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Transforming Organizing Strategies for
the Nineties:
The Women of Color Resource Center
Damita Brown and Kim Sánchez
In 1989 the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC) was an idea shared around
a kitchen table discussion. It has since grown into an Oakland/San Francisco
Bay Area non-profit clearing house which addresses nationwide information
needs for women of color who are organizing around social, gender, race, and
class issues. The WCRC is "committed to strengthening the efforts of those
organizers, advocates, and scholars who are working to improve the conditions
of women of color."
WCRC provides comprehensive current information and analyses through a national
directory of women of color organizations and projects; they also sponsored
the Researchers, Organizers, Scholars, and Advocates: Cooperative Links for
Women's Empowerment (ROSA) conference series in the early months of 1992,
with hopes of continuing ROSA conferences in the future. Currently, their
primary project is developing a library and nationally accessible computer
database; the library and database will be focused on how the following issues
effect women of color: labor force participation, immigration, sexual harassment
and assault, domestic violence, and poverty and homelessness.
Inscriptions spoke with three of the current nine board members, Linda
Burnham, Miriam Louie, and Julie Curry, about their process of collaboration
over the last four years. We had the opportunity to listen to activist struggles
that began in the sixties and continue to evolve and impact community organizing
of the nineties. All three co-founders have maintained a common ground of
continued political passion and focus which seemed to promote the respect,
comfort, and humor which charged their interview. Their history of activism
as well as their current work conveys their abilities to create inclusive
political agendas which span ethnic and cultural differences.
Linda Burnham worked with Black Sisters United, the Third World Women's Alliance/Alliance
Against Women's Oppression; she has written articles on women of color, African
American politics, and feminist theory for a number of periodicals and anthologies.
She is an editor of Crossroads and Race File, a journal of the
Applied Research Center where she is a scholar-in-residence. Ms. Burnham also
teaches yoga to women in recovery from alcohol and drug abuse and serves as
the Director of WCRC. Julia Curry is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies
at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992 she coordinated the annual
Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambios Social (MALCS) conference and chaired
the Program Committee for the 1993 conference of the National Association
of Chicano Studies (NACS). Professor Curry also started a mentoring program
for Chicanas/os who are preparing for graduate school admission. Miriam Louie
was Associate Director of Asian Immigrant Women's Advocates (AIWA) from 1983
to 1991. She coordinates media outreach for AlWA's garment workers' campaign.
Ms. Louie previously served as the national coordinator of the Third World
Women's Alliance/Alliance Against Women's Oppression. She has also taught
in Seoul, Korea and published articles on the Asian community, women's issues,
and South Korean politics.
***
Your work is wide-ranging and spans a variety of issues, and as a result
you rely upon a number of different organizing strategies. Your common ground
seems to be the development of forums wherein different groups of women of
color can work together. Therefore, we are especially interested in your strategies
with respect to creating unity and resolving conflict among women of color.
BURNHAM: Miriam and I both worked in the Third World Women's Alliance for
a long time. It was an organization which came out of attempts in the sixties
and seventies to try to figure out the commonalities among Third World peoples.
At the time there were many efforts to figure out what African Americans,
Asian Americans, Latinas and Latinos, and Native Americans had in common.
There were all sorts of social and political formations, most of them were
fairly transitory, but oftentimes politically effective; and this is how people
learned a lot about each others' communities.
The Third World Women's Alliance began in New York as princ-pally an African
American and Puerto Rican group. When it began in the Bay Area, it got established
as an organization comprised of African American, Latina, and Asian American
women. We spent a lot of time talking about the different social and political
orientations which we brought from our respective communities. We also discussed
the different ways in which our communities effected issues around the intersections
of gender and race. There were some very positive things about the organization
and some real limitations as well.
There are ways in which the WCRC emerges from some of these struggles around
limitations. For example, communities of color are frequently grouped around
a racial group, an ethnicity, or a nationality. As a result, this clustering
effects their work within the church structure, how people might interact
with the school system, how they deal with employment issues. If you are dealing
with immigrant women in the garment industry in the Bay Area, you are dealing
principally with Asian immigrant women. Asian women need to be there organizing;
and there is not a whole hell of a lot that an African-American woman can
do in that context besides be generally supportive of the struggle. That's
a sort of structural limitation on the form a women of color organization
can take. The organizing portion of our work is very difficult within the
context of a Third World framework.
There are very important reasons why women of color need to be able to communicate,
support each other, work together, and to collaborate. The idea is to create
a support structure that can be there to help advance work that women of color
are doing in particular communities. An example of this is our development
of a library and computer database. We want to create a place where women
of color who are advocates in the Chicano community, in the African American
community, in the Asian American community can find resources that will support
and move their work forward.
LOUIE: This project comes out of women's movement experiences. The women's
liberation movement that happened in the U.S. in the sixties and seventies
and the feminist consciousness that emerged from that period was dispersed
within different communities. To women of color, the content of our feminism
looks different within the context of each of our communities. What we learned
from that early period is that there is a way that you can criticize the mainstream
women's movement until you are blue in the face and not have any kind of an
impact; and you can be accurate in your analysis, but get completely burned
out in the process of critique.
The question of organizing priorities becomes a matter of resources and energy.
I see that happening with people that I know that are active in Asian Pacific
Islanders For Choice. They work in an arena that is principally comprised
of white women for abortion rights, but they have their group focused on particular
reproductive issues affecting Asian and Pacific Islander women. In addition,
their coalition work provides them with access to National Latina Health Project
and the Black Women's Health Project where each of these groups is trying
to work within their specific community on health and reproductive issues
for women. They each have different organizing techniques, but are concurrently
and collaboratively grappling with some of the similar problems. You need,
at times, to be active in the bigger picture of the mainstream women's movement.
But if your whole emphasis is placed there, you are in trouble.
After twelve years of Reagan/Bush, we now have a new administration that
is making different promises. Do you see certain ways that the changes in
the political climate affect the structure or efficacy of this particular
organization or your strategies?
CURRY: I think the fact that we are organized as historically segregated communities
has shaped much of our actions as communities. Most of the groups that I have
worked with have been Latino service-oriented, primarily Mexican American
or Chicano. But I have always worked best with the non-nationalist groups,
the ones that didn't have to have the sort of "my group first" and "we don't
trust those people to do work" attitudes. Many groups, including WCRC, are
trying to accept and advance our common issues.
However, I don't really look at the changes in the official political system
as necessarily lending us and our work an ear. Rather, I think what change
in administrations does is force us to look again at what opportunities might
be open to us. It seems to me that people of color are constantly having to
look for opportunities, and if they are not there we invent them. Many times
it is by getting beyond our own community that we can strategize more effectively.
I think the mainstream doesn't recognize the need for people of color to create
their own political moves.
For example, Clinton won't acknowledge that Latinas/os helped to elect him;
and Latinas/os shouldn't believe that he is there for them, even if he appointed
Henry Cisneros as the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Frederico
Peña as Secretary of Transportation. I don't think that the political
system works towards advancing any of the things that we do. I think all the
political system does is permit us to continue believing and trusting in the
institutions. When we do that I think that we sort of stop being critical
of the gains that we have made and what it took to achieve the gains. What
we should think about instead are the other changes we can effect, particularly
in terms of our own consciousnesses. I am not suggesting that we shouldn't
vote, but the electoral arena is not the only basket where our political eggs
should be placed.
BURNHAM: I, too, think a lot about relying on the Clinton administration for
progressive leadership. I consider, first of all, how depressing the Reagan/Bush
years were. I don't just mean depressing as in psychologically depressing,
but I think about the ways in which the Reagan/Bush agenda cast a fog, a really
thick fog, over political activity as well. People were in a defensive position.
I think this period really took its toll on the progressive political agenda.
People could not figure out how to stay active, how to stay committed, and
how to remain focused on the issues in a political period where it was really
clear that gains would barely be achieved. I think not so much about how we
can squeeze the Clinton administration, but more about how we develop an agenda.
What I think is true is that the really hard-core, right-wing sentiment and
ideology has been displaced. That is to the good. Where it is really to the
good is if people then feel that they have some space to move. This space
then gives more opening to political activism and to people who may then feel
"OK, I can come out of this hole that I have been in since Reagan came into
office and maybe start to make some moves." It becomes a space where, hopefully,
people come together around a whole range of issues and in all kinds of different
communities. That scenario hasn't shown itself quite yet, but it is early
on in this administration.
LOUIE: Even though we have come out of a very devastating period and a lot
of organizations and projects folded up and died out, there are a lot of new
systems of organizing. For example, the Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA)
is part of a network of sister organizations that came out of the Reagan/Bush
years. There is the Chinese Staff and Workers Organization, and that has a
women's committee. Then there is Fuerza Unida, which is the organization
of Mexican American women that sewed for Levi's and who got kicked out when
their jobs got moved to Costa Rica. There is another group, La Mujer Obrera
in El Paso, Texas that has been organizing, mainly with garment workers,
but they hook up with women's organizations on the other side of the border
in Mexico. There is a new group in Los Angeles, the Korean Immigrant Workers'
Association. Then there is a group of African American women poultry workers
in North Carolina, who get support from Southerners for Economic Justice.
Part of the importance of the WCRC is that we've begun to create an infrastructure
to support each others' work, provide leadership training for workers, and
share information.
How does funding influence the kind of work that you are able to do? What
kinds of funding do you currently receive for your projects?
BURNHAM: Funding is our biggest problem, quite frankly, and a real struggle.
Plainly it is a struggle because, and I am possibly speaking for all of us,
we came out of a period where you put together an organiz-tion and it kind
of runs on volunteer labor. That political period really doesn't exist any
more in terms of sustaining organizations over the long haul. So putting together
the WCRC meant trying to figure out how to fundraise for sustainment and programming.
There is no "rich kid" anywhere hiding in the wings for us as there sometimes
is in organizations. Those of us who put WCRC together essentially come from
working-class backgrounds; fundraising has been a real struggle.
It has been a struggle for me psychologically to get out of a resentment thing
around having to fundraise. Up until now, we have been funded by a variety
of different foundations, Ms Foundation, the Women's Foundation; we are still
dependent upon foundations to operate and we have not yet crossed the threshold
of financial stability. Hopefully, we will be able to do that within the next
year or two. We are also trying to figure out how to create a financial base
that is not completely dependent on foundations, that has some other kinds
of avenues of support; for us that means trying to create a membership structure
for the organization so women outside the Bay Area can be supportive of us.
It has also meant trying to create services that people might be prepared
to pay for.
So those are the kinds of things that we have to grapple with. It is very
real. It is real every day and it is a struggle. There are people in the world
who like to fundraise. I don't think any of us are. (laughter) Unfortunately,
it is about training ourselves to think about money and to realize that is
a serious aspect of our capacity to survive. That is what it is about. It
is ugly, but that is what it is about.
CURRY: I concur and think that part of it, as Linda mentioned earlier, is
that it is different to organize around community issues from a Third World
platform. It is difficult to organize for a center that isn't readily seen
as providing a service that is tangible to someone when it exists in an imaginary
stage. Many of us fundraise for issues or for emergency situations. How do
you, then, legitimate wanting to establish a center which has, to a certain
degree, tangential service mechanisms such as the directory?
LOUIE: I think that WCRC is also kind of a different animal. As Julia said,
we have been in different settings where we have to go around raising or threatening
for money around specific communities or issues, but WCRC is a little bit
different. Some other institutions that might be more similar to us, but are
also different are the Women's Research Center at Memphis State University
in Tennessee and the Women's Center at UC Berkeley. There are also different
policy centers run by white men in D.C., little think-tank things. But we
are probably more like the Schomberg Center in New York and the African-American
Cultural and Historical Society out here. We are trying to put together the
research/academic side with the community side, so WCRC doesn't quite have
a home. There aren't many models for that out there.
BURNHAM: It's the "neither fish nor fowl" problem. There are service funders
who want to see how many people you feed, how many people you get off drugs,
how many people you provide a bed for. Then there are the academic funders,
and they want to see the paper, the credentials, the publications. We are
not simply one or the other.
CURRY: We are constantly having to establish our credentials. We are often
going through status changes. I am an Assistant Professor, a recent Ph.D.
I had a particular way of looking at academic ventures, and that is what took
me to school. It wasn't to become a multi-syllabic speaker of any kind of
theoretical bent, but to make a link to what I saw as important. That link
being how people mobilized around issues because of their need to survive,
and their need to recognize and to establish in their immediate circles some
kind of dignity for themselves.
One of the major things for me is that WCRC is a place where my history counts,
where what I have been doing has legitimacy. I know on the one hand why I
am an academic, why I am the type of person I am, and that any one of my labels
is not the total me; I know that what counts is that I am willing to work,
and that collaboration comes from learning. Sometimes I wear the "Ph.D. hat"
in particular settings, because it is important for me to do that. Other times,
I want to wear the "farmworker organizer hat," or the hat where "I am trying
to figure out how to get this funding," or the "I am trying to help this student
to understand what it is like to be a community activist." We are doing, learning,
and teaching at the same time, and the collaboration for me comes from the
acceptance of who I am and my history.
As Linda said, we already have proven that we are committed for the long run.
Everywhere else, you have to keep proving yourself. Here, with WCRC, we prove
it to each other in terms of our accountability to each other. This is the
first group I have ever been in where we haven't had conflict. I think part
of it is because that isn't what it is about any more. None of us are in WCRC
for prestige, so the structures of rewards that are present in other settings
are not part of this organization. Our collaboration is partly structural,
but also due to the maintenance of a belief system. This is not a place where
I would want to argue. It just does not make sense. There is no conflict in
that sense. The conflict is elsewhere. It is important to think about things
not as dichotomies, but rather in "both/and kind of" terms as in Pat Hill
Collins's way.
LOUIE: I think also that things are turning out different than we had thought.
We had a simple color line in the old days, you know, "us against the white
people," but it is turning out that the so-called "ethnic minorities" are
the majority and the conflict among these groups is heavy-duty; that's why
I think that projects like WCRC are really important in trying to figure out
how we can all live together and understand what is common and respect differences.
There are a lot of ways that our communities are different, but then there
are a lot of similarities as well.
I would like to see us doing more regarding the issue of Asian and Latina
immigrant women workers. There are different groups that already network in
the Bay Area: the Immigrant and Refugee Women's Task Force works together
with the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services, and are part
of a group comprised of member groups from around the country. This is a significant
network in terms of alliance building. In the Bay Area, eighty-five percent
of the garment workers are Asian; however, in L.A. eighty-five percent of
the garment workers are Latina. There are some parallel workplace issues occurring
in the garment, electronic, and hotel industries; we need to be doing more
researching and networking into these issues because it all contributes to
the development of different organizing strategies.
The other important workplace issue for us is sexual harassment. WCRC was
getting a lot of calls here during the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings
with people asking about sexual harassment and the statistics on women of
color. And we couldn't find any statistics. We realized that we could come
up with our own data by creating a poll and surveying different people. This
is just one example of how there are ways that we can break new ground. I
think there need to be some kind of gathering points or positive projects
that people can work on, in order to get some understanding of what our commonalities
are, and learn how to break through some of the racial barriers.
BURNHAM: I think it is important to note that the whole framework for understanding
"race" in our country for centuries was Black/white. Now people are starting
to tune into the reality, and it is time to change that framework pretty thoroughly.
So, for example, in terms of sexual harassment, you will find mention somewhere
of a survey that will focus on white women, and say something somewhere about
Black women, but nothing about any other groups of women. There's just a total
and complete blank. We are trying to contribute to the filling in of those
blanks; we want to contribute to the understanding of the complexity of our
society.
What steps do you take or have you taken to combat prejudices and ignorance
among yourselves and the communities you serve?
BURNHAM: That is a hard question. I think it has been an assumption among
board members that people coming into our projects have already worked through
the really ugly stuff, and they are not bringing it in with them. I know a
lot of boards do their kind of diversity training, but we haven't done that.
That's not to say that we wouldn't do it or are against it; it hasn't come
up as a big problem within this board yet. But, boards change and grow and
differ from one period to the next; so even though there has not been a lot
of conflict within this group thus far, that is not to say that there won't
be in the future.
Do you encounter the tendency to rank oppressions on the basis of ethnic
or class background among the groups you work with? If so, how do you deal
with it?
LOUIE: I think it has been a mixed bag because as Linda was saying, in a way
we have a self-selecting board, so people interested in WCRC already have
some desire to work with people from other ethnic groups. In the course of
our work in our different communities, a lot of stuff comes up all the time.
For example, at Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) where I work, there
are tensions between different Asian groups. Because it's a Pan-Asian group
there can be many cultural differences and challenges. People have stereotypes
about each other, and we have to deal with them. Differences can also mean
the development of strong cross-cultural alliances. We also have had very
positive experiences working within the Congress of Working Women where Chinese
seamstresses got together with Mexican seamstresses, who connected with Navajo
women weavers from New Mexico, who joined with African American women from
an economic development collective in Dallas. When they all came together
they told each other important stories about themselves. They talked about
dealing with stereotypes, and this was a good first step in the development
of common ground.
Another example of the importance of talking cross-culturally about the historical
context of struggles comes from a community hearing about Bay Area garment
workers. AIWA developed a campaign against the dressmaker Jessica McClintock
for cheating people out of their back wages; a hearing was held as a means
of getting the word out. Elected officials were present and after hearing
the testimony of workers, Oakland City Council member Ignacio de la Fuente,
who had done labor organizing, spoke. He talked about the importance of worker
and immigrant solidarity and the work of César Chávez. The next
elected official to speak was California State Assemblywoman Barbara Lee,
an African American progressive, who spoke from her experience as a Black
woman. She introduced the historical context of slave labor, and with that
larger connection she really impressed people that she understood what they
were talking about. So, there are different points from which people can unify.
In the future, we have to develop organizations that bridge cultural gaps
and deal with conflicts when they break out.
Given the systematic ways that our communities are kept apart, there seems
to be a need for the kinds of things that WCRC provides, such as the national
directory and the data base. These resources could break through some of the
isolation between our communities and become a real important part of looking
at how we are systematically pitted against each other. We are fed cultural
images that breed the idea that conflict is the basis for our interaction,
and we get few images of the kind of cooperative ways we can work together.
BURNHAM: There is an enormous amount of ignorance out there, especially when
the only images people get of themselves are from television or the movies.
Getting a sense of peoples' life experiences and history is really hard! That's
why I think it's important, as Miriam was saying, to get people together to
tell their stories. I was really impressed by Taylor Branch, a white man,
who wrote Parting the Waters. I don't know if you are familiar with
that book, but it is a history of the civil rights movement and it is very
good.
In talking about how he came to use the style he used, Branch talked about
the fact that he wanted to find a form where people could not distance themselves
from the story. He used a storytelling form based on a lot of oral history
work that he had done. But it wasn't just straight oral history. He had integrated
the stories into a narrative form that was very powerful. Branch's form of
writing history impressed upon me that getting past stereotypes or ignorance
to a point where you can actually hear someone's story is real difficult.
I think that part of what WCRC is about is creating those opportunities for
developing common ground. We live in an extremely segregated society, and
we must try to figure out how to get past that so as to understand the reality
of peoples' stories, individual stories, as well as the stories of groups
of people. It is really hard. It is really hard work.
All that discussion about bridging cleavages in communities leads into
the ROSA conferences. What kinds of follow-up projects or involvements have
you seen develop as a result of ROSA? The post-conference report refers to
the "important groundwork for creating on-going links between activists and
researchers." Could you possibly describe that groundwork and talk about what
is needed to establish and sustain those links?
BURNHAM: Essentially what we did was create a conference in which community-based
folk came together first. They came together and talked about what kinds of
images they had of academics; what they thought they wanted from academics;
and where it was that they were stuck in terms of developing a research agenda.
We then brought together researchers who talked about where they had worked,
successfully or unsuccessfully; how they interacted with organizations; and
the ways in which they had tried to make their research work serviceable to
community-based groups. We held those two conferences separately and then
we brought both groups together in one place.
It was a very creative mix in which there were good examples of where people
had used collaborative research work successfully. I think that one of the
most important things that came out of the conference was for community-based
activists to stop objectifying the role of researcher and to understand the
ways in which they themselves already conducted research. The activists learned
that the ways in which they already posed questions were essentially research
questions, and they could stop alienating themselves from the "research process."
They could also stop alienating themselves from the idea that there is only
one way that research can be done, and that is the way that has been defined
through the social science disciplines. Also, they learned that there is a
way to connect with people who have another level of expertise and that they
can work in collaboration. I think it was really instructive on both sides.
What we were not able to do was to take an issue and go more deeply into the
questions surrounding specific issues. There are various ways in which different
organizing campaigns are unfolding and there have been various sets of academics
who are working on these issues. It's important to learn about these successes.
To ask and answer the question: How can we make the work between the community
and the academy successful? That question is where we would like to take ROSA,
but the conference series is "on hold" right now. ROSA is a victim of no funding.
In the future, we want to develop a data base of Bay Area scholars who are
interested in working on an on-going basis with grassroots community organizations.
The ROSA conferences were really exciting and we learned a lot from each other
by putting the conferences together. I think that the energy out of the ROSA
project is useful and appropriate in moving academics in ways that benefit
larger communities beyond the academic world.
LOUIE: A pet peeve that I have is of white women academics who study "women
in the Third World" or "women in development." This is not a blanket condemnation
of them, but it just irritates me when people are building their careers on
that kind of academic work; they are creating studies that don't have a connection
to the organizing work, to the work that will change the conditions they are
studying. However, I think that situation is changing, because more women
of color are going to school, and are gaining access to the resources of the
academy; resources that we have been shut out of for a long time.
Were the researchers and scholars in attendance at the ROSA conference
women of color?
BURNHAM: There were a mix. They were predominantly women of color, but they
were a mix.
This has been really wonderful. Are there other questions that you might
have for us?
BURNHAM: I imagine that most of the people who read this will be folk who
are studying somewhere either at UC Santa Cruz or some other educational institution.
I hope that you folk who are in school studying will get hold of the idea
that there are lots of things to do out in the world that don't have to do
with making tons of money; but you have to orient yourself towards figuring
out how to deepen your understanding of how the world works, how women are
affected, and how women of color in particular are affected. Then you have
to do something about it. I think that is what the Women of Color Resource
Center is about and that is what the board is about. There is a lot of work
to be done, and with the kind of training people receive in the university
setting, it's important to take advantage of that knowledge for the common
good. You would think that if you came to the end of your life and if you
realized that you had spent it chit-chatting with a bunch of academics about
stuff that nobody else cared about, well, that would be a disappointment,
wouldn't it? I think so!
LOUIE: I agree. I think that it is important for people who are doing research
to figure out where their interests intersect with the community; it is a
very complementary relationship. I have seen that in the work of WCRC. For
example, seeing Asian Immigrant Women Advocates work with students on the
Jessica McClintock boycott is exciting; the students have a lot of ideas and
energy. It is a very creative relationship. We are kind of hoping at this
point that some students doing video work for us might put together a little
mini-documentary on the organizing campaign. It is really interesting to note
that it is a younger generation of Asians. That is really good. There's hope
because the next generation is ready to take over with energy and enthusiasm.
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For more information contact The Women of Color Resource Center, 2288 Fulton
St, Suite 103, Berkeley, CA 94704, (510) 848-9272.