Communication Key to Success of Pomona Day Labor Center

By Jose Calderon, associate professor of sociology and Chicano studies, Pitzer College

The following article originally appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of Peer Review, which is a quarterly publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

In 1997, the city of Pomona passed an ordinance to fine day laborers $1,000 and six months in jail for seeking employment on street corners. At the time, a group of my students happened to be doing research on immigrant workers in the city. One of these students, Fabian Nunez, had just recently been elected to the State Assembly. Together, we packed city hall to protest the ordinance and, eventually, received $50,000 to start the Pomona Day Labor Center. Students in my “Rural and Urban Social Movements” and “Restructuring Communities” classes and I have been partnering with this community-based organization ever since.

While, as a result of our efforts, all day laborers in Pomona now congregate near the day labor center, some continued to gather on a corner about 300 feet away. The workers at this corner, and the employers who picked them up, undercut the efforts of the center by not having any restrictions as to what a worker could be paid. In meeting after meeting with the workers, we came up with various alternatives to the problem. Eventually, through dialogue and experimentation, the workers decided to invite Norma Torres, a supportive councilperson, and me to meet with the workers on the corner. The workers at the center also agreed to be part of the dialogue. After discussing the virtues of working together and the benefits of the center, we were able to get 75 percent of the workers to go to the center.

In a meeting involving eighty-five workers, a committee was organized to distribute leaflets about the services available at the center. Along with three students working as summer interns with the California Center for Community Social Issues and a community fellow, we met with the day laborers, practiced action research in the process of dialogue, and assessed that there was a need for community supporters who were not day laborers also to distribute the leaflets. Together, we organized volunteers from the day labor board, the city council, the college, and other community organizations to be there on a daily basis to distribute leaflets to employers and to support the workers in their efforts.

In addition, on the first day of our action, two other summer interns began teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and developing an immigration rights and health project at the center. As service providers, as researchers, and as participants, students have been a part of all of these actions. I cannot think of a better example with which to begin a discussion of civic engagement and partnering.

Not Just Service Learning

The Pomona Day Labor Center, which got started through the efforts of students, is not an isolated example at Pitzer College. It reflects the ethos of many programs that have emerged and taken off in the last few years. This ethos is rooted in the advancement of intercultural and interdisciplinary understanding as well as in the ideal of democracy translated as social responsibility. It is rooted in the idea that, through campus-community partnering, our students and faculty will engage in acts of collaboration that go beyond the charity or project paradigms. Keith Morton (cite) characterizes this as going beyond the charity model, with control of services with the provider, to a model of social change that builds partnerships of equality between all the participants, that gets at the root causes of problems, and that focuses directly or indirectly on politically empowering the powerless. Further, this ethos is rooted in the concept of “community-based partnering,” according to which research and action are carried out not merely for the benefit of academia but for the benefit of the community-based organization and its members in both the short- and the long-term. It joins the idea of service learning—some of which we might label as charity or project models, such as the students teaching ESL and taking day laborers for physical and dental check-ups—with the long-term goal of reciprocity. That is, service learning is part of a larger program meant eventually to empower the participants, to develop their leadership, and to develop the foundations that will allow them to function as active participants in the larger world of policy making.

This kind of community-based partnering is a cornerstone of the Center for California Cultural and Social Issues (CCCSI). Created in 1999, CCCSI supports research and education that contribute to the understanding of critical community issues and enhance the resources of community organizations. As part of its mission to be a genuine partner in communities rather than to dispense so-called “expert” solutions to pre-defined needs, the center supports numerous innovative community-based projects by offering research awards and technical training to faculty and students at Pitzer College. In its three years of operation, CCCSI has given over 100 awards to students, faculty, and members of the community. These have included community-based summer projects and internships, academic-year course enhancement and senior year projects, and urban and community fellowships. As part of campus-community partnering, the center has developed a small number of core partnerships with community-based organizations that last no fewer than four years. These partnerships include a Pitzer faculty member, who serves as the link between the students, the campus community, and the community based organization, and an individual—usually a community fellow—who is the designated link to the community-based organization. The goal of this relationship is to empower and build the capacity of both campus and community participants.

Again, this is not just about service learning. A number of my students, for example, have written their theses on day laborers. By connecting her work in the day labor center and her work with a United Farm Worker Alternative Spring Break, one student wrote a thesis comparing the organizing strategies of day laborers and farm workers. I am currently publishing an article on day laborers that I co-wrote with two graduates who had served as CCCSI interns. In return, we have used this research to write grants that have helped to fund the day labor center and its projects. Within this framework, one of our sociology professors has developed a capstone course in which seniors spend their last semester working in groups and writing grants for community-based organizations.

The CCCSI is linked to an external studies program, which is based on participatory learning, on understanding different cultural perspectives, and on cooperative projects with local community-based organizations in Nepal, China, Venezuela, Turkey, Italy, and Zimbabwe. Some of the students from this program return to use their newfound languages through external-internal programs. The community-based Spanish program, for example, develops partnerships between students and their Spanish-speaking host families and the Pitzer in Ontario program, which is situated a few miles from our college. Here, students immerse themselves in a multi-ethnic community that is undergoing dramatic demographic transformations. Through classes, fieldwork, internships, field trips, and participatory action research, students learn firsthand the processes of everyday life in suburban communities like Ontario and the effects of globalization and technological development on them. Through partnerships with local community-based organizations, students learn the principles of asset-based development and gain an awareness of sustainable development practices.

An Equal Relationship

In bringing students and faculty together with community-based organizations, all of these partnerships use the strengths of diversity, critical pedagogy, participatory action research, and service learning to work on common issues and to create social change. These collaborative efforts are examples of community-based models that require faculty and students to immerse themselves alongside community participants to collectively develop theories and strategies and to achieve common outcomes.

An essential component of this style of learning and research is its commitment to promoting an equal relationship between the interests of the academics and the community participants. Traditionally, academics have had a tendency to “parachute” into a community or workplace for their own research interests without developing the kind of long-term relationship and collaboration that it takes to create concrete change. In working to move beyond the traditional models of gathering research from outside for their own interests, participating students and faculty collaborate in what Kenneth Reardon (cite) has described as “intentionally promoting social learning processes that can develop the organizational, analytical, and communication skills of local leaders and their community-based organizations.” As part of this commitment, we have found that it is essential for faculty members to make a long-term commitment to the sites and communities where they have placed their students. Although students can only make a commitment for a semester or until graduation, faculty participants are in a better position to sustain campus-community partnerships.

As these long-term campus-community partnerships are developed, students and faculty can become a political force in their communities. They no longer have to be placed in the role of travelers passing by. Instead, they can see themselves as participants with a stake in the decisions being made.

Conclusion

The participatory style of learning and research takes into consideration the meaning of community—which, as a whole, is made up of many competing interests. Those who are corporate growers, developers, and polluters call themselves part of the “community,” although their profit-making interests often place them in conflict with “quality of life” initiatives in the community. The “communities” to which I refer are geographical, political, and spiritual places that are very diverse. They have different levels of stratification, power relations, backgrounds, and ideologies. These communities are facing inequality or they are trying to improve their quality of life. Hence, the research and learning described above focuses on the sources of inequalities and on what can be done about them. While the dominant understanding of inequality tends to blame the “individual” for his or her “inadequacies,” other theories and explanations focus on the historical and systemic foundations of inequality. The practices I have described stand with the latter. They challenge students and faculty to find common grounds of collaboration with community institutions, unions, organizations, and neighborhood leaders to invoke social consciousness and long-term structural change.

This type of civic engagement takes us beyond the traditional top-down models of “community service” to the level at which students and faculty join community participants in using research, teaching, and learning to create more democratic structures and to bring about fundamental social change. At the same time, this participatory style provides a meaningful and practical means for building bridges between students, faculty, and community participants from diverse backgrounds. Finally, it brings together the practice of diversity, critical pedagogy, participatory action research, student-centered learning, and intercultural and interdisciplinary learning to create a dynamic paradigm of community-based collaboration and social change.

References

Keith Morton. The irony of service: Charity, project, and social change in service learning.

Kenneth Reardon. Participatory action research as service learning.