La Gente


Book Description

La Gente traces the rise of the Chicana/o Movement in Sacramento and the role of everyday people in galvanizing a collective to seek lasting and transformative change during the 1960s and 1970s. In their efforts to be self-determined, la gente contested multiple forms of oppression at school, at work sites, and in their communities. Though diverse in their cultural and generational backgrounds, la gente were constantly negotiating acts of resistance, especially when their lives, the lives of their children, their livelihoods, or their households were at risk. Historian Lorena V. Márquez documents early community interventions to challenge the prevailing notions of desegregation by barrio residents, providing a look at one of the first cases of outright resistance to desegregation efforts by ethnic Mexicans. She also shares the story of workers in the Sacramento area who initiated and won the first legal victory against canneries for discriminating against brown and black workers and women, and demonstrates how the community crossed ethnic barriers when it established the first accredited Chicana/o and Native American community college in the nation. Márquez shows that the Chicana/o Movement was not solely limited to a handful of organizations or charismatic leaders. Rather, it encouraged those that were the most marginalized—the working poor, immigrants and/or the undocumented, and the undereducated—to fight for their rights on the premise that they too were contributing and deserving members of society.




Class Action; Community Mobilization, Race, and the Politics of Student Assignment in San Francisco


Book Description

The principal goal of the dissertation is to explain the political nature and effect of cultural characterizations on the development of student assignment policy. Cultural characterizations are socially constructed portrayals that become influential when stakeholders mobilize to bring about change. In education, as the professional authority of school boards and superintendents diminishes, community stakeholders are increasingly prominent. They serve as critical producers and providers of cultural characterizations of public education and its beneficiaries. As such, the engagement of community stakeholders with public sector institutions, organizations, and individuals can significantly amplify, modify, or blunt education policy. The dissertation traces the history of community mobilization in San Francisco from 1971 to 2005, during which the federal district court supervised all aspects of the school district's student assignment policy. Cultural characterizations of student assignment were structured by three distinct logics of action: integration, choice, and neighborhood. These logics were stable but not fixed. Changes in the institutional environment coupled with how stakeholders framed, understood, and shaped these logics led to transformations in student assignment policy that ultimately altered the educational experience of multiple generations of public school students. Data are drawn primarily from archival documents from the federal district court, the school district, and community organizations; mainstream and community newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and editorials; and, retrospective interviews with key stakeholders.




Hearings


Book Description







Mexican American Education Study


Book Description




Education of the Spanish Speaking


Book Description




Education of the Spanish Speaking


Book Description