one (Fennimore 2004; Noguera 2004; Orfield and Lee 2006).
Such leadership is not unthinkable, however, particularly in light of the increasingly well- documented successes of low-income communities of color to effectively mobilize for stronger school accountability, even in contexts where educational systems have long been controlled by White, middle-class residents and their privilege-protecting interests (see, for example, Noguera 2004; Mediratta, Shaw, and McAlister 2009; Shirley 2002; Warren 2005; and Chapter 7 of this book).
The Mobilization of Latino Communities for Equal Schooling
While relatively little research has been done on the more recent struggles of Mexican American communities to sustain or protect desegregated schools,14 there is a burgeoning literature on Latino political mobilization for school improvement and increased school accountability that is of relevance here. Much of this research has attempted to understand the relative success of Latino mobilizations for school reform in terms of the conceptual framework of social capital (see, for example, Noguera 2004; Shirley 2002; Warren 2005).15 In this work, attention has generally been given to two primary and distinction forms of community capacity-building activities—those related to the creation of bonding, or horizontal social capital—described as the strong and meaningful ties among local, working-class residents of color that can serve as the basis for solidarity and collective, grassroots action—and bridging, or intersectoral social capital, defined as relationships of cooperation and strategic coalition-building between distinct groups, sometimes across lines of significant social difference, where less enfranchised groups are connected to institutions and individuals with access to political influence and money (Fox 1996; Noguera 2004). Examples of positive outcomes associated with bonding social capital have included the mobilization of working-class Latino parents and youth, through intentional processes of leadership development and political education, to serve as school-community liaisons and strong advocates for equal access to such resources as high-quality instruction, fair disciplinary practices and a culturally relevant curricula (see, for example, Delgado-Gaitan 1996; Warren et al. 2011). Successful outcomes associated with bridging or intersectoral social capital building have included such things as the establishment of expansive coalitions linking emergent Latino parent/youth leadership groups with broader civic organizations (e.g., gender, labor, civil, and human rights groups) with a common commitment to issues of equity, fairness, and justice and who collectively undertake school-by-school outreach campaigns to promote and implement more justice-driven, school-based models, programs, and commitments (see Shirley 2002; Warren et al. 2011).16 In each of these cases the process of building power has tended to operate through “organizing groups” that sponsor intentional relationship-building activities, leadership development, political education, and public engagement opportunities in a manner that combines confrontational tactics with strategic efforts at collaboration and institutional development (Warren 2005: 152).17
Notwithstanding these documented successes, it bears recognizing that the mobilization of Latino populations to actively participate in the contentious fight for equal education comes with unique challenges, particularly when it involves immigrant, migrant, and undocumented residents for whom a sense of entitlement to society’s resources may not be easily rooted in national or legal citizenship status. The willingness of Latino (im-)migrant parents and youth to speak up against educational institutions from which they may feel disconnected or alienated can be restricted by a lack of a sense of a “right to have rights” to such basic entitlements as exercising a critical voice in local schooling politics. It is for these reasons that successful campaigns to politically empower U.S. Latinos—particularly Mexican immigrants—have often been rooted in assertions to “cultural citizenship,” that is, rights to belong in the U.S. contingent not on formal citizenship status but on essential human rights to dignity, well-being, and respect (Flores and Benmayor 1997; Rosaldo, Flores, and Silvestrini 1994). Such organizing strategies necessarily engage cultural struggle and power as key elements in the community mobilization process, given the need for strong and collective moral support against ongoing, popular campaigns of exclusion, marginalization, and disenfranchisement (Trueba et al. 1993).18 The importance of organizing around cultural experience and struggle is the context it provides for developing a sense of resiliency and mutual support to collectively navigate cultural, linguistic, and institutional borders in ways that allow residents to participate in community politics with a sense of power and in ways that sustained them as cultural beings (Dyrness 2011).
Educational ethnographers, in partic u lar, have emphasized the importance of such strategies for empowering immigrant Latina/o parents to become active participants in schooling politics, including the need to create spaces for parents to tell their stories and engage in a political process of “becoming and belonging,” which allows them to meet their own goals of self-realization and transformation rather than expecting them to simply “get involved” in existing school site activities that may be perceived as hostile or alienating (Dyrness 2008: 193; see also Delgado-Gaitan 1996; Villenas 2001; Villenas and Deyhle 1999). The availability of such relatively segregated “safe spaces”19— often favorably located outside formal institutional settings where normative forces of class/race privilege and entitlement can limit critical conversations—allows a context for socially and politically marginalized citizens to engage in a process of mutual dialogue that may include examining experiences of oppression, cultivating a critical awareness of the larger political system in which their lives are located along with the skills and voice to participate in it, and developing new leadership skills, knowledge, and aspirations, “as well as norms of collective deliberation that enable communities to mobilize social capital for shared goals” (Mediratta, Shah, and McAlister 2009: 140). As organizing contexts, such spaces allow room for Latino participants to understand power, learn public speaking and organizing skills, and “collectively create counter-hegemonic narratives of dignity and cultural pride” that contest the normative societal discourses of deficiency and lack by which their communities and children are often defined (Villenas and Deyhle 1999: 437; Foley 1997),20 and permit a questioning and reframing of the prevalent logics of educational merit and entitlement that have tended historically to distribute high-quality schooling experiences and opportunities differentially and unequally along lines of race, class, and culture.
Challenges to School Reform Or ganizing for Integrated Education
A distinct challenge for organizing efforts aimed specifically at protecting high-quality integrated education is that even with substantial capacity building and mobilization of residents from within working-class Latino communities, success is unlikely without support from a significant cross-section of residents from White middle-class communities as well. The prospect of enlisting significant support from White middle-class residents relies on the existence of widely shared convictions about the usefulness and viability of integrated schooling, including a belief among parents that they are not being asked to choose between “diversity” and “excellence” because there are compelling academic and social benefits associated with integrated education (Orfield, Frankenberg, and Siegel-Hawley 2010). From a grassroots mobilization perspective, it requires the ability to craft a collective action frame broad enough to permit a shared understanding of high-quality, integrated education as both a desirable option (rather than a threatening imposition) and a moral imperative (Oakes and Lipton 2002), so as to attract a critical mass of middle-class White parents as well.
Yet the task of establishing and then sustaining such a social movement frame is difficult when conflict, contention, and cultural struggle are taken as important crucibles for building power and civic capacity for educational change (as they have been with Latino school reform organizing efforts), and when the focus of activity is to challenge normative logics that have long favored affluent White suburbanites. Despite such obstacles, however, organizing in support of shared, high-quality schooling is possible, as Chapter 7 will explore. Here, Latino-led groups in Pleasanton Valley successfully built a broad-based collective action frame that portrayed high-quality integrated education as a fundamental right for all citizens, suggesting there is still some hope for establishing
