skj289

In 2009, Eve Tuck wrote a letter—”Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities”—urging communities to institute a moratorium on damage-centered research and to instead reimagine the ways research can be used to benefit communities. Tuck describes damage-centered research as that which “operates with a flawed theory of change: it is often used to leverage reparation or resources for marginalized communities yet simultaneously reinforces and reinscribes a one-dimensional notion of these people as depleted, reined, and hopeless” (409). Nearly ten years later, in 2018, Eve Ewing released her book Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, a story she tells of racism and the Chicago South Side’s school closings. Ewing’s methodological and theoretical notes are found in the appendix of the book. It is here where she describes her voice as a witness, her positionality as a “small-framed black woman” (176), the reciprocity and social life of her study, critical discourse analysis, institutional mourning, her semi-structured interview protocol, and finally her etic codes. Both Tuck and Ewing’s accounts give insight into the ethical components of community-engaged research, providing principles and protocols that I will adopt when entering into my research this summer at The Clemente. 

Tuck describes the act of researchers pursuing oppressed communities as an added layer of surveillance. From historical mistreatment and exploitation to present-day research, Tuck explains the invisibility that is felt within these communities. Tuck hopes to empower communities to exercise their right to self-determination—the communities must hold researchers accountable to put a stop to the damage that has persisted through years of surveillance, damage-centered research. Tuck’s letter directly addresses community-engaged research that invites the dispossessed to speak their pain and only their pain. The invitation to speak of pain is laden with incentives such as reparation and pay-off. Unfortunately, this research seldom creates repair for communities, and instead serves as a tactic of colonization. All that is left when the research ends is the damage the community started with. 

Tuck suggests an alternative to damage-centered research: research that captures desire rather than damage. A desire-based framework has the ability to stop the framework that positions communities as damaged. By conducting desire-based research, the focus “accounts for loss and despair, but also the hope, visions, the wisdom of lived lives and communities” (417). In an effort to suspend damage-based research in hopes for desire-centered research, Tuck ends the letter questioning whether the time has arrived for a moratorium on damage-centered research, and how a moratorium might be helpful. Working towards a moratorium, Tuck suggests communities insist that researchers focus on survivance rather than damage. Ultimately, Tuck explains that a moratorium on damage-centered research could achieve a re-visioning of communities’ theories of change, an established tribal and community human research ethics guidelines, and mutually beneficial roles of academic researchers in community research.  

In Ewing’s appendix, we learn of more ways that the researcher can either help or hinder the community being researched. Ewing conducted her research as a boundary sitter, neither involved directly with the community nor completely invisible to its residents. She quickly became aware of her power or lack thereof as a researcher, and had to embrace the affect this could have on her research outcomes. Throughout her research, Ewing remained approachable and maintained reciprocal relations with her participants. Ewing explains her critical discourse analysis of her participants, and how this discourse may ultimately end up offering the initial steps needed to create schools or justice. Additionally, Ewing discusses the feeling of institutional mourning that was expressed by many of the participants in the language they used in discussion; that of death and loss. Ewing’s methods and notes of theory are useful as guidance for conducting research, especially for understanding research questions that may be typically studied through the damage-centered research framework. 

Through reading Tuck and Ewing’s thoughts on research frameworks and methods, it is evident that when conducting research on or with communities that have undergone oppression or loss, a change of research practice is necessary. Survivance and desire must be embraced as frameworks. An understanding of positionality, approachability, and reciprocity must be practiced by researchers. A suspension of portraying communities as damaged and broken must begin if we are to hope for a moratorium on cycles of oppression and exploitation. 

In the chapter “Making Loisaida: Placing in Lower Manhattan” in Liz Ševčenko’s book Mambo Montage, the crisis, movement, and neighborhood ambition that fostered Loisaida and ultimately The Clemente is explained. The neighborhood that birthed The Clemente was described as a “vast wasteland” (293) by real estate developers in 1976. Nationwide deindustrialization coupled with city and private investor imposed poverty left Puerto Rican residents in a moment of crisis. Landlords were burning homes in the Lower East Side, and the city’s planned shrinkage policy left the area without spending for public operations such as fire stations and education. In the midst of speculative development and ripeness for gentrification, Puerto Rican activists saw opportunity in the crisis to make a claim to their home. Community organizers started the Loisaida movement, and successively asserted their right to the city by giving their neighborhood meaning. Loisaida became “an afro-puerto rican struggle to defend the values of working-class autonomy and self-help” (300). 

Ševčenko describes the Puerto Rican resident’s claim to space as “born from its political relationship to urban space” (293). The intention was for Spanish speaking multi-ethnic residents to empower each other in order to claim territory and resources they deserved. The movement organized a space where a multicultural coalition could find agency in demanding their rights to the neighborhood. Ševčenko suggests that the most powerful tool in asserting control of the neighborhood was for its residents to name it themselves. Through mobilizations and reuniones del pueblo, the name Loisaida took hold. Originally coined by Bimbo Rivas in 1974 while on a writing retreat with Chino Garcia, the name served as a “simple effective organizing tool” (298). Loisaida latinized the previously named Lower East Side, and provided an easy, roll-off-the-tongue identity for the neighborhood.

Shaped by the artists, musicians, and poets, Loisaida worked to preserve Nuyorican culture through creative work. Puerto Rican organizations and key organizers in the movement constructed a multicultural Puertorriqueñidad Loisaida amongst all Latinx residents in the neighborhood. The working class spirit and ethnic pride that exuded from Loisaida was crucial for the collectivization that led the residents to preserve their culture. 

Born out of the Loisaida movement, The Clemente is a Puerto Rican/Latinx institution working to cultivate, present, and preserve their culture. Its roots begin in 1982, when Teatro LATEO was founded by Nelson Tamayo, Nelson Landrieu, and Mateo Gomez to represent underrepresented Latinx culture in North American Theater. LATEO became the cultural hub at Solidaridad Humana, a bilingual education program. When Solidaridad Humana came to an end, Gomez, Landrieu, and Tamayo continued running the LATEO before its transformation into The Clemente. The Clemente includes 46 subsidized visual arts studio spaces and 12 studio/offices used for performance and education. Funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the organization is able to hold space for artists of all types in a collaborative and multidisciplinary environment. The Loisaida movement was led by the voices and activism of many Latinx artists, and The Clemente has preserved a space in the Lower East Side for continued artistic agency to be found. 

            In “Chapter One: Can’t We All Just Get Along?” and “Chapter Six: Struggle and the City: Conflict Informed Collaboration” in From Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America’s Metro Areas,” Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor discuss the need for diverse and dynamic epistemic communities. They use case studies from Greensboro, Fresno, and San Antonio to present how conflict, collaboration, and knowledge generation either aided or hindered the revitalization of each post-1970 metropolis.
            Benner and Pastor explain diverse and dynamic epistemic communities as those which comprise of a diverse and resilient knowledge and membership base. In turn, these communities construct regional social norms allowing for long-term growth. The need for these communities is evident in a relatively community-devoid US landscape. Benner and Pastor attribute the lack of a common knowledge base to the media and economic inequality, and an increase in spatial sorting to partisan ideology and social class. Lack of exposure to different opinions is exacerbated as individuals move to homogenized political and social areas. The authors describe that amidst an inextricably linked political, job, and inequality crisis, the first step towards building diverse and dynamic epistemic communities is to address the fragmentation of knowledge that underpins the individual truth claim. With the ability to broaden membership through a diversity of knowledge, increase scope of action, sustain interaction, and handle conflict, diverse and dynamic epistemic communities will “recreate a sense of commons and common good.” (Benner and Pastor, 17)
            In “Chapter Six: Struggle and the City: Conflict Informed Collaboration,” Benner and Pastor present the case studies of Greensboro, Fresno, and San Antonio and how the revitalization (or lack thereof) of each metropolis relied on the empowerment of the dispossessed in an effort of racial rebalancing.
            Greensboro’s economy suffered from deindustrialization and increasing mistrust and disconnection amongst the citizenry. Crisis ensued with a decline in employment, job growth, and earnings, and an increase in poverty and inequality. Racial tensions and inequality left the citizens unable to cooperate, and unstable leadership and organizational structures fostered intra-regional competition. The Greensboro Partnership made an effort to increase business, economic, and community development but was not entirely successful. Ultimately, the cooperation that Greensboro needed lacked trust and social capital and was undermined by racial tensions, “fragmented government structures, and unequal spatial distribution of poverty and economic opportunity.” (139)
            Despite being one of the most fruitful regions in the United States, Fresno maintains high levels of poverty and unemployment. The local economy lacks diversity, and laissez-faire politics have been formulative in racial segregation and suburban sprawl. The dominant power structures of oil, development, and agriculture, as well as a polarized economy have robbed marginalized communities of their agency. Fresno’s economic growth is dependent on its “poverty industrial cycle complex inequity.” (143) While Fresno has had organizing successes—the Chicano social movement, national farm workers association, and Plan A—the city lacks leadership that can simultaneously use conflict resolution to bridge competing knowledge claims and maintain validity.
           Lastly, there is the promising case of San Antonio—a lesson for the future. San Antonio’s goal was to move beyond its dependence on military spending. As a historically racialized city run by top-heavy business elites exploiting cheap labor, organizing efforts ultimately needed to tip political power to create change. In contrast to Fresno and Greensboro, there was important leadership that kept conflict at bay, allowing for engagement and collaboration to create a “common destiny” (13) that characterizes San Antonio today. Communities Organized for Public Services (COPS), Project Quest, Ernesto Cortes, and Henry Cisneros, as well as many others made strides in allocating resources, changing economic development strategy, creating cross-class collaboration, reskilling workers, and enhancing education. Together, the citizens of San Antonio created a vision—SA2020—focusing on education, employment, environment, and health. The collaboration in San Antonio came from intense conflict, controversy, and demand for representation. San Antonio’s successful revitalization proves that conflict can precede collaboration. Because of its strong leadership and the citizens deep connection with place, the space was created for all citizens to communicate and find a common purpose, in turn creating an epistemic community.
            Benner and Pastor’s articulation of struggle, collaboration, and community situates community creation within historical, community-corroding injustices of the United States. The success of San Antonio’s revitalization has me curious how The Clemente will utilize leadership, diversity of voices, common understanding, and collaboration in the preservation of Latinx culture which is in itself rooted in a history of struggle, conflict, and community.