Autoestima in Immigrant Latina Community Organizing: Politicizing Self-Esteem, Personalizing Politics

Abstract

The weather was unusually warm and sunny on May 1, 2006 as tens of thousands of white-shirted demonstrators filled the streets of San Francisco’s Financial District.¹ This year’s International Day of the Worker had been recast as “The Great American Boycott,” in support of immigrant rights. Ignoring calls for “business as usual” by more conservative pro-immigrant leaders and institutions, young students, workers, public school parents, and grassroots activists instead led the largest coordinated student strike, work stoppage, and economic boycott in U.S. history. Red, white, and blue signs insisted, “AMERICA, we are YOUR people!” Media pundits spun the day as another generation of U.S. immigrants wielded their demo graphic power for influence in electoral politics, just as others had done before them. But is the contemporary immigrant rights movement just about “getting a piece of the American pie?” Does American citizenship mean the same thing at all when the subject demanding equal rights and democratic protections is socially marginalized or legally excised from the body politic? How does a person subject to such exclusion make claims for legitimacy, rights, and recognition without assimilation?