
sociology, political science, psychology, law, anthropology and many areas of cultural studies.
T h e so-called "new social movement" 1 3 7 theorists claim that efforts to "define, celebrate,
enact and deconstruct identity" 138 are m o r e important in recent movements than they have
been in the past. The c o m m o n theme that runs throughout this literature is an insistence that
collective identity is best described as & process rather than a property or product of a group
of people. 139 Sociologist David Snow suggests that there are five characteristics of collective
1. Collective identities are emerging and evolving rather than rooted in established
social and personal identities;
3. When collective identities emerge and people act together, that means that other
personal and social identities have subsided in relevance and salience for the time
being;
4. Collective identities are connected to personal and social identities and often
people embrace a collective identity as part of their personal identity and sense of
self; and,
5. Collective identities tend to b e more fluid, tentative and transient than social
identities or even personal identities. 140
New social movements are loosely defined as those that have emerged since the mid-1960s. They
depart from the classic Marxian paradigm of economics and labor as an organizing paradigm.
Instead, they focus more on changes in the civic aspects of identity, lifestyle and culture. Examples
would be movements organized around Black Power, Peace, Women, Ecology and Queers (e.g.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual. Transgender or LGBT issues).
Francesca Poletta and James Jasper, "Collective identity and social movements," Annual Review of
Sociology 27, (2001): 287.
Snow, "Collective identity and expressive forms," 2; Melucci, Challenging codes.
Snow, "Collective identity and expressive forms," 3.
56
Researchers and theorists have often been drawn to collective identity as a response to gaps
in understanding about how social movements come about, why people are motivated to act,
how people make choices about how to act, and especially to get at the cultural effects of
social movements that go beyond institutional reform.141 Alberto Melucci, Chela Sandoval
and intellectual collaborators Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison are social movement
theorists who put collective identity at the center of their analyses. Their theoretical
responses have relevance for more fully describing die process of collective identity that is at
Sociologist Alberto Melucci, in his seminal work on social movements Challenging codes:
Collective action in the information age'42 uses the process of collective identity to get at
the problem of defining a social movement. He points out that although an understandable
and pragmatic description of any social movement is possible, there is actually a much more
complicated process going on underneath the surface. People are hardly ever completely
unified, and there is always struggle within any movement about definitions, purpose, action
and even how to describe the "opposition." Alberto Melucci suggests that collective identity
is a way to think about these processes that go on beneath the surfaces of social movements
at different places and times.143 He also suggests that the process of collective identity can
be described as a lens through which people in social movements read and act on reality.
People (or groups) come together, define what they have in common and work, evolving
what Alberto Melucci calls an action system, a set of dynamic relationships and conditions144
that has much in common with the notion of community of practice described by Jean Lave
Cultural theorist Chela Sandoval adds an important characteristic of the process of collective
identity in her study of the methodology of the U.S. Third World Feminist movement.145 She
sees collective identity as having a set of improvisational strategies for resistance, any of
which can be deployed from situation to situation, depending on the actions, reactions and
collective identity at any given time in the process requires recognition that collective identity
is flexible and constructed differently, depending on the context. The way that people in
social movements mobilize their collective identity at any given moment depends on the
strategy people decide would work best to dismantle or remove the various obstacles and
strategies used by social formations that exist "in opposition" at that moment. Chela
Sandoval says that a group of community organizers must have "the ability to commit to
structures of identity for one hour, day, week, month or year, yet also have enough flexibility
toward equality" make it necessary and strategic. So in describing situated learning in social
movements, it is important to recognize that there can be multiple — and even contradictory
— meanings for "who we are" and "what we do" within a group's collective identity that are
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
2000).
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 59-60.
58
Chela Sandoval also lifts up the possibility that people in social movements might also
engage in processes of "coalitional" collective identity, to form alliances with other groups
who have different collective identities. 147 This characteristic calls to mind what N a o m i
Klein calls "a m o v e m e n t of movements," when people who have been active in different
social movements join together on particular issues that involve a "reclaiming of the
commons," a reclaiming of social and physical spaces that can be communally shared. 148 So
movements, thinking with Chela Sandoval suggests that paying attention to the ways that
different groups come together to learn as they evolve a purposeful collective identity is as
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison offer a potent vision for imagining the informal
Their work suggests that social movements can be thought of as the social laboratories
where an informal education approach for the benefit of all society is shaped. They also
believe the main intellectual activity of social movements is centered on creating and
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison describe ways to focus research o n the social learning
conversations and actions that can uncover evidence of cognitive praxis, the reflective
processes that people use to identify fundamental contradictions or tensions in a society and
create innovative solutions for them. A study of situated learning in social movements can
focus on how people interpret old ideas and develop new ones, how they generate new
problems for a society to solve, as well how new organizational forms and principles are
shaped.151
Thinking with these social science scholars adds depth to understanding the process of
collective identity, how it motivates people to act together and how it cognitively supports
insights, the next section proposes the detailed method for describing the informal education
in social movements used in this research. This method blends the three characteristics of
informal education discussed earlier with the analytical approach of viewing situated learning
reflective learning that is driven by a process of collective identity. To describe this situated
First, the process of collective identity is defined as being situated within a particular
environment that includes the physical settings in which people gather, and a description of
151
Eyerman and Jamison, Social movements, 45-94, 165.
60
the membership and the patterns of participation in the community of practice. Second, the
process of collective identity is defined through the evolving commitment to purpose and
values in a community of practice. Finally the process of collective identity can be defined
conversations, through describing the activities and actions that people engage in and/or
through the signature learning strategies that people develop together in a community of
practice. This model is used to guide the presentation of research on informal education in
Figure 3.3 lays out the model visually and also shows how the chapters that follow describe
informal education in the New Majority. The original three characteristics of education,
now incorporated into model of situated learning and chapters and topics from New
One important thing to note about this dissertation is that the research on informal
education in the New Majority is not presented in a linear progression by chapter from the
top to the bottom of the visual model for two reasons. First, situated learning in social
presented in a chronological manner to tell the story of the New Majority as it unfolded
from 2003-2009. Second, the presentation of research reflects the actual process of
grounded theory from which this model of informal education in social movements slowly
emerged, driven by a nonlinear progression of insights rising organically from the data.
61
prophetic n a m i n g
Chapter 6
I
new majority situated learning: new majority
environment purpose &
people form the values
Chapters
4&8
new majority Chapter 7
community of
field of
history, patterns practice meanings that
of participation
limits to and engage in a answer the
inclusion & question:
power of place
process of "what is the
collective identity new majority?"
iAvfovmcU> edwocvtCo-n/ unformed/ educa/tlcm/
I
collective l e a r n i n g is fostered in the n e w majority
through
conversation:
I
through learning strategies: through action:
Chapters Chapter 9
5&10 relying on the wisdom of
uncovering groups, taking agenda-
implicit learning limiting access and building to the
participation, streets
by "decolonizing
& learning in a geography of
the imagination"
difference and struggle
The intellectual genealogy presented in this chapter recounted some of the scholars, research
and ideas that guide this research and this ethnography. During this study, I discovered that
people in social movements have something in common with scholars doing research;
people in social movements also rely on knowledge and insights from the past to guide their
learning and practice. During New Majority gatherings, participants would often contribute
stories and insights about what happened "back in the day" that were relevant to whatever
was being discussed. Sometimes the stories and insights were from community organizing
efforts that happened as far back as 50 years ago. The next chapter traces a part of the
genealogy of insights and actions from Boston's historical multiracial and multicultural
coalition building efforts that inform the New Majority's community of practice.
4
The new majority begins "back in the day"
We are the N e w Majority on paper, but n o t in practice.
Felix Arroyo, Jr., New Majority celebration, 17 December 2008
In a surprising twist of Boston politics in January of 2001, the Boston City Council elected
African American District 4 City Councilor Charles Yancey as their president. 152 This
March 2001 release of the 2000 Census and consequendy, the Boston City Council's process
of redrawing district voting lines in response to the new numbers. A March 2001 article in
the Boston Phoenix observed that the district line re-drawing was expected to be "especially
contentious this year since early estimates indicate that African Americans, Latinos, Asians
and other racial minorities [sic] now make up nearly half of the city's population, up from
button issue in 2001 because up until that time, there had only been two African Americans
elected to the city council at any one time. There had never been a Latino or Asian elected
to the council. Charles Yancey and Chuck Turner, the two African American city
councilors at the time, had recently suggested creating at least one additional "minority-
Conservative District 2 Southie City Councilor Jimmy Kelly could not muster a majority to retain
the eighth consecutive year of his presidency and in a surprise move, he threw all his votes behind
Dorchester's Charles Yancey. The move was particularly surprising given that Jimmy Kelly was
known for frequendy stoking "race-based enmity in his hometown" and made his name battling
busing and opposing the integration of South Boston's public housing. (Adam Reilly, "James M.
Kelly, R. I. P.," Boston Phoenix, 10 January 2007).
Dorie Clark, "Line Drawing," Boston Phoenix, 8-15 March 2001,
http://www.bostonphoenix.corn/boston/news_features/other_stories/docunients/00671478.htm
Upon becoming city council president, Charles Yancey quickly moved to make his mark on
this process of redrawing Boston's district lines by appointing die District 7's Chuck Turner,
to head the Redistricting Committee. The 2000 Census came out and the numbers showed
that People of Color were in fact the majority of residents in Boston. And it was under
these historic circumstances that a conversation took place in Chuck Turner's city council
office that would prove to be an important catalyst for the New Majority.
Chuck Turner and his aide Felix Arroyo, Jr. were looking at the numbers for Boston in die
US Census 2000 and having a conversation about how to develop the new Boston
redistricting plan with People of Color as the majority. Chuck Turner had been a Boston
community organizer and agitator since 1966 and was elected to the Boston City Council in
1999 using die humorous campaign slogan, "Bold, Bald and Bright!" Felix Arroyo, Jr., then a
young Latino graduate of Boston Public Schools just into his 20s at the time, grew up in a
Puerto Rican family actively involved in community organizing and public service.154 In the
course of talking together, Chuck Turner recalls that Felix Arroyo Jr. turned to him and
asked the question, "Well, we are die majority, but what does that mean if there are no
operational relationships between Blacks and Latinos and Cape Verdeans, etcetera?" Eight
years later at a New Majority celebration in 2008, Felix Arroyo, Jr. offered another version of
die question from his memory, ccWhy are we the New Majority on paper but not in
practice?"
In fact, a few years later in 2003, his father Felix Arroyo Sr. would become the first Latino
elected to serve on the Boston City Council. As I write this in the Spring of 2009, Felix Arroyo, Jr.
himself is a candidate for an at-large seat on the Boston City Council.
While this is the moment that people often point to when they speak about the beginning of
the New Majority, that moment was produced by a long history of People of Color
organizing in Boston. Just as scholars work with an intellectual genealogy that guides their
research and just as teachers shape their classrooms from education research and insights
they learned in their training, informal education among social movement organizers has
roots in the knowledge and insights of past community organizing efforts. People in social
movements learn and seek new ideas, and they do so in conversation with intellectual
ancestors and with insights from movements of the past. Historian James Green eloquently
refers to this as the "role of historical consciousness in movement processes and the
mysterious processes that create human solidarity." He emphasizes "how powerful the past
can be in concrete experiences of the present" and how "ongoing struggles for social justice
What most community organizers produce is collective action. To design and carry out that
action, they draw on the advice and experience of people they learned organizing from, past
campaigns for change they have participated in, and the stories they have heard about what
ancestors and elders from their communities have done to catalyze change. Community
organizers draw implicitly or explicitly on the insights gained from the ideas and actions that
happened, as some people in the New Majority express it, "back in the day." Since the
process of collective identity has been identified as the main intellectual activity of social
movements, the next section traces some "social learning laboratories" in organizing projects
"back in the day." These provide a thicker understanding of not only how the New Majority
began but also some clues as to the progression of historical consciousness that led to die
James Green, Taking history to heart: The power of the past in building social movements (Amherst, MA:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2000).
specific process of collective identity that captured the imagination of the New Majority.
Figure 4.1 shows how this chapter contributes to building a model for informal education in
Today is a beginning. Yet, in another sense, we are really just continuing the work of
previous generations of leaders who have struggled hard to establish a political,
economic and cultural presence in the city of Boston. We stand on the shoulders of
many. With this history and experience as a foundation, we can accomplish very
much indeed.
New Majority Initiative, 2003 New Majority Conference Program
There is no such thing. . . as an infallible narrative map. Arbitrarily one chooses that
moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
Michelle Richmond, No oneyou know156
City Council Aide Felix Arroyo Jr. was in his early 20s during that conversation in Chuck
Boston's Asian, Black, and Latino communities, Felix Arroyo, Jr. had not lived through
many of the years when each of those communities were organizing and establishing the
kinds of nonprofit organizations, research institutes, voluntary groups and networks that
made it possible to gather people from Asian, Black and Latino communities as the New
Majority. And Felix Arroyo, Jr. had yet to be born or was a small child when people from
different ethnic and cultural communities were collaborating on changing Boston's political
Michelle Richmond, No one you know (New York: Bantam Dell, 2008).
67
Figure 4.1. Informal education in the N e w Majority
| | The area shaded like this box shows how this chapter fits into this informal education model
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
+
new majority situated learning: new majority
environment purpose &
people form the values
Chapters
new majority- Chapter 7
4&8
community of ^
Ilistory, pattei-ns field of
practice meanings that
of participatiian
limits to and engage in a answer the
inclusion & question:
power of pla<:e
process of " w h a t is t h e
collective identity inew m a j o r i t y ? "
t characterCttiC' 2
Boston's Asian, Black and Latino communities have each developed their own set of
identities. T h e rich network of associations and organizations within each community were
built, at least in part, to nurture and carry o n those community identities. Some groups
organize around specific ethnic identities such as the Chinese Progressive Association,
VietAid (Vietnamese), Inquilinos Boricua en Accion (Puerto Rican), and the Freedom House
(African American). Others serve as umbrella groupings, for example the Asian American
Resource Workshop, La Alianza Hispana (Latino), ^Oiste? (Latino) and the Black Ministerial
Alliance. Some organize across communities on issues as they nurture solidarity for other
kinds of identities, such as A C O R N , which organizes low income residents, or the District 7
issues.
T o give a sense of how people in the N e w Majority think together about these social
networks, Figures 4.1 and 4.2 are transcriptions of two conceptual maps produced in a short
group exercise at the December 2007 N e w Majority Retreat. Teams from the N e w Majority
Steering Committee were given large poster sheets, colored markers and sticky notes. They
were asked to answer the question, " W h o else is in the landscape with the N e w Majority?" 157
O n e team produced the concept map shown in Figure 4.2. T h e map shows that while some
Dorchester, Chinatown and East Boston that have concentrations of a particular ethnic or
1 57
As recorder for the 2007 Retreat, I transcribed what was documented on easel poster sheets for
the New Majority. For these large diagrams, I used a grid transfer method to transcribe the visual
images and their proportions from the poster sheets onto 8 V2 x 11 inch paper that could be scanned.
The scanner helped me produce electronic copies for the New Majority archives. I used my own
handwriting to transcribe the words.
69
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Another New Majority Steering Committee team produced the conceptual map of Figure 4.3
that shows social locations where people gather and organize, as well as the different types
of social change associations. It is interesting to note that on this map, loose and informal
associations at barbershops, on street comers and in churches are given equal importance
and nonprofit organizations. The groups included in these concept maps were largely
organized by and for the separate neighborhoods and ethnic or cultural communities.
As pointed out in the last chapter, scholars like Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman158 claim
that the process of collective identity is the main intellectual activity of social movements.
From that observation, it follows that efforts to promote identities within the Asian, Black
or Latino community might lay part of the foundation for later coalitional processes of
collective identity like the New Majority. Urban and environmental policy and planning
scholar James Jennings suggests that at least part of the reason for the increase in coalition
building across Asian, Black and Latino communities in the past few decades has been
pragmatic and can be explained by the increase in diversity within individual Communities
of Color. He says,
Today, the Black community is composed of various ethnicities, as is the case with
the Latino and Asian communities. Ethnic diversity means that terms like, "the
Latino community," or "the Asian community" present erroneous monolithic
impressions about these groups. It also means that terms like "African American,"
as popular as it has become, may now be a demographic misnomer. There are many
people from Haiti, Nigeria, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba and Panama, who may not call
themselves African American, but will say they are Black. This kind of ethnic
diversity is changing the social agendas that have been traditionally associated with
James Jennings believes that this mingling of c o m m o n issues across communities could be
one explanation for the stories about coalition-building across the Boston Asian, Black and
Latino communities that are told in the next section. What follows is only one possible
historical path among the many that lead through the landscape of Boston's multiracial,
multicultural organizing efforts. 160 Included o n this particular historical path are organizing
projects that were mentioned briefly in N e w Majority meetings, retreats and street talks, such
as the Rainbow Coalition and the L o n g Guang Huang campaign. Others, such as Say Brother,
the YWCA and the Third World Jobs Clearinghouse were suggested during formal and
informal interviews with longtime community organizers w h o were directly asked the
question, "What past community organizing efforts influenced the development of the N e w
Majority?" or "What past community organizing efforts among women influenced the
James Jennings, "Coalitions between Blacks, Latinos and Asians: A retrospective look for the
future of economic democracy in the U. S.," The Black Commentator 224, 5 April 2007,
http://www.blackcommentator.com/224/224_retxospecuve_economic_democracy_jennings_ed_bd
_pf.html.
A history of multicultural and multiracial organizing collaborations across Boston's Asian, Black
and Latino communities would be a lifetime intellectual project well beyond the scope of the present
research. This brief history is very partial and draws on conversations within the New Majority,
interviews conducted with Chuck Turner, Gloria Fox, Sarah Ann Shaw and Joyce King, and informal
conversations with community organizers across Boston.
While many associations "back in the day" were organized both by and for individual ethnic
o t cultural communities, there were also important projects that spanned the Asian, Black
Some organizations have historically had multiracial and multiethnic boards focused o n
eliminating racism by design. Long-time Boston community organizer Joyce King insists
that the impact and legacy of women's organizations like the Young W o m e n ' s Christian
"were out there on issues of race and class across the country," particularly in the 1940s and
1950s, on up to the 1980s. In fact, Joyce King points out that their national mission was
"the elimination of racism wherever it exists and by any means necessary and mat's the
wording and where I learned it."161 The Boston chapter's board set aside a time during each
year for discussions on the issue of race within the board and chapter and even went so far
to hire outside facilitators for these discussions. T h e practices of multicultural and multiracial
groups like the YWCA created models for eliminating racism "by any means necessary" that
involved seeking change within a group as well as trying to effect change outside the group
in the community.
Chuck Turner believes that Boston's compact geography and history of neighborhood
"By any means necessary" is a phrase p o p u l a t e d by Malcolm X and is often colloquially applied
to justify violent means for oppression. However, that is not what Joyce King is suggesting here.
She is suggesting that the kinds of nonviolent antiracist discussions and activities engaged in by the
YWCA were taken seriously and considered just as strong a strategy for eliminating racism. I believe
she is also making die point that the use of this phrase by women within the YWCA community
predated Malcolm X's famous speech.
historically, Latinos and Blacks have shared occupational and residential areas in
Boston, for example in the South E n d and Roxbury. And at least since the early
1960s, Blacks and Latinos have established joint organizations. . . . and have enjoyed
an integrated and inclusive political and artistic — particularly musical — scene. 1
Examples of two of these 1960s collaborations that Chuck Turner suggests are predecessors
of the N e w Majority are the organization Puerto Afro and the W G B H television program
Say brother. Puerto Afro was a cultural organization formed in the 1960s by a group of
African American and Puerto Rican men who were musicians. 163 They worked together to
put on cultural events that "helped create a sense of racial and cultural unity based on the
commonalities of [their] cultures." 164 T h e research of social work scientists Mark Stern and
Susan Seifert have found that such cross-cultural arts projects change the social environment
together in public matters of collective and individual interest." 165 Although building
collective identity may n o t be an explicit part of such collaborations, Anita Walker of the
Massachusetts Cultural Council recentiy spoke 166 about how multicultural and multiethnic
creating a safe place to transcend ethnic differences. In other words, the success of
Jorge Capetillo-Ponce, "The thin and the thick: A study of two opposite trends of collective
identification among Boston's Latin and Black communities," the submitted version of an article,
"Black-Latino relations in Boston: Two Trends of Collective Identification." under edit and to be
published in a forthcoming issue o£ Latino Studies (sent to me with permission to use by the author,
who is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston).
Chuck Turner, Interview with Susan Klimczak, 6 June 2006, Fieldnotes.
Chuck Turner, "Political strategy: What are we going to do?" Part 2 of a 3 Part Series
"Organizing objectives and strategies," Black Commentator'281 (12 June 2008),
www.blackcomnientator.coni/281/281_what_are_we_going_to_do_part_2_turner_ed_bd.htnil
Mark Stern and Susan Seifert, "From creative economy to creative society," policy brief published
by the University of Pennsylvania Social Impact of the Arts Project (2008),
http: / /www. sp2.upenn.edu/SIAP/.
Remarks of Anita Walker from the Massachusetts Cultural Council at a seminar on "Race, Class
and Cultural Participation" held at die Boston Foundation on 26 June 2008, videotape of seminar is
available online at the WGBH Forum Network: http://forum.wgbh.org/lecture/race-class-and-
cultural-participation.
75
collaborations like Puerto Afro plant hope and the possibility of building other forms of
In the late 1960s, the Black community organized a boycott of WGBH. WGBH had
recently pulled a show from New Bedford that had put some film on the air with language
the station considered offensive. The show was negotiated back on the air with a
community committee working jointly with the station to oversee production. In 1968,
Boston's public television station WGBH debuted this program Say Brother during the era
of Black Power and Black Pride. Originally, Say Brother grappled with issues of Black life
such as housing, employment and education, while also showcasing local and national
performers. However for five years, starting in 1976, the program developed a multicultural
format that also included the Latino, Asian and Native American communities. Along with
providing television programming, Say Brother also served as a tailing ground, employing
and guiding a generation of new Black, Latino, Asian and Native American media
professionals.
An important Boston alliance directed at employment issues among People of Color (mostly
men in the building trades) was the Third World Jobs Clearinghouse. In 1974, changes were
made to the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding arrangements. As a
result, the city of Boston found itself to be a conduit for federal community development
funds and thus became a major force in the local construction industry. Kevin White, then
mayor of Boston, put a new affirmative action policy in place for city-funded and city-
adrninistered construction projects. Black representatives met with other People of Color
groups in Boston to create a new alliance that pushed for creating a city-sponsored referral
agency to place Boston workers from the Asian, Black, Latino and Native American
communities in construction jobs. Although the mayor faced resistance from unions, he
decided to support the new agency with funding. In late 1975, the Third World Jobs
Clearinghouse was established under the leadership of Chuck Turner.167 Almost immediately
after the clearinghouse was funded by the city, internal struggles began among the different
groups of People of Color represented. Many of the conflicts stemmed from past
employment antagonisms between Blacks and Latinos in Boston. Mel King tells the story
The Hispanic community began to say, "What is going to protect our interest from
yours?" Because the way they looked at it, they had not been satisfied with the Black
community. . . They said that we don't feel comfortable with getting involved with
you unless there is some kind of protection.
This was not an easy thing for the Black organizations sitting around the table to deal
with. In some cases, they saw themselves as the more progressive organizations in
the community. So, they were not used to being challenged in terms of their own
sense of justice and cooperation and sharing. . . it was something that was not easily
accepted by the Black community because if you shut your eyes and listened to the
conversation going on, it sounded as if the responses of the Black people were very
similar to what white people had been saying to Black people. What eventually
happened was that Black organisations realised that it was more important to
unify with other ethnic organisations.
The Hispanic position was that they didn't believe in one person one vote. Looking
at the board, there were six or seven Black organizations that could qualify as board
members in terms of die criteria. . . but there were only two, perhaps three, Hispanic
organizations, one or two Asian organizations and one Native American
organization. . . . [The Hispanic community] wanted to have one vote per ethnic
group. . .
The Black organizations were split with one group of people saying that we can't
afford, even with this situation, to give away power; and another group saying to let
the power of the collective protect the interests of each group, rather than try to
protect our own interests within that by having a numerical majority. Narrowly, the
principal of one vote per ethnic group was accepted [emphasis mine].168
Gordon Clark, judges and the cities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), 88-89.
Mel King, Chain of change: Strugglesfor Black community development (Boston: South End Press, 1981),
187-188.
Third World Jobs Clearinghouse did use a unity approach to governance that gave two votes
to each of the four constituencies, rejecting a majority rule approach that would have given
Black People considerably more power by increasing the number of their votes on the
board. Construction workers from the Black community had the experience of struggling
with their own tenuous and hard won power in choosing to share power for the good of all
Boston construction Workers of Color. This was a breakthrough in cooperation that Chuck
Turner believes both set historical precedents for Boston People of Color working together
and laid down a model for later collaboration in the New Majority. One precedent set was
the trust that was built by the representatives being willing to work through conflicts that
presented obstacles to this governing structure. The stakes were high in that the success of
the alliance meant jobs for construction Workers of Color. And these high stakes provided
a strong motivation to strive for unity in spite of the obstacles. The resulting outcome made
real the possibility that unifying People of Color could be in the positive self-interest of each
community, rather than a negative loss of power. This social innovation within the Third
World Jobs Clearinghouse is an example of what Iris Young refers to as an emerging model
a unified purpose, diverse group interests can be allotted a voice within a given organization,
social institution or movement."169 The Clearinghouse set another precedent for future
coalitions of People of Color by rejecting the term "minority" and instead calling themselves
Carol Hardy-Fanta referring to the work of Iris Young ("Polity and group differences: A critique
of the ideal of universal citizenship" In Feminist and Political Theory, edited by Cass Sunstein, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990, 117-141) in Latina politics, hatino politics: Gender, culture and political
participation in Boston (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993), 107.
The Third World Jobs Clearinghouse faced strong resistance. Chuck Turner explains, "The
unions wouldn't come to the Clearinghouse for jobs." So the workers formed a separate
organizing arm, called the Third World Workers Association to "organize and go back into
the streets." 170 They used the confrontational tactics of boycotts, picket lines and
community mobilizations. At this point, some of the Chinese organizations withdrew from
the activities of the Clearinghouse because these tactics proved "too radical for their
taste." 171 However, in the end, the Third World J o b s Clearinghouse w o n significant
concessions in construction and municipal hiring, some of which still impact workers in the
Black and Latina w o m e n in the South E n d were also cooperating on issue-based organizing
during the late 60s and 70s.173 The women's shelter, Casa Myrna Vazquez, was founded
during that time and still remains an active organization today. In the mid-70s, grassroots
activists and street workers in the South E n d "found themselves listening with outrage and
frustration as neighborhood women confided [to them about] beatings at the hands of their
husbands and partners. Children talked about the abuse of their mothers." 1 7 4 As shelter
170
Chuck Turner, Interview with Susan Klirnczak, 13 June 2006, Fieldnotes.
Chuck Turner, Interview with Susan Klimczak, 13 June 2006, Fieldnotes.
172
Nina Mjaqukii, Organising Black America: Encyclopedia ofAfrican American associations (New York:
Routledge, 2001), 118.
Though seemingly counterintuitive, it may be that collaborations among Black and Latina
women's groups are sometimes easier to navigate than even collaborations among women's groups
within the Black community. The increase in diversity within the Black community is one reason.
As Angela Davis explains, "There is often as much heterogeneity within a Black community, or more
heterogeneity, than in cross-racial communities. An African American woman might find it much
easier to work together with a Chicana than with another Black woman, whose politics of race, class,
gender and sexuality would place her in an entirely different community." From Angela Davis and
Bettina Martinez, "Coalition building among People of Color," Inscriptions (1994),
http://www2.ucsc.edu/culturalstudies/PUBS/Inscriptions/vol_7/Davis.htnil.
History of Casa Myrna Vazquez, www.casamyrna.org/histoiy.html. The shelter was named after a
famous Puerto Rican actress who had "an unwavering belief in the restorative power of the arts and
culture."
programs across the country were started, very few (if any) were designed to serve women
for whom English was not a first language or for Women of Color. Casa Myrna Vazquez
was founded to address this gap and was organized to directly deal with cultural and
language differences.
Although founded by Latdnas, almost immediately "Black and Brown women"175 served
together as staff, volunteers and board members of Casa Myrna Vazquez. The women who
sought out the services of the shelter were also from both the Black and Latina
communities. To build a strong agency, Casa Myrna Vazquez board, staff members had to
not only wrestle with all of the cultural and language needs of women guests and the
conflicts that arose among the guests, but also had to work hard to resolve cultural and
language differences that often came up among themselves. Joyce King, who served as both
member and as the chair of the Board (as well as on the boards of many other Boston
organizations) cites this as an exemplar coalition building effort among Black and Brown
women. She says, "there are just so many things that we wresded with and I though it was
one of the best of all women's groups."176 Here a group of Latina and Black women were
brought together and motivated to build bridges and resolve conflicts in coalition by their
passion to address the needs of women who had experienced domestic violence. As the
women at Casa Myrna Vazquez shared ideas and engaged in activities, they developed their
own community of practice and process of collective identity as an agency. In this process
of "becoming and being Casa Myrna Vazquez together," Black and Latina women created
another model of collective identity building across race and ethnicity in the Boston
Communities of Color.
Joyce King, 18 October 2008 Interview, taped and transcribed from field notes.
Joyce King, 18 October 2008 Interview, taped and transcribed from field notes.
In general, W o m e n of Color in the 1960s and 1970s were involved in the "building of
establish long-lasting organizations like Casa Myrna Vazquez. Other coalitions were often
short-term by design and addressed specific issues such as the sterilization of Puerto Rican
"primary venues for the establishment of collective identities," b u t rather a "way of working
such coalition was created in 1979 in response to the murder of twelve Black w o m e n and
and the South End. 180 City agencies showed a surprising lack of concern about the murders
and the Boston Globe was unsurprisingly complicit 181 in this lack of public attention. These
events led to the establishment in 1979 of a successful multiracial and multiethnic, almost
entirely female "Coalition for Women's Safety" w h o gathered together to "publicize the
cases, the police inaction, the dangers to women and the sexism of those in power." 182183
177
Winifred Brienes, The trouble between us: An uneasy history oj White and Black women in the feminist
movement (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), 158-160.
178
Benita Roth, Separate roads to feminism: Black, Chicana and Whitefeminist movements in America's Second
Wave (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 221.
179 • • e-
Roth, Separate roads to feminism, 221-222. Here Benita Roth is quoting from an interview with
Margo Okasawa-Rey, member of an influential Boston Black feminist group in the 1970s called the
Combahee River Collective.
"Many of the women were strangled, with bare hands or a scarf or cord, and some were stabbed;
two were buried after they were killed, and two were dismembered. Several of the women had been
raped." From Duchess Harris, "All of who I am in the same place: The Combahee River
Collective." Womanist theory and research 3, no. 1 (1999),
http://www. uga.edu/~womanist/harris3. l.htm.
The Boston Globe was notorious for its poor treatment of Blacks, especially with the busing issues.
In contrast the Black community weekly newspaper The Bay State Banner provided detailed front-page
coverage during the whole year. See Duchess Harris, "All of who I am in the same place."
Brienes, The trouble between us, 158.
81
This coalition also contributed to an important legacy for future multiracial and multiethnic
organizing in Boston. Mel King was among the participants in the Coalition and later went
o n to form the Rainbow Coalition in his 1983 campaign for Mayor of Boston. T h o u g h
sometimes unacknowledged, many women organizers believe that the work of the Coalition
for Women's Safety laid a basis for the coalition-building and "rainbow concept" developed
during the 1983 Mel King for Mayor campaign. 184 Up until this point, successful coalition-
building among People of Color had largely been "strategically situational, provisional and
issue-specific." 185 With the Rainbow Coalition, something different happened within the
It is interesting to note that while White women participated in this coalition, they took an
explicitly supportive role and deferred to the leadership of Women of Color in a Second Wave time
where genuine conflict between White and Women of Color feminists was more the norm.
It is interesting to note that in a private communication with Mel King, he said that he could not
claim to be conscious of this connection between the Coalition for Women's Safety and the Rainbow
Coalition. Instead, his conscious memory points more toward a direct progression between the
Third World Jobs Clearinghouse and the Rainbow Coalition. This may be an indication of some of
the broadly drawn differences between men and women in what they lift up from history in the
telling of Boston community organizing stories. When researching this history, I became aware that
the organizations and movements that people most often mentioned were those that largely involved
men and the establishing of organizations. This led me ask the question, "What were women
doing?" and actively seek out the elders from Women of Color community organizing to get at the
stories of Women of Color and engage in what might be called "decolonizing how people imagined"
this community organizing history. There is some precedent for this difference in the Boston political
history memories of Women and Men of Color (and the need to actively seek out the memories of
each) documented in Carol Hardy-Fanta's Latina politics, Latino politics: Gender, culture andpolitical
participation in"Boston(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993: 101-102). She says, "Latina
women in Boston emphasize creating community in their representation of Latino political history,
whereas most Latino men focus on the more traditional elements of politics such as redistricting, the
creation of formal structures and electoral campaigns. . . For Latina women, creating community
means grassroots politics and the incorporation of large numbers of people in the political process.
Latino men, in contrast, create organizational structures that, however important in generating Latino
representation in government, depend on and generate considerably less participation in the
community." I would venture an intuition mat this observation is not confined to Latinas and
Latinos but applies more widely among Men and Women of Color and could account for some of
the differences in the ways that men and women can remember and find meaning in the history of
community organizing in Boston. To create a thicker understanding for the historical social
laboratories that developed ideas and actions leading to the New Majority, the need to present the
interpretations of both men and women was an important research strategy.
Roth, Separate roads to feminism, 221-222; quoting from an interview with a Boston feminist
organizer and Combahee River Collective member at that time, Margo Okazawa-Rey.
I have often heard the comment that people in the N e w Majority have a rainbow coalition'
mindset," 186 referring to the impact of a political and social innovation used in the 1983 Mel
King for Mayor campaign, the Rainbow Coalition. 187 This vibrant coalition was forged of
People of Color, White people, women's groups, gays and lesbians and groups from the
many protest movements that had surged through Boston for two decades. 188
Kevin White decided n o t to run for reelection as mayor of Boston in 1983. This set the
scene for the Rainbow Coalition to organize a successful primary campaign to have Mel
King as the first Person of Color to become one of two run-off candidates in Boston's
mayoral election. Twenty years later Ray Flynn, the other run-off mayoral candidate who
faced Mel King, published his memories of the race in a Dorchester Reporter article saying,
Twenty summers ago, Boston was a beehive of political activity. Practically every
other house was adorned with candidates' signs and o n just about every car was a
campaign bumper sticker. . . Bostonians were in the middle of the greatest political
campaign and election in the city's long and proud history. . . 1983 serves as the
textbook study o n urban American politics and elections. It was a campaign in
which 76 head to head public candidate forums were held in neighborhoods across
the city. . . A n d all nine serious candidates showed up for all of them. 189
After the primary, the campaign was further energized by the recent successful mayoral bid
coalition mobilized communities and overcame the "old Daley patronage machine." 190 191
Rainbow Coalition 192 reveals how, right from the start, Boston people recognized that this
political candidate's campaign. For instance, Mike Liu from the Asian American community
wrote, "we felt, win or lose, the mass movement had a lot to gain from the King
campaign." 193
Just as conversations about the 2000 Census were a catalyst for the N e w Majority,
conversations about another public document were the catalyst for the Rainbow Coalition.
In 1983 the document was, according to Mel King, "a jarring m a p " that looked across the
city with a neighborhood focus and vividly illustrated how many neighborhoods were
segregated by ethnic and racial groups. 194 H e says, "We called it a Rainbow because the m a p
showed it was not just geography but also had to do with organizing different ethnicities." 195
The use of the term "Rainbow" was chosen in direct contrast to the demeaning and
assimilationist "Melting P o t " image for citizenship. 196 As Carol Hardy-Fanta points out, the
Rainbow is a concept that "recognizes and draws strength from rather than suppresses
diversity." 197
191
In fact, Harold Washington's visit to Boston over the summer to endorse Mel King created even
more excitement and energy for the Rainbow Coalition campaign.
192
For instance, see Radical America 17 no. 6 and 18 no. 1 (double issue: November 1983 — February
1984), an entire issue devoted to "The Mel King campaign and coalitional politics in the eighties."
Mike Liu, "Grassroots politics and Boston's Asian community," Radical America 17 no. 6 and 18
no. 1 (double issue: November 1983 - February 1984): 82.
Personal communication with Mel King, 29 May 2009.
195
Personal communication with Mel King, 29 May 2009.
196
The image of the Melting Pot has been used to promote the idea that a homogenous community
is ideal and the goal is for everybody to learn how to conform to White norms.
197
Carol Hardy-Fanta, Latina politics, Latino politics: Gender, culture and politicalparticipation in Boston
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993), 107.
N o t only can the Rainbow Coalition be described as a short-term m o v e m e n t of movements,
it was also a movement that strengthened the racial and ethnic movements that made up the
coalition. After the primary campaign was won, the Rainbow Coalition switched from a
practical consequences. People from constituencies based o n gender and sexual orientation
neighborhood-based. 1 9 8 However, the positive impact of this approach for Asian and Latino
constituencies that were neighborhood-based was dramatic n o t only for the campaign, but
for the political movements within those ethnic and racial communities. T h e Latino
community "witnessed the beautiful sight of dozens of new activists emerging to defend
their community, to work and to fight" 199 and this re-energized Latino community
T h e Asian community was able to use the campaign "to raise the issue of political power in
our community." 200 For the first time, people in the Chinatown community were able to
strike a blow to the political and economic control wielded by a small family-based clique
that monopolized access to City Hall. For years, this clique used a system of patronage and
dirty politics, resisting "any democratic process or mass input into any major decisions in the
For instance, lesbian community organizers in the Rainbow Coalition wrote that the shift from a
constituency orientation to a neighborhood focus "was a major shakeup to our voter identification
approach. Our 'neighborhood' is where we are out, in organizations, in the bars, at events and
among friends. It is often in our geographical neighborhoods that we are most closeted." From
Margaret Cerullo, Maria Erlien, Kate Raisz and Jessica Shubow, "Lavender is a color in the rainbow:
Lesbians and gays and Boston politics," Radical America 17 no 6 and 18 no 1 (double issue:
November 1983 - February 1984): 95.
Melania Bruno and Mauricio Gaston, "Latinos for Mel King: Some reflections," Radical America
17 no. 6 and 18 no. 1 (double issue: November 1983 - February 1984): 74.
Liu, "Grassroots politics and Boston's Asian community," 82.
85
201
community, anything that would threaten their control over it." The outcome of
participation in the Rainbow Coalition can be found in the words of community organizer
Mike Liu,
The campaign also had changed the political situation for the Asian communities.
Previously considered "invisible," Asians definitely became a recognized political
force in the city. Asians had established themselves as a component part of any
future coalitional politics in the city, a step toward political power. . . We were able
to give expression to the desire of Chinese people for democracy and equality.202
Participation in the Rainbow Coalition seemed to take politics and the class struggle in
Chinatown and in the Asian community to a new level. In particular, people living with low
incomes experienced a new possibility of what believing in their own political power and
Mel King's 1983 Mayoral campaign gave rise to a new political organization, the Black
Community Coordinating Committee (BCCC) that involved about seventy Black community
organizers from the Rainbow Coalition. These Black organizers gave credit to the positive
impact that the Rainbow Coalition had on the Black community by increasing the number of
registered Black voters, nurturing new Black leadership and developing a strong sense of
pride that "made the community come alive."203 However, some of these organizers also
struggled with what they felt was Mel King's hesitancy in taking an explicitly vocal pro-black
stance and expressed some sense of ambivalence about the impact of the Rainbow Coalition
on the Black community. Candy Carson, who was a member of BCCC, eerily echoes some
of the contemporary Black criticisms of the campaign of Barack Obama when she writes,
When these Black organizers reflected on their experience, the struggle to maintain a sense
of the importance of Black collective identity within a Rainbow Coalition that included
White people seemed particularly compelling from their point of view. The Black
community had already achieved some hard-won Black political power in the face of Kevin
White's pre-1983 White political "patronage machine second only to the Daley organization
formidable and nuanced experience of the mental and political habits of both the progressive
People of Color. From this unique position, they underscored the "general need for
independent organizations among minority [sic] nationalities, whose cultures are always
Interpreting from a different perspective, people in the BCCC summed up what they learned
from the Rainbow Coalition by emphasizing the importance of holding any "Rainbow"
accountable for maintaining the brightness and integrity of each "color." They stressed the
danger of succumbing to the many temptations to blur the colors in a diminishing way in the
Cason, 'The Mel King campaign and the Black community, 43.
James Green, "The making of Mel King's Rainbow Coalition: Political changes in Boston 1963-
1983, Radical America 17 no. 6 and 18 no. 1 (double issue: November 1983 - February 1984): 21.
Cason, 'The Mel King campaign and the Black community," 45.
T h e Rainbow Coalition reflected and popularized a belief that people needed to change the
way they thought about politics and themselves. 207 It was based on a conviction shared by
many that Boston's politics needed to — and could — go beyond being consumed with City
public and private issues, connections between people," as Latino community organizer Julia
Santiago pointed out when explaining why she participated. 208 T h e Rainbow Coalition
planted the seeds for a new kind of collective identity organized around citizenship. Instead
of struggling over resources, people in the Rainbow Coalition wanted to redistribute the
decision making power. This social innovation was a direct challenge to what Mel King saw
As Latino Rainbow Coalition members Melania Bruno and Mauricio Gaston put it, "we
were not only seeking to change the players in the game, but to change the rules of the game
to make the city equitable, accessible, and just." 21 The Rainbow Coalition demonstrates a
historic precedent: that Boston political campaigns have the capacity to represent more than
an individual candidate's campaign. Political campaigns for Candidates of Color also have
the capacity to be vehicles for forging relationships within and among Communities of
Color. The Rainbow Coalition was n o t only active during the few months of the 1983
mayoral election, people from the Rainbow Coalition continued to meet and work o n
Its impact and legacy have been long-lasting, allowing people to imagine the possibility of
new collective identities that reject the notion of "minorities," and that leave Asian, Black
and Latino identities vibrant and intact. It also allowed r o o m for people to imagine that
"movements of m o v e m e n t s " can actually internally strengthen the individual Asian, Black
A year and a half after the historic 1983 Boston mayoral election, when the Asian
community was galvanized into action by a case of police brutality in Chinatown, members
of the Black community and the Rainbow Coalition stood in solidarity with their campaign.
O n May 1, 1985, Long Guang Huang, a 60-year-old recent immigrant from a rural farming
collective in China's Guangdong Province, was walking through Chinatown near the
Combat Zone. 211 It was the middle of the day and he had come to shop o n a rare day off
from his job at the Royal Hawaiian restaurant. O n die street, he was mistakenly confronted
by an undercover Boston vice squad detective, Francis Kelly w h o accused him of soliciting a
White prostitute. According to witnesses, 212 Francis Kelly then pushed Long Guang H u a n g
against the wall and repeatedly punched him in die face. Long Guang Huang was left with a
Some history of Chinatown is important to this story: "In the 1970s, the Boston City government
decided to designate Chinatown as an adult entertainment district. The adult entertainment district
was infamously known as the Combat Zone. Originally the Combat Zone was located in Boston's
Scollay Sqaure. The Mayor had an ambitious plan to update Boston. . . by building a modern City
Hall in Scollay Square. . . To avoid having the embarrassment of having adult businesses next to City
Hall, the city decided to move [the adult entertainment district] to Chinatown. Strip clubs, theaters,
bars and adult stores lined the streets next to Chinatown businesses. Along with the Combat Zone it
brought pimps, prostitutes, Johns, drugs, pollution and violence. Chinese women and girls walking
to school or to their jobs were harassed or seen as hookers." From Kye Leung and Duke Rhoden,
"Justice for Long Guang Huang," A^ine: Asian American Movement E^ine, (2000),
http://www.aamovement.net/community/long_guang_huang/justice_for_huang.htmL
Margot O'Toole, a researcher at Tufts University School of Medicine was one of the witnesses
and notified the Boston Globe.
89
concussion serious enough to requite five days of hospitalization. T h e Boston police then
had the audacity to charge Long Guang Huang with both solicitation for a fee and assault
and battery of a police officer, even though witnesses claimed that the detective, Francis
T o the Chinese community, this was clearly a case of police brutality. Although incidents like
this had happened in Chinatown before, this was the first time the whole Chinese
community united in protest. 214 They swiftly moved into action, meeting with the mayor and
police commissioner, as well as establishing a fund to help Long Guang Huang. By the end
of May, the Black community — including the Boston Black Coalition, Clergy and Citizens
for Justice — and the Rainbow Coalition publicly came out in support of the demands of the
Asian Community. May Louie, an Asian American community activist and the chair of the
Rainbow Committee, was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying, "It's very valuable support
because the Black community has more experience in fighting police violence." 215 The
Asian community organized a march to City Hall to protest the incident on 18 June 1985,
chanting "Chinatown, Chinatown is our home, the city gave us the Combat Zone" 2 1 6 and
" D r o p the charges against Mr. Huang, put them on Kelly where they belong." 217 Participants
from the Black community marched alongside participants from the Asian Community and a
representative from the Rainbow Coalition spoke at the rally at City Hall.
21^
Gregory Witcher, " T m afraid,' says victim of Chinatown beating," Boston Globe, 23 December
1985 Metro Section: 13.
Carol Stocker, "Chronicling the lives of Chinese Americans," Boston Globe, 4 December 1988, Arts
and Film Section, Al,
Judith Evana, "Hub Blacks support Asians in beating case," Boston Globe, 9 June 1985, Metro: 53.
See previous comment for information about the history of the Combat Zone location.
217
Doris Sue Wong, "200 March to City Hall Plaza to protest alleged brutality against Chinese
immigrant," Boston Globe, 19 June 1985, Metro Section: 24.
For over a year, the Asian American community sustained participation in the campaign.
Long Guang Huang was acquitted of all charges in August 1985. The community was able
to force the Boston police to open up the internal police misconduct hearings for Francis
Kelly (the vice squad detective involved) to the public. This was the first time the city "ever
allowed an open hearing and it set a precedent for other cases of police brutality to be
opened up."218 Pressure from the Asian community forced the Boston police commissioner
to temporarily suspend the vice squad detective, Francis Kelly. A lawsuit filed on Long
Guang Huang's behalf yielded a settlement fhat covered his hospital bills. Shortly after Long
Guang Huang's death in 2005, Peter Liang spoke about the significance of this organizing
We mourn, we remember and we honor Rosa Parks, and I think that's a good thing
to be doing right now.
A litde less than a month ago, a Chinese immigrant who didn't speak much English,
but who occupies that same kind of significance in history for the Chinese
community in Boston — Mr. Long Guang Huang — passed away. There was no
mention of his death in local newspapers. Those of you who have been around for a
while will remember a police brutality case in Boston Chinatown in May 1985, and
the ensuing outrage over this elder restaurant worker being beaten by an undercover
police detective in Chinatown in mid-day. Mr. Huang was that person. This even
spurred a social movement for justice and equality fhat took the city by surprise, and
from that moment on, the political development of the Chinese community in
relation to the city qualitatively changed.
In both Mr. Huang's case, and in Rosa Parks' case, there was an individual who
decided "enough is enough," with a lot of support. An individual's choice connects
an individual story with a community's aspirations. No one remembers Long Guang
Huang, except a few of us. And why is that? Why was there no coverage of it? Why
is that case not taught in schools?219
James Jenning, "Changing urban policy paradigms: Impact of Black and Latino coalitions," in
Slacks, Latinos and Asians in urban America: Status andprospectsfor policy and action, ed. James Jenning, 5
(Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing, 1994).
Peter Liang quoted in Boston Foundation transcript of "Building the collaborative gene:
Achieving diversity" from the What's Next Seminar Series sponsored by the Boston Foundation, 25
October 2005, http://www.tbf.org/IndicatorsProject/News/detail.asp?id=3321.
91
As Peter Liang points out, Long Guang Huang, and the community mobilization that he
inspired in the Asian Community and in other Communities of Color, may not yet be taught
in Boston public schools. However when people in the New Majority remind each other of
this and other organizing efforts from "back in the day" in committee meetings, annual
meetings and retreats, they keep the spirit of those efforts and people alive. In fact, these
community organizing efforts are not only being kept alive in people's memory; they are
also "being taught" as part of the informal education that takes place in the New Majority.
Just as scholars develop a "literature review" that informs their research, community
developing collective identity from "back in the day." People gathered in the Asian, Black
and Latino communities build up Asian, Black and Latino collective identities through meir
conversations and actions in associational settings that range from street corners and beauty
shops to nonprofit service organizations within the Asian, Black and Latino communities. A
"movement of movements" like the New Majority draws upon the intellectual foundation,
history and network of ideas and actions from each of its constituent communities.
Asian, Black and Latino communities have worked together in different joint community
projects. Some projects that involve cultural sharing, especially in the arts, such as Puerto
Afro and Say Brother have created bridges between the communities and established the
organizing efforts were forged through passionate commitment across ethnic and racial
communities on specific issues and have given birth to long-lasting agencies like Casa Myrna
Vazquez, a shelter for women who have experienced domestic violence. Some coalitions
like Women for Public Safety come together to do important work that is pragmatically
issue-based and provisional, yet they do not necessarily engage in collective-identity building.
Other coalitions made gains in building a "Third World" collective identity and a model for
structural egalitarian unity among the Asian, Black and Latino communities. These coalitions
were fueled by the strong motivation of increasing the number of construction jobs for
People of Color through the Third World Jobs Clearinghouse. The Rainbow Coalition
forged an alliance that has had lasting impact. Under the "Rainbow," for the first time
Boston Asian, Black, Latino and White communities, as well as other constituencies such as
the Lesbian and Gay community and the women's communities generated a "collective
identity of collective identities." Their organizing solidified the possibility that a unified
movement could actually strengthen the individual movements that constituted parts of the
whole. And the Long Guang Huang campaign modeled the "Rainbow effect" as the Black
community saw their connection to the issue of police brutality in the Asian community and
Moving forward to 2001 and the catalyzing conversation for the New Majority: Felix
Arroyo Jr.'s observation that Communities of Color had no operational relationships among
them was only true up to a point. The kinds of historical organizing efforts in and among
Boston Communities of Color had already laid an important foundation for the emergence
As often happens in social change, that conversation between Felix Arroyo, Jr. and Chuck
Turner in the Boston City Council District 7 office did not go any further just then.
However, a year later when some time opened up, they revisited the idea together. In the
words of Chuck Turner, what happened next was, "We figured that if you were going to put
something. . . together, you need elements from all three communities. . . Asian community,
Latino community, Black community. You've got to really put those communities together
to try to synthesize some action. We thought the [three People of Color] Institutes at
University of Massachusetts Boston would be ideal [as the facilitators] and they were
interested."220 The project was called the "New Majority Initiative" and funding was secured
from the United Way of Massachusetts and the Foley Hoag Foundation to further develop
When people talk about the New Majority, they often say that the New Majority began on
Boston and sponsored jointly by the Institute for Asian American Studies, the Mauricio
Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy and the William
Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture. A New Majority Initiative steering
committee, "drawn from organizations and individuals from across the city" who
represented the Asian, Black and Latino communities, worked to shape and advance the
community organizers from various organizations and movements of People of Color across
Today is a beginning. The Census 2000 revealed that people of color now comprise
a majority of the population in the city of Boston. What the data cannot tell us is
how communities can work together in this historic moment to recreate our social
and political institutions, cultural and economic life in order to reflect this diversity.
The New Majority Initiative seeks to answer this challenge.222
and the initiation of a coordinated effort of informal education within the New Majority.
This informal education started with the rejection of the label "minority," following in the
footsteps of other renaming attempts like the "Third World" Jobs Clearinghouse and the
"Rainbow" Coalition.
The next chapter considers how a call for learning through particular kind of conversations
was set by the New Majority Conference Keynote Address of Mel King. One challenge in
can reveal learning and to develop approaches for analyzing those conversations. Blending
insights from social movement theorist Chela Sandoval and adult education theorists
Stephen Brookfield and Paulo Friere, such an approach for such conversation analysis is
New Majority Initiative, New Majority: Uniting Communities of Color Conference Program, 18
October 2003, University of Massachusetts Boston.
222
New Majority Initiative, "What we hope to accomplish today," New Majority: Uniting
Communities of Color Conference Program, 18 October 2003, University of Massachusetts Boston.
95
5
Talk as struggle to gain a new and informed humanity
We are defining ourselves as people committed to making the city work for
everyone. We are defining ourselves as people who are part of a process to make
change. We have to move from isolation to the New Majority, from isolation to
inclusion. Move diis city! Change the dynamics!
. . . The struggle is for a new informed humanity. It's not for equal access in a
dehumanized society.
Through the months of 2003, a New Majority Initiative Steering Committee met and
launched plans for the New Majority Conference. Invitations were sent out to community
organizers from the Asian, Black and Latino communities for the New Majority Conference
held on Saturday, the 18th of October in 2003 at the University of Massachusetts at Boston..
As participants walked into the tall concrete lobby outside the Herbert Lipke auditorium in
the Science Building, they found registration tables and greeters who provided nametags
with elastic bands and conference information in the form of a thick handsome two pocket
teal-colored folder with die New Majority logo. Inside one pocket of the folder were
brochures and newsletters from die tiiree campus institutes organizing the conference, the
Institute for Asian American Studies, the Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community
Development and Public Policy and die William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of
Black Culture. Inside the second pocket was a copy of the New Majority Agenda statement
that had been circulated along with conference invitations, an evaluation sheet and a New
It has been nearly a year since Councilor Chuck Turner and then Councilor-elect
Felix Arroyo called upon our institutes to help address the implications of the rise of
Boston's new majority. T h e N e w Majority Initiative, of which this conference is a
key part, was a response to that challenge. An outstanding steering committee drawn
from organizations and individuals from across the city and our own dedicated staffs
have worked tirelessly to shape this conference.
administrators and organizers from the Asian, Black and Latino communities (See Figure
5.1). This Steering Committee also published a letter in the conference program that
T h e General Plenary Opening was held in the Lipke Auditorium. A large banner that read
" N e w Majority: Uniting Boston's Communities of Color" hung on the stage, which sas set
up with a single wooden podium and an acoustic guitar propped u p on one end. Melissa Li,
a young Asian woman folk singer bounded on stage and picked up the guitar. Her energetic
song with the refrain "all we need is our voices" drew people into the auditorium. When
m o s t everyone was seated, Jose Masso, the host of the popular radio program [Con Salsa!223
stepped up to the podium, saying "This is a historic m o m e n t in the city of Boston!" H e told
a story about his 112 year-old grandmother who lives in southern Puerto Rico. T h e moral of
the story that he connects to the group of people gathered is, " N o matter what age we are,
New Majority Initiative Steering Committee, "What we hope to accomplish today," New Majority
Conference Program, 18 October 2003, University of Massachusetts Boston.
223
jCon Salsa! is a popular Saturday night radio show on WBUR 90.1FM hosted by Jose Masso for
the past 34 years. It is "part music show, part party, part community center; the program is a mecca
for Latinos and lovers of things Latin." http://www.consalsa.org/about/.
97
Figure 5.1 2003 N e w Majority Initiative Steering Committee
greatest gift." Sam Y o o n from the N e w Majority Initiative Steering Committee followed with
a Who's in the House? exercise to make "everyone. . . stand up and be counted!" Then h e
went o n to lead a r o u n d of singing Happy Birthday for the keynote speaker Mel King, w h o
was celebrating his 74 . Sam Y o o n gave a little history as he introduced the keynote speaker,
emphasizing how so many people in Boston "coalesced behind" the Rainbow Party and Mel
Mel King came up on stage. TalL with a quiet voice, his hands made elegant flat planes
This conference is a gift for my birthday. This coming together is something I've
dreamed about, hoped for, wished for, strived for. T h e h o n o r of this opportunity to
speak here is meaningful.
H e then went on to tell a story about how he once had the honor of introducing Nelson
Mandela in Boston, adding, "this m o m e n t exceeds the feeling I had then." 224 After thanking
all who came together to plan the N e w Majority Conference, he began the heart of a speech
that has served as a call to conversation and action for the N e w Majority.225
Mel King was part of the original group that came up with the idea of the New Majority and was
an integral part of planning the conference. Organizing with others in Boston for (and across
Massachusetts and the globe) for more fifty years, he also served as a state legislator for ten years and
twice ran campaigns for mayor that changed the landscape of Boston politics. In 1997, Mel King
opened the South End Technology Center @ Tent City as his "retirement project" and since then
has served as its full-time volunteer director.
This speech excerpt comes from my field notes, not from a transcribed tape. Therefore the
excerpt may be partially paraphrased. Portions of the speech set off within quotations indicate my
confidence that Mel King's exact words and phrasing are represented.
99
"The model for self-definition was Rosa Parks." Her act says, "I am somebody." If
she had gone to the back of the bus, her act would have said, "I am less than who I
know I am." "You can't allow other people to make you less than who you are."
Rosa's action has more to do with why we are in this room. "We've always been the
majority. H o w do we take that and move? We've got the numbers!" When we
organize around being the [New Majority], we need to get people to understand what
it means when you've got the numbers.
We've learned things from each of the communities represented here at this
conference. There is a line from a song in Dreamgirls that I like, where the character
says, let them have our music so that they can feel as good as we do.
We are defining ourselves as people committed to making the city work for
everyone. We are defining each of ourselves as people w h o are part of a process to
make change.
T o make a new and transformed humanity is the task we are taking on. The N e w
Majority Agenda is the new instrument that can be used for strategic action. We've
come together in an agenda-building process. We need to increase the level of
coordination between organizations, leaders, and communities so that the
effectiveness of each is advanced for the benefit of all.
At the end of Mel King's talk, Jose Masso returned to the podium and led the people
Then, Jose Masso asked everyone gathered to bring the ideas and spirit of this speech into
the conversations that followed, during the breakout sessions on different issues. The ideas
in Mel King's talk did indeed have an impact on the New Majority conversations that
followed, not only during the conference, but throughout time of this study. For instance,
five years later, "We've got the numbers!" is still a slogan prominently displayed in New
Majority press releases, brochures and other communications and an idea that continues to
However, in this chapter, I argue that Mel King's talk contained far more than potent ideas
to inspire conversations among people in die New Majority. Embedded in the structure of
his speech is a model for conversations that promote social change learning. That such a
model can be uncovered from analyzing Mel King's talk is not surprising, for he brings over
50 years of organizing experience and has been witness to some of the best practices in
Boston social movements, as described in Chapter 4. This chapter demonstrates how Mel
King cycles through a set of five learning tasks during tins talk, conversational learning tasks
that are associated with both critical adult education and die "metiiodology of the
this, I interpret Mel King's talk as an implicit call for community organizers to think and
learn together using this a set of conversational learning tasks that "decolonize the
imagination." These five tasks, when practiced togedier in conversation, have die capacity to
break down habits of thinking that dehumani2e and replace them with new ways of thinking
In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is
meaningful, the system under which we n o w exist has to be radically changed. This
means we are going to have to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its
original meaning — getting down to and understanding the root cause [s]. It means
facing a system that does n o t lend itself to your needs and devising means by which
you can change that system.
Ella Baker, 1969226
. . . Sooner or later, these contradictions [about reality] may lead formerly passive
[people] to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality.
They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is
irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive
through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant
transformation. If m e n and w o m e n are searchers and their ontological vocation is
humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction [s]. . . and then
engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1968.227
Using the intellectual genealogy developed in Chapter 3, the informal education project in
creating an environment that supports and sustains the community of practice, defining w h o
the N e w Majority are based on purpose and values, and the fostering of learning through
conversation, action and learning strategies. From a research standpoint, this chapter
introduces an emerging approach and theory for studying the "learning through
conversation" that is part of informal education in social movements. First, one kind of
social change conversation (or conversation thread that continues to resurface over time) is
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black freedom movement: A radical democratic vision (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
227
Paulo Freire, "The banking concept of education," in The Paulo Freire reader, eds. Ana Maria Araujo
Freire and Donaldo Macedo (New York: Continuum, 1998), 70. Originally published in Paulo
Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970).
102
identified as being potent for adult education analysis. Then, synthesizing insights from
social movement theorist Chela Sandoval and adult education theorists Paulo Freire and
Stephen Brookfield, a promising approach for analyzing what is being learned through those
conversations is developed. Figure 5.2 shows how die findings from this chapter map onto
Identifying social movement conversations potent for analysis. When observing how
people in social movements such as the New Majority learn through conversation, certain
challenges and questions tug at an ethnographer's curiosity. One question that arises is,
"Can any distinctive conditions be identified within social movements that promote
learning through conversation?' Certainly the conditions that allow learning to take place in
schools are often discussed in education literature. For instance, one condition that allows
effective learning to take place in a classroom is that a teacher must believe in the capacity of
all students to learn. But what kinds of conditions for learning through conversation are
the beginning of this section suggests one possible answer. He argues that people's belief in
their own capacity to shape reality is a condition for learning. People must "perceive that. . .
reality really is a process, undergoing constant transformation"; believe they have the
capacity to "engage themselves in the struggle for liberation"; and ultimately be prepared to
reject their "former passivity." Certainly there is evidence that that these conditions were
present among the people who gathered for conversation at the New Majority conference.
In their conference program letter to participants, the directors of the three University of
Boston's public life. They mention both what Boston organizers have done in the past to
Figure 5.2. Informal education in the New Majority
| i J I The areas shaded like these boxes shorn how this chapterfitsinto the informal education model
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
+
new majority situated learning: new majority
environment purpose &
people form the values
new majority Chapter 7
community of
field of
history, patterns practice meanings that
of participation
limits to and engage in a answer the
inclusion & question:
power of place
process of "what is the
collective identity new majority?"
char-&crteri4tU> 1
I
collective learning is fostered in the n e w majority
through
conversation:
I
through learning strategies: through action:
the future:
Mel King also spoke from this belief in people's capacity to participate in a transformation
of the conditions in Boston during his keynote address when he urged those gathered to
Many kinds of conversations go o n among people who seek to make positive change in their
community. A m o n g them, are there any kinds of conversation that might offer particularly
potent insights for describing the distinctive form of informal education that goes on in
social movements? Freedom Movement organizer Ella Baker offer some clues for
answering this question in the quotation included at the beginning of this section. Her
insight suggests that identifying conversations in social movements where people "think in
radical terms" shows potential. Ella Baker has a very particular definition of "radical," as
"getting down to and understanding the root cause [s]" for why people are not able to
participate meaningfully in the life of their community. Paulo Freire further refines the idea
of "root causes" when he says that people "perceive contradictions" that show "their
present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human." Therefore it
is likely that the analysis of conversations displaying both of these characteristics can
produce insights into a distinctive form of informal education that takes place in social
movements.
8
Paul Wantanabe, Andres Torres and Castellano Turner, Letter to Participants, New Majority
Conference Program, University of Massachusetts Boston, 18 October 2003.
105
However, both Ella Baker and Paulo Freire also suggest other qualities that must also be
present in such radical conversations, beyond simply identifying the root causes and
contradictions. People must also "devising a means by which [they] can change that system"
So, this indicates that one ethnographic approach for exploring the learning in social
movement conversations is to identify and analyze radical conversations. And these radical
conversations can now be defined as those conversations (or conversation threads that occur
over time) that not only identify contradictions and root causes for problems, but also
identify ways to think about those problems differently and act in ways that generate a
change.
Jose Masso made a call for New Majority Conference participants to "use the ideas from Mel
King's talk as context, as a guide for the conversations. " I interpret this as a call to
incorporate not only the individual ideas, but also the method Mel King models for
analyzing problems in radical conversations. His method contains all the elements of radical
talk described by Ella Baker and Paulo Freire. The contradiction inherent in allowing other
one root cause for the problem of People of Color being systematically excluded from full
economic, political and social representation in Boston. Mel King went on to identify ways
majority" committed to making Boston work for everyone. He then named the conference
gathering as a first act to generate a change because Boston People of Color were creating
106
the first draft of a common agenda for Boston People of Color that would serve as a new
Since Mel King's speech served as a model for radical "talk" or "conversation," an important
interpretive step involved closely examining his talk and comparing its structure to promising
theoretical models from research literature. The rest of this chapter first addresses a
theoretical basis for the model of five learning tasks involved in radical conversation and talk
that emerged. The resulting theoretical model is then applied to Mel King's 2003
Conference talk. However, as happens with most grounded theory, the model development
involved a complex discernment process cycling back and forth between education and
social movement theories on the one hand, and Mel King's discourse on the other.
Developing an approach for analyzing Mel King's talk with intellectual vigor revealed some
of the learning tasks involved in radical conversation and how such conversation can
"decolonize the imagination"229 during the informal education that takes place in social
movements.
Insights from the intellectual genealogy outlined in Chapter 3 suggested that learning
fostered through conversations in informal education is often implicit and there exists little
emerging adult education theory to guide an analysis of the explicit learning tasks involved in
those conversations. However it was possible to develop a model for analyzing the learning
tasks in these radical conversations by building an intellectual bridge between theorists who
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
2000), 112.
107
examine social m o v e m e n t s with a cultural lens and some prominent theorists of critical
adult education. T h e intellectual bridge that supports such a model links education theorist
Paulo Freire's notion of conscienti^afao and Stephen Brookfield's critical adult education
learning tasks with social movement theorist Chela Sandoval's model for the "technologies
Relevant insights about conversation learning tasks from theorists of critical adult
education. In Paulo Freire's influential book, The pedagogy of the oppressed, h e says that
the "conviction of the oppressed that they must fight for their liberation is. . .
conscience. It refers to acquiring the ability to read the world, "learning to perceive social,
political and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of
.. .way in which men and w o m e n can become aware of themselves, their way of
behaving and of thinking, when they develop all their capacities by thinking n o t just
of themselves but of the needs of everyone. 232
Linda Bimbi, in the preface to the Italian edition of the Pedagogy of the oppressed, cites
common situation. 233 Parallel to the theory of situated learning, Paulo Freire also emphasizes
Freire and Macedo, The Paulo Freire reader, 64. Note that I prefer the original phrase in Portuguese
to the oft-used awkward English translation, "conscientization."
1
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1982), 19. This book was first
translated from the Portuguese in 1968.
Moacir GadottL, Reading Paulo Freire: His life and work. (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1994), 164 (Chapter 2, Footnote 2).
Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 16. An excerpt from Linda Bimbi's preface is translated and set
down in Moacir Gadotti's book.
108
the collective learning that takes place in community and theories the necessity of both the
Stephen Brookfield's book, The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and
teaching, explores how adult learning can be reframed as a set of learning tasks by using
critical theory that address some thorny dilemmas identified by adult education
understand how the reproduction of blatandy unequal structures based on massive economic
disparity is accepted as the natural order of things by adults within successive generations."235
Stephen Brookfield provides an overview of the learning tasks that adults engage in as they
begin to challenge the ways things are, while also working toward making a
a vision of a society in which people live collectively in ways that encourage the free
exercise of their creativity without foreclosing that of others. In such a society
people see their individual well-being as integrally bound up with that of the collective, [emphasis
mine]236
Figure 5.3 shows seven closely interrelated tasks that Stephen Brookfield sets out for the
purposes of his analysis. These learning tasks are used in radical conversation to read
inequities in power, read the dangers of hegemony (ways of thinking and acting that often go
unquestioned as "common sense") or to learn how to enact true democracy. These learning
tasks overlap with Paulo Freire's concept of deconstructing and constructing new ideas and
actions. For instance, unmasking power and contesting hegemony both require
deconstructing why things are the way they are; while learning liberation and democracy
Stephen Brookfield, The power of critical theory:Liberating adult learning and teaching (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Brookfield, The power of critical theory, 30.
Brookfield, The power of critical theory, 38-39.
109
unmasking
power
challenging
ideology ?
learning tasks of
overcoming
alienation
critical theory
suggested by adult
education theorist
Stephen Brookfield learning
contesting .democracy
^x
hegemony
reclaiming learning
reason liberation
Figure 5.3.
Critical adult critical learning tasks suggested by Stephen Brookfield
From:
Stephen Brookfield, The power of critical theory: liberating adult learning and teaching (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
110
involve constructing a new vision of what reality could be in a truly democratic society. All
this can happen in the radical conversations that take place in social movements.
Relevant insights from social m o v e m e n t theory. Paulo Freire insights emphasize the
contradictions in society that "domesticate" experience, talk that uncovers h o w things are
n o t necessarily the way they seem to be; talk that focuses o n other ways to understand the
world, to uncover inequities and injustices and to make social change n o t only possible but
also necessary. Stephen Brookfield describes this kind of conversational journey through
"the learning tasks of critical theory." Social movement theorist Chela Sandoval also applies
a parallel framing to describe the exemplar learning she observed in the U. S. Third World
Feminist social movement and p u t at the center of her Methodology of the oppressed.237
The next sections provide a rather detailed explanation of key concepts from the
Methodology of the oppressed because the specialized theoretical complexity and arcane
terminology from other disciplines used by Chela Sandoval might otherwise render her
movement learning is "decolonizing of the imagination." 239 Talk and conversations threads
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
2000).
While I am encouraged and enthusiastic about an increased attention to multidisciplinary research,
I find one of the obstacles to such research is the arcane terminology that has been developed within
each discipline. My hope is that with an accessible introduction to Chela Sandoval's work, other
adult education researchers might realize the efficacy of investing the considerable time and energy
necessary to read her work and apply her ideas in the service of other adult education research in
social movements.
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 112.
Ill
in the N e w Majority were often directed toward this "decolonizing of the imagination." So,
what is "decolonizing the imagination" and h o w can Chela Sandoval's insights apply to
If the imagination needs to be decolonized, then the imagination must initially have been
colonized. The usual definition of colonialism generally refers to imperialism, "the extension
both." 240 In the postcolonial world, 241 in addition to political and economic control, there is
also cultural control of "ideas and values, consumer fashions and popular culture" 242 and
transnational corporate control. 243 Frantz Fanon's seminal works, Black skins, white
masks244 and The wretched of the earth243 argue that colonialism exerts tremendous
psychological control, though there always exist pockets of creative resistance and people in
social movements often engage this creative resistance as they talk to each other.
An important power dynamic associated with control is the assumption upon which the
acceptance that some people, ideas, institutions, governments or ways of living are assumed
to be superior and to bring "progress" to those who are (and that which is) "backward" or
240
Chris Rohmann, A world of ideas: A dictionary of important theories, concepts, beliefs and thinkers (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 194-195.
By postcolonial, I mean both an historical period after the collapse of European (and other)
colonial states and the critical approach that intellectually takes apart the assumptions, ideas and
effects of colonialism.
242
This refers to what is also called cultural imperialism: Rohmann, A world of ideas, 195.
This refers to what is also called neocolonialism: Rohmann, A world of ideas, 195.
244
Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white mask (New York: Grove Press, 1994; Originally published in
French under the title Peau Noire, Masques Blancs, 1952, Editions Du Seiul, Paris).
245
Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1965), Originally published in
French under the title Les damnes de la terre (Paris, France: Francois Maspero, editeur, 1961).
112
246
"primitive" in comparison. In other words, this control mostly gets "accepted as the
Brookfield suggests. In his book, Culture and imperialism, Edward Said quotes D . K.
T h e basis of imperial authority was the mental attitude of the colonist. [His or her]
acceptance of subordination — through a positive sense of interest with the parent
state, or through inability to conceive of any alternatives — made [the British] empire
durable [emphasis mine].241
when she speaks of the need to decolonize the social imagination. 248 Decolonizing the social
imagination means that people must learn to imagine that another city or country or world is
possible and act toward making what they imagine a reality. And people often learn to
Although "overseas" imperial colonization still exists, 249 the kind of colonization to which
Chela Sandoval refers happens within societies, including so called "developed" countries
such as the United States. 250 She suggests that U. S. Third World feminists align with Franz
Rohmann, World of ideas, 194. Because of the scope of this dissertation, I am greatly simplifying the
tremendously complex dynamics of colonialism and postcolonialism here. As those situated in the
intellectual lineage of postcolonial and poststructural theory would be quick to point out, one
important dynamic that I am suppressing is that there are tremendously lively and creative pockets of
resistance in any colonial system.
247
Edward Said, Culture and imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 11. Edward Said is
quoting "distinguished conservative historian of empire" D. K. Fieldhouse from his 1965 book, the
colonial empire: A comparative survey from the eighteenth century (New York, McMillan, 1991), 103.
Although D. K. Fieldhouse's historical analysis about colonialism may be challenged as partial or
wrongheaded, his observations about the impact of colonialism on the mind and spirit seem accurate
to me.
4
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 183.
In fact, Native American nations, Puerto Rico, Iraq, and even the District of Colombia are
colonized, to bring it on home to the U. S. of A.
She is referring to what is called neocolonialism or the "new" colonialism.
113
Fanon's idea that there is colonization whenever a society "freezes social hierarchy into
place,"251 and goes on to say that "a society that freezes social hierarchy in place is a society
in which liberty and justice between human beings is impossible to achieve." For example,
there is evidence of this kind of colonization within the United States even though the
United States history shows that the practice of these principles of liberty and justice is
certainly evolving and far less than perfect.252 All too often in the United States, people
have experience the practice of a liberty and "'justice' that naturalizes hierarchy through
domination [and is] constructed in a fashion that serves the dominant order. . . not liberty
Chela Sandoval also agrees with Franz Fanon's insight that the humanity of both those in
the position of being colonizer and those being colonized — a person or group could find
themselves in a position of being one, the other or even both — have their humanity
diminished by colonization. In other words, the ways that we all see, think, feel and act are
"under the influence" of a domination that diminishes our humanity unless we strive to
251
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 127.
252
The struggle for emancipation of slaves, suffrage for women and sovereignty for Native
Americans are all examples of the colonization inherent in a country whose guiding principles include
liberty and justice.
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 127. For those intellectuals who would question the
interpretation of the United States as having naturalized hierarchy through domination, I offer a
statement about that hierarch and its effects on justice by philosopher and public intellectual, Cornel
West. His interpretation is appropriately strong, saying, A specter of despair haunts. . . America. The
quality of our lives and the integrity of our souls are injeopardy. Wealth inequality and class polarisation are
- with ugly consequencesfor the most vulnerable among us. The lethal power of global corporate elites and
! managerial bosses is at an all-time high. Spiritual malnutrition and existential emptiness are rampant. The
precious systems of caring and nurturing are eroding. Market moralities and mentalities —fuelled by economic
imperatives to make a profit at nearly any cost —yield unprecedented levels of loneliness, isolation and sadness.
114
Liberatory learning through conversation in social movements contributes to this project of
decolonizing the imagination, which not only benefits those participating in the social
movement, but also benefits those in the wider society by increasing the possibilities for all
people to become more fully human. Because of this, Chela Sandoval goes on to suggest a
analyzing the practices of U. S. Third World feminists. Tracing an outline of how she
developed her method offers insight for analyzing talk and conversation threads across time
Feminism, the consciousness and practices of U.S. Feminists of Color from roughly 1968-
1988. Alice Yun Chai succincdy expresses the vision of U. S. Third World Feminism during
What "feminism" means to women of color is different from what it means to white
women. Because of our collective histories, we identify more closely with
international Third World sisters than with white feminist women . . . A global
feminism, one that reaches beyond patriarchal political divisions and national ethnic
boundaries, can be formulated from a new political perspective.254
Chela Sandoval suggests that U. S. Third World Feminists produced social innovations for
organizing opposition to the dominant order. The dominant order, as seen through the eyes
of these U. S. Third World feminists, also included the hegemony inherent in "second wave"
feminism that they interpreted as essentially a White women's movement. Although U.S.
Third World Feminists participated sporadically in this "second wave" White women's
movement, they largely interpreted White feminist's call for "unity" under the banner of
254
Alice Yun Chai, "Toward a holistic paradigm for Asian American Women's Studies: A synthesis of
feminist scholarship and women of color's feminist politics," Women's international studiesforum 8, no. 1
(1985): 59-66.
115
"women" to be a smokescreen for White women's deeper and real need for homogeneity
that would allow them to sidestep thorny issues of race and class. The social innovation
World Feminism features this social innovation in approach to opposition prominendy. She
says,
Typical of her intellectually concentrated style of writing, Chela Sandoval packs a lot into this
definition that is worth unpacking because in later chapters this concept of differential
Chela Sandoval believes that since the 1960s, people in most groups or branches within
social movements have organized their opposition to "dominant and oppressive powers"
with great fidelity for one particular ideological standpoint or mode. To illustrate her point,
standpoints that different contemporary social movement groups have used to organize their
When groups of people within social movements declare fidelity to only one of these
ideological positions and dig their feet in, a problem arises. Eventually such movements get
divided from within. For instance, die "second wave" White Feminist movement developed
separate schools of feminism (e.g. socialist feminism, lesbian separatism, liberal feminism).
Each of those schools developed and adopted different oppositional tactics that all too often
were mutually exclusive, causing divisions and disagreement within the overall movement.
Chela Sandoval also argues that organizing opposition within a single ideological stance is no
longer effective against the new cultural logics of the "globalizing neocolonial forces of late
capital."258 These neocolonial forces that social movements face are so complex that it is no
long possible for people to "make sense of reality as it unfolds" because the forces have the
capacity to rapidly absorb and co-opt opposition through what Chela Sandoval calls the
"advertising culture." She claims that the time when it was "possible to know exacdy who
you are and where you stood" is past and this renders single standpoint opposition strategies
impotent.
The good news brought by Chela Sandoval is that U. S. Third World Feminists have made a
paradigm shift in thinking about how to organize opposition in the face of such complex
"enact one or more of the four ideological positionings. . . but rarely for long, and rarely
257
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 53-57; A complete description of Chela Sandoval's topology
of oppositional resistance is beyond the scope of the current discussion, but tracing an outline of her
thinking will hopefully assist the reader in understanding die usefulness of her insights for informal
education.
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 15-16.
117
Figure 5.4. Chela Sandoval's modes of oppositional consciousness
Modes of oppositional consciousness can be thought of as standpoints that community organizers
take to develop and justify their strategies for opposing injustice. Examples of social movement
groups that consistently adopted one of these modes of opposition are offered.
examples: examples:
National Organisation for Women Nation ofIslam
League of United Latin American Citizens Chicano movement's A^ldn
Martin Luther King & Freedom movement Lesbian separatist (e.g. Michigan Womyn'sMusic
Festival)
example: U. S. ThirdWorWFeminism
supremacist
n o t only claim differences, but assert
revolutionary that those differences provide access to
argues for a fundamental a higher evolutionary level than that
restructuring of categories by attained by those who hold social
which the dominant is ordered to power
lead society to function beyond examples:
domination and subordination While the most obvious example is the extremism
of white supremacy, subordinated groups sometimes
examples:
claim that their experiences of oppression and
Black Panthers and Brown Berets
American Indian Movement double-consciousness afford them higher ethical and
US Marxists and Socialist Feminism moral vision. For instance women might claim
V
Reference: Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the
that their experiences prepare them to be more
compassionate and ethical leaders or People of
Color might claim that their experiences of
oppression better prepare them to address the needs
Oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: University of
ofallpeople
Minnesota Press, 2000), 53-61.
118
adopting the kind of fervid belief systems and identity politics that tend to accompany their
construction." 259 They assume that there are "manifold positions for truth."260 N o one
ideological stance can be judged as being better than another without context, without
examining what the most effective stance might be given what a group might be up against
self-consciously to secure influence and interrupt "shifting currents of power." 261 This
flexible strategy is what Chela Sandoval calls "differential consciousness and movement."
Third World Feminists' acceptance into the "second wave" White women's feminist
movement. 262 According to Chela Sandoval, white women initially misunderstood these
''When [Feminists of Color] were there, they were rarely there for long" went the
usual complaint. Or, "they seem to shift from one type of women's group to
another, and another." They were mobile (yet ever present in their "absence")
members of this, as well as of other race, class, and sex liberation movements. 263
What White feminists 264 failed to recognize is that the U. S. Third World Feminists'
supports the use of fluid identities, combining the "strength to confidently commit to a well-
Differential consciousness and movement also allows practitioners the "grace to recognize
and act on alliances with others committed to egalitarian relations." Recognizing this quality
of flexibility and differential becomes important in future chapters, especially in the analysis
of conversations linked to processes of collective identity among the New Majority. People
in a movement of movements like the New Majority must traverse identities, issues, and
social habits that present obstacles for liberation (e.g. sexism, racism, ableism, classism,
Being able to engage these multiple levels of complexity in conversation requires such a
In the next section, a foundation for defining the learning tasks involved in social movement
movement with insights from the work of decolonial theorist and semiotician Roland
Barthes.
that goes on in the radical talk and conversation of social movements is rooted in her re-
definition of radical love. As bell hooks observes, "it is difficult to imagine that love really
120
has the power to change everything," but Chela Sandoval argues that love — as she defines
She affirms that love can break through whatever controls understanding and community,
she affirms as she describes a "hermeneutics of love that can create social change," a "love
that can access and guide our theoretical and political movidas — revolutionary maneuvers
toward decolonized being." 266 Chela Sandoval specifies love n o t as a feeling or an attitude,
but as a m e t h o d of interpretation, a set of procedures and practices that allow people access
both inside and outside colonized thinking. She draws on the insights of U.S. Third World
Feminist writers such as Gloria Anzaldua, E m m a Perez, Trinh Minh-ha and Cherrie Moraga
and thinks with the semiology of Roland Barthes 267 and the postcolonial theory of Franz
Fanon. 268
Chela Sandoval identifies five important and interrelated tasks that she defines as the
265
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 138-139.
266
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 139-140, 169.
267
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 81-82, 86-109, 116-126. Chela Sandoval argues that Roland
Barthes' contributions as a "de-colonial" theorist are underappreciated and should be further
explored by scholars. Roland Barthes was a contemporary of Franz Fanon and was working on the
"white problem" of colonialism. He wondered what mental habits allowed otherwise very decent
white colonizers to avoid decolonizing their minds. For those interested, my January 2006
Qualifying Paper has a section (p. 94-99) that discusses the model that Chela Sandoval has developed
from his work and how it relates to learning.
268
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 83-86, 126-129.
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 113.
121
Figure 5.5. The technologies of love theorized by Chela Sandoval
From Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000), 81-113. Examples of the technologies are included in italics below the definitions.
semiotics deconstruction
profoumd commitment to sign-
reading; reading forms of practice of challenging
domination as artifacts; ability to ideological forms (such
distinguish deformation as artifacts and
meanings) through their
Roland Barthes: "semiology" deconstruction;
Gloria An^aldua: "lafacultdad" showing h o w these
Henry Loins Gates: "signifin"' ideological forms are
Fran^Fanon: "black, skin, white mask" wedded to maintaining
dominant power
T democratics
?
a process of locating that gathers, drives and orients the other technologies with the
intent of bring about egalitarian social relations or with the aim of producing "love"
Roland Barthes: sowing in
meta-ideologizing
operation of appropriating
dominant ideological forms
<v differential movement
ability to manipulate
consciousness
and using them whole to improvisationally and move
transform them; social through stratified zones of
projection of new and form, meaning, resistance
revolutionary meaning and approach (including
systems to induce social those that are colonized)
justice
W, E. B, DiSois:
Roland Barthes: double consciousness:
revolutionary exnomination U.S. Third World Feminism:
differential consciousness
122
Five conversation learning tasks involved in decolonizing the imagination: Building
a bridge between critical adult education and social movement theory. The
relationship of these learning tasks and Stephen Brookfield's parallel list (see Figure 5.3) is
striking and worthy of far more consideration than is warranted by the scope of this
study. A close reading of Chela Sandoval's technologies of love suggested a way to organize
Stephen Brookfield's critical adult education learning tasks, while also adding the essential
new learning task of differential movement. Figure 5.6 shows a conceptual map of this
organizing process that produces five learning tasks for conversation. Names and
definitions for the five learning tasks were assigned to be accessible for people who study
and work in education. This mapping forms a basis for analyzing people in the New
Majority learn through radical conversation (and radical conversation threads across time) to
decolonize the imagination. The five learning tasks (underlined for emphasis in Figure 5.6)
270
This definition relies on Stephen Brookfield's definition of hegemony as "the process by which
we leam to embrace enthusiastically a system of beliefs and practices that end up harming us and
working to support the interests of others who have power over us": Brookfield, The power of critical
theory, 93.
271
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 82, 85, 109-110, 113, 173.
123
Figure 5.6. Partial mapping of Chela Sandoval's technologies of love
to Stephen Brookfield's critical adult education learning tasks
Underlined terms are used to theorize decolonizing the imagination as five learning tasks found in social
movement learning conversation and conversation threads over time
.. , . . ^* K^ overcoming alienation
meta-ideologizmg < _ Z Z _ > , . .
TT
» e ^— p^—^
combined reclaiming reason
challenging ideology
going beyond deforming ideology
o
combined
democratic commitment to
equal distribution of power
124
3. going beyond Going beyond deforming ideology is to project new and
deforming ideology: revolutionary meaning systems that liberate those under
domination. This makes a move to meta-ideology by making
a liberatory movement in identity and perception. 272
mental gears. T h e fifth learning task is the guiding moral force that directs all the others:
democratic commitment t o equal distribution of power. This last task assures that learning is
accountable to the goal of making the world work for everyone.
Chela Sandoval's insights also suggest a key relationship to indicate in the model: the
serves to guide to the other four tasks. Further interpreting these five conversation learning
tasks through Paulo Freire's modes of breaking down ideas {deconstructiori) and putting
ideas back together {construction), adds another layer of relationship to the model, as shown
in Figure 5.7. T h e first two learning tasks involve deconstruction or breaking down what is
272
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 82, 85, 109-110, 113, 173.
273
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 82, 110, 173.
274
Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 82, 85, 111, 116-126, 173.
125
This model for analyzing conversations in social movements builds bridges linking the
insights of Chela Sandoval, Stephen Brookfield and Paulo Freire.
126
going on to get at hidden meanings: perceiving hegemony and unmasking power. The
second two learning tasks involve construction or finding a way to make change and put
things back together in liberatory way: going beyond deforming ideology and shifting
mental gears. The fifth learning task is the guiding moral force that directs all the others:
democratic commitment to equal distribution of power. This last task assures that learning
This model for decolonizing the imagination provides a more nuanced understanding of
how people in social movements learn through conversation in a distinctive way. The next
section shows how Mel King's 2003 New Majority Conference speech models the process of
learning through radical conversation and talk among participants in the New Majority.
La facultad is the capacity to see in the surface phenomena the meaning of deeper
realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. . . Those who are pushed out of
the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized.
Gloria An^aldua275
The only way we can [overcome oppression] is by creating a whole structure that
touches every aspect of our existence, at the same time as we are resisting
Audre ljordi76
Social movements such as the New Majority often promote and involve distinctive learning
perceive that reality is a process undergoing constant transformation. They believe in their
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/ JLafrontera: The new mestizo. (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books,
1999), 60.
Audre Lorde, Sister outsider. Essays and speeches (Berkeley, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 103.
127
own capacity to engage themselves in a struggle for creating liberatory change to that reality
so that "a new informed humanity" can emerge. O f particular focus and potential is such
radical conversation and talk in the N e w Majority. Radical conversations and talk identifies
n o t only the contradictions and root causes for problems that prevent a new informed
humanity from emerging, b u t also identifies revolutionary new ways to think about these
After Mel King finished his 2003 N e w Majority Conference keynote address, Jose Masso
asked that everyone gathered use the speech as a context and a model for conversations
about the N e w Majority. Behind Jose Masso's suggestion is an understanding of the deeper
significance that the communications of people like Mel King play in social movements. Mel
King is an example of an "elder," not in the sense of age but in the sense of his experience,
leadership, skills and ability to pass along that experience to others. T h e biblical meaning for
"elder" confers a certain quality of leadership. An elder has deep knowledge of and
knows how to assess the health and direction of the [community], and [he or she]
knows people, knows their needs, troubles, and weaknesses. . .
[An elder] knows h o w sensitive they are, how they can hurt one anoth-
er, h o w stubborn they can be, and how slowly and patiendy they must be
led. A n d when [an elder] doesn't know these things, [he or she] is quick to find
277
answers.
A n elder is also a teacher, w h o carries within himself or herself a vocation to protect, guide,
and nourish the community through words and actions. In social movements like the N e w
Majority, elders like Mel King also carry the history of a community's organizing not only in
their memories, but in their very bodies which they have often laid out in the way of harm in
Alexander Strauch and Paul Santhouse, Biblical Eldership Discussion Guide (Colorado Springs, CO:
Lewis and Roth, 2005), 6-11.
128
past struggles. That is why there is often a certain palpable electricity and rapt attention in
the room when elders tell stories and offer advices. So, a talk given by someone like Mel
King, who carries these deeper meanings of eldership for Boston has the quality of
education, where an elder has the capacity, usually passed down through a historical lineage,
dutiful obligation. Because of their thick understanding of the tasks to be undertaken, such
elders serve as conduits; their words and stories are able to produce what might be called
"aha!" or "arrow in the heart" moments of experience in those who are present and
listening.278
Understanding Jose Masso's request that people at the New Majority conference use Mel
King's speech as a model and guide for conversation can be interpreted with fuller meaning
in the context of transmission. Not only did Mel King transmit ideas for people in the New
conversation and solving problems. The speech includes examples of all five learning tasks
in the model developed for analyzing talk that decolonizes the imagination. Figure 5.8 recalls
the speech, this time separating the speech into five parts to illustrate each of the five
For readers who are interested in an anthropological rather than spiritual understanding of what I
mean by transmission, I suggest exploring the work of Keith Basso, especially chapters 2 and 3 of his
book Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
129
Figure 5.8. Decolonizing the imagination in practice: Five
learning tasks for radical conversation in social movements
Passages from Mel King's speech that apply directly to the learning task are underlined.
as he points out the deforming social and emotional effects experienced by People of Color
when they accept being defined as "minority" by other people. In the past, People of Color
might have accepted the label of "minority" as "natural" in the sense that its use was so
widespread that it appeared to be a common sense that required no questions. But Mel King
says "none of the groups here are a minority on this planet!" He performs the learning task
of unmasking power as he reads die hidden mode of domination, saying that the word
"minority" renders People of Color to be less than who they really are and goes on to
advocating that it be rejected, Mel King goes on to suggest new ways of thinking and acting
that can be engaged instead, moving into the tasks of construction. He demonstrates the
learning task of going beyond deforming ideology to point out that People of Color have
"always been the majority" and urges them to instead organize around being the "New
Majority." To refuse the label "minority" as not true, and instead to go beyond that
become synonymous with the Boston New Majority, "We've got the numbers!"279
shifting gears through systems of meaning, resistance and approach through his suggestion
that people in the New Majority seek to develop a "culture of power." He does this by first
lifting up a successful strategy from the past when the Asian, Black and Latino communities
sought to demonstrate the "power of culture" as they cultivated pride in their cultures and
communicated that pride in their actions. Now, Mel King suggests that this phrase can be
turned around on its head as a fresh strategy for the New Majority Initiative that encourages
people to develop a "culture of power." To have a culture of power means not only to
come to a place of understanding how power works. It also means to understand how power
works deeply inside, so that thinking and acting out of a culture of power becomes as second
nature to People of Color as thinking and acting with the power of culture.
this part of his speech by outlining what he believes is the "awesome responsibility" of the
culture of power driven by individual gain when he says "we are defining ourselves as people
committed to making the city work for everyone," not merely a city that works for People of
Color. Mel King paraphrases historian Vincent Harding's words from There is a river: The
"We've got the numbers" is actually a slogan that Mel King learned when he assisted in
the successful 1970 mayoral campaign of Kenneth Gibson in Newark, New Jersey.
134
black struggle for freedom in A.mericam when he says, "The struggle is for a new informed
humanity. It's not for equal access in a dehumanized society." He is urging people in the
New Majority not to seek to increase their power and participation in Boston as it is right
now, but rather to catalyze a transformation in Boston so it becomes the city and community
it ought to be.
In this chapter, I argue that informal education in social movements can not only be
understood to foster learning through conversation in general, but also through a specific
form of radical conversation where people engage in learning tasks to decolonize the
imagination. This radical conversation and talk serves three separate purposes in the analysis
First, radical conversation, and radical conversation threads continue over time, are useful to
identify and analyze because they have particular potential to yield insights about learning in
the New Majority. Later on in Chapter 10, "To be or not to be 501(c)(3)," a story is told
about a radical conversation thread among people in the New Majority that stretched over
several years and most likely continues on as this ethnography is being completed.
Second, analyzing particular talk with these qualities — Mel King's twenty minute talk at the
2003 New Majority conference — and comparing that talk to insights from both critical
adult education and social movement theory leads to an analytic model for decolonizing the
imagination with five learning tasks. The entire model for decolonizing the imagination is
280
Vincent Harding, There is a river. The black struggle forfreedom in America (New York: Vintage Books,
1981).
135
applied to uncover learning through conversation among people in the New Majority. In
Chapter 10, "To be or not to be 501(c)(3), the model of learning tasks that decolonize the
imagination is used to collect and organize data from a radical conversation thread. In this
case, applying the model provided a thick interpretation of what people in the New Majority
Finally, the separate learning tasks described within the model and in particular the learning
task of differential movement, are applied to provide a deeper analysis of more general
conversation. In Chapter 7, "The purpose and vision of prophetic naming," the learning
task of differential movement is used to interpret how people talked the meaning of the
name "New Majority" over the five years of this ethnographic study.
The next chapter describes prophetic naming as the particular form that informal
education takes in the New Majority by telling the story of the New Majority's
elected to public office in the November 2003 elections that took place soon after
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
+
new majority situated learning; new majority
environment purpose &
people form the values
new majority Chapter 7
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& learning in a geography of
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difference and struggle
A community of practice formed within one particular social movement has its own unique
process of collective identity, its own distinguishing environment, its own purpose and
values, and its own intention to foster learning. In other words, a particular social
movement is likely to have its own distinctive system of informal education. So far, in telling
the story of the New Majority, the environment or associational setting from "back in the
day" has been presented. An introduction to the 2003 New Majority Conference generated
an approach for looking at how learning is fostered through radical conversations or talk.
This chapter takes a step backward for a wider perspective in order to explore what can be
said about the whole system of informal education within the New Majority. Figure 6.1
places this chapter within the theoretical mapping of informal education in social
This chapter begins with the story of the New Majority's participation in the January 2004
Community Inaugural for People of Color elected to public office in the November 2003
elections. The events suggest an emerging general theme, "prophetic naming," that most
closely describes the spirit and distinctive arrangement of informal education of the New
281
Walter Bruggermann, The prophetic imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers,
2001), 6.
137
Figure 6.1. Informal e d u c a t i o n in t h e N e w Majority
The areas shaded like this box show how this chapterfitsinto the informal education model
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
J
new majority situated learning: n e w majority
purpose &
environment people form the values
Chapters
4&8
new majority Chapter 7
community of
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collective identity n e w majority?"
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Chapters Chapter 9
5&10 relying on the wisdom of
uncovering groups, taking agenda-
implicit learning limiting access and building to the
participation,
by "decolonizing streets
& learning in a geography of
the imagination"
difference and struggle
As I walked from the frigid evening air of January 10th, 2004 into the Community Inaugural
being held at Roxbury's Twelfth Baptist Church, the first thing I heard were the sounds of
recorded African American gospel choir music. The sense of social change history in this
particular church was poignant, because "when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a
doctoral student at Boston University in the early 1950s, he frequently graced the pulpit of
Roxbury's Twelfth Baptist Church, perfecting the soaring oratory that would help him lead a
movement."283
As I entered the back of the sanctuary, I could immediately see the New Majority presence.
Representatives sat at a table, registering new members and selling buttons with a design of
overlapping circles and the slogan, "New Majority: Uniting Boston's Communities of
Color." Although I did not know people from the New Majority would be here, I was not
surprised at their presence. The "word on the street" was that enthusiasm generated by the
New Majority had made an important contribution to the successful November 2003
election of Felix Arroyo as the first Latino on the Boston City Council a few months before.
Since then, there had been news articles written by pundits who pondered Felix Arroyo's
"surprising victory." He had received the second largest number of votes in the field of At-
Large City Council candidates. Yet few writers acknowledged the New Majority by name.
282
Melucci, Challenging codes, 1.
283
John C. Drake "Church honors King's struggle for civil rights: Service reaches out to younger
generation." Boston Globe, 14 January 2008, Local News.
Instead, news organizations like the Boston Globe chose to attribute the victory to what they
The. formal purpose of this Community Inaugural was to celebrate and bless through
ecumenical benediction n o t only the election of Felix Arroyo b u t also the re-election of
African Americans Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey to the Boston City Council. However,
this event also included what I interpret as an informal community inauguration and blessing
program notes as a participant itself. A brief description of the N e w Majority included the
following paragraph,
T o lead off the inaugural program, the N e w Majority sent representatives from each of the
constituent communities — Mel King for the Black community, Lydia Lowe 284 for the Asian
American community and Jose Masso 285 for the Latino community — to give brief remarks
and issue an "open call to build the N e w Majority into an ongoing coalition." They also
284
Director of the Chinese Progressive Association for over 15 years, Lydia Lowe has coordinated
some remarkable organizing efforts within the Boston's Asian American community.
285
Jose Masso, a native of Puerto Rico, has a special interest in Latinos in sports and society and was
Senior Associate Director of Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society (CSSS) between
1997 and 2000. He has been an activist in various community organizations and had been a member
of Boston Mayor Menino's Office of Cultural Affairs Planning and Assessment Advisory Task Force.
He is currendy the host of WBUR's popular bilingual radio program "Con Salsa."
140
T h e N e w Majority was mentioned often in the many speeches. However the nature of re-
elected District 7 City Councilor Chuck Turner's remarks has implications for understanding
more about the distinctive nature of informal education in the N e w Majority. Speaking of
both Team Unity 286 and the N e w Majority, Chuck Turner said,
When such a compelling public speaker with a demonstrated capacity to mobilize people at
the grassroots makes a reference like this, there are often hidden layers of meanings for
community insiders. T h e Promised Land metaphor that Chuck Turner associated with the
New Majority to carries a number of resonances for Boston's N e w Majority and also
education activity.
The "Promised Land" is a metaphor that holds deep meaning for African Americans; it is
associated with certain migration patterns and histories. Migration to Boston is legacy that
will be discussed in detail later as part of Chapter 4, "The N e w Majority begins "back in the
day." For African Americans, the Promised Land is often used as a metaphor for the "Great
Migration" or "Flight to the North," of African Americans from the rural South who
relocated to the Northern cities. T h e first trickles of migration began in 1910-1915 and did
286
In 2003, the New Majority and Team Unity were founded based on conversations about the
change in the 2000 Census for the City of Boston when People of Color were first recognized as
being more than 50% of Boston's residents. Team Unity is an alliance of the Boston City Councilors
of color who often choose to vote as a block on issues affecting communities of color, much to the
annoyance and sometimes even ridicule, of many of the other Boston City Councilors and Boston
officials. Chuck Turner's involvement as one of the founders of the idea of the New Majority is
described in detail as part of Chapter 4, "The New Majority begins "back in the day."
not slow until around 1970. Historical accounts describe how African Americans sought
to live out the promise of emancipation that seemed elusive in the South and moved to the
North hoping to escape racism and to find what were perceived as increased opportunities
for work. Like the N e w Majority, the Great Migration can be characterized as a movement
of people seeking equality and justice in both relationships and opportunities. Boston was
one of the northern destinations in the Great Migration. In 1970, just under half of the
people who identified as Black in Greater Boston had been born in Massachusetts and 45%
reported that they were originally from the American South or other U. S. states.288
Migration also played a role in creating a sense that "we've got the numbers" in the N e w
Majority. As community organizer Atieno Davis pointed out at an April 2004 N e w Majority
meeting, "how we got to be the N e w Majority is the immigrant population." For many
decades, Boston has been undergoing what government planners call an "historic. . .
revolution" of demographics. 289 The numbers are dramatic. From 1990 to 2000, while die
percentage of people who identified themselves as White living in metro Boston decreased
by 2.5%,290 the number of people in Greater Boston who identified as Black increased by
11.3%. The 2000 Census reported that people who identified as Black in Greater Boston
were culturally and linguistically diverse; 27% reported being born outside of die United
States (up from 6% in 1970)291 and 28% reported speaking a language other than English
287
Milton Semett, Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
288
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston: Meeting the needs of the region's people (Cambridge, MA:
Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, 2003), 80.
289
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston, 80.
290
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston, 80.
291
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston, 82.
142
292
(Haitian Creole and Cape Verdean Creole, African languages, French and Portuguese). In
the 1990s, the people who identified as Asian in the Greater Boston also grew by 71.9%,
with 3A reporting that they had been born outside the United States. At the same time, the
number of people identifying as Latinos in Greater Boston increased by 49%.293 So, when
People of Color became a majority of the population in the City of Boston, according to the
immigrants to Boston. This immigration flow from outside the United States runs parallel to
the African American metaphor of African Americans migrating North within the United
States, which was associated with renewed hopes and dreams for a "Promised Land."
The Promised Land that Chuck Turner links to the New Majority in his speech also refers to
a well-known biblical prophecy from the Old Testament about a place that God promise
to the descendants of Abraham. In this prophecy, God promises to deliver these people out
of slavery to a place where they can create develop relationships with God, with each other
and with the land that will be a model to the world. In Exodus 3:17 of the Bible, God says,
"And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery into . . . a land flowing with milk
and honey."
When Chuck Turner mentioned the Promised Land at an important spiritual home of
Martin Luther King, he was invoking the memory of the well-known Promised Land sermon
and linking the spirit of that sermon to the New Majority.294 On April 3 rd , 1968, Martin
Luther King preached at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple Church of God after attending a
292
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston, 82.
293
Charles Euchner, Governing Greater Boston, 82.
294
Follow-up conversation with Chuck Turner after the Inaugural confirmed this point.
protest march for striking garbage workers in Memphis. Although in past sermons, h e had
mentioned "the promised land," this particular sermon has poignant meaning because it was
his last; he was assassinated the next day. T h e image of the Promised Land also is imbued
with the quality of transmission associated with elders that was discussed earlier. In the
. . . I have been to the mountaintop. . . A n d I've looked over. A n d I've seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that
we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
Finally, the later intellectual and organizing tradition of Martin Luther King is at the center
of the Boston organizing efforts that have actively engaged Chuck Turner. 295 For example,
he was one of the founders of the Fund the Dream Campaign, which places the concept of
the triple evils of racism, materialism and militarism "at the heart of an action agenda for
change." Martin Luther King introduced the idea of this triple evil to the public exacdy a
year before his death at the "Beyond Vietnam" speech given in N e w York o n April 4th,
1967 at Riverside Church. O n e of the Chuck Turner's editorials in the online journal Black
Commentator96 makes an explicit connection between Martin Luther King Jr.'s Promised
295
One example is Chuck Turner's District 7 Roundtable. For over ten years, one Saturday morning
each month, residents of Roxbury and other communities have gathered for the District 7
Roundtable at the First Church of Roxbury ("the white church on the hill in Eliot Square) to become
informed, have conversations, offer feedback and share a free meal. Everyone is welcome and in the
half a dozen or so roundtables I have attended, the participants have crossed the spectrum from
people out of work looking to network for a job and people living without a house seeking a free
meal to hard-core intellectuals longing to thrash through theoretical problems and experienced
community activists seeking conversation and camaraderie. The District 7 Roundtable functions as
a grassroots public policy forum that Chuck Turner uses to guide his political agenda.
296
Chuck Turner is on the editorial board of the Black Commentator, an online political journal that
publishes the analytical work of public intellectuals of color.
144
T h e "promised land" was n o t a green pasture just over the hill, b u t a new field of
struggle in which African Americans would add their voices and unique experiences
to the arsenals of human resistance to evil.297
These stories about the Promised Land can be considered to be a prophetic allegory n o t only
for the N e w Majority but for informal education in the N e w Majority. T h e Promised Land
symbolizes a state of earned inheritance and a spiritually sensitive place imbued with
possibility. T h e Promised Land can also be described as a social laboratory that supports
people as they learn h o w to reach the state of enlightened humanity that is their legacy
practice had these.prophetic qualities as well.298 In his speech at the 2004 Community
Inaugural, he also suggested that People of Color in Boston had the opportunity to create a
community of practice that could "build a civilization that will correct the errors of the
past."
also echoed in the work of social scientists. As discussed earlier, Alberto Melucci's work is
particularly relevant to the study of informal education in social movements because of the
cultural lens he uses as a focus. In fact, the lead-in to this discussion was a quote by
Social movements are prophets of the present. What they possess is . . . the power
of the word. They announce the commencement of change; not, however a change
297
Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon. "Dr. King's Global Vision: Today's Missing Ingredient," Black
Commentator'73, (15 January 2004),
http: / / www.blackcornmentator.com/ 73 / 73_cover_since_mlk. html.
298
Follow-up conversation with Chuck Turner after the Inaugural confirmed this point.
299
Susan Klimczak, "Decolonizing the imagination: Some thoughts on education and social
movements." unpublished qualifying paper, Harvard Graduate School of Education, January 2006.
in the distant future but one that is already a presence. They force the power out
into the open and give it a shape and a face. They speak a language that seems to be
entirely their own, but they say something that transcends. . . and speaks to all.300
Later in his master book, Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age,
Alberto Melucci suggests that ideas generated within social movement communities of
practice often begin to name and articulate how people are already challenging existing
unjust systems of thinking and acting.301 This process of naming and articulating the idea of
"what is" then suggests how pushing these ideas further can offer opportunities for
developing more just systems of thinking and acting in the future. Other social movement
theorists mentioned earlier who take a more directly cognitive approach, such as Ron
Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, go so far as to say that social movements function as "social
Both Chuck Turner's remarks about the New Majority being "the Promised Land" and
Alberto Melucci's notion of social movement as "prophet of the present," suggest that there
is indeed some thing prophetic about informal education in social movements. Focusing on
the prophetic also reinforces an earlier claim that the New Majority can be described as a
community of practice propelled together by a shared intellectual and moral history and
committed to fostering learning to explore the ideas and actions that promote an enlightened
humanity.
300
Alberto Melucci, Challenging codes, 1.
301
Klimczak, Susan. "Decolonizing the imagination." p. 34-39.
302
Eyerman and Jamison, Social movements.
Alberto Melucci also associates being prophetic with announcing or naming a change that
has already happened. T h e particular name, N e w Majority, announces something that has
happened; People of Color became the majority population in Boston according to the 2000
Census. T h e name " N e w Majority" announces that being a Person of Color in Boston
consequently has a new meaning in the present time and that forming a community of
practice to think, act and learn under that name can help shape w h o People of Color in
Boston can become together in the future. T h e next section explores the theoretical
"Name it and claim it. Word is bond. You feeling me? Just saying. . . "
Teenqgedyouth teacher in the ljearn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn Program challenging his friend
N a m e it and claim it. W o r d is bond. Often, I hear the Boston Youth of Color I work and
learn with call each other out with a variation of these phrases when they challenge friends
who are putting themselves down by not speaking up or by being reluctant to say what they
know to be true about themselves. I believe what the youth mean is this: There is a curious
power in naming what you know (or even what you just want to believe) out loud. O n c e
you name it out loud, something happens inside you. What you know becomes yours, even
if you had doubts before you named it and claimed it. Further, you have made a strong
commitment to keep becoming what you know and to live out the consequences of what
This insight is also connected to a conversation I had at the 2003 N e w Majority Conference.
Raysa, a young Puerto Rican woman who looked to be in her early 20s, approached m e
147
during lunch after an Education break-out session we both attended to talk about our shared
interest in environmental justice. After we spoke for a while, I asked her "What made you
come to this conference?" Raysa said that a friend had called her up and told her about the
conference, but as soon as she heard the name, "New Majority," she did not need to listen
to much else to be convinced. She said, "Something about that name touched me and I said,
'I want to go to that!" She told me that her reaction to the name wasn't logical; she just
knew she wanted to be involved. As I listened to her, I mought that the New Majority had
"named it and claimed it" for her and she wanted to come to the conference as an attempt
to leam, to better understand why and do something with others who felt the same way.
Word is bond. Certainly effects of such naming, claiming and committing can be observed at
the personal level. But how can naming impact the process of collective identity that goes
on in a community of practice?
A clue can be found by returning to Mel King's October 2003 keynote address at the New
Majority Conference presented in the last chapter. He describes the importance in taking
In this passage, Mel King is expressing a collective variation on the theme of "name it and
claim it" and "word is bond" when he breaks down why declaring and acting on a new name
for People of Color in Boston is relevant and important. Naming is an act of self-definition,
an act that ameliorates the efforts of other people to define your culture, your ethnicity or
your race in demeaning ways that "make you less than who you are." Mel King is also saying
148
that within the act of self-definition and naming comes the responsibility and the
m o m e n t u m for people to " m o v e " differently in b o t h their personal lives and together as a
community. Rosa Parks and Long Guang Huang are examples of individuals whose acts of
self-definition sent the message, "I am somebody. I am deserving." In a way, each catalyzed
a whole community to move differently; to demand respect; and to demand what is deserved
T w o other examples that express the collective quality of "name it and claim it; word is
b o n d " come from a N e w Majority gathering at the SEIU union headquarters in lower
Roxbury on April 13, 2004. Barbara Saliaterra picked up o n the theme of history, saying that
taking the name N e w Majority meant a community commitment to "take the rich history of
civil rights to an entirely different level." Another participant said, "The N e w Majority is our
reality. We need to take the possibility in that name and turn it into power together."
T h e significance of this process of reclaiming a collective name can also be found in the
how people who live under oppression and exploitation often face a very "real" and
"palpable" ultimatum: accept theft. The theft he speaks about includes the economic and
political, but it also includes cultural and psychological thefts as well. O n e of the most
describes is the annihilation of "a people's belief in their names." His prescription is to
303 Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature (Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann, 1986).
address this with a "creative culture of resolute struggle," where the people "have to speak
the united language of struggle contained in each of their languages. . . They must discover
their various tongues to sing the song: 'A people united can never be defeated.'" Ngugi Wa
Thiong'o says that reclaiming one's name in one's own language begins to decolonize the
mind, and helps to free the thoughts from control and constraint by others who seek power
over them.
At the New Majority Conference in 2003, Mel King pointed out that the act of naming the
New Majority has at least two important dimensions. First the act of naming the New
Majority was an act of rejecting a deforming definition made by others, an act that places
doubt in the truth of the "common sense" in calling people of color "minorities." Second,
the act of naming the New Majority was an act of self-definition, of claiming the right to
Prophetic naming closely describes the overall process of informal education in the New
Majority as shown Figure 6.1. Informal education in the New Majority's community of
practice is a process of collective identity, or as New Majority member Peter Lin Marcus
puts it, "unity for a purpose," that invokes a prophetic name. The process of collective
identity is prophetic in the sense that the New Majority can be thought of as the earned
process of change that is nascent and seeded within Boston's Communities of Color. The
name, "New Majority," represents a way for People of Color in Boston to decolonize how
they think about themselves and how they can imagine the future. As New Majority member
150
Gibran Rivera expressed it colloquially, the name "New Majority" is "the most innovative
thing we have."
Within the construction of that prophetic name is an acknowledgment of past and present
injustice, as well as a commitment to creating new relationships and learning that will lead to
justice for all. Mel King's talk about self-definition suggested ways to shape a new
community learning process to seek meaning for the name New Majority through
conversation and action. The 2003 New Majority Conference initiated the creation a
community of practice and a process of collective identity engaging the name "New
Majority," as prophetic and "imbued with possibility." The next chapter traces how people
have talked about what the New Majority is over five years of conversation and better
defines the purpose and vision of both the New Majority and the New Majority's distinctive
One important question that needs to be asked is, "What are the purpose and values that
define prophetic naming?" Grace Lee Boggs captures long-term nature of^the process of
collective identity that is at the center of prophetic naming: the process of how ideas about
the New Majority community of practice and ideas within the New Majority community of
practice develop over time, and how those ideas are turned into action. This is a process
In the last chapter, prophetic naming was described as the particular form of informal
education in the New Majority. The purpose and vision of the New Majority is evolving and
will continue to develop and evolve over time because that is the nature of any process of
collective identity. However, a picture of the New Majority's purpose and values can be
painted by looking at the different ways people have talked about the New Majority over
time. This chapter explores how people talked about the meaning of the name "New
Majority" over the five years of this ethnographic study. Figure 7.1 revisits how the purpose
and vision of informal education fit into this dissertation's map for describing prophetic
naming.
304
Grace Lee Boggs and Bill Moyers, Interview from Bill Mayers Journal, 15 June 2007, full interview
transcript available online at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06152007/transcript3.html.
152
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To prepare for a New Majority retreat four years after the 2003 conference, facilitators
Gibran Rivera and Kelly Bates informally interviewed some members from the original 2003
New Majority Initiative Steering Committee to gather advice and reflection. Gibran
Rivera's remarked that one of the insights coming out of these interviews affirmed that
"naming and claiming" the New Majority continues to be an important innovation for this
community of practice. Following up on this insight, analyzing how people talk about what
the New Majority is across the years can paint a larger and more colorful picture of this
innovation.
In this ethnographic study, identifying, collecting and analyzing common themes over many
years of conversation and action has been an indispensable research strategy for detecting
relevant when considering one of the radical conversation learning tasks identified in
Chapter 5: the differential movement or shifting mental gears through systems of meaning,
Looking over the years at what people have said and the symbols they have produced about
what the New Majority is reveals a number of seemingly incongruent definitions for the
"New Majority." In the context of just a few conversations, this seems to point to support a
claim for ambiguity about what "New Majority" means. But, looking over five years of talk
154
This model highlights the task of differential movement, shifting mental gears through
systems of meaning, resistance and approach
The area shaded like the box represents the learning task ofdifferential movement
to get a fuller picture and thinking with the learning tasks developed for decolonizing the
imagination, a different possibility emerges. What people in the New Majority have
produced together is a dynamic field of many meanings about what the New Majority is.
And they move among and between these different meanings as they think and act together,
as they are engaged in the process of collective identity in their community of practice. This
field of many meanings for "New Majority" has built capacity among people in the New
Majority to engage in differential movement, one of the five learning tasks for decolonizing
The rest of this chapter explores the kinds of opportunities that are created within the
community of practice to talk about what the New Majority is and the field of different
meanings for the New Majority that the community of practice generates together in their
evolving process of collective identity. The chapter ends by describing how the acts involved
in generating this dynamic field of multiple meanings are exactly what enables differential
People in the New Majority have always claimed and publicized a definition of who they are.
The original steering committee defined the New Majority as an "initiative" or "the first step
in a process that, once taken, determines subsequent action."305 The first recorded definition
by this New Majority Initiative Steering Committee was included with the invitation
materials for the 2003 Conference. This definition was the initial act of naming the New
305
Definition from Encarta World English Dictionary.
156
Majority in academically oriented language, perhaps reflecting the participation of the
The Census 2000 revealed that the city of Boston is at a turning point with people of
color now comprising a majority of the population in the city. What the data cannot
tell us is how communities can work together at this historic moment to recreate our
social and political institutions, cultural and economic life in order to reflect this
diversity. . .
The purpose of the New Majority conference is to identify a common agenda for
Boston's communities of color and begin to develop strategies and sustainable
structures to promote and build upon that agenda. We hope that [the New Majority]
may serve as a unifying call to action for individuals and organizations that have
demonstrated a commitment to change.
This definition was first made public through conference invitations sent over the Internet,
by email and through the postal mail to activists and community leaders in Boston's
Communities of Color. It has remained a stable definition and some form of it has
continued to be used over the years for the New Majority's public communications.
The New Majority also has a symbol as part of its definition. On every conference invitation
was also a visual definition of "New Majority Initiative," a New Majority logo:
157
T h e design with its four partially overlapping circles does n o t communicate its full meaning
to the outsider. But according to members of the original 2003 N e w Majority Initiative
Steering Committee, the logo has deep symbolism." Each of the four overlapping circles was
intended to represent one of Boston's Communities of Color: Asian, Black, Latino and
Native American, 306 joined inside a larger circle.307 This logo has been reproduced on all
written communications, on a banner which has been faithfully displayed at all 2003 - 2008
political forums and membership meetings, as well as on the button (pictured above) that the
N e w Majority has sold to raise funds. David Ortiz, one of the co-chairs of the N e w Majority
Steering Committee in 2007, has reminded steering committee members at three committee
meetings of the importance in having every communication from the N e w Majority carry the
logo, saying that it was an important part of New Majority "branding." 308 In political
science, symbols such as the N e w Majority logo are considered to have significance because
of their efficient ability to "quickly convey multiple emotions and meanings without verbal
explanation." 309
306
While the Boston Native American community is included in the New Majority and sent
representatives to the 2003 New Majority Conference, their participation has not been sustained
over the years. The Native American community in Boston is small and fragmented and members
often overlap with other communities. Therefore, when I refer to the New Majority constituents as
the "Asian, Black and Latino communities," I am speaking of the practical reality of the communities
represented by active participants.
307 Personal communication, Mel King October 2008.
I have personal experience with the positive impact of the New Majority "brand." For several
years, I wore the New Majority button on my coat. Quite often, in stores or on the T (Boston's
subway) or at community meetings, youth and adults who I did not know would approach me to talk
about the button and the New Majority. Some recognized the logo immediately and knew about the
New Majority; others were drawn to the symbol and wanted to know more about the New Majority.
I would often unpin my button and give it to the person who initiated the talk. Over several years, I
gave away several dozen of the buttons in this way.
3119
Mona Noriega, "Problem definition and agenda-setting: LGBT aging issues," in Proceedings of
the Midwest Political Association, Chicago, Illinois, 6 April 2008, 8-9.
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This stable and public written and visual definition represents the public face of the New
Majority and has everyday utility. When people ask about the New Majority, a definition and
brochure with an explanation and definition can be given to them. Press releases and letters
can be sent out with the New Majority letterhead and include an explanation of the New
According to Alberto Melucci this kind of static definition used by the New Majority is
pragmatic and necessary for communicating the broad unity of purpose of a social
movement, though there is also a much more complicated process of collective identity
going on under the surface. Even though the written description and visual logo of the New
Majority have remained the same over time, in meetings and events since the 2003
conference, what people say when they talk about what the New Majority is does shift and
change, indicating precisely this kind of complicated process going on. This shifting and
changing of meaning suggests that accepting ambiguity and engaging in continuing dialogue
and deliberation about the definition has been and continues to be central to the work of the
One sign that this definitional ambiguity and dialogue was anticipated is conveyed by the
very first sentence describing the "New Majority Initiative." The words that follow the
explanation of the meaning of Boston's 2000 U. S. census results are "what the data cannot
tell us is how communities can work together at this historic moment to recreate our social
and political institutions, cultural and economic life in order to reflect this diversity"
[emphasis added). What this implies is that coming together to develop mutual
understandings of what the New Majority means is exactly the point of the New Majority.
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That is why the N e w Majority is n o t only a prophetic name, b u t also a continuing process of
naming and growing into a name. Said another way, the informal education of prophetic
identity. Central to that process is engaging in a process of dialogue and action linked closely
Looking at the associational settings or contexts where people gather to define what the
N e w Majority is offers some understanding for how this process contributes to learning.
answering, one way or another, the question of "What is the N e w Majority?" informally or
Informally, speakers at N e w Majority gatherings often begin their talks or presentations with
membership meeting Steering Committee member Lydia Lowe began a report on the
310
The use of the word, "gatherings," here means that I am grouping together the data from field
notes from 2003-2009 New Majority membership meetings, steering committee meetings, and
retreats.
311
The New Majority is full of community organizers and nonprofit workers who bring rich and long
experiences of facilitation to gatherings and meetings. Although their skillful facilitation has been
integral to the informal education in the New Majority, a thick analysis of their contributions is
beyond the scope of tiiis dissertation.
160
Another example comes from a discussion that took place at a 2007 Steering Committee
Meeting. Ty dePass started out his report on initial plans for a reworking of the New
Majority brochure by talking about the New Majority's role in supporting some of people's
There is a sense of isolation. People think they are fighting by themselves. They
don't know where to go for help and they are worried about the payback. The New
Majority is this idea, that there's a group that's family that will rally. The New
Majority makes this real for folks.
Even though Lydia Lowe and Ty DePass were both saying that the New Majority is an idea,
each offered a different description of the New Majority. Lydia Lowe claims the New
Majority is "an electrifying idea to bring about social and economic power," while Ty DePass
says the New Majority is "an idea that there's a group that's family that will rally" for
individuals when they feel isolated, suspicious and discouraged. Also, Lydia says the New
Majority is both "an electrifying idea" and "a group of people." In these contexts, other
participants in the meeting listened to the definitions of the New Majority, but the
definitions were not then discussed directly in the meeting. However, it is possible that there
were informal discussions after the meeting between small groups of participants where
round robin fashion what they believe the New Majority is. Typically, there was no time
structured in for discussion or dialogue about what people shared. One example of this
occurred at the 13 April 2004 New Majority meeting, which was held at the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1957 Hall in Lower Roxbury. New Majority
steering committee members Owen Toney and Todd Lee asked people who attended the
meeting to introduce themselves by describing the New Majority. Here are a few of their
responses. Each line is the voice of a different participant arranged in the order in which
they spoke:
"[The New Majority] is a voice to so many who wouldn't have one. The New
Majorityisyouth empowerment"
"The New Majority is an idea that there is potential for great change in Boston"
"[The New Majority] is a way to take a rich history to an entirely new level"
The New Majority is an effort to empower citizens to stand up and vote and make a
difference in the city."
"The New Majority is our reality. The New Majority is a possibility we need to
take and turn it into power."
Again, people had divergent definitions of the New Majority. According to these
possibility and even a shared reality. One observation worthy of note was that people in the
room seemed to listen to one another in a relaxed way without verbally challenging each
other. The facilitators did not summarize or comment on what people said about the New
Majority. This suggests that there was something implicitly intentional and accepted about
There were two occasions when participants shared an explicit intent to develop consensus
about how to define the New Majority: two New Majority retreats in March 2006 and
December 2007. Participants at these retreats were mosdy, but not exclusively, New
Majority Steering Committee members. At each, the professional facilitators engaged to lead
162
the retreats spent over an hour on exercises designed to elicit responses that define the New
Majority. For example, at the New Majority retreat held at the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in Codman Square in March 2006,
facilitator Sandra Mcintosh had the group spend about an hour on a "Vision statement
brainstorm," out of which a consensual statement, 'The New Majority is ." was
generated. Participants wrote phrases or ideas about the New Majority on small square
sticky notes, then stuck them on a large poster paper hung on an easel. Sandra Mcintosh
then asked the group pick out the most important words from among them. Finally, the
group worked together to put the words together in a sentence, which would become the
New Majority vision statement. Notably, the first draft of the sentence left the central noun
Extended discussion about what to put in place for the missing word(s) included suggestions
such as "social movement" and "coalition." The final consensus was to replace the missing
word with "organization." It is likely that that this consensus was influenced by the purpose
of the retreat, which was to lay plans for formalizing the New Majority as a 501(c)(3)
organization and a Political Action Committee (PAC). Two other heated points of
discussion that followed were "whether to use the word power or empower" and "the role
of white people." The final draft of the New Majority vision statement was:
sustained way about what ought to be included or excluded in a definition was during these
retreat discussions.
What was different about the context of the retreat discussion from other contexts where
people talked about what the New Majority is? The purpose of die vision statement
discussion was to develop a momentarily static definition of the New Majority that could be
used for official communications such as brochures, websites, press releases, and
membership materials. What people came to consensus about at the retreat was a working
definition that would serve as the public face of die New Majority community of practice.
The other contexts or associational settings can be described more accurately as being
internal to the New Majority community of practice. So, in fact, these vision statements are
a working definition for the general public, but in the wider education process of prophetic
naming, it is only one in a field of meanings that people in die New Majority are developing
Having one working definition of the New Majority diat serves as a bridge between the
community of practice and "society" is part of the process of collective identity. Up until
now, the informal education of prophetic naming that has concerned this study has mostly
involved learning within the New Majority community. This consensual definition is
intended not only for participants in the New Majority, but also for the Boston community
in general. What this indicates is that the informal education of prophetic naming also
involves learning that is "evolutionary" in the sense that philosopher and sociologist Jiirgen
Habermas proposes, meaning that this community of practice seeks to have their learning
impact "society" and help society "grow and mature." This public definition of the New
Majority serves to announce to "society" the possibility of — and indeed, the imperative for
— developing new ways of understanding, engaging and integrating People of Color into the
structures of power that determine Boston's direction as a city. Steering committee member
Lydia Lowe often reminded people of the need to insist that this evolutionary learning take
place in wider Boston society by asking the question, "Whose Boston is this?" outside of the
Majority chose to take on a public voice by forming an organization. The choice of the
"legitimize" the New Majority learning community as a social actor within Boston civil
and/or a PAC — is creating a type of group democratic voice that already has accepted
legitimacy and comprehensible standing in the wider civil society, a legitimate operational
"educational bridge" for the New Majority to "teach society" and carry its insights to a
broader audience. Later, Chapter 10 "To be or not to be a 501(c)(3)" explores how people
in the New Majority engaged in the learning tasks of decolonizing the imagination as they
Two important questions rise to the surface while exploring these observations related to
• What does the act of leaving meaning ambiguous accomplish for people in the
New Majority?
165
• For what purpose do people in the New Majority return again and again to this
naming and definition process in their gatherings?
Exploring the social movement learning task of differential movement, shifting mental gears
through systems of meaning, provides one plausible explanation. People in the New
Majority are creating a field of multiple meanings that they can move among and between in
Gloria Anzaldua is one of the central figures in U. S. Third World Feminism. The
description of mesti^a consciousness in this quote suggests one approach for understanding
Central to her work, mestizo, consciousness is a state of mind and strategy for managing life
Woman of Color use to negotiate multiple collectivities. Tolerating ambiguity and even
welcoming mat ambiguity can be interpreted as intentional and purposeful for managing and
"The New Majority begins "back in the day", developing this particular process of collective
identity among the New Majority involves building a collective identity that incorporates
many historical and ongoing processes of collective identity in the Asian, Black and Latino
312
Anzaldua, Borderlands, 80.
166
The learning task of differential movement was introduced in Chapter 3 using Chela
through a field of four different ideological positions taken by groups of white women
within "second wave" feminism. In that example, U. S. Third World Feminists positioned
themselves improvisationaUy among and between separatist, supremacist, equal rights and
effective tools for what they were up against in the moment. The salient observation here is
that U. S. Third World Feminists moved among and between already-established systems of
meaning. But, what if there is no already established system of meanings in which to practice
the learning task of differential movement? In the case of the New Majority, the name is
prophetic and at least part of the meaning for "New Majority" has yet to be created.
Since the 1990s when questions of definition and meaning have come into play in intellectual
philosophical theorists as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault and their followers, what this
problem boils down to is that it is difficult for educational ethnographers to find grounds for
313
N. Denzin, and Y. Lincoln. Eds. The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), 1-34.
167
314
"determining the accuracy of one representation as opposed to another." One way out of
this dilemma suggested by educational ethnographers Phil Carspecken and Geoffrey Walford
is to turn again to Jurgen Habermas for his pragmatic theory of truth and say that truth is
always contestable, but what really matters is the field of possible and different meanings.
What is interesting and salient is primarily not some objective meaning and definition, but
how meanings and definitions are used to "coordinate actions between people" (and
between people and the world), and secondarily to persuade others to accept the
ethnographer's statements and explanations that apply the meanings.315 The learning task of
differential movement, of shifting mental gears through systems of meaning, is aligned with
this pragmatic approach to the "crisis of representation" being practiced. Thus, rather than
argue for the single "true-est" meaning for what the New Majority is, a field of different
Categories in a field of different meanings for what the New Majority is rose organically
participants over time (patterns of participation are discussed in detail as part the next
chapter). The overall analysis showed that definitional statements about the New Majority
could be associated with one of five groups of meanings associated it. The first meaning is
the vision and mission statement that people in the New Majority formed by consensus to
present as a public face (as described in the last section). Other meanings identified as part
314
Carspecken, Phil and Geoffrey Walford. Eds. Critical ethnography and education. Amsterdam: JAI,
2001:1-26. It is beyond the scope of this analysis, but interesting to note that the Houston school of
critical ethnography further ties meaning to validity claims in ways I believe many other researchers
might find as interesting to think with as I do.
315
Carspecken and Walford. Critical Ethnography and Education. 6-8.;
168
The New Majority is an idea,
The New Majority is a reality,
The New Majority is a moral consciousness and a set of ethics to think and act with, and,
The New Majority is an effort to form new bonds of relationship.
We need space for the idea to exist, new space for orientation to the idea so that it can reach
a broader group of people.
Gibran Rivera, New Majority Retreat, December 2007
Of these four groups of meanings, the one previously identified in this chapter as most likely
to be the "innovation," is that "the New Majority is an idea." Thinking with Paula Gunn
Allen suggests the possibility that for the New Majority, "the place we live now is an idea,"
bom of People of Color's history of experiences of their exclusion and their resistance to
that exclusion in the social, economic and political life of Boston. And as Gibran Rivera
points out, creating space for that idea to exist and to be shared among People of Color in
Boston is central to the purpose of the New Majority. Ty DePass, a steering committee
member and education director of Roxbury's District 7 Roundtable, also commented that it
Four quotations from New Majority participants best represent their orientation to the New
Majority as an idea:
"The New Majority is an infectious viral idea that sets people moving."
"The New Majority is an electrifying idea, to bring about social and political power."
"The New Majority is an idea that has emotional impact and comets confidence."
"We want to popularize the New Majority as an idea and present it as an exciting
social innovation."
Examining these quotations further suggests that the New Majority is not just any idea, but
an idea that "gets inside people," that spreads among people infectiously and that inspires
people to act differently and with more emotional charge than they might commonly act.
One dictionary definition says an idea is "what you intend to do" or "a plan or a scheme,"
but in the New Majority there is a twist because a process of multiple meaning and
ambiguity is at work in intention and in planning. Adding "viral" to the mix may also mean
that there is unpredictability about when and how the idea will be spread.
One example of a moment when the emotional impact of the idea was palpable took place
on December 8th, 2007 at a New Majority retreat of leaders and members held at the offices
Downtown Boston. In the Saturday afternoon session of the day-long retreat, facilitator
Gibran Rivera had the participants do an exercise designed to get at answers to the question,
"why does the New Majority exist?" Gibran Rivera described the purpose of the exercise,
saying that he hoped this would help participants also answer the question, "what will be the
New Majority's direction?" His response, quoted at the beginning of this section, was, "We
need space for the idea. . . new space for orientation to the idea so that it can reach a broader
group of people."
Participants arranged their chairs into two lines, facing each other and close enough for
conversation. Those sitting across from one another paired off and Gibran Rivera asked
one person in the part to initially b e the questioner and one person to b e the listener. The
task of the questioner was to ask over and over again, "why does the N e w Majority exist?"
listening to each response and repeating the question after each response. After about five
minutes, the roles of questioner and listener were switched. I was one of the participants in
this exercise. 316 T h e emotion in the r o o m was electric and I was n o t the only one w h o felt
After the exercise was complete, participants were asked to rearrange their chairs into a
circle. There was some lingering, a reluctance to separate from the pairs, that Gibran Rivera
noted when he led a discussion about what people felt and heard. When participants
responded to his question of "what did it feel like to listen?," many described the emotion in
the r o o m by saying that it was " d e e p " and "profound." Participants described the impact of
listening to each other, saying, " T w o of us made it deeper," "I felt I was n o t the only o n e "
and "we can get close and separate again." O n e described the emotional meaning of
It was great to know that I have an ally on issues I feel strongly about. Feeling that I
could go down alone on issues, that's what made the separation more profound.
So one way an idea has emotional impact is when that idea breaks a person's sense of
isolation. What these comments suggest is that many people might already have an idea
inside them. However, they feel that they are the only one who has the idea and thinks that
the idea is important. T o hear the idea being communicated by others can be an affirming
316
When I asked permission to attend this retreat from David Ortiz who is one of the New Majority
steering committee co-chairs, David said, "Of course, but there is one condition. You must
participate." I did not contribute to every discussion and exercise at the retreat, but strategically
chose two of the exercises where I felt my voice from the perspective of participant observation
would be appropriate. This was one such moment when I chose to step in and participate. My
partner was Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association.
171
experience that breaks one out of intellectual and emotional loneliness. Or, as one
participant put it, "if we break down the isolation, there are possibilities for change." One
thing that the process of collective identity in prophetic naming accomplishes is interrupting
the illusion of powerless isolation and providing hope for the possibility of change.
Another participant reflected on the quality of listening that allows an idea to be heard in a
To really listen means a willingness to change. If you are not willing to change, you
are not listening.
The person speaking was suggesting that an idea could possibly "go viral" among a group of
When Gibran Rivera asked what "came up" for people during the exercise, some answers
repeated phrases from the New Majority vision statement, such as "bringing people
together," "unify common agenda" and "political power for People of Color." Other people
revealed more of the emotional impact of the New Majority and the process of collective
identity. Maud Hurd, a steering committee member who is the executive director of the
Boston Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), said the New
Majority exists "because we are not waiting for someone to tell us that the New Majority
matters." Edwin Argueta, the Civic Engagement Coordinator for the East Boston
Ecumenical Council (ESAC) said, "because we are in danger." Other participants said,
"because this will be our children's place and we need to be a voice for the children" and "to
break down our isolation." Notice that most of the statements colored by overt or implicit
emotion are phrased with "we" and "us." This pronoun usage suggests something shared in
172
the thinking and feeling about participants' experience of the idea of the New Majority —
and the process of collective identity. Cultural theorist Raymond Williams' observations
about "structure of feeling," might apply here to describe what appears to be a shared but
difficult-to-articulate continuum between thinking and feeling associated with this idea that is
central to the New Majority. What this "structure of feeling" also suggests is a shared
sorrow about the necessity for the idea of the New Majority. This can be the kind of shared
sorrow and compassion that Gloria Anzaldua and Paula Gunn Allen referred to in the quote
at the start of this section, "so much has been taken away that 'the place we live now is an
idea.'" There is also hope embedded in the strength that was required to get to this "place";
the feeling is part of a tradition that allows displaced communities to resist assimilation.
As time has gone on in the process of collective identity within the New Majority, the
steering committee has increased their recognition of the New Majority as an idea. At a 26
February 2008 follow-up meeting to the 2007 retreat, participants decided to redesign of the
New Majority brochure as one of the action items. Until that time, the New Majority had
been using a brochure that took most of its written copy from the original documents from
the 2003 New Majority conference. The brochure committee, David Ortiz, Ty DePass and
Meiko Rollins,317 presented a very rough mock-up of the new brochure at the 27 March 2008
Steering Committee meeting held at the Chinese Progressive Association office. They
decided to maintain the original New Majority logo and have two goals for the other content
in the New Majority brochure. One was to keep the description of the organization in order
to name the rising expression of the New Majority as a political force, to encourage activists
317
David Ortiz works at MassVOTE, Ty dePass is a community organizer in Jamaica Plain and is
also the education coordinator for Councilor Chuck Turner's District 7 Roundtable and Meiko
Rollins works for Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation (Nuestra CDC) which advocates
for the Dudley Street neighborhood in lower Roxbury.
to join or collaborate and to serve as a first contact voice for the media and for alliance-
building outreach.
However, Ty dePass described another goal for the brochure, saying "-we want to popularize
the New Majority as an idea and present it as an exciting social innovation." Here is a fully
articulated indication that promoting the New Majority as an idea was as important for
creating a bridge between participants and the wider Boston civil society as organization-
building. Participants at the meeting went on to critique the content of a rough draft of a
paragraph to be included about the New Majority as an idea. The sense of the conversation
was that everyone in attendance was in agreement and the outcome was that the paragraph
about the New Majority as an idea would be reworked for the next draft of the brochure.
Informal education and its process of collective identity in the New Majority involves
developing a "public face" definition that shows some consensus about what the New
Majority is. This public identity includes a visual definition from the New Majority logo, a
vision statement that defines the New Majority as an organization and the articulation of the
New Majority as an idea, a social innovation to be promoted for the good of all in Boston.
Adopting an organizational structure and promoting a socially innovative idea also allows
because it creates a socially recognizable voice (organization) to spread the idea for the
The New Majority is our reality and we need to take the possibility in it and turn it into
power.
Participant, New Majority Membership Meeting at SEIU Hall, 13 April 2004
What the New Majority is also reflects demographic reality. Cultural sociologist Alberto
Melucci points out that social movements are "prophets of the present" who "announce the
commencement of change; not, however, a change in the distant future but one that is
already a presence."318 The New Majority is a group of People of Color, which according to
the symbolism in the New Majority logo, includes the African American or Black
community, the Latino community, the Asian American community and the Native
American community of Boston. The New Majority origin story that is most often told,
claims that the New Majority came out of a conversation about the US Census figures from
2000, which showed that People of Color were the population majority in the City of
Boston. This has been expressed in everyday language through a continual lifting up of the
slogan, "we've got the numbers," since Mel King first offered it in his keynote speech at the
For the first few years of my work as a participant observer with the New Majority, this was
the only claim of fact that I recorded in my field notes. Sometimes, people would speak
about the role of immigration in increasing the population of Boston People of Color as an
additional fact. However, at the 2007 New Majority retreat, facilitators Gibran Rivera and
Kelly Bates asked the question, "Where are we in this precious moment in time? What has
changed socially, politically, economically since the start of the New Majority?" Among the
8
Melucci, Challenging codes, 1
many answers that were offered in the small and large group discussions that followed was
After this fall's election 319 there was a feeling of a setback. There are also worries
that though People of Color reached a "new majority" in the 2000 census, they are
getting pushed out of Boston by die high costs of housing, unemployment, and
gentrification. There is a political struggle going on, with people trying to stay in
Boston and change the political landscape.
the same retreat, offered his take on multiple meanings of the N e w Majority based on fact,
There are multiple New Majorities. I see at least three. First, the Census reality of
5 1 % . Second the young population. . . for example Boston Public Schools have 8 5 %
students of color. Third the potential, but not yet, electoral majority.
This suggests that even while basing the definition of the N e w Majority on demographic
facts, in the face of one fact being potentially changed, differential movement consciousness
Majority are developing other facts within this category of "the N e w Majority is reality,"
Widening the number and type of facts used to describe the N e w Majority as a reality also
established and largely White political structure. An example of the kind of potential
resistance to or dismissal of the N e w Majority's relevance that might be faced can be found
in a 2008 interview I conducted with Michael Flaherty, a White at-large Boston city
councilor. I asked him what he knew about the N e w Majority and its impact on Boston
319
In the Fall of 2007 Boston elections, incumbent Latino City Councilor Felix Arroyo was defeated
by Irish lawyer John Connolly who hails from the political genealogy of the white Irish and Italian
male Boston political machine. Felix Arroyo's election to the Boston City Council in 2003 had been
considered in part to reflect the New Majority's first contributions to the Boston political landscape.
politics. His immediate — and sole — response was to focus o n demographics and point
out that according to the latest trends in demographics, People of Color are likely to lose
their majority by a small (less than 1%) margin in the 2010 census. O n e interpretation of
this response might be that Michael Flaherty believes that the N e w Majority reality is likely
improvisationally about other kinds of numbers and facts that represent their reality beyond
the US Census demographic numbers in Boston will b e important in countering this kind of
It is often thought vaguely that our ideals are all there, shining and splendid, and we have
only to apply diem. But the truth is that we have to create our ideals. . . T h e test of our
morality is whether we are living not to follow but to create ideals, whether we are pouring
our life into our visions only to receive it back with its miraculous enhancements for new
uses.
Mary Parker Follett, 1918, Roxbury, Massachusetts21
T h e N e w Majority is not just people of color, but certain values, lifting up voices of all in a
way that respects all cultures.
Mel King, Community Inaugural January 2004
320
Notably, in June 2009 as I wrote this, both Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon (a member of the
New Majority and another at-large Boston city councilor) were both campaigning for mayor of
Boston against the incumbent Tom Menino. Michael Flaherty won a place as the run-off candidate in
the September 2009 primary. Despite having been able to raise dramatically less campaign funds
than Michael Flaherty, Sam Yoon received only 3 % less votes than Michael Flaherty. And Michael
Flaherty has asked Sam Yoon to join his runoff ticket against incumbent Tom Menino as a deputy
mayoral candidate.
Mary Parker Follett, "The Unity of the Social Process," chap. 6 in The New State - Group
Organisation, the Solution for Popular Government (New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1918),
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Mary_Parker_Follett/VI.txt
177
From the start, participants in the New Majority have put moral consciousness at the center
of their process of collective identity. Mel King set the tone, putting values front and center
Here, Mel King argues that the definition of the New Majority includes a moral
argument that present political representation is administering the city in such a way that it
does not work for all people. The responsibility that he claims for the New Majority is to
make a change, not so the city works for only People of Color, but so that the city works for
everyone. This was underscored when he lifted up the words of Vincent Harding in this
"The New Majority is a struggle for new and informed humanity, not for self-interest
in a dehumanized society."
Other participants have also repeated this conviction in their own words at different New
"[The New Majority is] not just a question of individual gain, but gain that is fair and
equitable for all."
"This isn't just about 'us getting something for ours,' [the New Majority] is about 'we
the People of Color in Boston working together to improve life for all of us."
Jurgen Habermas suggests that the development of moral consciousness in adult learning
serves as "a lever of social evolution." This hinges on people's capacity to recognize,
name and analyze the ethical underpinnings of how and what they are learning. Then, by
following up with tests and adjustments to their conversations and actions, people embody
322
Stephen Brookfield, The power of critical theory, 256.
an the ethical commitment to make the city work for everyone and to strive for a new and
informed humanity. Here, people in the New Majority declare that they aspire increasingly
to have their thoughts and actions driven by an egalitarian impulse they find missing in
Boston social, economic and political life. This is akin to Chela Sandoval's learning task of
democratic commitment to equal distribution of power, the learning task that drives the
The New Majority community of practice has continued to return to this definition of the
New Majority as moral consciousness or ethical commitment and has taken time out in
gatherings to reflect on the values that drive their process of collective identity. In one
instance, a values clarification exercise was an integral part of the 2007 New Majority retreat.
This exercise was an effort to document individual values in the group and use them as a
basis for developing a set of specific collective values for the New Majority. The exercise
facilitator Gibran Rivera framed the exercise as an act of resistance to current political
conditions, saying,
Something tragic happens in politics when we let the Right Wing run away with
values. You need alignment between your values and the values of your
organization. The most important thing to do is to know who you are. You need to
have your organization values align in the New Majority.
In the exercise, participants were asked to write down the three most important personal
values, one on each of three small "sticky paper squares," then go into the hallway outside
the conference room and group them in some kind of affinity relationship on several large
sheets of paper mounted on the wall. Some general categories (in no particular order,
categories mine but approved as part of the retreat meeting notes distributed by the N e w
Justice and Humanity: This was another category that was well-represented, with
contributions such as "justice — right relationship," "seek equality,"
"people of color as human beings matter, despite where they come
from," "fairness," "belief in the humanity of people with struggles,"
"respect for everyone," "justice — lifting every voice," and "we all
have the ability to progress and contribute."
Other Values: There were other values that did not exactly fit into the categories.
They included, "spiritual belief," "hardworking/drive," "personal
power," "integrity — wholeness of person," "rhythm
(tension/movement/balance) and "offer hospitality."
Time was allowed for everyone to look over the responses, have informal conversation and
to adjust the grouping of the stickies. I even overheard one of the youngest organizers,
Calvin Feliciano, reacting to seeing so many stickies joining his and grouped around the idea
of love, provoking laughter by memorably saying, "Love and care is why I am so 'gangsta'!"
323
As a note, this was one of the exercises in the 2007 New Majority Retreat that I chose to
participate in; I contributed my own three stickies to this values clarification exercise.
T h e n facilitator Gibran Rivera gathered the participants together and asked them to reflect
o n these personal values and take a step towards what Jiirgen Habermas might describe as
"testing the universality" 324 of their convictions, by posing the question, " H o w do we go
from 'me' to 'we'?" For the next part of the exercise, Gibran Rivera asked each participant
to come up with one value "that would make you want to commit to the N e w Majority." 325
T h e list that was generated differed somewhat from the original list of values and included
Participants used a process of voting to winnow down the list to five and "possibilities"
went from having only 2 votes to being one of the five final values: unity, power of love,
justice, family and community, and possibilities. Figure 7.3 shows these values as a concept
The remarks that people made as they changed their votes to "possibilities" were particularly
interesting. Participants said, "possibility has something to do change and responsibility," "I
want to change from strength to possibility because I see the possibility of strength," and "I
like possibilities. Maybe in a sentence: Unifying in the power of love for endless
324
Jiirgen Habermas, Autonomy and solidarity: Interviews with jiirgen Habermas (London: Verso, 1992),
269.
325 While I participated in offering my three contributions to the original list of personal values, I
participated only as a listener to this part of the values clarification process.
Figure 7.3. Concept map of 2007 N e w Majority values clarification
with some notable remarks about each value from participants
possibilities ^ \
power of love
"possibility has something to do with
change and responsibility" carino, "caring personal
relationships"
"possibility of strength"
compassion
"unifying in the power of love for
"if we don't have love,
endless possibilities"
there is no foundation"
"possibility lets us not get boxed in
by 501(c)(3)" K.
V r family and
community
unity
"all the children are my
among People of Color children"
among "people with ubuntu, "I am because
struggles" vou. we are"
I
"in our shared humanity"
I
justice
"right relationship"
"belief in the humanity of people with struggles"
"people of color as human beings matter"
"seeking equality"
"lifting every voice"
'there is injustice in the world and we ought to do something about it"
182
326
possibilities." Edwin Argueta said, "possibility lets us not get boxed in by becoming a
501(c)(3) 327 nonprofit." What he was referring to is the N e w Majority's three-year struggle to
seek legal status as an organization and possibly as a nonprofit. Here the last-minute
inclusion of "possibilities" among the values of the N e w Majority and immediate support
among the retreat participants affirms the importance of the learning task of differential
statement about considering possibilities for modifying the legal status of the N e w Majority
as an organization, even with two years effort toward nonprofit status was prophetic, and
will be discussed in detail in Chapter 10. Within days of the end of this retreat, a foundation
would approach the N e w Majority with the possibility of funding if they organized as a
501(c)(4) rather than a 501(c)(3) and the N e w Majority's "possibility" would very literally be
engaged.
In prophetic naming, the process of collective identity involves people developing moral
consciousness as part of their evolving identity. What drives the moral consciousness in the
N e w Majority is an often-stated belief that they are seeking a "new informed humanity"
rather than increased "access" to the "dehumanized" workings of Boston's social, economic
326
Edwin Argueta is a New Majority Steering Committee member and the Civic Engagement
Coordinator for the East Boston Ecumenical Community Council (EBECC). His biography from
the EBECC website describes him as, "An immigrant from El Salvador, Edwin came to the U. S. in
the 1980's. He joined EBECC in 1998 as an Immigration Counselor. Edwin is a well-known activist
involved in many issues in the East Boston neighborhood and in the Greater Boston Latino
community over the past 10 years." EBECC is a neighborhood-based organization founded in 1978
to promote racial harmony. Now EBECC focuses on the advancement of Latino immigrants of all
ages in East Boston.
327 "501 (c)3" is shortcut term that refers to a form of tax exempt status nonprofit organizations and it
stands for the legal code of the U. S. IRS for nonprofit tax exempt status.
and political life. They also restate a commitment to "making the city work for everyone,"
not just People of Color. This moral consciousness is dynamic in that the New Majority
Steering Committee has practiced values clarification as part of their retreats to better define
it. The continuing development of this moral consciousness and a set of values that define
the New Majority is also linked to the learning task of democratic commitment to equal
gain a new informed humanity." The learning task of democratic commitment is especially
important as it infuses and shapes the other four learning tasks involved in decolonizing the
mind. The New Majority's values and commitments will also be useful in evaluating the
effectiveness of of prophetic naming in the final conclusions for this study, to see if the
informal education in the New Majority community of practice has lived up to its values.
The New Majority — what we are asking is, "Whose Boston is this?"
Lydia ljtwe, New Majority Membership Meeting at SEIU Hall 13 April 2004
Bonds of relationship have been central to the New Majority's definition from the first
conversation where Felix Arroyo, Jr. essentially asked, "what does it mean to be the new
majority if there are no operational relationships among People of Color in Boston?" Lydia
Lowe asked, "Whose Boston is this?" a question that has often been repeated in New
Majority conversations. This question extends the New Majority's bond of relationship to
include not only people, but also the city of Boston itself. The need to develop and deepen
relationships among and between People of Color is based on a sense that the present
functioning of economic, political and social life in Boston has largely led People of Color to
New Majority is defined in the practical terms of aspirations for a structure that represents
the New Majority's public face. For instance, here are a few declarative statements from
participants,
Certainly, building the bonds that make possible an organization with legal status is one
aspect of the process of collective identity. Functionally, the New Majority has also created
instance, individuals can pay dues to become individual members of the New Majority and
organizations can pay dues to become organizational members of the New Majority.
Further, the political candidate forums sponsored by the New Majority have brought
As will be seen in Chapter 10, the structure of the New Majority has evolved from the dual
nonprofit and political action committee structure that was originally imagined.
However, most of the time, people in the New Majority speak about the bond of
relationship among and between People of Color in Boston, saying such things as,
"The New Majority brings together People of Color and folks who want change."
"The New Majority is uniting communities of color; creating one community."
"The New Majority increases coordination among diverse groups to strengthen each group.'
"The New Majority together is a social and political force."
Participants also describe the bond of relationship in the New Majority at an interpersonal,
and even what might be called an intimate, level, through remarks such as, "The New
In prophetic naming^ developing relationships among and between People of Color is part
of the process of collective identity in the New Majority community of practice. Through all
an evolving purpose and vision, and by learning through conversation and action — people
in the New Majority engage in building the relationships that form — and re-form — their
community of practice.
collective identity that is linked to other historical and continuing processes of different
collective identities in and within the Asian, Black, Latino and Native American communities
as seen in Figure 6.4. All these processes of collective identity serve purposes along a
continuum between affirmation of culture and opposition to injustice. For example, recall
the New Majority slogan "We've got the numbers!" which evokes both a sense of
affirmation and pride in People of Color being identified as the majority population in
Boston and a call to opposition against a pattern in Boston's public life where those
numbers are not reflected in the way social, political and economic power work in the city.
This definition of the New Majority as the bond of new relationships is linked to both
The concern about increasing relationship among People of Color to each other and the city
connects historically, "back in the day," to the Rainbow Coalition. For instance, Chuck
Such a nesting of collective identities makes differential movement possible among and
between them for the purposes of both affirmation and opposition to injustice
African American
Vietnamese
South Asian
Cambodian
Haitian
Korean
Chinese Somali
Cuban
Cape
Verdean
Columbian
Puerto
Rican
Sarvadoran
187
the Rainbow Coalition has been included [in discussions of the N e w Majority]
because it was from that mayoral campaign . . . that people really saw [the N e w
Majority] as the next stage in the development of the Rainbow Coalition. 328
However one important difference exists between the Rainbow Coalition and the coalitional
relationships being developed in the N e w Majority. The Rainbow Coalition was a coalition
that included not only People of Color groups in Boston, b u t also constituencies that were
(and continue to be) largely White, such as Lesbian and Gay groups and some feminist
groups organized in the "second wave" of feminism. 329 During the years 2003 — 2009,
people in the N e w Majority have largely been concerned with developing coalitional
relationships exclusively among People of Color and not so m u c h (or at all) with including
White progressive allies. For instance, earlier in this chapter, the visual definition of the
Latino Americans and Native Americans. 330 In light of this, the question that arises is, " H o w
can the N e w Majority be interpreted as representing "the next stage of development" from
progressive White constituencies who might share values and goals with the N e w Majority
are excluded?
O n e approach to interpreting the answer to this question can be found by thinking with
with some of the insights from the different Communities of Color who participated in the
328
Chuck Turner, Interview with Susan Klimc2ak, 13 June 2009.
329
The Rainbow Coalition also included individuals who were not affiliated with groups.
330
New Majority leadership is continually explicit about youth and Native American people being
included, even when diere are not yet die resources to recruit and retain them.
188
Rainbow Coalition presented in Chapter 4's discussion. W h e n Chela Sandoval describes the
oppositional strategies of the U. S. Third World Feminists, she speaks about the
ideological stances from the second wave White Feminist movement. Rather than take a
strategies), U. S. Third World Feminists practiced differential movement through groups and
stances. They changed tactics of resistance, depending on what they believed would present
the best opposition to what they were up against in addressing any given issue.
Recalling the discussion of the Rainbow Coalition from Chapter 4, People of Color groups
formed coalitions with some neighborhood groups and constituencies that were largely
White. Although the Rainbow Coalition was experienced as having a very energizing effect
o n Asian and Latino community grassroots organizing, the Black community organizers'
reflection on the Rainbow Coalition was more ambivalent. 331 T h e Black community
What this reflection from the Black community suggests directly is that, in order to be
successful, "Rainbow" coalitions need more than just People of Color participation from the
331 This summary is based on the articles contributed by Rainbow Coalition organizers from the
Asian, Black and Latino communities to a double issue of Radical America (November 1983 —
February 1984) dedicated to participation and reflection on the Rainbow Coalition. This issue is
quoted in the analysis of the Rainbow Coalition offered in Chapter 4 of this dissertation.
332
Cason, "The Mel King campaign and the Black community," 45.
individual Asian, Black and Latino communities. Established means of opposition that
organizing with people from the dominant — read largely White — culture must also be in
place. What this suggests is that developing strong relationships and a capacity for coalition
among and between Asian, Black and Latino communities are necessary for People of Color
to act together efficiently and effectively when such subordinating habits and tactics are
There has already been a historical pattern of Boston People of Color practicing differential
movement through multiple level coalition-building, for instance the Chinese community
organizing at different times by engaging their collective identity as Chinese and/or as Asian
American, depending on which collective identity or identities presented the most effective
resistance or opposition to what they were up against. And when the issue of police
brutality toward Long Guang Huang came up, the Chinese community took the lead in
organizing, supported by the Asian American community. The Rainbow Coalition, as well
as the Black community, also issued formal statements and participated in the collective
actions against Boston police brutality that were organized by the Chinese community.
One interpretation of the utility of a coalitional consciousness across Asian, Black and
Latino communities is that it adds another collective identity to the field of collective
identities that can be effectively engaged in resistance to stubborn patterns of injustice. This
expands the capacity for differential movement among and between the various levels of
People of Color identities that were shown in Figure 7.4. Through conversations and action
190
together, the Asian, Black and Latino grassroots organizers establish a working relationship
that they can choose to engage as one of the many strategies for, as Cherrie Moraga puts it,
. . .how we cope, how we measure and weigh what is to be said and when, what is to
be done and how, and to whom. . . daily deciding/risking who it is we call an ally, call
a friend.333
The New Majority can become operationally one among many possible collective identities
that people can engage differentially in the struggle for justice. As Chela Sandoval argues,
This bond of relationship among and between Boston's People of Color represents a kind of
evolutionary learning process of collective identity that impacts not only the New Majority,
but the general community within which it works. A coalitional consciousness like this also
has the potential to be part of other coalitions and efforts for social change across Boston.
In their book, Social movements: A cognitive approach, sociologists Ron Eyerman and
Andrew Jamison make a strong case for social movements being social laboratories where
333
Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color (New
York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1981).
334
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, 59.
191
learning processes produce social innovations, new ideas and new political and social
identities.335 They also argue that social movements are not only learning processes.
However the learning processes in social movements are what gives those movements their
particular character, especially those learning processes that involve identity development.336
The New Majority's purpose and vision is defined by a continuous engagement in reflection
and a self-conscious process of exploring what the New Majority is. This chapter has
discussed how people in the New Majority engage in formal and informal conversations to
describe an evolving field of five different kinds of meanings for what the New Majority is
In their process of collective identity, people in the New Majority eventually developed an
At the same time, this definition carries in its shadows a much more complicated, contingent
and evolving process of collective identity. It is a process that involves learning by tolerating
ambiguities about meaning over time. In tolerating these ambiguities, people in the New
Majority are creating and shaping a field of many meanings through which they can move
differentially. These meanings are summarized in Figure 7.5. The New Majority's process of
collective identity includes the exploration of the meanings of the New Majority as the
335
Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social movement: A cognitive appnach (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1991).
336
Eyerman and Jamison, Social Movements, 55-56.
192
an idea
"The N e w Majority is an infectious viral idea that sets
people moving."
P a bond of relationship
"The N e w Majority brings
r I
a reality
People of Color are more than 50%
together People of Color" of Boston's population
"The N e w Majority is uniting Boston Public Schools have 85%
communities of color; creating students of color
one community." People of Color are a potential
electoral majority
"The N e w Majority is a group of
brothers and sisters in a circle of
trust." V
193
public face of an organization, as a reality, as an idea, as moral consciousness and as the
bond of relationships.
I argue that creating this field of multiple meanings for the New Majority is part of the social
meaning and approach. In the continuing process of collective identity that shapes the New
Majority community of practice, this field of multiple meanings develops in people the
meanings for what the New Majority is, depending on which meaning or set of relationships
The public face in the organizational definition of the New Majority allows for the New
Majority to be a conduit for new ideas within and beyond Boston's Communities of Color.
This chapter has also introduced the ways that the process of collective identity involves
learning within the New Majority community of practice. Further, the process also involves
setting up bridges to other potential allies not presendy an active part of the movement.
This set ups conditions that allow for the possibility of evolutionary learning that impacts the
wider Boston community. The bond of relationships being developed among and between
Communities of Color have the capacity to impact other wider coalitional social change
efforts engaged in by People of Color and perhaps even including those coalitional efforts
Stepping back even further, there is something remarkable in all this sustained talk activity
about meaning in the New Majority. One could ask, as one of my intellectual mentors did in
reading an early version of this research, "What's going on with all this self-reflection and
self-consciousness, asking the same questions over and over?" One possible explanation is
that this focus on meaning reflects changes in what people need to learn and do to effect
positive social change. Trying to effect incremental single-issue change so as not to alarm
"media power brokers" is becoming increasingly difficult. Many seasoned activists such as
Michael Lerner and Grace Lee Boggs are speaking out about the importance of changing the
culture of values among people, making a shift so that the culture of consumerism and
materialism are no longer seen as the sources of happiness and well-being. In fact, Michael
Lerner speaks about forging an explicit "politics of meaning," that reconnects people to their
Michael Lerner suggests that meaning-based movements have the capacity to attract people
who feel alienated and sense an inner need. Grace Lee Boggs puts the politics of meaning in
a different way, saying, "these are times to grow our souls" because the problems that need
to be solved can't be solved through government. She talks about the need to life and
organizing more relational, intimate, caring, and local. I would like to suggest that at least
part of what the New Majority is learning to do through these continually self-reflective and
meaning-making activities is forging a new path toward such a new politics of meaning.
337
Michael Lerner, The politics of meaning: Restoring hope andpossibility in an age of cynicism (Reading MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1996).
195
While this chapter has examined the purpose and vision in prophetic naming, die informal
education system particular to the New Majority, the next chapter expands the description of
association and coalition-building among and between Boston of People of Color was
explored in Chapter 4. The next chapter provides an in-depth examination of la vie associative
As long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall dislike it; when
we think of it as that which unites us, we shall cherish it.
A century before the New Majority was formed, Quaker community educator Mary Parker
Follett was theorizing and practicing pioneering approaches for collective informal education
in the very Roxbury and East Boston Massachusetts neighborhoods where many participants
in the New Majority now live. She served as staff at the Roxbury Neighborhood House and
helped establish neighborhood centers in high schools, such as the East Boston High School
Community Center. Mary Parker Follett's visionary work describes the importance of
cultivating group and associative life because she believed that creativity and learning are
realized in such settings. Diversity was the key ingredient of her vision of community, just as
it is for participants in the New Majority. So her voice provides a fitting introduction to a
Prophetic naming — informal education in the New Majority — takes place in a community
of practice. According to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a community of practice is,
Mary Parker Follett, "The group and the new psychology" and "The group process: The
collective idea (continued)," Chaps. 1 and 3 in The New State - Group Organisation, the Solution for Popular
Government (New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1918), online Virtual Mary Parker Follett Institute,
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Mary_Parker_Follett/Fins-MPF-01.html; For more information on
Mary Parker Follett, see Infed.org, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-foll.htm.
a set of relations among people, activity and the world over time and in relationship
with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice." 339
Put another way, at the heart of a community of practice is la vie associative, which
expresses the importance of "association in the widest sense of the word and the effect
which this association can have both o n the life of the individual and o n the life of a village,
town, region or country." 340 T h e N e w Majority community of practice and the informal
education of prophetic naming are defined in part by this environment or associational life
This chapter portrays the associational life or environment of the N e w Majority community
of practice in two ways. T h e general and specific patterns of people's participation and
access from the periphery to the center of the N e w Majority Steering Committee are
described. These patterns of people's participation define the form of situated learning
process of collective identity is also uniquely shaped by purposefully limiting access to the
N e w Majority to People of Color. H o w and why the N e w Majority limit such access is
explored.
Then, two patterns of participation observed over the five years of this study are identified
and interpreted as learning strategies particular to the association life of the N e w Majority
approach, directing learning from the bottom up. They often seek out wisdom from the
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning, legitimate peripheralparticipation (Cambridge,UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 98.
Mark Smith, "association, la vie associative and lifelong learning," Infed: The Informal Education
Homepage (London: infed.org, 2000, updated 2008), http://www.infed.org/association/b-
assoc.htm.
periphery of the community of practice in making key decisions about how to structure and
guide learning. While the New Majority's associational life and learning involves the
practice gathers. So the second pattern of participation that I interpret as a learning strategy
is the way that the New Majority community of practice situates their learning in a
"geography of difference and struggle." When these two learning strategies are described, I
also explore the possible theoretical basis for their educational efficacy.
Learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework, not in an individual mind.
. . distributed among co-participants. . .
Learning is a way of being in the social world, not a way of coming to know it.
William Hanks, introducing Situated learning: legitimate peripheralparticipation341
At the center of prophetic naming, the informal education that takes place among the New
is the source of learning opportunities in a community of practice. Jean Lave and Etienne
moving in a centripetal direction, one that gradually increases levels of access and
become acquainted with how people in the community think, talk, organize and act together.
William Hanks, "Introduction," in Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning: legitimate
peripheralparticipation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 15, 24.
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning, legitimate peripheralparticipation (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 95.
199
Figure 8.1. Informal education in the New Majority
The areas shaded like this box shos how this chatter fits into the informal education model
ptc*0ii0i& iratMr|g
Chapter 6
T
new majority situated learning: new majority
eiayir*)ftmeM purpose &
people form the values
Chapters
new majority Chapter 7
4&t community of
field of
history, patterns practice meanings that
of participation
limits to and engage in a answer the
inclusion & question:
power of place
process of "what is die
collective identity new majority?"
informed/ education/ informal education/
cfaafouot&irOstic/1
I
collective learning is fostered in the new majority
cbAxracterittGc 2
activities of the community that are more central to its functioning. Jean Lave and Etienne
Wenger refer to this gradual enlarging of access and participation in a community of practice
If participation is a way of learning, then what can be said about the opportunities for
participation that the New Majority offers? In the conceptual map of Figure 8.2, the New
Majority can begin to be described using three concentric circles of participation. The New
activities that allow people to become introduced to the New Majority as part of a mission to
create a unified agenda for Boston People of Color. Examples of such community
activities are Street Talks and At-Large City Councilor Political Candidate Forums, which
According to an article by Lydia Lowe published in the Sampan, Boston's bilingual biweekly
throughout the city to build membership, educate voters and identity the important issues
for a common city-wide agenda."343 They have been convened about six months prior to
city elections. Information gathered from these conversations has been used to generate
agendas and questions for At-Large City Councilor Political Candidate Forums held in
Lydia Lowe, "Opinion: 'Street Talks' to build New Majority coalition," Sampan, 22 July 2004,
http://sampan.org/pastissues/2004/0716/opinion.htm.
Figure 8.2. Peripheral patterns of participation
retriats ^/_
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•
/ committee
meetings \
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o
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3
C
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in the N e w Majority by individuals and organizations. For instance, some people learn about
the N e w Majority by attending Street Talks and Political Forums, where they see the N e w
Majority banner, receive N e w Majority literature and hear short explanations given about the
N e w Majority. Others read newspaper accounts and comments o n these gatherings in local
and city-wide media such as the Bay State Banner, Sampan, and the Boston Globe544 or
through the internet on local list serves and blogs. Finally, some people find out about the
N e w Majority through "word o n the street," by speaking directly with those who have
Organizations that are not yet N e w Majority members participate in the coalitions that
sponsor Street Talks and Political Forums, providing an introduction and peripheral
organizational access to the N e w Majority. People who are part of organizations concerned
with issues raised by the N e w Majority participate in the Street Talks and Political Forums,
even if their organizations are neither members of the N e w Majority nor participants in the
can become members and vote. Both members and other participants become more
familiar with the N e w Majority and involve themselves in their purposeful gatherings,
retreats and annual meetings. At these events, people gather to shape their practices, to
344
E.g. Editor, "Boston's New Politics," Boston Globe, Editorial, 25 October 2005,
http://www.mccomiack.umb.edu/centers/cms/press-25Oct05.php; Toussain Losier, "Candidates
make case at New Majority forum," Bay State Banner 41, no. 8, 13 October 2005,
http://www2.baystatebanner.com/archives/stories/2005/101305-5.htm; Lydia Lowe, "Opinion:
'Street Talks' to build New Majority coalition," Sampan, 22 July 2004,
http://sampan.org/pastissues/2004/0716/opinion.htm.
evaluate and celebrate what has been accomplished, and to plan future directions for the
• Practice and Preparation Session for Street Talk Hosts, 13 July 2004 at the
Chinese Progressive Association. At this session, New Majority Steering
Committee members shared a format for Street Talks, including a standard
outline and introduction that could be used by Street Talk Hosts. Hosts received
help in producing an invitation flyer and learned how to register new voters at
the sessions.
The centripetal movement that characterizes communities of practice such as the New
Majority creates increasing levels of opportunity for access and participation over time.
Membership represents one such opportunity for access and participation. People of Color
become members by filling out a form and offering a small donation in support of the New
Majority, $10 per year.345 People of Color organizations typically donate $100 per year to
Each of these membership fees is listed in the New Majority brochure. Though there is a fee for
membership, I have never seen anyone who wanted to participate turned away for lack of resources
to donate.
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support of on the adoption of organization by-laws. People who are White but wish to
support the New Majority are allowed to become non-voting supporters by offering a
The innermost level involves participation in the activities of the New Majority Steering
Committee. Elected members of the steering committee and members can attend monthly
steering committee meetings, biannual planning and reflection retreats and committee
meetings where the business of the New Majority is conducted. The monthly steering
committee meetings are typically two hours long and are open to members. The day-long
retreats are facilitated professionally by members or those associated with the New Majority.
The most active committees have involved civic participation and have organized the Street
Talks and Political Forums that will be described in the next chapter.
Participation in the New Majority community of practice ebbs and flows over time. For
instance, in the first few years, the New Majority actively created multiple opportunities for
access and participation at all three levels. However, from 2006 — 2008, when the focus of
the community of practice turned inward to organization building, much of the activity was
focused within the tight inner circle of the steering committee. The Political Forum for at-
Large City Council Candidates during this time was organized without initiating another
round of Street Talks. Participation in the New Majority decreased dramatically as fewer
opportunities for participation and access at the outermost levels of the community of
practice were created and the organization became vulnerable because of this attrition. In
2009, plans are underway to revitalize participation and access in the New Majority through
for the improvisational development of new practice. . . [or] a field of learning resources in
everyday practice viewed from the perspective of learners.,"347 This chapter begins to
of participation and some learning strategies associated with these patterns of participation
in the N e w Majority.
Groups, under the right circumstances, can be incredibly smart. In fact, they are often
smarter than the smartest individual in them. . . Although our inclination is to chase the
expert. . . the right answer is often to ask the crowd, instead.
James Surowiekf48
that takes place within this community of practice. Some of these patterns of participation
can be investigated in more depth as being important learning strategies within the N e w
Majority "learning curriculum." O n e such learning strategy in the N e w Majority involves the
practice of often relying on the wisdom of group to organize the learning activity of the
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 97; Here, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger claim it is important to
distinguish a learning curriculum from the more familiar teaching curriculum used in many forms of
education. Rather than structuring learning opportunities, a teaching curriculum "structures
resources for learning, the meaning of what is learned" and control of access to what is learned as
mediated through an instructor's participation and an external view of what knowing is about.
James Surcwieki, The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom
shapes business, economies, societies and nation (New York: Little Brown, 2004).
From the start, the New Majority has been committed to "lift up the voices" of Boston
People of Color and form new relationships among and between People of Color that allow
for fuller representation at all levels of the social, political and economic life of the city. To
model their project of "lifting every voice" within the New Majority itself, members of the
Steering Committee consciously create learning opportunities to uncover the wisdom of the
For instance, at the 2003 New Majority Conference, a process was designed for the people
who attended to self-select into issues groups and participants in those issue groups were
called upon to name and prioritize action items. Another example of the learning strategy of
relying on the wisdom of the group took place around the Fall 2004 First Annual New
Majority Meeting as the community of practice went about choosing the cultural caucuses to
At 7:00 p. m. on the evening of the 2nd of September in 2004, about a dozen New Majority
Chinatown in the conference room of the Chinese Progressive Association. The agenda was
largely dedicated to making plans for the First Annual New Majority Meeting. When I
entered, a lively discussion was underway about the possible support and endorsement of
Andrea CabraL an African American with Cape Verdean family roots campaigning to
become the first woman to serve as Suffolk County Sheriff.349 After a while, attention
turned to making plans for the upcoming First Annual New Majority Meeting to be held on
349
Andrea Cabral was successfully elected as the 30 th Suffolk County Sheriff and the first woman to hold the
office of Sheriff in Massachusetts history.
207
11 October 2004. Up until this point, New Majority gatherings had been organized by
members from the original New Majority Initiative Steering Committee that set up the 2003
At this First Annual Meeting, a new Steering Committee would be nominated and elected
for the first time by New Majority participants. However no process existed to guide the
nomination and election of the new Steering Committee. Todd Lee started out the
discussion about the designing a process to decide the next New Majority Steering
Committee, saying,
By any stretch of the imagination, the people gathered at this meeting could be described as
experts with impressive backgrounds and experience to shape their understanding of the
complexity of Boston communities. For instance, Lydia Lowe is a long-time organizer in the
Chinese American community and has served as executive director of the Chinese
Progressive Association of Boston for over fifteen years and Chuck Turner has been a
Boston community organizer and politician for over forty years. Each of the people in the
room could have put forth an informed design for representing New Majority constituents
on the new steering committee. Yet the proposal that was immediately suggested and
supported without much struggle was one that positioned the steering committee as learners
and facilitators of a learning process for the group. Todd Lee went on to state the proposal
as,
One suggestion was to have people [at the Annual New Majority meeting] divide
themselves into whatever cultural groups they believe are important and have each
group nominate representatives. Based on the groups proposed, we will decide
208
together on the number of representatives from each group that will be elected.
Some at-large candidate spots will also be filled outside of the groups.
Instead of relying on die "experts" gathered in the room, the proposal was in the form of a
learning strategy that relied on the wisdom of the group of New Majority participants that
would gather for the Annual Meeting. Shelia Martin, an African American community
advocate since the 1970s, pointed to "learning" in her support of the proposal when she
I agree that the creative way to deal with the issue is to turn it over to the Annual
Meeting group, let everyone have a chance to self-identify and let that drive which
cultural groups are used to select the next steering committee.
Steering Committee members decided to neither assume or predict nor recommend how
New Majority participants self-identify and anticipate what kinds of groups would be
One point of discussion offered by Peter Lin-Marcus, a self-identified biracial New Majority
organizer was the question, "How appropriate is it to divide into cultural groups when there
are mixed race groups?" One of the younger members of the New Majority, Peter's question
seems to me to have tremendous merit, for even the 2000 Census acknowledged the growing
multiracial population in the US by allowing residents to check more than one racial box on
One definition of "creative" from the Merriam Webster Dictionary is "to make or bring into
existence something new," that is, coming to know or learning something new.
209
the Census form. 351 Peter Lin-Marcus' concern about the problem of including those with
multiple race and ethnicity in their family or those who might not fit into any one cultural
caucus was taken seriously by the Steering Committee. African American city councilor
Chuck Turner immediately acknowledged his point and responded by saying, "Having at-
large seats [on the N e w Majority Steering Committee] are one way to respond to Peter's
These exchanges illustrate a learning strategy that relies not o n design by individual experts
but one that puts faith in the wisdom and participation of the N e w Majority participants as a
group. A fuller understanding of diis learning and participation strategy can be gained by
Many members and participants come to the N e w Majority with experiences in community
organizing. And, the historical traditions of community organizing have had an impact on
the N e w Majority's community of practice and learning curriculum. O n e of the clearest and
I have experienced this increase in people identifying as multiracial among the teenage Youth
Teachers of Color in the Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn Program when I ask them to self-identify.
They often choose to identify in ways that confound common categories. Last year, a majority of
our 40 youth teachers preferred to have their ethnic or family roots to be identified in two or more
cultural categories. Data from Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn youth teachers was collected for the
past four years using an online survey tool with an open-ended essay question about how the youth
would like to be described when foundations who consider partnering with the program ask us for
information about their racial/ethnic/cultural backgrounds. Although the annual number of youth
teachers is relatively small with 25-40 in each cohort, the small samples are notable in that youth
teachers are purposefully chosen to represent diversity in gender, neighborhood, school, and cultural
background in Boston. For example, one indicator of the diversity among mis year's cohort is that
youth teachers reported speaking 12 languages as well as the English language.
210
political scientist Melissa Harris-Lacewell in a recent issue of FlypMedia that focused on the
What community organizers do is they start with the assumption that the answers
already exist among the people who have the problems.
[They avoid] assuming that [on the one hand], there is a community that has a
problems, issues, concerns and then [on the other hand] there is a community of
smart people who have the answers, and that the goal is to bring the smart people
with die answers together with the less informed people with problems. That's a
kind of leadership model that is missionary in its impulse in the sense that it brings
answers to people with problems.
What community organisers assume is that the answers already exist in the very
communities that are challenged. A n d it says that the role of any given leader is to
help the ordinary people have a path to take their answers, which they already have,
and put them into practice. 352
Melissa Harris-LacewelTs quote sheds some light on an important learning strategy, relying
on the wisdom of groups. First, the attitude toward learning and solving problems in the
already know the answer to the problem under discussion. T h e role of the community of
practice as a leader is to create opportunities for discussion that lead people to articulate
those answers and to synthesize their various interpretations of the answers in way that leads
to action.
Earlier, the point was made that prophecy describes a reality that already exists in the
present, but at the same time points to a future reality. This learning strategy left r o o m for
Alan Stoga, "Welcome to the Future: Race and Politics / Interview with Melissa Harris-Lacewell,"
Flypmedia 20, (29 December 2008 - 19 January 2009): 4, http://www.flypmedia.eom/issues/20/#2/l
(go to page 4 of the Flypmedia "article" on Melissa Harris-Lacewell, then click on the "community
organizer" videolink to view the interview transcribed for this quotation).
211
the possibility that together the people in New Majority who gathered at the First Annual
Meeting would be able to identify important cultural groups that exist in the present and
need representation on the present steering committee. Relying on the wisdom of the group
of people gathered at the Annual Meeting also allowed the New Majority group process to
be flexible enough to accommodate the identification of important cultural groups that are
not yet imagined as important but might emerge as important for the future.
The New
Majority Majority since the October
meeting. Lydia Lowe was quoted as saying, "There was a lot of energy after the conference.
. . we were beginning to see that people didn't want this idea to end there." The voice of
Atiya Dangleben, a young voting organizer active in the New Majority, was also featured in
the article. She gave her own definition of what the New Majority is, what it means, and one
353
Avi Steinberg, "The TSIew Majority' takes it to the streets, gently," Boston Globe, 10 October 2004,
via boston.com,
http://www.boston.com/news/locd/massachusetts/articles/2004/10/10/the_new_niajority_takes_
it_to_the_streets_gently?mode=PF
212
There are so many people doing good work in different pockets of this city. The
New Majority is a way of putting the pieces together. . . The goal is to give all of
Boston's communities of color a voice in shaping a unified agenda and ultimately to
establish a new political order that more closely matches Boston's demographics. . .
The numbers show that we are a majority in this city. The question is how are we
going to translate that into political power?
The same article also goes on to describe what was planned for the next day's "New Majority
The three-hour event will bring together residents from Boston's communities of
color to widen their "Street Talks" discussions, elect a steering committee and
celebrate their anniversary with music, food, dance and spoken word performances.
Recently elected Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral is expected to stop by.
Lots of people and energy were already present when I entered the Vietnamese Community
Center in the Fields Corner neighborhood in Dorchester a half hour before the start of the
New Majority Annual Meeting at 1:00pm on 11 October 2004. Against the windows were
long tables that were being filled with platters of food. When I poked my head into die
small and busy kitchen in the back to ask if there was anything that I could do to help, I was
immediately put to work unpacking drinks to be carried out by volunteers. Then I was given
very specific instructions for how to cut donated round cakes that would be served as dessert
so that they would produce the greatest number of pieces. The calmly organized women
who were preparing to feed over 100 folks expected to show up at the Meeting impressed
me. When I remarked about how efficiently and well they were working together at a big
task in a small space, one of the women said, "Ah, this is nothing. . . we've got church
training!" Food is always present at New Majority gatherings and more than once someone
has remarked that eating together helps people know one another better and helps people
Viet Aid welcoming New Majority participants. He spoke about how his growing
community here in Boston has roots and ties far across the world in Vietnam and how the
building where we were meeting used to be a blight on the street before it was turned into
In Mel King's opening and Chuck Turner's featured talk, both emphasized the prophetic
meaning and action mat the New Majority is initiating for not only Boston, but the world in
the future. Mel King said, "It's in everyone's interest to come together. . . everyone,
everywhere. What we have accomplished is a meaningful part of what needs to happen all
over the world." Chuck Turner specifically linked the New Majority to a learning and
knowledge tradition rooted in Boston. Referring to Boston's political history and the
concentration of research universities and colleges in the area, he said, "Boston historically
sends out new thought. . . People of Color can be unifed across these kinds of issues and
build a movement through this country and the world that puts human beings before
politics."
Chuck Turner also spoke more explicitly about the hard work of learning that was to be
done that day by organizers within the New Majority as a form of learning by generating new
ideas, saying,
Organizers work on conceiving new worlds, conceiving new ideas, conceiving justice
and equality.
I have a belief that the New Majority has the capacity to evolve a set of politics
different than what we have seen. . . We need to work to conceive a city, when
despite all that we are up against, everyone has a home that they deserve. We need
to conceive a school system that educates all children. We need to conceive of a city
with a health care system that takes care of all.
O n e interesting note is that the w o r d "conceive" can be defined as a verb that means n o t
only to gestate a new life through the body, but it also associated with the learning involved
After the speakers, T o d d Lee stepped up to introduce and guide the steering committee
A lively, loud and somewhat chaotic process ensued with people mingling about the room,
punctuated by some groups gathering and declaring themselves, asking for recognition and
recruiting members. Somewhat predictably, a Latino cultural caucus group based on shared
language, an Asian American cultural caucus and an African American cultural caucus based
on ethnicity quickly formed. The first change came as a group of South Asians split off from
the Asian Americans. Nasim Memon, a scientist and South Asian-Indian organizer was a
strong advocate for this move, hoping to have an independent South Asian representative
i • • 354
o n the steering committee.
Outside her professional work, Nasim Memon is a long-time organizer in the South Asian-
American community, serving on both national and local boards of Asian American Action Fund
PAC, Indian American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE), and the Northeastern University
Asian American Alumni Association.
215
Then, the African American cultural caucus shifted to the n a m e Black, which refers to skin
color but is often used to unite those from the African Diaspora. O n e reason this is an
important detail is because using the category Black makes the group more inclusive and
reflects the Boston non-African American Black populations with cultural roots in Africa,
South American and the Caribbean. According to social scientist Regine Ostine Jackson,
Currently [2005], o n e o u t of every four blacks in Boston is foreign born. 25.4 percent
of the total Black population claim a West Indian ancestry, 355 14.4 percent are sub-
Saharan African and 5.5 percent are of Hispanic origin.
This was exactly the point made by longtime N e w Majority Steering Committee member
Shelia Martin when I asked her if she wanted to be identified as African American in this
dissertation. At first she said, "yes," but then immediately she said " n o , I am Black." The
cultural category Black, when referring to loosely joined African Diaspora communities is
derived. 356 The wisdom of the group in naming the cultural caucus Black, rather than
African American, loosens the boundaries of the categories to include rather than exclude,
A small group of people who identified as having roots in Cape Verde did n o t join any of
the three groups. Instead, they successfully proposed that their needs were different enough
Ambiguity that is sometimes part of this term, for West Indies is both another name for the
Caribbean Islands and other times is used to refer specifically to those Caribbean Islands colonized
by the British. Some scholars, for instance sociologist Mary Waters, link Haiti into the studies of
West Indian Immigrants. Here, West Indian refers to Caribbean Islanders and people from Guyana.
356
James Brow, "Notes on community, hegemony and the uses of the past" Anthropological'Quarterly,
63, no.1(1990): 1-6; Felipe Smith, American body politics: Race, gender and Black literary renaissance
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 208-213
216
to establish that a Cape Verdean 357 representative should be granted one of the At-Large
seats. Cape Verdeans have often been misunderstood in Boston because they do not easily
identify easily themselves with commonly used racial categories. Cape Verdeans often
consider themselves to be "not White, not Black, not Hispanic" 358 according a Boston Globe
article published a few months before this N e w Majority Annual Meeting. In the same
Being Cape Verdean in Boston is hard because we are a minority within a minority... We
aren't accepted being Black because I am Cape Verdean and my culture is different and I am
lighter. We know we are from Africa, but we are from Cape Verde. We are n o t accepted in
the white culture because we are dark and speak Portuguese. We are caught in the middle of
blacks and whites. 359
There is another reason that those who identified as Cape Verdean might have wanted a
separate voice on the steering committee. A pattern of gun violence and retaliation has
disproportionately affected the Boston Cape Verdean community. In fact, in the summer of
2005,1 joined the Annual Boston Parents' and Children's Walk for Peace, that was founded
in 2000 by Cape Verdean American Isaura Mendes who lost two of her teenaged sons to gun
violence. T h e annual march goes through the Dorchester neighborhood where many Cape
Verdeans live. So both identity and special community concerns were likely to have
influenced the request for a Cape Verdean At-Large seat on the N e w Majority Steering
Committee.
People with Cape Verdean origins in have ancestral roots in a string of islands off the western
coast of Africa, uninhabited until the Portuguese brought African Slaves there in the 15th century.
358
Johnny Diaz, "One thing they could use: A litde respect: Not white, not black, not Hispanic —
Boston's Cape Verdeans have long been misunderstood," Boston Globe, 15 February 2004, via
Boston.com,
http://www.boston.com/news/locd/massachusetts/articles/2004/02/15/one_thing_they_could_u
se_a_little_re spect/
For those interested in learning more about Boston Cape Verdean identity, I recommend: Gina
Sanchez Giban, "Diasporic identity formation among Cape Verdeans in Boston," Western journal of
Black Studies (June 2005).
T w o cultural caucus groups coming out of this 11 October 2004 Annual Meeting process
loosely calling itself "Artists for Movement Building." However, after a few minutes
discussion, the group decided to disband and disperse among the other cultural caucuses.
Another cultural caucus of " Y o u t h " formed and those in the group asked to b e represented
separately on the Steering Committee. Cheers and clapping from the r o o m suggested that
this Youth cultural caucus had strong support for its formation.
Nominations for At-Large seats o n the Steering Committee were then taken from the
gathered participants and self-nomination was not only permitted, but encouraged. At one
point, a White man named Ralph who often participates in local progressive organizing
events nominated himself as a candidate. 360 Lydia Lowe, w h o was recording nomination
names, didn't miss a beat and put his name to the list. There was n o protest from the rest of
This incident schooled me and exposed the bias of my own white privilege front and center
because I misinterpreted h o w the wisdom of the group was expressed by this event.
Earnesdy wanting to continue in a role of white supporter, I took the Ralph aside in the
kitchen and rather strenuously labored with him about why his self-nomination was
inappropriate and at odds with the mission of the New Majority and n o t a positive and
I was not the only white present at the Annual Meeting. Several white community workers who
work primarily in communities of color as I do, were present. Also present was a white progressive
politician, Maura Hennigan (who ran for Boston Mayor) and a couple of white organi2ers from
Boston's liberal/progressive community.
218
as he calmly stood by his right to an At-Large seat and walked out of the kitchen. I saw
Lydia Lowe and stopped her to explain what just happened with the White man, Ralph. She
cheerfully laughed and brushed my concerns lighdy away, saying, "Don't worry. We are
going to have an anonymous vote for the At-Large candidates and he just won't get any
votes."
And what happened was just that. The At-Large candidates were announced, but the actual
voting counts were not publicly announced for those nominees who did not secure a seat. I
suspect that no Person of Color in the room protested Ralph's self-nomination because they
already felt confident about what the nominating and election committee would do to
preserve the exclusion of White People from leadership in the New Majority. It was only me
A new Steering Committee for the New Majority came into being through this process of
relying on the wisdom of the group. The New Majority participants who gathered worked
together to form a set of cultural caucuses and nominated representatives from those
caucuses as well as at-large candidates. At the end of the day as I helped to clear the tables,
stack chairs and haul bags of garbage out to the dumpster, I thought about how the old
Steering Committee would probably never have come up with exacdy the same
The learning strategy of relying on the wisdom of the group to shape decisions about the
direction of learning and action was consistently practiced over time within all three levels of
participation in the New Majority and more examples of this strategy will be explored in
219
Chapter 9. People in the N e w Majority seem confident that learning in social change efforts
should not be done primarily through a banking model with "teacher leaders" disseminating
knowledge and directing learning but more through a collaborative learning model where
each person in the group is both teacher and learner and much of the knowledge is
constructed in the group comes through contributions from each participant. 361 T h e power
explained by Melissa Harris-Lacewell earlier. But is there any theoretical basis to explain the
documented in education as well as the wider social science disciplines. I began this section
with a quote from business and finance journalist James Surowieki, w h o is also an American
History scholar. H e claims that groups are often smarter than the smartest individual in
Surowiecki, include a relatively independent and a diverse group who have some collective
m e t h o d for shared decision making. In fact, he argues that groups of experts are often the
worst at solving problems because they usually are trained to think in the same way. This
means that as individuals and as a group, these experts come up with the same set of ideas
Education theorist Parker Palmer has a marvelous discussion of the intricacies of such a
community education model in: Parker Palmer, To know as we are known: Education as spiritual journey
(San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 1993).
220
Legal educator Lani Guinier brought up the relevancy of this notion of the wisdom of
diverse groups for Communities of Color at the 2009 State of the Black Union address. 362
She spoke of the necessity of redefining merit and thinking specifically in terms of the
collective merit of a diverse group for taking on problems, citing the work of complex
systems theorist Scott Page. Scott Page uses computer models for solving difficult problems
and for developing insights that clarify the efficacy of the wisdom of diverse groups. He
approaches with the capacity to imagine and explore new approaches. Simply put, Scott
Page shows that when people solve problems, they use approaches and perspectives they
know until they get stuck. People w h o have similar experiences will get stuck in the same
places and not be able to move forward. H e suggests that exploring and developing new
approaches requires not a group of experts, but a diverse group of smart people w h o get
stuck in different places. Together such a diverse group possesses a collection of approaches
that help them negotiate a wider range of stuck places. H e says "perspectives therefore
matter. . . we need diverse perspectives" when approaching problems. This is also why Scott
Page suggests that often "diversity trumps ability" in solving difficult problems. Community
organizers have been using this strategy of relying on the wisdom of groups for several
generations, but research like that of Scott Page is beginning to more explicitly uncover its
Lani Guinier, "Video excerpt from 2009 State of the Black Union," 28 February 2009,
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/03/youtube-lani-guinier-state-of-the-black-union-2009/.
Scott Page, The Difference: How the Power of'Diversity Creates better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), especially Part Two, "Diversity's Benefits:
Building from Tools," 129-174.
221
purposefully limiting access to support learning 364
Exclusivity doesn't bother me. There aren't spaces for People of Color to speak about
power among themselves in Boston.
Atiya Dangleben, 16 March 2006 New Majority Retreat
The N e w Majority is part of the rainbow, but n o t all of the rainbow. We have to strengthen
the colors in the rainbow before we can work together with the whole rainbow.
Paul Wantanbe, 17 Decvember 2008 New Majority Celebration Gathering
identity that might seem obvious — but tihat is worthy of an analytic eye — is die practice of
purposefully limiting full participation access to People of Color. Both who is in a group and
w h o is excluded matters and shapes the kind of learning that takes place. If diverse
suggested in the last section — then why would a group purposefully limit access to
participation?
This question is particularly relevant because, excluding White People from the N e w
Majority has been a learning strategy from the beginning. During the 2003 N e w Majority
Conference, an explicit intent to exclude White People from New Majority leadership and
decision making processes was made clear. At the wrap-up session of the Conference, Paul
Wantanabe, Director of the Institute of Asian American Studies, stepped up to speak about
some of the questions he got about the N e w Majority Conference from "mainstream"
reporters. H e specifically addressed one question that many reporters had asked him. "Why
I want to acknowledge and thank Rony Raphael for inspiring me to think more deeply and
develop this section. As you can imagine, there have been a number of times when my presence as a
White participant observer has impacted people in the New Majority. At one Steering Committee,
Rony Raphael took a stand about the presence of White People at discussions. I decided to leave die
meeting to allow space for the group to discuss this without my presence. When writing up my
memo that evening, I resolved to find a way to take this strategy of limiting access and participation
seriously in the dissertation.
222
didn't you reach out to the old majority?" they asked, with a challenge in their voices. It was
plain for most to understand that "old majority" was being used as a codeword for "White
people." Paul Wantanbe chuckled as he repeated their phrasing and said, "We all know
what that means." He proceeded to reply with another question, "Why can't the New
Majority be experts about our own lives?" Paul Wantanabe continued on by offering an
interpretation for what he believed was the greatest fear behind that question asked by White
"mainstream" reporters. He said, "Growing power [for the New Majority] is not to get
back at the old majority, not to separate. [We believe] people who have experienced
injustice are the best people to build a city that is just for everyone"
Before the New Majority's October 2004 First Annual Meeting, I witnessed several heated
conversations among people in the New Majority about excluding White People from
the purpose of New Majority as being to lift up People of Color voices and People of Color
leadership.
How can this pattern of limiting access be more carefully described? For the New Majority,
exclusion was not an either/or proposition, meaning White people were neither fully in the
group nor completely left out and banned from the group. Rather, the participation of
White people in the New Majority is more accurately described as being limited on a
continuum. There have always been limited opportunities for White people to participate in
the New Majority outside of structured group conversation and leadership. White people
participate by attending and listening at New Majority gatherings. White people can "join"
223
the New Majority by paying membership dues as "New Majority Supporters," with the
There have even been occasional roles for White "supporters." One example is that I was
asked by a member of the New Majority to take aside and speak with White folks who might
attend the Grove Hall Street Talks and want to discuss why they felt the mission of the New
Majority to lift up the voices and leadership of People of Color excluded their voices and
concerns. This behavior by some White folks had not only caused frustration, but more
importantly had derailed conversation among New Majority People of Color in other Street
Talks.
The 11 February 2004 New Majority Annual Meeting described earlier in the chapter offers a
revealing example of this pattern of access and exclusion. White people did attend the
meeting and observed the cultural caucus process. A clear boundary for the participation of
White people was drawn during the vote on members of the new steering committee; only
members participated in voting and since White people had standing as supporters, but not
However, other boundaries for White participation were negotiated in a much less explicit
way. The New Majority's norms for White participation were transgressed when a White
man nominated himself for consideration as a member of the steering committee. His
nomination was allowed to stand and be voted upon, but he was not elected to serve on the
steering committee. Several years later, at the 16 March 2006 New Majority Retreat, Lydia
Lowe commented on this incident in a discussion about including "Others" — White people
224
— in the N e w Majority. She said, "Though the issue keeps coming up, I have never had any
problem with having White people participate. It's n o t even a problem w h e n White people
run for the steering committee; we just don't vote for them." However, everyone does n o t
share this point of view. At the other end of the continuum, are People of Color w h o seek a
much stronger and explicit exclusion of White people. For instance at this same 18 March
2006 N e w Majority retreat, Nasim M e m o n expressed anger when the group dedicated time
to considering the inclusion of Whites and at one point remarked, "Uniting Communities of
Color doesn't mean including Whites. . . they had their chance and blew it." 365 In general
there is an acceptance of ambivalence toward the participation of White People. Peter Lin
Marcus summed up this attitude at the same meeting, saying, "Lots of People of Color
organizations aren't clear about the role of antiracist Whites." 366 In general over the years,
the sense has been that these conversations about clarifying the participation of White
people are at the very least unproductive and mostly, they are distractions from the main
focus of the group in building relationships and power among People of Color communities.
Beyond the pattern of exclusion that has been defined, there is a more interesting question
This continues to come up from time to time. For instance, I voluntarily stepped out of a January
2009 Steering Committee monthly meeting when one person suggested that he would not participate
in the New Majority if White people were allowed into the meetings. I was the only White person at
the meeting and stepped out so that the committee could continue the discussion without my
presence.
Some of this tolerated ambiguity around the participation of White people may also be a result of
the difficulty of defining who is White and who is a Person of Color also comes up from time to
time. In fact, this issue arose during this March 2006 retreat conversation. Peter Lin Marcus pushed
at the group, saying, <cWhat about me? There are no clear cut boundaries between Whites and
People of Color. I am half white." However the group did not engage in further conversation about
his point and the sense was that there was no question that Peter Lin Marcus was included in the
People of Color category. He was a member of the Steering Committee at the time and in later years
went on to serve as Co-Coordinator of the New Majority.
225
limiting access affect collective learning in a positive way and create conditions for
an earlier chapter, one explanation was offered based on the history of Boston multiracial
and multiethnic coalition building. O u t of die Rainbow Coalition era came the insight that
was stronger relationships and a larger capacity for coalition building a m o n g and between
Asian, Black and Latino communities are necessary to build. Building such relationships and
capacity would allow People of Color to act together efficiently and effectively when
subordinating habits and tactics impact the discussions of issues and actions in "rainbow"
Incorporation for the N e w Majority with the State of Massachusetts, a group conversation
ensued that expands the answer to diis question. When several participants asked questions
about whether or not the N e w Majority defined itself as a "progressive" organization and
asked about the historical participation of White people, a revealing discussion followed.
Many underscored important reasons for the New Majority to focus on Communities of
Color. Cindy Suarez, a field director with Northeast Action, 367 pointed out the racial and
ethnic segregation of progressive organizations, saying, "There isn't a lot of overlap between
People of Color organizations and White [progressive] organizations. A n d there are not
spaces in Boston for people to talk about that, especially since most candidates [for political
Cindy Suarez has experience in community-building, grassroots organizing and training both
within Boston's Puerto Rican community through Inquilinos Boriqua en Accion (IBA) and within
other disenfranchised Boston communities. She has served as both training director and field
director for Northeast Action, a hub of progressive movement building in New England and New
York.
226
office] are still running after White voters and White allies." Sheik Martin, a longtime Black
N e w Majority Steering Committee member, clarified that the N e w Majority has been
focused o n "uniting Communities of Color for change: for social, economic and political
change. We did not define the N e w Majority as progressive, liberal or conservative; the
commitment is to change." Gloribell Sota broke down the problem that needed change,
An Asian American organizer then spoke up, saying that recent anti-immigrant violence
suggests that, despite mainstream media discourse, "This is n o t a post-racial world. Race is
critically important part of our world and this town. The idea of this unity among People of
Color — or at least opportunities for having dialogue among people from different
community activist and journalist for the Bay State Banner supported his point, saying,
"That kind of space [for talking among People of Color] is something we don't have. In
order for those dialogues to happen, the N e w Majority needs to hold a space." 368
Paul Wantanabe 3 6 9 made a moving statement about the original intent of the N e w Majority
Initiative, explaining,
F r o m the beginning, the movement and structure of the N e w Majority were going to
exclude the 'new minority.' We reached a point where [People of Color] 370 were in a
Yawu Miller has also been involved in organizing informal conversations in homes for members
of the Black Community to discuss issues of concern.
Paul Wantanabe is the Director of the Institute for Asian Studies at the University of
Massachusetts Boston and served on the original New Majority Initiative Steering Committee that
organized the 2003 New Majority Conference.
227
position to come together. For this m o m e n t at least, People of Color need to come
together and talk.
Maybe at some point in time, we may reach for something other than that [and
include White People]. But now is n o t that time.
What Paul Wantanbe is pointing out is that, beyond simple visions of 'unity,' a community
of practice has to struggle through some real problems associated with coming together.
This is another aspect of what the N e w Majority has to "learn": h o w to live out and achieve
actual solidarity among People of Color, in circumstance when that solidarity isn't
"naturally" present. Here, "uniting" as a verb indicating process is more accurate than the
noun "unity."
T o engage in the process of "uniting," Paul Wantanbe identifies two kinds of dialogue that
People of Color need to create a space for and engage. First, he suggest that dialogue is
needed to continue identifying emerging issues that Boston Communities of Color have in
common. Second, once relationships among People of Color from different communities
mature, dialogue about conflicts between Communities of Color and People of Color need
to be addressed. Luisa Pefia, a Boston community organizer and state director for
MassVOTE, voiced one particular conflict that might need conversation, saying, "Boston is
Paul Wantanbe actually used the term, "nonWhite People of Color" in response to an earlier
comment at the gathering by an African American woman who insisted that "white is a color and so
White People should be included in the designation of People of Color." I am not using the phrase
here because I believe that Paul Wantanabe meant the phrase "nonWhite People of Color" to include
white Latinos, so the distinction is misleading. I will keep on with the convention in this dissertation
that "People of Color" refers to all people who identify as Asian, Black and Latino.
228
a hard political environment to be in. What will happen when People of Color run against
Longtime Roxbury activist Bob Terrell spoke up in support of Paul Wantanabe's position
and added a historical perspective that supports the need for limiting access to the New
Majority, saying.
Bob Turrell was pointing out here that when People of Color gather without White People,
this makes people in power (who are largely White) nervous and there is a certain advantage
to that.
Rony Raphael, a New Majority Steering Committee member, asked Paul Wantanbe, "Do you
feel the New Majority should be representative of the rainbow?" Paul Wantanabe's
memorable reply, which was quoted at the beginning of this section was,
The New Majority is part of the rainbow, but not all of the rainbow. We have to
strengthen the colors in the rainbow before we can work together with the whole
rainbow.
Byron Rushing, an African American who is the Massachusetts Assistant Majority Whip in
the Massachusetts State Senate, brought the conversation around Paul Wantanabe's remarks
to a close by saying,
What's important to understand is that there are times when, to organize well, you
can't organize everyone. Exclusion is only wrong when it is done for the wrong
reasons.
And it is difficult for People of Color to get commensurate power unless something
dramatic happens. [People of Color] can talk about expectations, what people
229
should have if they are the N e w Majority; that is a useful conversation to have among
People of Color. [People of Color] should have conversations together over and
over until we get to know each other.
Byron Rushing suggested the possibility that the policy of exclusion could change over time,
taking into account the dynamic and change-full character of community life. They b o t h
made the point that a focus on "strengthening the colors of the rainbow" is most important
at the moment, but allowed for the possibility of expanding N e w Majority conversations to
Figure 8.3 is a concept map that shows one possible way to organize these conversations and
remarks into five points that explain the learning strategy of limiting access and participation
in the N e w Majority. However, what is implicit and missing from the concept map is the
radical or root obstacle to N e w Majority informal education, what Community Change, Inc.,
a Boston antiracist education organization and action calls "the white problem." 371 T h e need
for the N e w Majority's learning strategy of limiting access and participation of White people
supremacy 372 that have had the effect of limiting access and participation of Communities of
Community Change Inc. (CCI) serves as a hub for antiracist learning and action, with a special
focus on involving white people in understanding and challenging systemic racism,
http://www.communitychangeinc.org/
Here, I am referring to white supremacy in the general sense used by Critical Race Theorists and
others, rather than the popular use of die word to refer to people who have explicit beliefs in the
superiority of White people to members of other racial and ethnic groups (i.e. Neo-Nazis, etc.).
230
r Gathering Communities
Fill a current learning need to of Color creates a
"strengthen the 'colors' part of that political advantage
rainbow" that could allows for because it captures the
future efficient and effective attention of Boston's
conversations that include politicians, "sends out
White people for the purpose of waves" and makes those
increasing the social, political and in power say "What's
economic power of People of Color their next move?"
231
beyond the scope of this dissertation, a few salient points can be made. Boston's "white
problem" exists o n at least two different levels: the structural and the everyday interpersonal.
First, access and participation by People of Color t o the structures of political, economic and
social power in Boston has been limited. Evidence of this can be seen in the under
corporations, philanthropy and other political and economic bodies. Evidence can also b e
seen in the overrepresentation of People of Color being negatively affected by such pressing
social issues as the achievement gap and the housing foreclosure crisis, as Gloribell Mota
pointed out in her remarks at the December 2008 N e w Majority Gathering. American
Studies scholar George Lipsitz points out in his book The possessive investment in
A meaningful documentation of the history and impact of Boston's race relations is beyond the
scope of this dissertation. However, we can hope that the colleagues of Tufts University historian
Gerald Gill are able to publish the book on this subject he never had a chance to complete before his
untimely death in 2007, Struggling Yet in Freedom's Birthplace. In a Tufts Journal article about
his research and writing progress on the book, Gilbert Gill said "Boston's racial history. . . was
influenced by many circumstances specific to the city; it's a mistake to compare race relations in
Boston to other places." The book which was largely complete at the time of his death, intended to
look "at how one of the most progressive cities in the United States in terms of race relations toward
the end of the 1800s and first several decades of the 20th century became 'the most racist city in the
United States' by the '70s and the decades after."
(http://toftsjournd.tufts.edu/arclrive/2001/november/people/giU.shtml)
232
social fact, an identity created and continued with all-too-real consequences for the
distribution of wealth, prestige and opportunity. 374
H e goes o n to suggest that this whiteness "possesses" White people, unless "White people
develop anti-racist identities, unless they divest themselves of their investments in white
supremacy." 375 This has clearly n o t happened in a widespread manner in Boston, which is
often ranks high on lists that attempt to define trie most racist cities in the United States. 376
Community Change, Inc.'s Yvonne Pappenheim Library o n Racism has many volumes
documenting how Boston's particular expressions of white supremacy have limited access
At the second level, "the White problem" in Boston has everyday impact on the possibility
everyday relationships and situations for People of Color. George Lipsitz points out that
Microagressions are a notable example this "White problem" because they are characteristic
of the very White liberals who might be "White allies" for the N e w Majority.
Microaggressions are activities of individuals who are often well-intentioned but not
consciously aware of beliefs, attitudes and actions that often discriminate against People
374
George lipsitz, The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profitfrom identity politics
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), vii.
Lipsitz, The possessive investment in whiteness, vii
For example, on 28 July 2008, in the popular Freakanomics blog at the New York Times, Sudhir
Venkatesh published an entry entitled, "What is the most racist city in America?" that named Boston
as a city under contention for the title. This entry generated a lot of interest and discussion across
the Internet. See: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytinies.corn/2008/07/22/what-is-the-niost-racist-
city-in-america/
377
Lipsitz, The possessive investment in whiteness, vii-ix.
233
ofColor. Microaggressions are "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or
derogatory or negative racial slights and insults, sending denigrating messages to People of
Color because they belong to a racial [ethnic, or language] minority [sic] group." 3 7 8 Pervasive
and automatic in everyday conversations and often delivered as "subtle snubs or dismissive
looks, gestures and tones," they are often erroneously dismissed as being innocuous.
Examples of microaggressions are found in everyday acts and communications that, for
instance, effectively pathologize or put down different cultural values and communication
styles, deny that race plays a role in success, or bestow preferential treatment to White
people. 379 Microagressions are detrimental because they impair performance, and in the case
of the N e w Majority, the claim is that they impair learning by derailing meaningful
conversation.
People in the N e w Majority are seeking to ameliorate the effects and consequences of these
limits to their access and participation imposed by the peculiar forms of white supremacy
that operate in Boston. Superficially, the N e w Majority learning strategy that limits the
access and participation of White people to the N e w Majority may appear to perpetuate the
very same anti-democratic impulse that is the source of their under representation in
Boston's political, economic and social life. In fact, participants in the N e w Majority are
aware of this. Sandra Mcintosh, facilitator of the 2006 N e w Majority Retreat, represented
this awareness in a discussion about limiting the explicit participation of White people in the
378
Derald Wing Sue, Christina Capodilupo, Gino Torino, Jennifer Bucceri, Aisha Holder, Keven
Hadal and Marta Esquilin, "Racial microaggressions in everyday life," American'Psychologist62 No 4
(May-June 2007): 271-286.
379 • . . .
Derald Wing Sue et. al., "Racial microaggressions in everyday life," 271-286.
234
However, I suggest that the strategy of limiting access and participation in the New Majority
is different in three important ways that prevent it from being an anti-democratic impulse.
First, People of Color are making a conscious and strategic choice to the limit access and
participation of White people, in contrast to a pervasive social denial of limits to access and
participation of People of Color in Boston's political, economic and social power structures.
Second, People of Color in the New Majority are willing to consider the (the admittedly hard
to imagine) possibility that this strategy might no longer be necessary in the future if
political, economic and social changes bring positive impacts. Third, and perhaps the most
important reason, is that the conscious intention of this strategy is actually strongly
democratic because the New Majority seeks to create change Boston into "a city that works
for everyone."
Figure 8.3 sets out some of the positive reasons for the New Majority strategy of limiting
access and participation. I argue that this learning strategy fills in some historical learning
gaps in terms of opportunities for conversation among People of Color that identify
common issues and address conflicts. It also creates opportunities for learning and acting
based on the insights of People of Color serving as experts on their own lives. There is an
intent that this learning strategy will serve to strengthen "the colors of the rainbow" and
. . . geography. . . is infused with sensations and distinct ways of knowing. . . geography holds
in it the possibility to speak for itself.
Katherine McKittrickfrom Demonic grounds: Black women and the cartographies of strupple380
Considering the intellectual possibilities of the cultural landscape provides a very different
sensation from encountering officials at public meetings while trying to plan a project.
38138
Dolores Hoyden from The Power of place: Urban landscapes as public history
This chapter began with a discussion of associational life and a claim that describing
Associational life of the New Majority community of practice includes not only the
participation ofpeople, but also the influence of Replaces in Boston where people gather.
This section discusses the often-undervalued contribution oiplace to the opportunities for
participation and learning. In prophetic naming, where learning and participation takes place
matters.
The New Majority purposefully hold their meetings and events in different neighborhoods
of Boston, but to understand one reason why this is an important learning strategy requires a
"neighborhoods that are predominantly people of color and/or lower income, where riders
are likely to not own cars and therefore depend on public transit to get to work, school,
Katherine McKittrick, Demonic grounds: Black women and the cartographies of struggle (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), ix.
381
Dolores Hayden, The Power of place: Urban landscapes as public history (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press),
236
382
recreation, or shopping." ACE further describes their solution to the problem, saying that
. . . demand [a] fair share of service because the MBTA and the state have failed
to meet the needs of riders in low income neighborhoods and neighborhoods
of color. Buses are unreliable, crowded and slow, and continue to pollute the air we
breathe with dirty diesel exhaust, [emphasis from the original]383
Under such conditions, bringing meetings of the New Majority to neighborhood settings
across Boston has a significant impact on access and participation. Lydia Lowe, who has
served as a member of the New Majority Steering Committee since its founding, emphasized
this point saying, "Well, people are more likely to be able to attend meetings in their
neighborhoods. So at a very basic level, rotating the meetings allows more people to have a
chance to attend." Access to learning under the transportation conditions faced by many
People of Color in Boston is important. Where the learning takes place has to move closer
to the people, rather than asking the people to always travel the distance to where learning is
taking place. So, one obvious contribution to learning made by holding gatherings in
community of practice. However, providing physical access is not the only reason that this
learning strategy is important. Lydia Lowe also said, "I guess we also move the meetings
around because, the way that Boston is, we don't get that many chances to see where each
Observations from the 12 February 2004 New Majority Meeting, held just a few months
after die 2003 New Majority Conference, are examined to identify another reason why such a
Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) is a Roxbury-based nonprofit whose focus
is on building power for environmental justice in Boston. The quote is from their website page,
http://www.ace-ej.org/tru.
http://www.ace-ej.org/tru
237
learning strategy linked to place is needed. These observations can also explain why, beyond
overcoming particular place-based challenges to transportation that prevent access, there are
m o r e general implications for a learning strategy that takes seriously geography and the
Center 384 in the Fields Corner neighborhood of Dorchester, a neighborhood where about
half the estimated 20,000 Boston families with Vietnamese cultural roots live. T h e overall
purpose of the meeting was to form committees and to choose which of the 36 action items
Jose Masso led the meeting. Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jose Masso has had
roots in Boston since 1973 and is familiar to many in the Latino community of Boston. H e
has produced and hosted the Latin music radio show "jCon Salsa!" on one of Boston's
public radio stations WBUR for over thirty years. In his opening remarks to the 12 February
2004 meeting, Jose Masso voiced a concern I have heard many times in the N e w Majority
about the combined effect of the segregation of cultural groups in neighborhoods and the
"politics of scarcity" practiced when "the City and State act like resources from the State and
We know this is n o t true. W e have to have the will to use those resources in a way
that benefits all people and helps those most in need. . . There is a desire to n o t fight
among ourselves for the crumbs offered. The N e w Majority is here because w e
need to k n o w each other better. S o m e t i m e s I believe that the s a m e
Boston's Vietnamese American Community Center opened in 2002 and has the distinction of
being the first full-service community center built and operated by Vietnamese immigrants and
refugees in the United States. The Center offers senior services for the elderly Vietnamese, after-
school programs, a bilingual child care center and has a library, meeting rooms, office space, and a
large gathering hall for the larger community.
238
prejudicial attitudes as we see in the media go on among People of Color as
well, [emphasis mine]
Stating some of the divisions that exist among Boston People of Color, Jose Masso is
offering his own interpretation of one of the "common themes" that emerged from
workshop sessions in the 2003 New Majority Conference. According to the New Majority
Due to misinformation and lack of information and knowledge about each other, as
well as history, communities of color are divided among themselves. The many
divisions and subdivisions work against communities' progress [emphasis mine].385
Jose Masso engages the some of the learning tasks for decolonizing the imagination
introduced in Chapter 5 in this talk. He points out a particular learning task for the New
Majority is one of perceiving hegemony and challenging the deforming "common sense"
behind City and State governments' implications that resources from the state and federal
governments are scarce. He also unmasks the power imbalances that result when this
"common sense" is falsely accepted as truth, by pointing out how this politics of scarcity
often results in competition and infighting among People of Color groups for what are
perceived as "scarce resources." Jose Masso then suggests that "prejudicial attitudes among
People of Color" are linked — perhaps as both cause and effect — to infighting among
People of Color groups for scarce resources. His statement can also be interpreted as a call
for learning to go beyond this deforming "common sense" approach on a path to "know
New Majority Conference Committee of Recorders and Editors. "New Majority Summary
Proceedings of the First Conference: October 18, 2003," Unpublished Manuscript, New Majority.
239
After Jose Masso's remarks, people in the meeting went round-robin offering opinions about
what they believed were the most important tasks of the N e w Majority, saying which of the
action items they felt the N e w Majority needed to address first. Education theorist Griff
Foley links action and learning, so these action items can also be interpreted as calls for
learning.
Many people at the meeting made pointed remarks echoing the theme and concerns that
Jose Masso brought up, affirming his analysis and the need for learning and action. People
called for this action and learning, saying that "working to build cultural approaches is
important for the development of power," "the cultural part is precisely what is dividing us.
. . need to show that the three cultures [African American, Asian American and Latino] can
come together. T h e N e w Majority will be o n e of the few things that unites." and "we need
to use cultural understanding to bind us together." 386 Here people in the N e w Majority
community of practice are identifying obstacles in their process of collective identity that
prevent situated learning from taking place. These observations were taken seriously by
those gathered, and to address them, a new category of "culture" was added at this 12
Looking at the context for these observations and analysis can provide an explanation for
how the N e w Majority developed a learning strategy to address the geography of learning in
Cultural theorist Raymond Williams famously said in Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, 76) that "culture is one of the two or three most
complicated words in the English language."386 True to his insight, the people in the New Majoirity
who spoke about culture often referred to a mix of understanding about what the word culture
means. However, when people spoke of the common sense understandings of culture as art, music
and spoken word poetry, a more anthropological understanding of culture as socially transmitted
behavior, beliefs, work and thought was always present as well.
240
a serious way. It is likely that some current public discussions about obstacles to organizing
among People of Color set an important context for the learning the People in the New
Majority believe needs to be done. For example, one obstacle to coalition building among
People of Color being discussed actively in online People of Color organizing communities
is the insularity of various groups — e.g. African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans. Many
groups address only those expressions of racism that directly impact their group without
often giving thought to how the struggles of others are the same or different. Andrea Smith
from INCITE!, breaks this down by suggesting that conflict arises among People of Color
from different groups working in coalition because they often "presume that. . .communities
have been impacted by white supremacy in the same way. . . and assume that all. . .
communities will share similar strategies for liberation."387 Latoya Jackson, an organizer and
editor of the blog Racialicious, explains one consequence of this conflict, that coalition
conversations often get reduced to the level of "oppression Olympics," where people
"effectively waste time arguing over who has it worse, who has a claim to certain ideas and
At this 12 February 2004 Meeting, several New Majority participants went on to speak
specifically, often with emotion, about how the divisions among People of Color extended
to youth and how important building cultural bridges of communication and understanding
between the communities is , as a strategy to stem youth conflicts that sometimes result in
387
Andrea Smith, "Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of White supremacy: Rethinking
Women of Color organizing" in The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology, ed. INCITE!
Women of Color Against Violence, 66-73 (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006).
Latoya Jackson, "Series introduction: The things we do to each other / the things we do
to ourselves," via the online blog Racialicious.com, 9 December 2008,
htto://www.rackHcious.com/2008/12/09/series-inttoduction-me-things-we-do-to-each-
otherthe-things-we-do-to-ourselves/.
241
violence. A number of people pointed out that youth were not present at the Meeting and
suggested that part of the reason had to do with turf and cultural tensions. For example
I am a youth activist and really concerned with die future of the New Majority.
Youth of Color are pitted against each other. They say, "What do you mean, New
Majority?" There is an increase in violence and even intra-Asian violence.
City Councilor Chuck Turner walked in at that point and explained his late arrival to the
Meeting saying, "The reason I am late is because I was working as a Black Group Leader in
an neighborhood effort to decrease tensions between Black and Latino youth. We need to
develop mechanisms to help folks resolve differences." Chuck Turner points out that
learning the ways in which prejudices and competition among youth for " t u r f can result in
conflict and violence needed to be added to Jose Masso's call for learning that will
strengthen the process of collective identity in the New Majority community of practice
Before the Meeting, I heard several people chatting about a piece of history relevant to the
discussion; the fact that this New Majority Meeting was the second gathering of Blacks,
Latinos and Asian Americans in this Vietnamese American Community Center room in just
a few weeks. In late January 2004, local youth workers brought together Vietnamese, Black
and Latino youth here to talk and try to address some of long-simmering tension and
violence between teenagers "growing up in the same Dorchester neighborhood, yet divided
by cultural, racial and ethnic misunderstanding."389 In an article about the youth gathering
Hoston Globe, Monica Rohr, "Teen rivals face off, learn: Aim is to bring Blacks, Latinos,
Vietnamese closer in Dorchester," Local News section, 31 January 2004.
242
390
published in the Boston Globe , the tensions between the three youth communities were
described vividly:
Black and Latino youths say they don't step in Fields Corner. Vietnamese youths say
they never cross over to Geneva Avenue or Harbor Point. They stick to their own
corners, hang with their own crews, and don't mess with anyone they don't know.
And, when one crew happens to run into another, it doesn't take much to set things
off: A "grilL" a look held just a moment too long. A stare perceived as a taunt.
A face remembered, sometimes mistakenly, from a brawl last month.
Then it's on. . . another clash pitting Vietnamese teenagers against Black and Latino.
Ken Johnson, then the executive director of the Ella Baker House, which serves Black and
Latino youth, says in the same article, "It's not as if these youth are fighting over something
significant. They just don't know one another, and that lack of understanding spills out in
antisocial behavior. . . And that can be overcome."391 To address the learning task of going
antidote to infighting is affirmed by these insights. Figure 8.4 organizes some of the
unmasking power
T h i s " c o m m o n seo.se" p u t s d o w n a n d d e n i e s the p o w e r
of P e o p l e of C o l o r :
• the combination of the scarcity model and prejudicial
attitudes causes People of Color to "fight among ourselves for
the crumbs offered" and creates conditions where "due to
misinformation and lack of information and knowledge about
each other, as well as history, communities of color are divided
among themselves"
• of concern is how this division among communities of color
plays out as conflict and even violence among Boston youth of
color
conversation and context from this meeting through the analytic model for social movement
How can the New Majority's strategy to "situate learning across geographies of struggle and
difference" break down prejudices among Boston Black, Latino and Asian American
communities? How can this learning strategy help people better understand what they have
in common behind the differences? The New Majority Steering committee actively and
many different neighborhoods and types of organizations in Boston as possible. Figure 8.5
is a map that represents Boston neighborhoods and Figure 8.5 shows die meeting sites and
neighborhoods of some New Majority gatherings, and provides some strategic information
about that location. New Majority members and participants from different cultural, ethnic
and language groups go out to visit and become familiar with each other's neighborhoods
and organizations. To further explore reasons why this strategy has the potential to impact
learning requires unpacking some Boston history and geography, as well as thinking with
social and political conditions that affects the everyday lives of people in these
David Harvey, justice, nature and the geography of difference (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).
245
Figure 8.5. Map representing Boston's neighborhoods
Pdrchester
246
Figure 8.6 Meeting sites and neighborhoods of some N e w Majority
gatherings
New Majority Site and Remarks about neighborhood
Meeting neighborhood
New Majority University of This campus is located right on Boston Harbor;
Conference Massachusetts at Boston UMass Boston has had an "urban mission" to
18 October 2003 provide educational opportunities for both non-
Columbia Point in East traditional as well as traditional students in the
Dorchester greater Boston area; only campus in city with ethnic
research institutes specifically interested in Boston.
Steering Committee Vietnamese Community Fields Corner is a diverse community of many
Meeting Center Vietnamese businesses and residents (more than
12 February 2004 10,000), but also African-American, Caribbean, Irish
At Large City Council Fields Corner in South and Latino residents; Vietnamese Community
Dorchester Center is the first of its kind in the United States.
Candidate Forum
6 October 2005
Membership Meeting SEIU Office This Lower Roxbury community is located between
1 March 2004 (Service Employees the South End and Roxbury. It is home to the
International Union) Boston Medical Center and its residents are largely
Lower Roxbury African American. The union office is located
behind the Boston Medical Center.
Street Talk Host Chinese Progressive Boston's Chinatown is the only historically Chinese
Practice and Association (CPA) neighborhood in New England and is located
Preparation between the city's financial and theatre districts, not
31 July 2004 Chinatown far from Downtown Crossing. The third largest
Chinese neighborhood in the country, it is also one
of the most densely populated neighborhoods in
Boston. CPA is a community organization that seeks
to improve the living and working conditions of
Chinese Americans and to "involve ordinary
community members in making decisions that affect
our lives."
General Meeting League of Women for The South End is one of the few historically
21 May 2005 Community Service multiethnic neighborhoods of Boston. It is also
home to people living with a wide range of incomes.
South End The League of Women for Community Service is
one of the oldest African American women's
organizations in the city and its building was once a
stop on the Underground Railroad.
Annual Meeting Freedom House Grove Hall is a low income neighborhood located on
11 November 2005 the border of Roxbury and North Dorchester.
Grove Hall in Roxbury Residents are largely Black, represented by both
African American and Caribbean Americans. There
is also a large Cape Verdean population.
Muhammad's Mosque No. 11 and the Nation of
Islam have had a historical influence on this
neighborhood, especially because of their emphasis
on developing black-owned businesses. Freedom
House is a historical center of civil rights and
advocacy for Boston's African American community.
247
Figure 8.6 Meeting sites and neighborhoods of some New Majority
gatherings, continued
widely defined cultural groups such as White, Black, Latino and Asian.
However, social networking, as well as other factors such as redlining housing sales and
reverse redlining predatory mortgage lending practices, has also led to the dynamic rise and
fall of many distinct neighborhood enclaves where those with similar family cultural and
ethnic roots gather to live.394 There are many examples of this in today's Boston, such as
the deep Puerto Rican ethnic roots in the Villa Victoria area of my o w n South End, the
Caribbean, Central and South American roots in Jamaica Plain and East Boston, the Haitian
The current Mayor of Boston Thomas Menino and other political leaders are often quoted
as celebrating Boston positively as a "city of neighborhoods." Yet there are less positive and
are often underreported. David Harris, former Executive Director of the Fair Housing
John Logan, Deitdre Oakley and Jacob Stowell. "Segregation in neighborhoods and schools:
Impacts on minority children in the Boston region," paper prepared by the Lewis Mumford Center
for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the University of Albany and presented as part of
the Harvard Colorlines Conference sponsored by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 30 August - 1 September 2003, ERIC 480995.
394
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner. "Boston's emerging ethnic quilt: A geographic perspective,"
paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Boston, MA, 1
April 2004, via California State University Website,
http://www.csun.edu/~hfgeg005/eturner/gallery/Bostonatlas/Bostonadascover.html.
It should be noted that there is at least one neighborhood in Boston that has been culturally and
ethnically diverse at least since the early part of the 20* century, the South End. Within the diversity
of the South End neighborhood, however, there have been shifting and stable ethnic enclaves.
249
Center of Greater Boston, is among those community leaders who point out that some of
the neighborhoods and enclaves in Boston reinforce segregation and racism, saying
"Neighborhood can be a code word for exclusion and exclusivity. Too often, our reliance
How is it possible that people from the New Majority learn about each other from simply
visiting unfamiliar neighborhoods? Delores Hayden, who studies the history of landscape
and the politics of place, writes about the public meaning of a neighborhood as representing
a complex network of social and cultural ties and memories as well as the spatial ties of a
physical place.397 This implies that social, cultural and historical meaning are "recorded" in
But can people somehow learn by "reading the urban landscape"? This is not such a far-
fetched notion in the field of ecology, where scientists have long been considering the
fact, while teaching experiential environmental education in the Gulf of Maine, I often used
Ecologist Tom Wessels' excellent text called Reading the forested landscape.399 When
people walk around neighborhoods, they can develop cognitive maps and mental images. I
suggest that one learning strategy that could be linked to the practice of New Majority
Beth Potier, "Has Boston shed its racist reputation?: Panel tackles racism and segregation in
Boston," Harvard Gazette, November 7, 2002, via Harvard University,
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/ga2ette/2002/ll.07/09-racism.htrnl
397
Hayden, 3-4, 9.
398
May Watts, Reading the landscape (New York: Macmillan Co., 1964).
399
Tom Wessels, Reading the forested landscape: A natural history ofNew England (Woodstock, VT:
Countryman Press, 1997).
250
possibilities" stored in the landscape of each neighborhood, as suggested in the Delores
Hayden quote that begins this section, "considering die intellectual possibilities of die
cultural landscape provides a very different sensation from encountering officials at public
meetings while trying to plan a project." There is evidence for this in the informal
neighborhood curiosity I have often seen expressed at New Majority gatherings. At the
beginnings and endings of meetings, I have frequendy heard people who live far from the
meeting place ask local members questions about what they noticed as they walked through
the neighborhood, as well as questions about recent local as well as about both recent and
and learning, the possibility that visiting each other's neighborhoods could shift dynamics in
communication and interaction between New Majority members as they learn togedier.
Environmental psychology is a relatively young discipline that provides insight into the effect
of place on people. One insight about how people learn from geography comes from
pioneering research by psychologist Robert Roger Barker, who began to question the focus
of psychology on individual personality traits and the use of experimental laboratory settings
in the 1950s. Instead, he used observational data from everyday life in a small Midwest
town and his analysis was akin to the kind of grounded theory approach now widely used in
that determine a range of behavior possible in a particular setting. One finding was that
behavior cannot be separated from setting and that setting provides clues about the roles
played by people in a setting and can strongly determine behavior. Robert Roger Barker
introduced the term "behavior setting" as a way to describe this finding. He found that
knowing about a behavior setting was more useful in predicting behavior than knowing the
This suggests that what and how people share and learn together can be affected as people
speak in their own neighborhoods and organizational settings and as they leave their own
familiar neighborhoods and organizations and visit the neighborhoods and organizations of
others in the New Majority. In everyday conversation, people often acknowledge that
group dynamics can or should change based on place. For example, consider the athletic
of competition such as the Olympics. Or consider another example in the popular advice
that suggests adopting the cultural traditions of others when visiting as a sign of respect,
"when in Rome, do as the Romans do." Rotating New Majority meetings among
neighborhoods and groups allows whatever advantage and responsibility for adapting
This section begins with a quote from critical geographer Katherine McKittrick who urges
dynamics in a city are expressed geographically, and one of the most powerfully effective
ways to limit economic and political rights has been to limit access to space. The issue of
transit justice and the inequities of access to efficient public transportation for Communities
of Color represents one such way of limiting access to space. The economically driven
400
McKittrick, Demonic grounds, x.
252
segregation of neighborhoods in Boston that, at least in part, represents such a geography of
understanding that Boston Blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans can still maintain about
each other, as Jose Masso observed at the February 2004 New Majority meeting. Where
people learn — or where situated learning is physically situated— can and should be
The practice of the community creates the potential "curriculum" in the broadest sense. . .
Learning activity appears to have a characteristic pattern. Learning itself is an improvised
practice: A learning curriculum unfolds in opportunities for engagement in practice.
For nearly a century, starting with Mary Follett and her work in the early 20th century
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, researchers have been considering Boston's
patterns of access and participation in the New Majority's 21 st century community of practice
has been an important focus of this chapter. These patterns of participation describe the
associative life or environment of prophetic naming, that is, situated learning in the New
Majority. Centripetal patterns of access and participation introduce newcomers to the New
Majority and provide increasing opportunities for engagement and taking part in making
decisions that guide the New Majority. In fact, situated learning is best described through a
than the more familiar teaching curriculum that focuses more closely on what is to be
learned and the order in which it will be learned. A learning curriculum focuses on the
method for generating, legitimating and transmitting learning and practices, rather than on
documenting the particular facts and skills that are being transmitted.
One important way to generate, legitimate and transmit learning and practices is found in a
limiting access and participation largely to People of Color. This pattern of participation is
interpreted as having positive learning outcomes for the community of practice. People of
Color in Boston need to have a social laboratory dedicated for People of Color. This is a
social space where People of Color can not only engage in a process of collective identity; it
is where they can be experts about their own lives, where they can generate, legitimate and
transmit learning that is by and for People of Color. It is a social space where People of
Color can learn together how to gain political, economic and social power in Boston. As
Paul Wantanabe pointed out at the New Majority Conference, who could better understand
how to make the city work for everyone than principled people who have experienced
injustice themselves?
People in the New Majority situate this particular pattern of limiting access and participation
in time and acknowledge that, should the political, economic and social conditions change in
the future, their approach to limiting access and participation might also change. This
underscores that patterns legitimate peripheral participation involved in situated learning are
dynamic and communities of practice are expected to change them over time.
254
prophetic naming and the New Majority community of practice. Relying on the wisdom of
strategy. Although this learning strategy largely reflects the representation and influence of
grassroots community organizing practice within the New Majority, there is also a theoretical
basis in emerging for its educational efficacy. When learning involves describing and
solving difficult problems, emerging research shows that a collaborative group of diverse
individuals can come up with "smarter" solutions than the "smartest" person in the group.
Finally, the places where people learn are important to the associational life of the New
Majority. In face, the New Majority Steering Committee's practice of situating learning in
prophetic naming. Geography can play an important role not only in determining who has
access to learning but also can shape people's intellectual capacity to engage with the learning
From this general description of the New Majority's associative life, the next chapter
provides a closer look at how this learning curriculum has supported social change action.
Over the past five years, people in the New Majority have been engaged in agenda building
for Communities of Color by organizing Street Talks, threshing meetings and political
Our biggest role and contribution has been to put together agendas [of issues and
questions from Communities of Color] and [political candidate] forums.
New Majority Steering Committee member Lydia Lowe, 17 December 2008
On 17 December 2008 participants in the New Majority gathered to celebrate their (not yet,
it turned out) legal incorporation provided a chance for New Majority leaders to summarize
and reflect on what had been done and accomplished. As Shelia Martin pointed out in her
remarks, people active in the New Majority do see their work together as education. Lydia
Lowe also suggests that New Majority education efforts have taken a particular form,
providing spaces for the voices of People of Color to be heard through "Street Talks" held
among People of Color living in different Boston neighborhoods. Recording these Street
Talk conversations and threshing through the insights from these conversations, people in
the New Majority developed an agenda of issues important to Communities of Color. They
took action by using that agenda to develop questions that were not being asked of Boston
politicians and organize political candidate forums for People of Color communities that
This chapter widens die understanding prophetic naming, the informal education practiced
fostered. In earlier chapters, situated learning has largely been described in terms of efforts
to change and learn from within the community of practice, as the New Majority attempted
256
to create practices within their own group as a strategy to effect change among themselves
and to better model to others what they want to see happen in Boston and the rest of the
world.
However, at the same time, the New Majority has tried to effect change from within, they
have also engaged in actions that are organized attempts at what Jiirgen Habermas calls
evolutionary learning. These actions are evolutionary learning acts because they are
systematic attempts to engage the wider Boston society in constructive learning that
produces more positively socialized individuals.402 This chapter describes how collective
learning is fostered as the New Majority takes their ideas out "into the streets" of Boston in
actions that are also attempts at organizing evolutionary learning. Figure 9.1 locates the
subject of this chapter among the three informal education characteristics of prophetic
naming.
When most people think about social movements, they think about people taking action in
the streets, inside legislative halls, and during election processes. These actions are arguably
the most intuitive sites of learning for an adult education researcher to observe in a quest to
find interesting insights about what and how people learn when they try to make change in
their communities.403 These actions are also particularly characteristic of the situated
described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger came out of a survey of ethnographic research
on apprenticeships, none of which involved action for social change. So, to deepen
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
+
n e w majority situated learning: n e w majority
purpose &
environment people form the values
Chapters
4&8
new majority Chapter 7
community of
field of
history, patterns practice m e a n i n g s that
of participation
limits to and engage in a answer the
inclusion & question:
power of place
process of " w h a t is t h e
collective identity n e w majority?"
Onformab ed/wocutton/ informal/ etUwxvttOTV
I
collective learning is fostered in the new majority
chtMrouct&rOytVo 2
IT I
through through learning strategies: through action:
conversation:
Chapter 8
Chapters Chapter 9
5&10 relying on the wisdom of
uncovering groups, taking agenda-
limiting access and building to the
implicit learning
participation,
by "decolonizing streets
& learning in a geography of
the imagination" difference and struggle
of informal learning^
Social actions can be interpreted as incidents and as such, the informal learning theory of
incidental learning can offer one framework for understanding social actions. According to
adult education researchers, Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins, incidental learning takes
place "whenever people have the need, motivation and opportunity for learning" and often
begins with some kind of trigger, "an internal or external stimulus that signals dissatisfaction
with current ways of thinking or being." 405 As people in the N e w Majority engage in
collective learning through action, the need motivation and opportunity for learning as well
For instance, the overall learning catalyst for the New Majority was that "[t]he Census 2000
revealed that People of Color. . . compose a majority of the population of the city of
Boston." 406 O n e important dissatisfaction with current ways of thinking was identified by
Mel King when he spoke about the reason why People of Color were gathered at the 18
October 2003 N e w Majority Conference. H e broke down what was w r o n g with the way that
People of Color have been thought of and accepted being thought of as a "minority" saying,
Here, it is important to remember that adult educators often confound informal education with
informal learning, as discussed in Chapter 3. The theory of incidental learning that follows is a theory
of informal learning.
405
Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins, "Chapter 3: Informal and incidental learning," in ed.
Sharan Merriam, The New Update on Adult Learning Theory: New Directionsfor Adult and Continuing
Learning No 89 (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Spring 2001): 25-34.
406
New Majority Steering Committee, "What we hope to accomplish today," from The New
Majority Uniting Boston's Communities of Color: 18 October 2003 New Majority Conference
Brochure, University of Massachusetts at Boston.
259
accepted the term minority, we were allowing other people to define us. None of the
groups here are a minority on this planet!!! Self-definition allows us to say very
powerful things.
The model of self-definition was Rosa Parks. Her act says, "I am somebody." If she
had gone to the back of the bus, her act would have said, "I am less than who I
know I am." You can't allow other people to make you less than who you are.
Rosa's action has more to do with why we are in this room. We've always been the
majority. How do we take that and move?
We've got the numbers! When we organize around being the majority, we need to
get people to understand what it means when you've got the numbers.
One "dissatisfaction with current ways of being" is that People of Color as the majority are
not reflected through representation in economic, political and social institutions in Boston.
From the beginning, the organizing question of the New Majority has been, "How can
communities work together. . . to recreate our social and political institutions, cultural and
As Lydia Lowe points out, the initial New Majority answer to this question can be summed
up under the umbrella of "agenda-making activities." This chapter explores some of the
incidents and incidental learning involved in these agenda-making actions of the New
Majority. Specifically examples of the incidental learning among people in the New
• used the information gathered from the Street Talks to thresh out a 2005
agenda of important issues to Boston People of Color and used that
agenda in 2005 to conceive questions that were missing and needed to
be asked in many public conversations about Boston, and
Interpreting these actions through an education research lens, I suggest that at the heart of
what people in the New Majority have done in "taking change to the streets" is a learning
purposeful and complex ways that people in the New Majority listen and question is another
indication that they approach this learning in agenda building from perspective of ongoing
change. For instance, rather than seeking a stable agenda for the New Majority, participants
keep an eye out to adjust for accommodating the everyday contingencies, breakdowns,
opportunities and unintended consequences encountered in a changing world. This habit of,
Lydia Lowe, "Opinion: 'Street Talks to Build the New Majority Coalition," Sampan: New England's
only Chinese Newspaper, 22 July 2004, http://sampan.org/pastissues/2004/0716/opinion.htm.
408
JISC InfoNet, "Change Management Info Kit" (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Northumbria
University, 16 May 2006), 2, http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management.
261
building the first new majority agenda and coalition with organizers
Half of them were from outside the United States. Nearly all spoke two or more
languages. They were from Roxbury, Dorchester, Boston, Somerville. They were
Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans, activists all. A n d they
converged early one morning at UMass Boston to speak up and set an agenda.
From "Minority theNewMajority,''UMassMediastudentnewspaper, October2003
F r o m the beginning, people in the N e w Majority have defined their project as being centered
program of things to be done or considered," 409 "matters that need attention: the various
matters that somebody needs to deal with at a specific time" 410 as well as "personal
motivation: an underlying personal viewpoint." 411 So, this suggests that as people in the
N e w Majority develop an agenda, they are seeking different viewpoints and finding out what
matters to Boston People of Color and from that, developing a list of things to be done. In
the case of the N e w Majority, the most important "thing to b e d o n e " was to design
questions for politicians that forced them to consider what People of Color in Boston are up
against, questions that turned out to be quite different than the usual questions asked at
Researchers of learning in social movements will find that there is a whole body of political
science literature that specifically deals with "agenda-setting theory." 412 Although much of
this body of literature is beyond the scope of the discussion at hand, a few basic ideas can b e
problems are defined and the strategies used to present an issue to government officials for
action."413 At the heart of the New Majority agenda building is learning how to move
identified issues from conversations among Communities of Color into the public discourse
for the purpose of catalyzing evolutionary learning. Success in learning in the agenda
building of the New Majority means developing learning strategies that allow people in the
New Majority to identify issues that are relevant to Communities of Color and coming to be
able to define them in a way that shows their relevance to the wider Boston community.
Success can also defined in terms of agenda-setting theory, as being when people in the New
Majority are able to find ways to persuade politicians — and people — that they not only
have the moral imperative, but also the means and a concrete political path for solving the
The first New Majority agenda-building process came out of carefully choreographed
workshops at the 2003 New Majority Conference, which was attended by a group largely
made up of community organizers. Paul Wantanabe put it best when he described those who
were invited to the Conference, saying, "We invited the doers, not just the thinkers. We
invited doers, not just visionaries to the conference." This Conference was competently
steered and organized by a committee with representatives from the three University of
Massachusetts institutes, as well as the directors and board officers from community
organizations that serve the Black, Asian American and Latino communities in Boston.
Many of the people from this Board, such as Mel King, Jose Masso and Pal Wantanabe, have
A concise description of the agenda-building process was included in the materials I was
given by Chuck Turner when he invited me to attend the 18 October 2003 New Majority
415 It feels important to reiterate here that the use of the word "elder" is not a reference to age, but to
wisdom and experience.
416
All through 2003, my research on learning in Boston social movements was much more
general. I was listening and taking field notes with a number of different organizing groups,
one of which was City Councilor Chuck Turner's District 7 Round Table. The Round Table
is a monthly three-hour gathering of Chuck Turner's constituents to meet, discuss an issue
facing the community, develop strategies to address the issue and share a meal. Chuck
Turner knew about my research, because earlier in the year, I had asked permission to take
field notes at the Roundtables. At an early Fall 2003, he told me about the New Majority
Conference and suggested that I attend as part of my research, saying that the conference
was "open to all."
417
Participation from members of the three University of Massachusetts policy institutes
(The Wiliam Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture, the Maurico Gaston
Institute for Latino Community Development and the Institute of Asian American Studies)
are evident in many of die published documents that came out of the 18 October 2003 New
Majority Conference.
418
New Majority Steering Committee, "New Majority Agenda," Fall 2003,
http://www.iaas.umb.edu/newmajority/agenda.shtml
264
The morning of the 18 October. 2003 New Majority Conference was cold and overcast. The
in Dorchester that extends out into Boston Harbor. Even though I lived within the Boston
City Limits, I still had to take the 66 Bus, then a Red Line T subway, then finally a UMass
loop bus which dropped me off to face a 15 minute walk through a maze of buildings and
courtyards, following taped "New Majority Conference" signs with arrows. The people
coming to build this New Majority agenda certainly were those who could arrange to be free
for a whole Saturday (including some who had to arrange childcare since none was provided
at the Conference), who felt comfortable coming to a college campus and who could
After registering and getting some refreshments, I sat down in the back of the Lipke
Conference to begin. Opening the blue two-pocket folder I was given with the New
265
Majority logo, I found a handsome 7 page conference program with a cream heavy-weight
cardstock cover. The "Day at a Glance" page said that after the 45 minute long General
Plenary, we would be attending one of seven discussion groups for two hours.
The discussion groups (or workshops)419 seemed to correspond to the seven issues
identified as part of the "New Majority Agenda," which "was developed by representatives
of the African American, Hispanic/Latino and Asian communities — all active members of
the New Majority Steering Committee"420 a few weeks before the Conference. The seven
The Conference Program stated three goals for the discussion sessions:
(1) to deepen our understanding of how specific issue areas affect different
communities of color in Boston;
(2) to identify sustainable structures, systems and processes to promote a
common agenda;
(3) to begin to discuss areas of collaboration and action steps.422
At the end of the Plenary Session, a woman came on stage to organize participants into
discussion groups. She struck a playful pose with her hand on her hip, saying "You better
New Majority participants and literature around the conference described these break-out
sessions interchangeably as either discussion groups or workshops.
420
New Majority Steering Committee, "New Majority Agenda"(Long four page version), 18
October 2003. The original New Majority Steering Committee was made up of
421
New Majority Steering Committee, New Majority Conference Program, 18 October 2003,
University of Massachusetts at Boston.
422
New Majority Steering Committee, New Majority Conference Program.
266
listen up, people!" and told us that the discussion groups would break out to meet in three
different buildings. After giving us instructions, she struck her hand-on-hip pose again and
said "We're tired of talking. . . Let's do some action!" I decided to attend the Education
discussion session meeting and, along with over twenty other folks, was directed to a
classroom on the first floor of die Wheatley Building by smiling young university student
volunteers w h o were posted in the hallways with signs to help us get to the right place.
Miren Uriarte and Tulaine Shabazz Marshall 423 were the facilitators of the Education
Discussion G r o u p and the classroom was set up with an easel pad for recording "ideas for
collaboration" As part of introductions, participants from Black, Asian American and Latino
teacher, alternative educator for "drop out" parents, "survivor of the Boston Public School
system," chair of education for Chuck Turner's District 7 Roundtable, chair of curriculum
and instruction for the UMass teacher education department, parent, and pastor of Leon de
Juda. 424 An education reporter from the Boston Globe newspaper covering the Conference
Miren Uriarte is Director of the Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community
Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Tulaine Shabazz
Marshall is an African American educator, activist and artist. She recently worked as the National
Director of Graduate and Youth Opportunities at YouthBuild USA where she oversaw a series of
initiatives that help YouthBuild graduates enroll in college and participate in the 21st century
economy and workforce.
Leon de Juda an evangelical church in Lower Roxbury that serves Boston Latinos and has many
education programs. I attended a music-filled Sunday service there as part of a course dealing with
organizational diversity at Harvard Graduate School of Education. The service was given entirely in
Spanish, but headphones that streamed a simultaneous translation of the service in English were
available to people without Spanish language skills.
267
After the introductions, Miren Uriarte and Tulaine Shabazz Marshall explained that
workshop was "designed to solicit different perspectives and experiences with education."
They also presented groundrules for the discussion. Along with the usual kinds of
groundrules, two unusual rules set the tone for the conversation, "Make conversations that
build on the points that are made — it's a function of listening, not just focusing on that 'I
have my list of things I want to say'" and "Don't dwell on the 'awfuls."
Almost all the education workshop participants, most of whom were women, spoke in this
conversation that followed and many spoke with great feeling. The New Majority Steering
Committee had arranged for one person, Carlos Maynard, to serve as recorder for the all the
own field notes with the summary comments for each person's contribution published in the
the conversations that is central to both learning and the collective identity process. The
recorder often summarized the meaning of the comment into a kind of education shorthand
that often downplayed the emotional dimension of the comments. One good example of
this occurred when a woman spoke about the impact of the Massachusetts Comprehensive
Assessment System (MCAS often pronounced "em-cass"), "high stakes" English Language
Arts and Mathematics tests that students must pass as one condition for eligibility for
graduation. MCAS are also the tests used to hold schools accountable to the No Child Left
Behind Act. In the Conference Proceedings, one woman's contribution was summarized as
MCAS and labeling children is a problem. The only people being punished by the
MCAS are the students, not the test designers or the politicians! There is continuous
discourse about the students not being able to achieve. The students experience
heavy anxiety and tears. They can't sleep. Their discouragement leads to dropouts.
In my field notes, the cause of suffering is not just the MCAS, but real people like the test
designers and politicians, who the woman holds accountable for their discourse and actions.
The woman was inviting other people in the room to feel the emotional toll on students, the
anxiety, tears, sleeplessness and discouragement. Here is evidence that action steps and
summaries capture only part of the learning that happens in conversations like these when
people share the suffering they believe can be eased through equity and change. The
proceedings and lists of action steps were important, but so was the laughter I heard as
people were eating lunch or listening to the musical group or chanting "we've got the
numbers!" together. Organizer Fran Peavey describes this process using the metaphor of
having people tune a radio to a particular frequency to learn together, saying it is like a
"tuning of the heart."426 Alberto Melucci also discusses these nonrational — but not
irrational — processes as being one of the three most important characteristics of any
maintain unity. In fact, Alberto Melucci goes so far as to say that "passions and feelings,
love and hate, faith and fear are all part of a body acting collectively" and that "there is no
these kind of conversational learning processes that go on in social movements? When the
facilitators of this Education workshop suggested that one of the groundrules be, "Don't
dwell on the awfuls," they were pointing to this. Miren Uriarte followed up the introduction
Her words can be interpreted to be a caution about the obstacle to learning and acting that
exists if people get immersed in the immensity of the present suffering and the size of the
present problems without also reminding themselves of what has been accomplished
together in the past. Forgetting that problems have been faced, and that suffering has been
lived through to victories in the past, can have negative consequences for people engaged in
learning how to best make change in their communities. From the point of view of the
learning tasks in the model for decolonizing the imagination proposed in Chapter 3,
facilitators Miren Uriarte and Tulaine Shabazz Marshall suggested that there is an emotional
toll taken when people limit themselves to the learning tasks of "deconstructing" without
"constructing" possible solutions and generating a vision and hope for change.
As the Education Workshop continued, the facilitators went about the work of recording
categories of "ideas for collaboration" that came up on the easel pad. These "ideas for
collaboration" were taken into the afternoon New Majority meeting where all the individual
the 11th floor of the Healy Library to eat a box lunch. During the lunch, a musical group
named Solj Canto performed and elicited the same kind of emotional response that
Alberto Melucci says is necessary to create and maintain unity in a collective identity learning
process. Puerto Rican/Argentine singer and bongo player Rosi Amador and New Mexican
guitarist and composer Brian Amador performed from "El Doble de Amigos/Twice as
Many Friends," a CD of bilingual songs they wrote for children as part of their work as
bilingual education advocates. They said about their songs, "twice as many languages is
twice as much fun and twice as many friends!" Looking around the room, I saw many
smiles and many New Majority conference participants put down their sandwiches to sing,
After lunch, New Majority participants remained gathered in the University Club of the
Each of the seven issue groups convened briefly in different sections of the large room and
each came up with two overall goals they thought were important for the New Majority to
address. They also used their "ideas for collaboration" lists to come to an agreement about
five bold action steps to recommend to the whole gathering on their particular issue, as well
as some suggestions for keeping the momentum of the New Majority Conference going.
Each of the seven groups presented their action agendas. The day ended with a discussion
of the upcoming Boston City Council election and the At-Large City Council Candidacy of
428
New Majority Steering Committee, 18 October 2003 New Majority Conference Program,
University of Massachusetts Boston.
Felix Arroyo. N e w Majority conference participants enthusiastically voted yes o n a
resolution to support and work for election of Felix Arroyo, 429 suggesting a bullet-voting
strategy. 430 Paul Wantanbe promised that the three University of Massachusetts Boston
Institutes would publish and distribute the Proceedings of the New Majority Conference to
all w h o attended. In closing remarks to the 2003 N e w Majority Conference, Mel King said,
This city is our H O M E . This conference represents what we have been going
through, the struggle of developing solidarity, being positive and making community.
We shape our reality through our living.
As Lydia Lowe and Shelia Martin pointed o u t in the quotes at the beginning of this chapter,
building an agenda for People of Color has been at heart of the N e w Majority's incidental
learning. Creating spaces for listening and learning is an important learning strategy in the
intellectuals and organizers from across Boston's Communities of Color for the purpose of
building relationships and networks across seven different issues. Many of the conversations
and activities included nonrational processes, not recorded in the Conference Proceedings
and Action Steps. Social movement theorist Alberto Melucci points out that these
The New Majority sent out a letter announcing a "New Majority Rally for Felix Arroyo" that was
held e a few days before the election on 1 November 2003 at the First Church Parish Hall in
Roxbury. Although the event was called a rally, much of the time was spent doing a literature drop
among the homes of the largely African American residents in Roxbury.
4
° The way that Boston At-Large City Council elections work, die four candidates that receive the
most votes in the election are seated as At-Large Councilors and each voter can cast up to four votes
among the field of At-Large City Council Candidates. Bullet-voting is a voting strategy that
encourages voters to cast only one of their four possible votes. In this case, the number of votes for
Felix Arroyo would increase but not the number of votes for the other (by the way all White) At-
Large Candidates.
272
notitrational process are an important part of communal learning in any process of collective
identity. In the course of the day's conversations, people laughed, sang and danced together;
they shared and gave witness to the suffering in their communities that stemmed from
inequities in Boston political, social and economic life. These qualities in incidental learning
contribute to the emotional investment needed to maintain the unity of a social movement
When the New Majority Summary Proceedings of the First Conference: October 18,
2003 was published later that fall, the seeds for the New Majority's next grassroots agenda
building activity can be found. Earlier in this section is a photograph of Lydia Lowe and
Jorge Capetillo leading one of the two workshops on Civic and Political Participation at the
2003 conference. Among the remarks published in the conference proceedings about that
workshop is a note that "a speaker suggests that we organize on a street-by-street basis, on
issues over and above the voting process and try to convince people that the system can
work." Members of the New Majority Civic and Participation Committee developed the idea
from that remark into a learning campaign they called "Street Talks."
Street talks to "define our Boston": a new kind of agenda built through
neighborhood listening and learning
Instead of calling it a political agenda, we can call it defining our Boston, the new
Boston. We can assert a vision of the city that is ours. . a vision of what the city
would be if it were the way we want it to be.
Participant, 30 March 2004 New Majority Civic and Political Participation Committee Meeting
This summer, as part of its strategy to build political clout, the New Majority will
hold "Street Talks," or informal meetings in neighborhoods throughout the city to
build membership, educate voters and identify the important issues for a common
citywide agenda. . . The goal of Street Talks is to promote the idea that communities
of color can build a citywide movement to gain political power.
273
Lydia Lowe from the Sampan, New England's Only Chinese Newspaper, 22 July 20044}1
At a well-attended 12 February 2004 New Majority Steering Committee Meeting, the group
Committee generated the largest interest and was chaired by Lydia Lowe. Bimonthly
meetings were held in the Gymnasium at the Josiah Quincy School in Chinatown during the
Spring of 2004.
The first New Majority Civic and Political Participation Committee meeting on 15 March
2004 included an overview presentation of the political and civic work already going on in
Boston People of Color communities and a discussion about the "particular role that the
New Majority could and should fill here, given our limited capacity."432 Most of the time
was spent talking about what people meant when they said, "we want to build the New
Majority into a political mechanism with a grassroots base."433 Participants felt this was the
idea underlying all the action steps that came out of die New Majority Conference and
When the Civic and Political Participation Committee met again on 30 March 2004 at the
Quincy School, discussion revolved around what the New Majority could actually
accomplish in the seven months before the next elections that would have impact.
Participants suggested that "the New Majority could become more of a unifying force" and
they rallied around a conviction that "finding a consensual agenda is the key to uniting
431
Lydia Lowe, "Opinion: 'Street Talks to Build the New Majority Coalition," Sampan: New England's only
Chinese Newspaper, 22 July 2004, http://sampan.org/pastissues/2004/0716/opinion.htm.
432 ,-
New Majority Civic and Political Committee, Agenda Notes for 03.15.04 Meeting.
433
New Majority Civic and Political Committee, Notes for 03.30.04 Meeting.
274
based Street Talks as part of a neighborhood-unifying process: "We could come in with
what our vision [of the New Majority] is and capture the issues of people in the
neighborhoods." One person suggested the goal for the Street Talks should be to "develop
an agenda for the mayoral race and make the development process for that agenda lively and
engaging." This led to a back-and-forth around the room about the process involved in
agenda building. During that part of the discussion, the following remarks made by different
participants:
What is the process for developing the agenda? Is it what people are talking about?
The New Majority Conference developed an agenda, but there was litde discussion
about it. An agenda is an ever-evolving thing, not like a blueprint. Our agenda
should be a framework and we should let it be really organic and let it grow and
change.
Framework is almost a worldview, basic values for how we look at issues. Building
an agenda is a long-term process and other folks want short-term gains. There is
always a tension between the two.
We need something to recharge up the New Majority. Do we start with the broad
agenda from the Conference?
No, let's have initial discussions looking at issue patterns by having Street Talks on
issues. . . trying to increase civic and political participation by going out and doing
Street Talks.
Instead of calling it a political agenda, we can call it defining our Boston, the new
Boston. We can assert a vision of the city that is ours. We can set up a time frame
for making the city ours, making our city a reality. We can define a vision of what
the city would be if it were the way we want it to be. We have the power in numbers
and it must be a neighborhood process.
Here, New Majority participants are again thinking about agenda building from a perspective
of ongoing change, "not like a blueprint," but emerging and evolving out of their learning
experiments. Yet, at any moment a "snapshot" can be taken of the agenda and a concrete
action can grow out of part of the agenda for "short term gain." One participant even went
275
so far as to describe the purpose of agenda building to be the building of a vision that
redefines Boston through the eyes of People of Color. Like the slogan, ' W e ' v e got the
numbers!" which has continued to be repeated over and over in N e w Majority meetings and
literature, this idea of "defining our Boston" has gained that same popularity, often being
What also became clear as I listened to this discussion at the 30 March 2004 Civic and
Political Participation Committee was that the learning strategy of relying on the wisdom of
groups would b e continued in Street Talks. At this meeting, people determined that "Street
Talks" were not to b e talks given by N e w Majority leaders to people "in the streets," but
living in different neighborhoods about what they are up against. O u t of this meeting, the
Civic and Political Participation Committee decided to submit a formal proposal to the N e w
proposal was accepted by the Steering Committee and N e w Majority Street Talks became a
reality.
The "Whose Boston? Our Boston" slogan also echoes a movement in urban cities across the
country where new organizing is being fueled by the idea of an urban commons. The national Right
to the City Alliance (http://www.righttothecity.org/) is one example with a unifying message of
"The city belongs to all of us!" Philip Cryan recently wrote an excellent 20 page report on the
emergence of this type of organizing called "The city belongs to all of us: New organizing on
economic issues is fueled by the idea of an urban commons" as part of an internship with the On the
Commons and Grassroots Policy Project (http://onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2399).
The New Majority Civic and Political Participation Committee designed a flyer "What are
the New Majority Street Talks?" in order to recruit Street Talk sponsors. The flyer explained
Because the Democratic National Convention was held in Boston at the end of July 2004,
the first Street Talks were scheduled after the end of the Convention, at the beginning of
August. An official New Majority press release was sent out on 27 July, 2004 titled, "New
Majority Launches 'Street Talks.'" In that release, Street Talks were described as
conversations that attempt "to help people who are disconnected from politics to
understand how voting and participating is important to daily issues that they care about."436
A few days later on Saturday morning, 31 July 2004, a Practice and Preparation Session for
Street Talk Hosts was held in the UNITE Building in Chinatown. As part of that practice
New Majority Civic and Political Participation Committee, "What are the New Majority STREET
TALKS?"flyerfor recruiting people to organize Street Talks in their neighborhood or precinct,
Spring 2004.
46
New Majority Steering Committee, "New Majority Launches 'Street Talks'" Press Release, 27 July
2004.
277
and preparation, sponsors of Street Talks received a two-page "Standard Outline and Intro
for Street Talks." Quotes from these two documents — the press release and the outline for
the Street Talks — can be mapped onto the learning tasks model for "decolonizing the
tasks, the New Majority Street Talks combine at least three prophetic naming learning
groups as they gather people who are disconnected from politics to identify and discuss
"issues" and "concerns" that they believe are important for political candidates to address.
These Street Talks were held in different Boston neighborhoods, applying the strategy of
situating learning in a geography of struggle and difference. The design of the Street Talks
prioritized public transportation access and the participation of People of Color in the
conversations, participants in the New Majority then created a political agenda to use in the
~C^T
applying the learning strategies of prophetic naming
situating learning in a geography of struggle and difference
relying on the wisdom of groups
taking active listening and the shaping of questions seriously
Note: All quotes takenfrom 27 July 2004 Press Release. "New Majority haunches 'Street Talks'
279
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Wa aare tfla© &ew BS^oritF! the innovative and strenuous voter
have grown. . . [Asian American] voters n o w appear more invested in the political process
and more concerned about specific issues." 437 According to the Street Talks Progress
Report published in September 2004, 438 109 people participated in the Chinatown Street
Majority was given and five of the discussion groups were conducted in Chinese, while o n e
discussion group was conducted in English. Seven N e w Majority buttons were sold and 10
people became new members of the N e w Majority (the N e w Majority asked for a $ annual
437
Yvonne Abraham, "Chinatown voter awareness helped propel Yoon's win: Turnout tripled in
last eight years," Boston Globe, 10 November 2005,
http://www.boston.com/news/locd/articles/2005/ll/10/chinatown_voter_awareness_helped_pro
pel_yoons_win/ Ppage—2.
438
New Majority Civic and Political Participation Committee, "Street Talks Progress Report," 23
September 2004.
280
membership fee). About a dozen of the attendees had previously paid memberships.
Detailed notes at each of the six discussions were taken and sponsors reported that "top
issues of concern were affordable housing, crime and public safety, elder services and health
care." Street Talks were also held in the South E n d at Castle Square Housing Development,
I served as recorder for the Street Talk Meeting held on Wednesday evening, 22 September
2004 at the Freedom House in "one of Boston's oldest neighborhoods of color," 439 Grove
HalL near the border of Roxbury and Dorchester. 440 Freedom House was founded in 1949
and has a long history as a "a center of civil rights and advocacy for Boston's African
American community." 441 T h e Street Talk was co-sponsored by the N e w Majority, Project
RIGHT 4 4 2 and the Freedom House. Atiya Dangleben from the N e w Majority Steering
Committee, an energetic statewide director of MassVote in her 20s at the time, was the
facilitator.
a group of about 20 people came together in a circle upstairs at 6:00pm. On a table in the
meeting room was soda, juice and other refreshments, including some trays of vegetables
and tiny frosted cupcakes. The Street Talk began with Executive Director Ricardo Neal
welcoming people on behalf of the Freedom House, pointing out a similarity between the
efforts of the Freedom House and the New Majority Street Talks saying, "This is a vehicle to
engage the community in conversation, something the Freedom House does every day."
Atiya Dangleben then gave an inspiring history of the New Majority and described the
Street Talks are conversations where people try to flesh out issues that are present in
the community. We are trying to work together to draw out what issues communities
have tried to deal with together — whether the outcome was good or bad — and use
that to help figure out what the agenda of the New Majority should be.
Atiya Dangleben then presented the two open-ended questions she wanted to have people
discuss,
Boston?
She suggested that as people answered the questions, they try to distinguish between
As people discussed the first question, Atiya summarized what people said on large easel-pad
sheets posted in the room. For the first question, "How have Communities of Color
worked together in Grove Hall (Boston)? She had three columns for recording summaries
of the responses.
282
In the first column was a "A" symbol to recotd struggles where people might have wished
outcomes were different. People mentioned "fiefdoms" and "turfs" that were difficult to
organizations and some established community organizations. They also spoke about
frictions between African Americans and Latinos, saying that "you can't cross race lines" and
that there are very palpable barriers that often prevent African Americans and Latinos from
working together. One person said, "we really should be working more hand in hand, but
In the second column was a "+" symbol to record struggles where people thought the
outcomes were positive. One person spoke about how when a community crisis arises and
things need to be addressed in Grove Hall, people do show up, pull together and work well
together. Another person said the same thing in a different way, "when push comes to
shove, when it is darkest before dawn, you can depend on people to show up." People
mentioned particular organized groups that work well, such as the Beulah Avenue Task
Force. Someone else mentioned that loosely held together groups were often quietly
successful. The example given to illustrate this phenomenon was an informal group of 50
teenagers who have played football every weekend for three years and "organize themselves
to be safe." "This seems to be a success with all kinds of kids working together. . . and
The third column was marked "insights." The insights that were recorded in this column
included both signs of hope that people see in their communities, as well as concrete
283
suggestions for strategies that would help People of Color Communities collaborate
together. One person said, "I have a strong sense that this is a new time with a new vision
for people working together." Several people mentioned the positive impact of Andrea
Cabral's success, a Cape Verdean American who was elected as Sheriff. They said, "she
helped educate people about what she did differently and what the job is really all about."
One person said, "Things are getting better on my street because I saw three or four Sheriff
Cabral signs and had three or four conversations with folks about the election. People have
the sense that the political tide is changing. That's what's impressive and that is what
motivates me!" Some of the strategies for collaborating that were suggested included:
Atiya Dangleben's method for organizing and summarizing the conversation helped people
to learn together and to build on each other's ideas. She kept bringing the conversation back
to show how their ideas could make a contribution to the New Majority. The enthusiasm
and participation that was generated from this listening and recording exercise laid a
foundation for the lively conversation that took place around the second question.
284
When Grove Hall Street Talk participants discussed the second question, "What issues
should be a priority for Communities of Color in creating an agenda for Boston?" they often
offered their suggestions in the form of questions. A list of four important issues was drawn
up: education, development and housing, getting seats at the decision making tables and
making decision makers accountable, and problems with "go to" people and gatekeepers in
the community. Figure 9.3 maps these four issues and some of the remarks and questions
Education. Talking about education, one participant asked "How is the Boston Public
School plan to go back to community schooling with walk zone schools going to impact us,
when many of the schools in our neighborhoods have been closed? and "Are we really
taking care of the New Majority of 85% students of color in Boston Public Schools?"
Development and housing. When speaking about the advertisements around the
neighborhood that were springing up for housing about to be built, a number of questions
were asked. "Who's developing the housing? Who will live there?" These two questions
addressed a fear that new housing will now "preserve the history that is already in the
neighborhood" and will "push people out" by raising housing costs in the neighborhood.
People asked questions about the subsidized "Section 8" housing cuts, pointing out how the
mobilization of people around these issues was fragmented: "Where's the mobilization
around cutting Section 8 for 6,000 families? Why are some people working only on the issue
of project-based Section 8 and some only working on the issue of Section 8 vouchers?"
285
Education
schools, assignments, quality Development and housing
development and housing that does not
questions raised during take away from the neighborhood's
discussion: history and does not push people out
Where is the master plan for these decision- not enough "go to" people for
making tables? Why aren't [People of Color] the individual problems faced
at the decision making tables? by people in the neighborhood
How can we make people voting be a
lifestyle? How can we make having people elected officials do not always
accountable for voting be a lifestyle too? have the resource to be
effective "go to" people
Or should we be organizing around other
things besides voting?
286
Getting seats at the decision making tables and making decision makers
accountable. Some people spoke out against "a small group of men downtown making
decisions" and expressed confusion about how to identify which "decision making tables"
were impacting their lives. They asked the questions, "Where is the master plan for these
decision-making tables?" and "Why aren't [People of Color] at the decision making tables?"
Another person addressed issues related to voting, asking "How can we make people voting
be a lifestyle? How can we make having people accountable for voting be a lifestyle too?"
Other people questioned what political power meant: "Is just getting the vote out political
Problems with "go to" people and gatekeepers in the community. Early in the Grove
Hall Street Talk, the issue of gatekeepers came up in a discussion about barriers to coalition-
building and collaboration. One of the participants said, "Gatekeepers can 'do in' a
collaboration or coalition effort. They are different in different neighborhoods. They don't
necessarily speak for the community as a whole." Another participant said, "We always have
to fight to keep our heads above water. Then sometimes the gatekeepers get in the way and
we can't get around them." The sense I got was that the gatekeepers were powerful people
in the neighborhood who had more influence man most residents and more influential in
community-wide issues than problems faced by individuals. Although people did not name
gatekeepers or suggest which gatekeepers might be good ones or might present problems,
examples of gatekeepers who impact the Grove Hall neighborhood might be Don
Mohammed from the Nation of Islam and Reverend Eugene Rivers of the Ella Baker House
people appear to be those people who can give advice to individual people with personal
problems and who can help resolve those personal problems. Participants in the Grove Hall
Street Talk spoke about the fact that there are "too few 'go to' people." One participant
insisted, "We must have a lot of 'go to' people because of the number of people in our
community with serious problems they have to serve." Another participant brought up the
issue of holding "go to" people accountable, saying "There is a need to hold 'go to' people
A discussion that included complaints from participants about elected officials as "go to"
people was revealing. One person said, "Elected officials act as though 'we' work for them.
They call us." Another said, "Elected officials have been leaning on community
Throughout these discussions at the Grove Hall Street Talk, Atiya Dangleben was listening
intendy and writing notes on the poster paper. I was assigned to be a recorder and take
detailed notes, as well. One way to describe what happened at the Street Talk is "listening
for change." "Listening for change" includes listening for the questions that are not being
asked or answered. "Listening for change" means listening for the issues that most needed
to be addressed to make real positive change in People of Color communities such as Grove
Hall. "Listening for change" also creates a space for people to articulate out loud what diey
know and make sense of what they know and have learned from their life experiences. It
288
offers an opportunity for taking the crucial step in experiential learning to go from just
Educators have recognized that listening certainly "plays a lifelong role in the processes of
organizer Fran Peavey writes that the "Asking questions and listening for the strategies and
ideas embedded in people's own answers can be the greatest service a social change worker
can give to a particular issue." Community organizer Mel King often points out that true
listening means having the capacity and willingness to change. This "listening for change"
can be interpreted as a creative force that builds relationships and possibilities for learning in
both those who listen and those who are listened to and deserves m o r e attention in future
education research.
As a community organizer in Maine working on a thorny issue in the 1990s, I was one of the
conveners of a Listening Project. A Listening Project is both participatory research and a community
survey organizing technique developed by the Rural Southern Voice for Peace (RSVP). Leaders on
both sides of an issue are invited to create questions for a community survey using a consensus-based
decision making process. Volunteers are trained go out into homes in the community to ask the
survey questions and listen, not offering any comments but simply recording the answers given. As a
team of us sorted through the data and talked with the listeners, one insight that came through very
clearly was that as people were given an opportunity to talk through their answers to questions, they
often would change their answers or soften their answers as they spoke. The act of speaking their
thoughts aloud actually allowed people to self-evaluate their own thought processes and make
changes without any conversation or persuasion from others. What appeared remarkable to me then
and now is that spaces for asking questions and listening are potent spaces for change because people
learn and change as they have an opportunity to speak from their experiences.
Nancy Hyslop and Bruce Tone, "Listening: Are we teaching it, and if so, how?" Eric
Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Eric Digest ED295132, 1988.
445
Fran Peavey, By life's grace: Musings on the essence of social change (Philadelphia, PA: New Society
Publishers, 1994).
289
Everybody is talking about "the new Boston" these days, but whom are we talking about
when we use that phrase, and what social, economic, and political changes are on the
horizon?
With the Boston mayoral and city council elections just a half-year away, it is time for the
New Majority to focus our efforts on influencing the debate and building power for die
2005 elections. . .
By focusing on issue topics prioritized through last year's Street Talks, we are working to
develop the New Majority's policy platform for 2005 — i.e. identifying a few City of Boston
policy priorities shared by New Majority communities which can become a focal point of
this fall's political debate.
5 April 20-05 letter to the New MajorityfromNew Majority co-chairs Lydia luowe and Shelia Martin
In last few months of 2004 and the first few mondis of 2005, the New Majority Steering
Committee, facilitated by co-chairs Lydia Lowe and Shelia Martin, reviewed the meeting
notes from the Street Talks that were collected and organized by the Civic and Political
Participation Committee. The Steering Committee also continued to discuss how the New
Majority would "influence the debate and build power" in the Boston mayoral and city
council elections fhat were coming up in November of 2005. By the early spring of 2004, a
way forward was decided. The focus electoral issues for New Majority would align with the
information gathered from the Street Talk discussions. A process would be designed so
that, with help from New Majority members, this information from the Street Talks would
The Steering Committee imagined fhat such a New Majority Platform with policy points
could be used in several ways. First, the New Majority Platform could be released to the
press as a way to begin a process of prioritizing New Majority advocacy during die Fall 2005
City of Boston elections. The Steering Committee decided that the New Majority would not
support or endorse political candidates unless those political candidates supported the New
290
Majority Platform. Second, questions associated with each policy point could be posed on a
New Majority candidate questionnaire that would be distributed to those running for mayor
and city council. Finally, the Platform could be used to design the questions for a New
Majority At-Large Candidate Forum to be held before the November 2005 City of Boston
elections.
To accomplish what the New Majority Steering Committee imagined, they took "listening
for change" back into the wider New Majority community of practice. On May 21, 2005,
the New Majority held "a lively general meeting"446 at the League of Women for Community
Service in the South End for the purpose of turning the information gathered from Street
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and I had to check the address twice to make sure I had
arrived at the home of the League of Women for Community Service because the building's
front was largely boarded up. It turned out the boarding was protection for a major
reconstruction effort on a historic site. The League of Women for Community Service is
one of the oldest African American women's organizations in the city. This brownstone
building where the New Majority general meeting was held is believed to have been a station
on the Underground Railroad when James FarwelL a sea captain and anti-slavery activist
owned it. Coretta Scott King, who helped lead the Freedom (Civil Rights) Movement along
side her husband Martin Luther King, Jr., lived when she won a scholarship to study concert
446
New Majority, "New Majority adopts 2005 Platform," press release *May 21, 2005)
Historical information on the League of Women for Community Service can be found on the
website of the Boston Women's Heritage Trail, http://bwht.org/tours/south-end.
291
So, as I — and about fifty other folks — stepped into history when we walked into the two
large ground floor rooms with wood paneling and high ceilings. As always, there were two
New Majority Steering Committee members behind a desk set up in the entrance hall with
brochures, membership forms, and New Majority buttons for sale. As always, the large
room in the back was laid out with a wonderful array of warm food, bought to support
family-owned People of Color establishments. The belief that sharing familiar warm
comforting food together builds bridges across differences and supports local businesses was
always mentioned and acted upon when a New Majority gathering was planned.
The front room had nearly a do2en poster-sized post-its covered with information from the
New Majority Street Talks that the Civic and Political Participation Committee had
organized into policy topics. The posters looked quite dramatic because there were
People were mingling, perching with plates by the walk and contemplating what was written
on the poster papers. So, when the time came to thresh out a New Majority Platform from
the large collection of suggestions gathered in the citywide Street Talks, a spirited
participatory process ensued. The facilitated threshing process involved both visual cues
and discussion. People were given sheets of colored dots and asked to place their dots
beside the policy topics and issues within those topics that they felt were most important for
the New Majority to name as being the most important shared priorities among the Black,
Asian and Latino communities in Boston. One person, who obviously came with a strong
agenda already in mind, called for clarification out from the back, "Can we put all our dots
292
on one point?" The question was received with laughter. And the answer was "well...yes...if
Some decisive folks possessing immediate clarity moved swiftly among the posters to place
their dots. Others clumped together in small groups, talking and gesturing around the
various posters, before hesitantly indicating their choices. Some placed their dots and
stepped back for a while to think about their choices. A few changed their minds and then
had to scrape the dots off in order to put them somewhere else. One woman sighed and
said, "with so many important issues, it is hard to choose!" As a dotless observer, I was
After a while, the two facilitators asked people to sit down for a group dialogue about the
results. The eight-point platform, shown as a concept map in Figure 9.4, slowly emerged
through a process far more complex than a simple majority vote. After summarizing the
issues and policies that had the largest constellations of dots beside them, the facilitator
asked if anyone wanted to advocate for an issue or policy point that they believed had
received fewer dots than it deserved. A couple of people did and they were each given a few
minutes to address the group. The facilitator then asked if anyone wanted to change their
As the discussion went on, the final eight policy points were decided more by the sense of
the meeting than by strict by-the-rules voting. The facilitators kept asking strategic questions
for clarification to winnow down the choices. I noticed that a policy point was finally
adopted when a quiet came over the room and everyone seemed satisfied that
Figure 9.4 Eight point of the 2005 New Majority Policy Platform
Multilingual
Equitable VOTING
funding of RIGHTS
SCHOOLS
to close the
achievement
gaP
/ \ / \
Hire Redefine
family/community
coordinators
HOUSING
affordability
in every
standards
SCHOOL
adding notes and arrows to the poster papers as she tried to visually record the discussion
and then made new poster papers as points were clarified. In all, eight policy points were
Although housing and public safety were assigned but one policy point each, they "rose
clearly to the top of the agenda."448 Of critical importance to people in the New Majority was
the exodus of People of Color due to inflated housing rentals and costs. The members
decided to push for a redefinition of housing affordability standards because the current
"unaffordable" housing for too many in Communities of Color. Instead of the usual call for
hiring more policemen, people at the New Majority decided to address the issue of public
Three topics were assigned two policy points each: schools, youth and voting rights.
Under the topic of education, people felt that addressing both the issue of equitable funding
and the need for a famfly/community coordinator at each Boston Public School to boost
parent support and participation were important. Municipal voting rights was a topic that
united both the Latino and Asian American New Majority members. The issues chosen as
policy points involved increasing multilingual voting rights and expanding municipal voting
rights to include U. S. Permanent Residents. The topic of youth was both a swiftly decided
platform point and provoked one of the most contentious discussions. There were so many
needs that people wanted to lift up for youth, it seemed difficult to decide which among
448
New Majority, "New Majority Adopts 2005 Platform," Press Release (May 21, 2005).
295
them to pursue as a platform point. The final decision was to have two policy points that
linked youth issues to the city budget: permanent line items on the Boston city budget for
After the eight points were threshed out, an official Robert Rules of Order vote was taken
among member to officially adopt them as die 2005 New Majority Policy Platform. The
"ayes" were hearty and unanimous. Then came the work of designing questions for each of
the policy points as shown in Figure 9.5. Members from the gathering volunteered to
"adopt" a policy point and question. Their job was to take one policy point and adjust the
wording of the question, then create an accompanying paragraph that offered a brief factual
history about the issue and its impact on Communities of Color. By the end of the day, a
press release entitled "New Majority adopts 2005 Platform" was ready and issued.
In diis New Majority Policy Platform threshing process, classic situated learning that applies
the wisdom of groups to engage a community of practice is in full display. All three learning
levels of the New Majority's pattern of participation described in Chapter 8 were engaged
(See Figure 9.6 for a reprise). The wisdom of the group of middle level New Majority
members who attended this General Meeting was engaged in threshing through information
gathered from Street Talks. The Street Talks, in turn, had engaged the wisdom of small
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298
The learning product of this threshing process was a Policy Platform with eight of the most
important issues in Communities of Color that have not received the attention and action
they deserve within the political life of the city. In the next section, the list of questions
associated with each of the policy points generated in this General Meeting is used as an
evolutionary learning instrument. This happens when the New Majority community of
practice attempts effect positive change in the wider Boston community by sponsoring an
At-Large City Council Candidate Forum for the November 2005 city elections.
"The City Council would be made up of folks who look like the New Majority."
Lydia ljowe 's answer449
Exactly a month after the New Majority General Meeting, on Tuesday, June 21, 2005, the
New Majority Steering Committee met at 6pm in the conference room at the Chinese
Progressive Association. Plans to sponsor a New Majority At-Large City Council Candidate
Forum in October before the city elections took up most of the agenda for this meeting and
the many other Forum planning meetings that following in the ensuing months. The date
and place for the At-Large City Council Candidate Forum were set: October 6, 2005 at the
The Steering Committee decided a coalition-building model and invite other Boston People
of Color organizations to co-sponsor the Forum. Shelia Martin volunteered to talk to the
Meghan Irons, "Hopes for a brighter tomorrow," Lydia Lowe's response Boston Globe, March 29,
2009, Local News Section.
299
League of Women Voters of Boston because their presence would add credibility. Other
organizations contacted ranged across the New Majority communities: for example, the
Chinese Progressive Association and the Asian Pacific American Agenda Association from
the Asian Community, the Black Political Task Force and the Muslim American
Society/Freedom Foundation from the Black Community, and City Life/Vida Urbana and
(jOiste? in the Latino Community. Other organizations that promoted citywide civic
organizations agreed to serve as Forum co-sponsors. Not only did this event serve as an
access opportunity for peripheral participation in the New Majority community of practice
by the organizations; each organization mobilized their individual members to come out for
the Forum.
The Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN) was engaged to tape and televise the Forum
prior to the November 8 elections. Translators and translation gear were lined up for those
attenders not yet fluent in English. Candidate Questionnaires that were based on questions
from the New Majority's eight point Policy Platform were drawn up and emailed. jCon Salsa!
radio host Jose Masso and transportation justice activist Khalida Smalls accepted the New
On Thursday evening October 6, 2005, shen I arrived on bike a half hour early, the room
and hallways of the Vietnamese Community Center were already packed with people. In all,
nearly 200 people attended the New Majority At-Large Candidate Forum, which was earned
it the distinction of being the candidate forum with the largest attendance in the November
2005 city election cycle. After welcomes from Nahm Paul Ton That on behalf of VietAID
and the Vietnamese Community Center and from Shelia Martin on behalf of the New
Majority's coalition of sponsors, the Forum got underway. All eight At Large City Council
Candidates attended and even more surprisingly, all eight stayed through to the end of the
event. This was in direct contrast to the candidate's spotty and partial attendance of other
Forums and at least "partly an indication of how important the votes of these [Communities
[of Color had] become," according to reporter Toussaint Losier from the Bay State Banner?50
The Forum program got off to a start with opening remarks by all the candidates. Another
indication of how seriously the At-Large City Council candidates took the Forum is
illustrated by the opening remarks of Sam Yoon, which elicited laughter from the audience
and nods from the other candidates. Sam Yoon commented, "I've got to admit I'm more
nervous talking now to all of you than I've been at any of the previous forums."
These opening remarks were followed by a list of questions for all candidates drawn directly
Then Lydia Lowe elicited laughs as she stepped onstage to coordinate the next part of the
program armed with a large fishbowl complete with fish-shaped papers on which questions
were written. This was, of course, the "fishbowl question" part of the programs where
Some of the White candidates stumbled to answer some of the questions that were clearly
new to them. Several years later when I spoke to City Councilor Michael Flaherty, he
immediately remembered the New Majority coalition's Forum without prompting and
Toussaint Losier, "Candidates make case at New Majority Forum," hay State Banner 41 no. 9,
October 13, 2008.
301
confirmed the impact of the New Majority's Platform, saying, "Some of those other [White]
candidates were real surprised by the questions, but I wasn't. I'd been visiting around the
city and talking with people for years. I already knew about the New Boston." Sam Yoon,
whose membership on the original New Majority Coordinating Committee for the 2003
conference inspired him to seek political office, used his closing remarks to send a "very
New Majority" message, urging the audience to "elect people to city council and elected
positions who look like you, who understand your culture and your background."
Communities of Color. Furthermore, the Forum served as the New Majority's initial
experiment into evolutionary learning, that is trying to effect a change in thinking among
those in the wider Boston community. The New Majority community of practice designed a
concern to Communities of Color diat had not been asked or answered in any serious way in
die economic, political or social mainstream of Boston. These questions had their origins in
the "grassroots," not the seasoned community organizers who predominate New Majority
membership. They reflected die genuine concerns of the neighborhood people who attend
one of the many the Street Talks and were the result of the New Majority community of
practice's commitment to "listen for change." The questions were refined by the New
Majority general Membership during a learning process that was designed to build another
instrument for evolutionary learning: the 2005 New Majority Policy Platform.
302
While this chapter has described how the New Majority has attempted to use agenda
building to catalyze evolutionary learning outside the community of practice in Boston, the
next chapter returns to a learning process that takes place largely within the New Majority.
The chapter that follows tells the story of organization building that took place largely in the
innermost circle of in the New Majority community of practice as they took an educational
journey to discover if the New Majority was "to be (or not to be) a 501(c)(3)" nonprofit.
303
10
Learning "to be (or not to be) a 501(c)(3)"
The New Majority needs to finally have a structure and by-laws and become. . . more
than just a loosely held-together coalition. I am committed to the concept of the
New Majority formalizing their organizational status. . . the organization needs to be
legitimate. People like to see permanency, know how the organization will continue
to go on.
Shelia Martin, Interview December 2008
On 11 November 2005, the New Majority held a second annual meeting at the Freedom
House in Grove Hall on the border of Roxbury and Dorchester, the site of one of the Street
Talks described in the last chapter. At the end of the meeting, New Majority Co-Chairs
Lydia Lowe and Shelia Martin presented recommendations for the upcoming year, saying,
"organization building needs to be a priority." Plans were made to hold a retreat to refine
the New Majority mission and better define the role of the New Majority plays among other
civic engagement organizations. However, the recommendation that would engage New
Majority participants with a learning journey that required time, sometimes conflicted
conversation, and energy for the next two years was this:
We also recommend formalizing the organization's structure and by-laws with the
proposal that the New Majority form itself as a non-profit organization which can
include individual and organizational membership, and that we also start a New
Majority PAC, which can support and endorse the candidates.
In Chapter 5, one meaning for the New Majority, identified as part of the process of
collective identity, was a relatively stable and public definition of the New Majority as an
organisation.
304
Many community organizers, like those in the New Majority, are reconsidering the "old
school" model of forming a tax-exempt nonprofit organization and a recognized legal entity
as a strategy to support and offer long-term stability for their work. Sheila Martin a seasoned
organizer on the New Majority Steering Committee communicates the traditional connection
between becoming a legal organization and being "real" in her remarks at the end of the 18
We can make a new spin on organization. . . This will engage members and attract
new members. We can communicate that we believe in the New Majority and the
message of the New Majority. . . We need activity to bring people back to the
point that the New Majority is real [emphasis mine].
Certainly becoming an organization with legal standing makes the New Majority real — or
legitimate — in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of foundations that give money to
organizations with legal standing. However attaining legal standing can put constraints on
what the New Majority participants can do as they continue their mission to seek social,
economic and political power for Boston's Communities of Color. As Kelly Bates suggests
in the quotation that begins this chapter, this might be the time to develop a different "on-
the-ground model that works for the community." This chapter documents uses the
learning task model of decolonizing the imagination to uncover how participants in the New
Majority learn organization-building into the mix of their collective identity process. Figure
10.1 shows how this chapter fits into the informal education model of prophetic naming in
prophetic naming
Chapter 6
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n e w majority situated learning: n e w majority
purpose &
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the imagination"
O n e of the tried and true ways for a group to gain a degree of legitimacy and stability is to
become incorporated with the state government, then to file for nonprofit status with the
create the articles of incorporation, it is also necessary to produce By-Laws for the
organization, an internal document that sets out procedural mechanics for the organization.
Both are rather lengthy complicated processes that often involve lawyers. However, these
sometimes struggle to survive. Additionally, organizations with these structures have not
yet effectively brought together People of Color together into coalitions with the ability to
effective widespread social, political and economic change. People in the N e w Majority have
been moving forward for three years on both filings, with the help of pro b o n o legal
assistance from lawyers David Clancy and John Alessi of the Boston legal firm, Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. This section presents observations about the process
w
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the $5-7 donation requested for breakfast and lunch at the Retreat, and I am startled to find
the Bank of American machine charges $2.25 for a withdrawal, far more than the $1.25
charged at the upscale Back Bay Station A T M not far from the South E n d where I live and
work! Then the reality I know from experience settled in, that everything from groceries to
ATM fees (and sometimes even rent) cost more in the lowest income areas of Boston like
Codman Square. I returned to a thought I have had many times before, "It's just not fair
that the people who live with the least money should have to pay more for everyday things."
This is the Boston office of the same ACORN organization that came under attack from
Republicans in the 2008 elections who questioned the legitimacy of their efforts to recruit and
register voters of color and voters who live with low incomes. ACORN in Boston had the foresight
to organize around predatory loans in early 2000, a number of years before the current 2008
foreclosure crisis that has impacts not only Boston but across the nation.
308
Even though I was ten minutes late, only a few N e w Majority folks have arrived. I
recognized the retreat host, Maud Hurd, who serves as die National President of A C O R N ,
from some other organizing meetings and from State House hearings about predatory loans.
So I took time to ask her some questions about the colorful art on the walls, depicting
African American and Caribbean themes. Maud told m e that the paintings were made by
young people from Artists for Humanity, an organization that engages Boston teens in arts-
based entrepreneurship, paying them an hourly wage to produce paintings, murals, theatrical
sets, photographs, silk-screened T-shirts, and graphic designs that are sold to individual and
corporate clients.
T h e meeting r o o m was a large space filled with natural light, set up with tables arranged in a
U-shape with paper, pens and nametags at each chair ready to begin. Some men from me
N e w Majority brought in bagels, cream cheese, donuts, coffee and juice, and set up a table.
As always there was a soy milk alternative to cow milk because large numbers of People of
Color in the community are lactose intolerant. A member of the N e w Majority, Sandra
Mcintosh, served as facilitator of the retreat. 455456 Sandra led the group through the
photocopied agenda for the day that sat in front of each participant. T h e morning was taken
community/strategy to build power." Lydia Lowe stepped up to tell about the afternoon
agenda, quickly summarizing the two tracks for organizational development suggested by the
This is the first time I saw men, rather than women, doing food preparation and setting up at a
New Majority event. Usually the food is handled by women, so the feminist in me marks this!
455
In addition to her work as Family Coordinator for Boston English High School, Sandra Mcintosh
was awarded one of Community Change's 2004 Drylongso Awards in recognition of her work
"doing what needs to be done in fighting against the destructive forces of racism."
456
Peacework, "2004 Drylongso Awards, " November 2004, via www.peaceworkmagazine.org,
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0411/041119.htm.
New Majority Steering Committee: pursuing nonprofit status as an organization and/or
PAC).
After lunch, New Majority steering committee member Shelia Martin facilitated the group
through a discussion of what it would mean and what it would take for the New Majority to
become a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit. The discussion uncovered reasons why pursuing the
nonprofit status would be beneficial. Perhaps the most important benefit offered was that
becoming a credentialed organization confers legitimacy, "gets you respect if you can pull
out the numbers," "can build cache," and "allows the capacity to shape policy and educate
people through that process." A related advantage for building membership was mentioned:
"nonprofit organizations can more easily attract members." Since New Majority members
include organizations as well as individuals, it was also suggested that nonprofit status would
I don't think other organizations would participate [as organizational members of the
New Majority] in a Political Action Committee, but would participate in a nonprofit
setting agenda. We need to see cooperative, not competitive, participation in the
New Majority.
Finally, people discussed the possibility that nonprofit status could expand the ability of the
New Majority to raise funds, or "build cash flow," saying "a lot of the work of the New
Majority is educational, so we can get donations and grants though we want to rely on these
less."
In this session, the New Majority participants also began what was to become a wider and
longer conversation stretched across time. They began to discuss the drawbacks of pursuing
310
nonprofit organizational status, deconstructing what has worked against the interests of
People of Color in organizational structure. One point with implications for continuing
discussion was,
Will the structure of the nonprofit and the dependence on grant money limit die
functioning and activity of die organization? This requires vigilance on the part of
the board to prevent. The New Majority's big goal is to achieve a membership and
participation base for support and use the grant money as an option only.
Tension between pursing the legitimacy conferred by official status and what the New
Majority hopes to achieve in the community continued as participants sought to define what
it means to be a member of the New Majority. It was pointed out that members are the
"source of leadership and new ideas. . . and the organization should support this happening."
Yet the process of pursuing nonprofit status focuses on the development of a structure and
one of the participants pointed out that "people don't participate in a structure; people get
involved to make their life better." There is concern that energy spent in developing and
maintaining the structure might siphon energy from the social change purposes of the New
Majority, because it has happened in odier organizations. The possible danger of pursuing
nonprofit status as a means for getting money for the New Majority was succincdy described
by longtime administrator in social change organizations, Maud Hurd, when she declared
One approach was identified to help with making the organization structure work for
organization:
Since this is a long passage, I wanted to note that this is close to a quote from a participant; a few
words might be paraphrased. I was handwriting field notes at the session, but the point seemed so
relevant that I went back and worked the full quote as soon as I wrote it down.
311
Membership
Steering committee
Co-chairs
Instead of having a president or executive director at the top of the hierarchy, the New
Majority would have two co-chairs at the bottom. The top of the hierarchy would be the
membership, who would be driving what is done by the organization. While this is another
example of the New Majority's fidelity to a learning strategy of "relying on the wisdom of
groups," it also is an example of how participants in the New Majority work through the
As people in the New Majority took steps toward organizational legitimacy, they were also
taking up the learning task involved in deconstructing the idea of an organization. First
they engaged in perceiving hegemony, keeping their eyes open to the aspects of becoming an
organization, "mat may seem natural, but that harm and work to support the interests of
others who have power over." They also deconstructed the idea of an organization by
unmasking power by "taking apart the' mode of domination that is hidden." Their hope
was to find a new way to operate as an organization that allowed people to attempt to go
beyond what has been deforming in other social change organizations. To reiterate what
Shelia Martin said in the same conversation, "We can make a new spin on organization,
312
encourage people and take a positive attitude. We need the kind of activity that will bring
people back to the point that the New Majority is real and invite people to be part of the
status to the New Majority members. They also decided to recommend that a Political
Action Committee be formed to operate in parallel with the New Majority nonprofit
organization. Thirteen action items were identified to make these steps real and people
stepped up to make commitments toward them under a timeline. Shelia Martin continued
to provide leadership toward pursuing nonprofit status, starting with developing by-laws and
taking other steps toward establishing nonprofit status for the New Majority. Owen Toney
committed to developing by-laws for the Political Action Committee. Nasim Memon
committed to finding the pro bono lawyers who could help with the legal paperwork and
filings.
313
Bringing the first by-laws to the general meeting, 13 September 2006
-Non-Prtuit and i*AC incorporation i Membership Meeting. This Membership Meeting was
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would include nonprofit and PAC incorporation and a vote on a draft of the by-laws, as well
as a discussion of the 2006 gubernatorial race, in which there was an African American
candidate, Deval Patrick. Above the Membership Meeting announcement, the newsletter
said, "The power and potential of the New Majority is clear. The challenge is to get
A Georgian Revival style building from 1903, the Great Hall in Codman Square sits on the
site of the old Dorchester Town Hall. The public library it once held was moved in 1975
and mat left the building largely abandoned. The 1970s were terrible times for the Codman
Square neighborhood. The Great Hall's present incarnation as a meeting space for the
Codman Square Health Center and the community is a testament to the efforts by local
residents to organize around reviving the neighborhood and improving conditions in the
community. Walking into the Great Hall on Wednesday 15 September 2006 for the New
Majority Membership Meeting, I saw that the room was set up so that people would be
314
clustered at round tables, rather than sitting on chairs arranged in rows or in a circle as I had
Atiya Dangleben and Peter Lin-Marcus were serving as Co-Chairs of the Steering Committee
that year. These relatively young organizers, in their 20s and early 30s led the Membership
Meeting. They started by having all the folks attending introduce themselves. The intention
was to get the by-laws passed at the meeting, but a number of sticking points came up as the
by-laws were discussed. The longest discussions had to do with the difference between the
board officers required by by-law legal conventions and how those requirements compared
with the actual composition of the New Majority Steering Committee. It was decided that
after the membership elected the Steering Committee, the Steering Committee would choose
those who would serve as the Board Officers from among them.
Another issue that came up was about how to describe the participation of youth on the
Steering Committee. One member pointed out that the by-laws specified that youth be at
least juniors in high school and that there might be youth who have dropped out of school
that might like to serve, "If there are young people who have dropped out of school who
want to be involved, that's great." Someone also mentioned that Steering Committee
member Lydia Lowe started getting politically active as a freshman in high school. The
discussion ended with a decision that 3 youth aged 14-21 would be eligible to serve on the
Steering Committee and that these youth would be fully enfranchised with a vote.
The by-law discussion ended with a commitment to pass drafts around by email and have a
vote taken on the By-Laws later. Then the New Majority went on to have a lively discussion
315
of the upcoming election in which African American Deval Patrick was a candidate for
governor. Even though the New Majority defined itself as being concerned mainly with the
City of Boston and the gubernatorial race was statewide, the people in the New Majority
voted to endorse Deval Patrick and encourage members to volunteer for the campaign in its
At the New Majority Annual Meeting on Saturday 10 February 2007 at the Tobin
Community Center on Mission Hill, Shelia Martin presented the proposed organizational by-
laws and they were approved unanimously. This allowed the New Majority to begin to move
forward with gaining non-profit status. Owen Toney also presented the by-laws for the
parallel political arm, the New Majority Political Action Committee, which were also
approved, with an amendment that the Endorsement Committee would make endorsement
In early summer of 2007, pro-bono attorneys John Alessi and David Clancy of the Boston
legal firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP sent a five page memorandum to the
New Majority that provided a "high level summary of considerations for incorporating as a
Massachusetts corporation and seeking tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the
Just days after the devastating electoral defeat of at-large city councilor Felix Arroyo,
Attorney John Alessi and an assistant attended an 8 November 2007 New Majority Steering
Committee Meeting held at the Chinese Progressive Association, bringing with them a highly
technical 18-slide tutorial on the New Majority's process covering the same ground. He
316
explained that legally the N e w Majority fits in as a hybrid of a "Charitable" organization that
information in the community. Much of the discussion with members of the Steering
Committee centered on the intricate financial definition of "public support" that the N e w
than a "Private Foundation." Questions were also asked about the possibility of having both
the co-chairs of die N e w Majority Steering Committee sign as "President" o n the articles of
incorporation.
After the attorneys left, the N e w Majority Steering Committee focused their discussion on
an upcoming December 2007 retreat. T h e amount of energy and effort that had been put
into the legal work involved in making the N e w Majority an organization over the prior year
seemed to have taken a toll on die group. Attendance at the Steering Committees was down
and it had taken half a dozen urgent emails to gather a quorum for this meeting. The impact
of losing one of the three People of Color on the city council seemed to also be creating a
sense of urgency about moving forward. Gloribell Mota 458 arid Lydia Lowe spoke up
summarizing a sentiment that seemed to capture the spirit of the group. Gloribell said, "We
should focus on revamping the N e w Majority to rejuvenate die work. . . We need to lay the
groundwork for what we want to accomplish, the tangible goals we should be meeting."
Lydia Lowe followed up by saying, "We should focus on what we want to do and not worry
Gloribell Mota has a long history of activism in East and South Boston. She was executive
director of the Mary Ellen McCormack Task Force in South Boston and a board member of Action
for Boston Community Development (ABCD). She served as an aide to at-large Boston city
councilor Felix Arroyo and ran an unsuccessful campaign to become die first Latino state
representative holding a seat in East Boston. Presently she is Director of Education and Training for
the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
Awareness of the tension between the pull of the getting the organization structured and a
feeling of impatience about getting o n with the community work of the N e w Majority was
heightened by the disappointing election results surfaced during the discussion of the retreat.
Sheik Martin continued to be the strong steady voice for building an organization structure
"that can do it. . . everyone wants to get to the end right away, b u t it takes time." Lydia
Lowe and Peter Lin-Marcus wanted the group to focus on relationship building and open up
the retreat to more members for that purpose, "especially after the elections." However,
Shelia Martin pressed for the Steering Committee to limit the retreat attendance and focus
on what the N e w Majority would gain from keeping a focus on the future. She said,
T h e group will b e here until we get the organization structured and get the by-laws to
move forward. That's when the real internal relationship building will take place. So
don't inject other agendas and get off on a tangent and then n o t be able to complete
what we have started. . . First focus on the business of building the group.
Lydia Lowe replied, "I am thinking about [opening up the retreat] as getting more minds
thinking. There is a danger I see in just focusing on the by-laws." Meiko Rollins 459
supported Shelia Martin, saying, "We need a foundation, like Shelia said." T h e retreat focus
was then summarized by Maud Hurd, who said, "First the retreat should focus on
organizational development. Second, [the focus should be on] generating an idea of where
we want to go." Shelia Martin added to Maud Hurd's statement saying, "[and] what we need
to look at together. H o w will we make an impact? How [will we get] elected officials [to be]
Partnership for Democracy and Education to support the December 2007 retreat, including
the hiring of two professional retreat facilitators who were also insider participants in the
New Majority Community, Gibran Rivera and Kelly Bates.46n The retreat was held at a
conference room of the MASSVote Offices near Government Center in downtown Boston.
The retreat began with Gibran Rivera as facilitator asking the poignant question,
Where are we in this precious moment of time?.. .What has changed socially,
politically, economically? We think too much in the context of organizations.
501(c)(3) defines us too much and lots is happening outside of those spaces. . . There
are lots of informal conversations going on. You are not just on your own. As far as
501(c)(3), you don't have to get all the people in the room to make things happen. . .
how do you bring these conversations alive? Through networking and self-
awareness? Consider calling yourself a "network". . . make connections inside. .. do
it!
Kelly Bates followed up Gibran Rivera's remarks and picked up on the continuing
conversations about shaping the New Majority organization in nontraditional ways. Her
message was that it was necessary to keep the eyes, ears and heart of the steering committee
There are lots of organizations "on the block." Lots want to be big and bold and
raise awareness. . . There are also quite a number of People of Color situated in
traditional White organizations. . . There are structures in organizations, "C3," "C4"
and PAC. [A lot of People of Color] organizations have found that all the structures
are necessary to do work, yet this creates a bureaucracy. . .
There is a need to move away from foundations, there is less money now, less focus
on long-term support. Organizations are moving toward having media experts and
lobbyists. There is no recognition that this is happening. Membership organizations
are stagnating and struggling with people's time constraints and the bad economy.
Many organizations have staff driven leadership and board models. Most
organizations have staff because people don't have the time to devote to them.
That's not new: our community has never had time. The board model is a white
model that's not working for busy people. We need an on-ground model that works
for the community.
Gibran Rivera served on the New Majority Steering Committee and Kelly Bates has been a
participant/member of the New Majority.
After this introduction, Kelly and Gibran broke the participants into small groups to discuss
the context of the New Majority by using the questions, "What do you see happening in
social, political, and economic trends in Boston? What should the New Majority be focusing
on?" There was so much thick conversational exchange about the New Majority as an
organization in this session that I have found it worthwhile to record several pieces of
conversation.
The group that I joined had six people participating. The discussion began with the general
weariness that people felt from being stretched for time and from their disappointment with
the elections. The weariness was also fed by growing alarm and frustration with strong anti-
immigrant forces that have taken up energy and divided People of Color communities.
Then some spoke about the 501(c)(3) process. Steering committee member Edwin Argueta,
an immigrant from El Salvador who is also the Civic Engagement Coordinator for the East
I'm frustrated with the 501(c)(3) structure because I see it as limited. It could mean
that we can't be radical and we have to start with a compromised position, even
when we push for policy — in Congress for immigration reform, for example.
I think it's dangerous that folks from Communities of Color are going into white
organizations, selling themselves out to the political machine. They don't have the
interest of the whole community in their minds. They just consider that the position
looks good on their resume and puts them in a position of power.
Communities of Color have not done a better job of working with stereotypes that
exist that lead to more dividing of people. People of Color need spaces to know
each other and get away from competing for positions and power.
Here, Edwin Argueta voices an important concern that the constraints on political activity
imposed by having 501(c)(3) status will even further limit the means of resistance that people
can officially apply if they act as members of the New Majority. Wanting to keep the option
320
of "radical" and "edgy" expressions of N e w Majority resistance open is an impulse that
several other Steering Committee members share, most often in informal moments.
Hammering out the intricate details of the by-law and incorporation articles has siphoned off
time and energy so there is not really space to explore other possible directions.
At the same time, Edwin Argueta also seems to be saying that the structure of an
organization is a space that fosters competition rather than the kind of activity that furthers
the interests of the "whole community" of Color. Rony Raphael, 461 a community organizer,
responded by saying,
When I think about [At-Large City Councilor] Felix Arroyo's defeat, I think that we
should consider that there is something inherent in our structure that allows that to
happen. W h e n this happens, it is a big loss, not just for Hispanics but for all People
of Color. We need to put structures into place so that this does not happen.
The small group continued their conversation until Kelly Bates and Gibran Rivera called all
the small groups together and asked them to report. Lydia Lowe gave the summary for our
small group and included some remarks about organizational development in her report,
saying, "We can't be limited by structures. . . Coalition building [in traditional organizations]
Some of the full group conversation that followed included more remarks about the N e w
David Ortiz spoke about how his role in MASSVote takes him out to see organizations in
Rony Raphael is a community organizer who became involved in politics through his volunteer
work in Deval Patrick's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, then decided to continue his activism through
the New Majority.
many communities and he wondered aloud how the New Majority could pick and choose
among best practices, even those from the corporate sector, saying,
I see organizations working in all different ways . . . The fun is it is the learning. . .
How do we start preparing ourselves to be more dynamic. . . How do we learn from
the corporate sector and embrace it and make that impact too while still taking an
organization further in development.
Lydia Lowe, Executive Director of the Chinese Progressive Association, followed, making a
For the older generation, 501(c)(3) is a framework — this has never been our
framework. It was just something you did. For the younger generation, this is a Big
Deal. The main thing is to figure out what we should do as far as the 501(c)(3) [is
concerned].
Lydia Lowe's remarks are interesting because she is not that young. She started organizing
as a high school student in the 1970s. That puts her age in the 40-something range. So
when she is talking about "the younger generation," she refers to community workers and
Peter Lin-Marcus, an organizer and public servant who is at least ten years younger than
Lydia Lowe, offered related comments about the younger generation of leaders, saying,
There are emerging leaders in the new generation, but. . .there is a lack of connection
to die infrastructure of the establishment. One place they are overrepresented is [as]
social innovators. People of Color find creative and effective ways to solve
problems. We need to help them have input and connect them to power.
Maud Hurd, the African American National President of ACORN, responded after Peter,
saying,
501(c)(3) ties your hands because you can't move on issues we normally want to
work on. Where is our base? Is it community? We need to begin to look at the
organization community as our base, our reach into the community. . . can't do
enough of that. People can speak for themselves, if given the opportunity.
322
Ty dePass, a longtime social justice organizer and a man of Afro-Cuban and Louisiana
I want to pick up on what Lydia said. . . The new Black and Latino leadership does
not share the legacy of the 60s, for example Deval Patrick [Governor of
Massachusetts], Cory Booker in Newark [Mayor of Newark, New Jersey], and Barack
Obama. These folks are knocking on the door, instead of the old model of Jesse
Jackson kicking down the door! Folks who walk in have to put Civil Rights aside.
Deval took the issue of race off the table — it's hard to be broader than that to
appeal. . .
This is a new trend, happening since the New Majority began. We need to talk about
raising the next generation to know the struggle is not over.
Then Calvin Feliciano, a young Latino and former youth gang member turned organizer,462
I am so glad Ty said this. . . Young People of Color Leaders shy away from race...
there is a generation gap, they think, "I will get elected by ignoring that I am
Black".. .There is a "second generation syndrome." I felt like I was talked down to
by old Black Leaders [sic]. This is important. Young folks and old folks are moving
apart more and more. Old folks [sic] have outdated strategies that are not working.
And young folks are too eager to jump out of the box and reject the older
generations' lessons. Old versus young is important.
People in the New Majority went on to talk about other things and to plan a two-hour
retreat follow-up meeting to brainstorm and decide among the proposed actions for the
New Majority.
This meeting took place on the evening of 26 February 2008 in Chinatown at the Chinese
Progressive Association offices. Using a brainstorm and threshing process, action items
were decided upon, one of which was to continue moving forward with the New Majority
This is the self-definition given by Calvin Feliciano for a New Majority grant proposal: "a former
youth gang member turned organizer who has served on the boards of Teen Empowerment and the
Hip Hop Summit and as an assistant to city councilors Chuck Turner and Felix Arroyo."
Decolonizing the imagination tasks: Legitimacy, permanency, money
Through these conversations and steps to have the New Majority become an incorporated
organization and pursue nonprofit status through the end of 2008, people were negotiating a
"common sense," "tried and true" path toward the three advantages they named. People in
the New Majority said that one advantage to formalizing their organizational status is
legitimacy. For instance, they say that the legitimacy "can build cache," "encourage
membership," and "gets [the organization] respect." People mentioned that formalizing the
organizational status also provides a foundation and assures people ofpermanency that the
organization will continue to go on and that is better than the "loosely held-together
coalition" begun under the name of the New Majority. The third advantage to becoming a
legal nonprofit organization identified by people in the New Majority was money, the capacity
So, on one hand, people in the New Majority acknowledge that formalizing their status as an
organization sends a recognizable message to the City of Boston communicating, "we are
real, we are here, we are part of Boston and we are not going away." On the other hand, as
seen in the narrative, people in the New Majority spiraled round and round in their group
conversations, meeting by meeting, to gradually break down and uncover how the "common
sense" of organizational development did not necessarily always serve the "common good"
501(c)(3)" is how they provide opportunities for people to name and learn about other
"divides" in the New Majority community of practice. Edwin Argueta's concern about
having a New Majority structure that leaves room for "radical" expression signals a divide:
the steadying conservative influence of some members who believe that organizational
legitimacy will attract people to the New Majority and those who believe that having a more
dynamic "out there" and "edgy" quality in the New Majority's activities would attract new
members. Calvin Feliciano brings up a generational divide; young people are more reluctant
to see how identifying with race will benefit them. These "new school" young people feel
that more "seasoned" and "old school" leaders reject their ambivalence in a condescending
way without being willing to listen. So, in conversations where people are learning one
conflict can give rise to opportunities for learning about other conflicts that might pose
An interesting way to reorganize the conversations and comments and see how people in the
New Majority moved toward working as an organization on their own terms is to use the
learning tasks model for "decolonizing the imagination" introduced in Chapter 5. Some
participants in the New Majority recognized mat the "common sense" of organizational
development harms People of Color and supports the interests of Boston Whites,perceiving
hegemony. They took apart and named some of the ways that traditional nonprofit
organizational development puts down and denies the power of People of Color,
unmasking power. And finally New Majority participants identified new paths towards
becoming an organization that will better serve People of Color and help them achieve their
goal of equitable social, economic and political power, going beyond deforming ideology.
325
Figure 10.2 shows a diagram of the learning tasks of decolonizing the imagination, with these
three tasks highlighted. Figures 10.3 - 10.7 that follow reorganize the conversations from
the narrative to show how people in the New Majority are moving around and between
these learning tasks to unpack some of the problems linked to the "common sense" ideas
that formalizing organizational status will provide the New Majority with legitimacy.
confer, the people in the New Majority talked about this formal organization model as being
a White model that actually puts up obstacles that harm People of Color seeking
commensurate social, political and economic power. While there is no doubt that this
White-dominated social, political and economic culture of Boston, the legitimacy breaks
down when the effectiveness of impact within People of Color communities is considered.
New Majority participants pointed out that the incorporated nonprofit structure diminishes
the power of the New Majority. For example, they also said that many such existing People
326
democratic commitment to
equal distribution of power
perceiving g o i n g beyond
hegemony deforming ideology
Identify the "common sense" New paths toward becoming
that harms People of Color an organization that will
and supports die interests of better serve People of Color
White people in power and achieve the goal of
equitable social, economic
and political power
I
deconstruction
I
construction
"break it down" "put it back together"
I I
unmasking power differential
movement
Show how "common sense"
puts down and denies the
power of People of Color
327
Figure 10.3 Breaking Down Legitimacy Assumptions:
What kind of New Majority organization structure support
and promotes the power of People of Color?
going beyond
perceiving deforming ideology
unmasking power
hegemony
463
Massachusetts House Representative Byron Rushing at New Majority gathering to celebrate
incorporation, 17 December 2008.
329
Figure 10.5 Breaking Down Legitimacy Assumptions:
What is N e w Majority organization model that includes
People of Color of all ages?
The "common sense" Youth don't serve on the Boards which The New Majority
formal organization hold power in the formal organization Steering Committee will
structure excludes youth structure and youth do not have voting reserve three spots for
and the voices and ideas power. youth aged 14-21 and
of youth are important diese youth will be fully
to include in the New enfranchised.
Majority.
Figure 10.6 Breaking Down Permanency Assumptions:
How does the N e w Majority lay down a foundation for
permanency?
There are hidden The agendas of foundations that The New Majority can
drawbacks to the give money to organizations can depend mostly on
"common sense" drive the agendas of organizations - membership to provide
assumption that Legal — organizations take on only money and resources
and nonprofit agendas that they can raise money and limit dependence on
organization status to support. This may make them foundations for support.
allows organizations to steer away from vital and radical
raise money and other actions that are not supported by Participation in the New
resources more easily. foundations. Majority will not be
limited by means.
There is less money available now
because the bad economy.
the bad economy stretches People of Color thin and creates, in the absence of an active
membership, participation gaps that are often replaced by professional media experts and
lobbyists. They complained that the power that staff wields in such organizations
encourages competition for positions and power and discourages People of Color in those
organizations from having the whole community on their mind. Furthermore, in the past
few years that New Majority participants have experienced firsthand how developing and
maintaining the incorporated nonprofit structure takes time and energy away from vital
social change organizing and action. New Majority participants also claimed that the
legitimacy of the incorporated nonprofit structure as the best means to solve problems
within and across People of Color communities is questionable. They pointed out that
problems in People of Color communities are so serious and urgent that "it is difficult to get
commensurate power unless something dramatic happens," and that the legal rules
controlling an incorporated nonprofit structure limit the ability of People of Color to take
radical steps.
Furthermore, legitimacy becomes problematic when important groups within and across
People of Color communities are excluded. For instance, many of the social innovators
who are emerging as the new generation of leaders in finding creative and effective ways to
solve problems are not connected to the infrastructure of the establishment. New Majority
participants have also claimed the importance of including the voices and energies of youth
in the New Majority and question the legitimacy of incorporated nonprofit structures that
often exclude youth from participation and voting power on governing structures.
While "common sense" logic says that the incorporated nonprofit organizational structure
assumption. Many of the "younger generation" (including people into their 40s) in the
New Majority claim the 501(c)(3) model is the framework and strategy of the older
generation of People of Color, "just something you did." However "to be or not to be
501(c)(3)" is a "Big Deal" for many others in the younger generation of People of Color.
This phenomenon was referred to by Calvin Feliciano as the "second generation syndrome,"
where the younger generation does not take up the values and strategies of the Freedom
Movement (now commonly referred to using the much narrower term "Civil Rights"
movement). New Majority participants argued that part of this generation gap is showing
itself in a new trend that post-dates the 2003 New Majority Conference, where new Black
and Latino leadership "take race off the table" as a strategy.464 Some New Majority
participants found that this contentious trend is widening the generation gap and is an
Some New Majority participants even found hidden drawbacks within perhaps the most
ability to raise money. They point out that foundations often have what seem to People of
Color to be fickle trends in their agendas. In the worst case, the agendas of these
See Gwen Ifil's recent book, Breakthrough: Politics and race in the age ofObama (New York:
Doubleday, 2009) for an interesting treatment of this phenomenon.
46
Interpreting the generational gap from another direction raises an even more significant
problem not explicitly identified by people in the New Majority. If the younger generation
does not value developing and expressing a racial or ethnic identity, how will they ever be
attracted to New Majority? For, at the center of the New Majority community practice is the
process of building a collective identity that is unabashedly racial and ethnic.
334
foundations can drive the agendas of community organizations as they compete for support
and resources. Some New Majority participants claimed that organizations are sometimes
financially strapped enough to steer away from vital and radical actions that are not
supported by foundations. In today's shaky economy, they said that not only are
foundations making less money available, but also are less likely to make commitments to
assumed by a member who gives money to the New Majority came up; people who have
the means to give money sometimes expect to have more power in an organization and
more influence in the decisions to be made about the direction of that organization.
"Money [and lack of money] makes people mean," and makes for difficult inner-
organization relationships was the remark of one New Majority witness to such a discussion.
Breaking down the ways that the "common sense" approach to an incorporated nonprofit
organizational structure was not the end of the learning process for New Majority
participants. The deconstructing learning tasks they engaged in have opened their eye to the
participants in the New Majority also engaged in the learning task to go beyond the
and have started to develop new learning paths towards organizing themselves in a way that
will better serve People of Color and achieve their goal of equitable social, economic and
political power. Again, the insights from spiraling conversations over the course of many
meetings point toward imagining a new "on the ground" model for organizing themselves
• Creating spaces that help include important groups within and across People of
Color who might be excluded by the "common sense" model, such social
innovators and youth,
What is interesting about this learning process is that it is nonlinear, and occurs over a period
of time measured in years, not the days or weeks or months like an institution-based
academic learning community. Participants in the New Majority have been willing to
continue looking and reflecting and imagining the kinds of relationships within their own
organization and within the Boston People of Color communities that will allow them to
At the 17 December 2008 New Majority Gathering to celebrate the incorporation of the
New Majority, there was an open conversation about the future of the New Majority and
Chapter 8, Paul Wantanabe, a scholar from the Asian American Institute at University of
Massachusetts Boston who was on the original Steering Committee to plan the 2003
conference, spoke movingly about importance in what seems like a simple act of New
Majority creating spaces for conversations to happen among the people who are now the
"new majority," without the participation of the "old majority," where People of Color can
talk to other People of Color about issues. Bob Turrell reminded the group about the
alarmed response from the largely White political establishment in Boston, that just the idea
that the New Majority was organizing conversations among People of Color "sent out shock
waves" and had an impact. Massachusetts House Representative Byron Rushing spoke
plainly about the need for People of Color to come together and "have conversations over
and over until we get to know each other. . . and talk about the expectations of what people
should have if they are the "new majority." People at this New Majority gathering lifted up
the fact that creating spaces for conversations to happen and keep happening among People
sense" is an important strategy. From listening in on these conversations over the years, I
would add that diis is also an important strategy for learning into liberation.
The emailed Evite invitation link for this Wednesday 17 December 2008 New Majority
Gathering said,
The New Majority is (still) Happening!
Join us after work to:
Celebrate the incorporation of the N e w Majority!
Mingle with old and new friends
Share hopes and concerns for 2009
G e t involved and help build N e w Majority power!
As always there was a wonderful dinner provided and I volunteered to serve drinks and
watch over the food table so Shelia Martin, who had organized the refreshments, could
mingle with the crowd. While I was there, Shelia pulled Lydia Lowe and Maud H u r d aside
near the food table and told them that the pro b o n o lawyers had called to report a conflict
with the filing of the N e w Majority incorporation papers. Since the N e w Majority Steering
Committee uses a has two people serving as Co-Chairs, both of those Co-Chairs signed the
incorporation document in the space designated for the "President." T h e Secretary of State
rejected the filing on the grounds that the N e w Majority cannot file with "two Presidents."
There was some quiet rolling of eyes among them, but very quickly Lydia said to instant
approval from Maud and Shelia, "just make one or the other a Vice President and let's just
After the 2009 new year began, the articles of incorporation were refiled with the state and
again rejected; this time the issue had to do with how the "secretary" was named. Finally, at
the Spring 2009 N e w Majority annual meeting held in a meeting r o o m at the University of
Massachusetts Boston overlooking Boston Harbor, Shelia Martin stepped up to give the
N e w Majority treasurer's report. She announced that on 19 February 2009, the articles of
incorporation were successfully filed at the offices of the Secretary of State with Mel King
serving in the role as "sole incorporator." Shelia Martin then called o n the participants at the
Annual Meeting to officially ratify the actions of the New Majority's sole incorporator. The
Just before the incorporation celebration, the New Majority Steering Committee was
approached by the Jobin-Leeds Partnership for Democracy and Education, the same
foundation that funded the 2008 New Majority Retreat. Jobin-Leeds extended an invitation
to the New Majority to submit a $25,000 grant proposal. The timeline for submission was
tight, within just a few days after the invitation was extended, but Lydia Lowe headed up a
At the 6 January 2009 New Majority Steering Committee meeting, a report was given on a
meeting between Lydia Lowe, Gloribell Mota, Meiko Rollins and David Ortiz from the New
Majority and representatives from the Jobin-Leeds Partnership for Democracy and
Education LLC. Jobin-Leeds wanted to make the grant proposal, but their focus is on
organizations). Lydia Lowe and David Ortiz explained that in Boston, while there are many
There are not enough 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations in the area for the few foundations
endorse political candidates as long as that is not their primary activity. 501(c)(4) nonprofit
organizations can also do more lobbying and spend a part of their resources to support
After discussion, a motion was made by Lydia Lowe to go back to Jobin-Leeds Partnership
for Democracy and Education LLC with an intention for the New Majority to become a
501(c)(4) nonprofit organization and to start the process of having the New Majority
become a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. The motion was seconded by Gloribell Mota,
Rony Raphael and Calvin Feliciano and the vote was all in favor with one steering committee
member abstaining. And as of March 2009, the story of the New Majority's journey learning
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VITA
Susan A n n Klimczak