shadows-streets-book

Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets!

Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets!Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights MovementSasha Costanza-ChockThe MIT PressCambridge, MassachusettsLondon, England

We are multitudes. No conocemos las fronteras.

ContentsForeword by Manuel CastellsAuthor ’ s Note xiiiAcknowledgments xvixIntroduction: ¡ Escucha! ¡ Escucha! ¡ Estamos en la Lucha! 11 A Day Without an Immigrant: Social Movements and the MediaEcology 202 Walkout Warriors: Transmedia Organizing 463 “ MacArthur Park Melee ”: From Spokespeople to Amplifiers 684 APPO-LA: Translocal Media Practices 865 Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital MediaLiteracy 1026 Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets:Pathways to Participation in DREAM Activist Networks 1287 Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us: Professionalizationand Accountability in Transmedia Organizing 154Conclusions 179AppendixesAppendix A: Research Methodology 205Appendix B: Interviewees 215Appendix C: Interview Guide 217Appendix D: Online Resources for Organizers 221Notes 223Index 257

ForewordManuel CastellsOver the last few years, a wave of social protests has rippled across theworld, and in its wake we have witnessed the profile of the social movementsof the information age. Yet, because of the novelty of their formsof mobilization and organization, an ideological debate is raging over theinterpretation of these movements. Since in most cases they challengetraditional forms of politics and organizations, the political establishment,the media establishment, and the academic establishment have forthe most part refused to acknowledge their significance, even afterupheavals as important as those represented by the so-called Arab Spring,the Icelandic democratic rebellion, the Spanish “ Indignant ” movement,the Israeli demonstrations of 2012, Occupy Wall Street, the Brazilianmobilizations of 2013, and the Taksim Square protests, which shook upthe entrenched Islamic government of Turkey. Indeed, between 2010 and2014, thousands of cities in more than one hundred countries have seensignificant occupations of public space as activists have challenged thedomination of political and financial elites over common citizens, who,according to the protesters, have been disenfranchised and alienated fromtheir democratic rights.A key issue in this often blurred debate is the role of communicationtechnologies in the formation, organization, and development of themovements. Throughout history, communication has been central to theexistence of social movements, which develop beyond the realm of institutionalizedchannels for the expression of popular demands. It is only bycommunicating with others that outraged people are able to recognizetheir collective power before those who control access to the institutions.Institutions are vertical, and social movements always start as horizontal

xForewordorganizations, even if over time they may evolve into vertical organizationsfor the sake of efficiency. (This evolution is seen by many in the movementsas the reproduction of the same power structures that they aim tooverthrow.)If communication is at the heart of social mobilization, and if holdingpower largely depends on the control of communication and information,it follows that the transformation of communication in a given societydeeply affects the structure and dynamics of social movements. This transformationis multidimensional: technological, organizational, institutional,spatial, cultural. We live in a network society in which people andorganizations set up their own networks according to their interests andvalues in all domains of the human experience, from sociability to politics,and from networked individualism to multimodal communities. In thetwenty-first century there has been a major shift from mass communication(characterized by the centralized, controlled distribution of messagesfrom one sender to many receivers and involving limited interactivity, asexemplified by television) to mass self-communication (characterized bymultimodality and interactivity of messages from many senders to manyreceivers through the self-selection of messages and interlocutors andthrough the self-retrieving, remixing, and sharing of content, as exemplifiedby the Internet, social media, and mobile networks). The appropriationof networked communication technologies by social movements hasempowered extraordinary social mobilizations, created communicativeautonomy vis- à -vis the mass media, business, and governments, and laidthe foundation for organizational and political autonomy. In a world of2.5 billion Internet users and almost 7 billion mobile phone subscribers, asignificant share of communication power has shifted from corporationsand state bureaucracies to civil society — a shift well established by research.However, we have only scant grounded analysis of the technological,organizational, and cultural specificity of new processes of social mobilizationand community networking. Too often, there is a na ï ve interpretationof these important phenomena that boils down to descriptive accounts ofthe use of the newest communication technologies or applications bysocial activists. Instead, a complex set of distinct developments is at work.It is simply silly (or ideologically biased) to deny or downplay the empiricalobservation of the crucial role of networking technologies in the dynamicsof networked social movements. On the other hand, it is equally silly to

Forewordxipretend that Twitter, Facebook, or any other technology, for that matter,is the generative force behind the new social movements. (No observer,and certainly no activist, defends this latter position; it is a straw manerected by traditional intellectuals, mainly from the left, as a way to garnersupport for their belief in the role of “ the party ”— any party — in leading“ the masses, ” who are deemed unable to organize themselves.) Moreover,my observations of movements around the world reveal that the new socialmovements are networked in multiple ways, not only online but in theform of urban social networks, interpersonal networks, preexisting socialnetworks, and the networks that form and reform spontaneously in cyberspaceand in physical public space. This networking consists of a processof communication that leads to mobilization and is facilitated by organizationsemerging from the movement, rather than being imported from theestablished political system. However, to make progress in understandingthese movements, we need scholarly research that goes beyond the cloudof ideology and hype to examine with methodological reliability howcommunication works in such movements and to understand with precisionthe interaction between communication and social movements.From this perspective, the book you hold in your hands represents afundamental contribution to a rigorous characterization of the new avenuesof social change in societies around the world. The concept of transmediaorganizing that Sasha Costanza-Chock proposes integrates the variety ofmodes of communication that exist in the real media practices of socialmovements. From the activists ’ point of view, any communication modethat works is adopted, so that the Internet and mobile platforms are usedalongside and in interaction with paper leaflets, interpersonal face-to-facecommunication, bulletins and newspapers, graffiti, pirate radio, street art,public speeches and assemblies in the square. Everything is included inwhat Costanza-Chock calls the media ecology of the movement. This isthe reality of the new movements and the foundation of their communicativeautonomy, on which their very existence depends, particularly whenrepression inevitably falls on them.Costanza-Chock identified this novel interaction between the shiftingmedia ecology and social movements long before the Arab Spring uprisingsor the Occupy movement came to the attention of the mass media.He focused on a most significant social development, the movement forimmigrant rights that exploded across the United States in 2006, with its

xiiForewordepicenter in Los Angeles. He studied this movement between 2006 and2013, beginning with his participation in the Border Social Forum, wherethe new realities of immigration were debated. Through a commitment tomethods of participatory research, he partnered with organizers and activistsfrom the immigrant rights movement, and worked with them as codesignersand coinvestigators in a range of popular communication initiatives.This courageous strategy of engaged scholarship allowed him to see thespecific, sometimes contradictory effects of different communication processesin the dynamics of the movement. For example, he identified thecentrality of critical digital literacy in grassroots social mobilization. In aworld in which the fight for one ’ s rights can be shaped decisively by one ’ sability to use the new means of communication, it is crucial to equalizeaccess to the direct use of communication technologies by grassrootsactors. By developing digital literacy, the movement can raise consciousnessas well as find better uses for digital tools as they are adaptedto movement goals. Otherwise the inevitable professionalization oftransmedia organizers leads to the formation of a technical leadership thatdoes not necessarily coincide with the leadership emerging from thegrassroots.The close analysis of these and related processes presented in the pagesof this fascinating book is of utmost importance for understanding thenew, networked social movements of the Internet age, as well as the potentialof new communication technologies to broaden citizen participationin institutional decision making. In the midst of a widespread crisis oflegitimacy faced by governments around the world, understanding theseprocesses is crucial for activists, concerned citizens, open-minded officials,and scholars everywhere. This book engages us in a fascinating intellectualand political journey. It raises, and often solves, many of the questionsnow being asked about networked social movements. It is based on impeccablescholarship, in which the author ’ s commitment to the defense ofimmigrant rights does not impinge on the integrity of his observation andanalysis. This is social research as it best: when normative values are notdenied by a detached academic but are served by investigative imaginationand theoretical capacity, yielding an accurate assessment of the ways andmeans of the new world in the making.

Author ’ s NoteThe author will donate half of the royalties from the sale of this book tothe Mobile Voices project. Mobile Voices (VozMob) is “ a platform forimmigrant and/or low-wage workers in Los Angeles to create stories abouttheir lives and communities directly from cell phones. VozMob appropriatestechnology to create power in our communities and achieve greaterparticipation in the digital public sphere. ” More information can be foundat http://vozmob.net .

AcknowledgmentsThis book owes everything to those who struggle on a daily basis to buildbeloved community in the immigrant rights movement and beyond. First,gr á cias a Mar í a de Lourdes Gonz á lez Reyes, Manuel Manc í a, Adolfo Cisneros,Crisp í n Jimenez, Marcos and Diana, Alma Luz, Ranferi, and the PopularCommunication Team of VozMob.net. Your stories continue to travelaround the world, providing insight and inspiration to everyone theytouch. You are truly leyendo la realidad para escribir la historia . AmandaGarces, you taught me so much; it ’ s incredible to look back and see howfar we came together. Thanks also to the tireless efforts of Raul A ñ orve,Marlom Portillo, Neidi Dominguez, Brenda Aguilera, Natalie Arellano, LuisValent í n, Pedro Joel Espinosa, and the whole IDEPSCA extended family. Ifeel honored to have been able to spend time building community withyou. It ’ s been a true journey through difficult times, pero llena de amor,respeto , and also delicious food. Thank you for exploring participatoryresearch and design, together with Carmen Gonzales, Melissa Brough,Charlotte Lapsansky, Cara Wallis, Veronica Paredes, Ben Stokes, Fran ç oisBar, Troy Gabrielson, Mark Burdett, and Squiggy Rubio.Thanks are also due to Virginia, Cristina, Cruz, Miguel, Consuelo, andeveryone who participated in Radio Tijera , as well as to Marissa Nuncio,Delia Herrera, Luz Elena Henao, Kimi Lee, simmi gandi, and all the incrediblepast and present organizers at the Garment Worker Center. Danny Park,Eileen Ma, and Joyce Yang, thank you for hosting the CineBang! screeningsand for providing a welcoming space at Koreatown Immigrant WorkersAlliance. Odilia and Berta at the Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones Binacionales,and Max Mariscal: I still think about the taste of tamales y atoleduring APPO-LA protests and screenings at the Mexican consulate.

AcknowledgmentsxviiI am thrilled to have found a home at MIT in the Department of ComparativeMedia Studies/Writing. My colleagues have been deeply supportive,especially T. L. Taylor and Jim Paradis, who have both been unerringguides, mentors, and advocates for an unconventional junior scholar.T. L. and Jim also provided detailed and very valuable feedback on themanuscript, as did Otto Santa Ana, Virginia Eubanks, Nancy Meza, ChrisSchweidler, and several anonymous readers from the MIT Press.CMS/W faculty and staff, including William Uricchio, Vivek Bald, FoxHarrell, Nick Montfort, Ian Condry, Heather Hendershot, Junot D í az,Helen Elaine Lee, Thomas Levenson, Kenneth Manning, Seth Mnookin,David Thorburn, Jing Wang, and Ed Schiappa, as well as Kurt Fendt, SarahWolozin, Scot Osterweil, Philip Tan, Andrew Whitacre, Susan Tresch Fienberg,Jill Janows, Mike Rapa, Becky Shepardson, Jessica Tatlock, PatsyBaudoin, Federico Casalegno, Jessica Dennis, Sarah Smith, Shannon Larkin,and Karinthia Louis, have created a welcoming space for deep discussionand debate around the questions that animate this book.It was a pleasure to work closely with Rogelio Alejandro Lopez, whoconducted a series of interviews with immigrant rights activists for thisproject and also for his own work. Rogelio ’ s master ’ s thesis, a comparativestudy of media practices in the farm workers movement and the immigrantyouth movement, shaped my thinking about transmedia organizing as anapproach that has been used throughout social movement history. I havealso greatly enjoyed discussing the dynamics of media, publicity, andhidden resistance with Sun Huan, the history of consensus process andprefigurative politics with Charlie De Tar, networked social movementswith Pablo Rey Maz ó n, and collaborative design with Aditi Mehta.Dan Schultz egged me on to keep pushing the limits; I still insist he ’ s adead ringer for Guy Fawkes. Joi Ito had me covered when there was blowback,and I can ’ t say more in public.Thanks also to the brilliant and hardworking crew at the Center forCivic Media, especially Ethan Zuckerman, whose tweets urged me acrossthe finish line, as well as Lorrie LeJeune, Rahul Bhargava, Ed Platt, BeckyHurwitz, and Andrew Whitacre. I am constantly amazed at the breadthand depth of knowledge across the Civic community. I have only onequestion for brilliant graduate students and fellows Chelsea Barabas,Willow Brugh, Denise Cheng, Heather Craig, Kate Darling, Rodrigo Davies,Ali Hashmi, Alexis Hope, Catherine d’Ignazio, Nick Grossman, Alexandre

xviiiAcknowledgmentsGoncalves, Erhardt Graeff, Nathan Matias, Chris Peterson, Molly Sauter,Sun Huan, Rogelio Alejandro Lopez, Matt Stempeck, Wang Yu, and JudeMwenda Ntabathia: What does the fox say?Bex Hurwitz, you ’ ve been an excellent partner in crime; it has been trulyfabulous to work with you to develop theory and practice around collaborativedesign. I ’ m looking forward to many RAD projects to come!Early stages of work on research that made its way into this book weresupported by research assistantships with Manuel Castells, Ernest J. Wilson,Fran ç ois Bar, Holly Willis, and Jonathan Aronson, as well as by grants fromthe HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition,the USC Graduate School Fellowship in Digital Scholarship, the SocialScience Research Council Large Collaborative Grants program, and anAnnenberg Center for Communication Graduate Fellowship. More recently,my research has been supported by John Bracken at the Knight Foundation,Archana Sahgal at the Open Society Foundations, and Luna Yasui atthe Ford Foundation ’ s Advancing LGBT Rights Initiative.Manuel Castells guided me during the earliest stages of this project, andcontinually urged me, with a twinkle in his eye, to struggle for liberationin the institutions, on the net, and in the streets. Ivan Tcherepnin taughtme how to listen to the universe, and first turned me on to the politicaleconomy of communication. Silke Roth introduced me to social movementstudies, Dorothy Kidd gave me hope that scholars could stay linkedto movements, and Dee Dee Halleck inspired me with handheld visions.Steve Anderson pushed me to develop a practice of scholarly multimedia.Larry Gross, mentor and friend since we first met at the University ofPennsylvania, encouraged me to take up the path of engaged scholarship.This book would not exist if it weren ’ t for him.My parents, Carol Chock, Paul Mazzarella, Peter Costanza, and BarbaraZimbel, always inspired me to dream of another possible world, and totake action to make it real. We have to make it happen, not least for mytiny niece, Colette Miele. Larissa, I love you; Grandpa Jack and GrandmaBrunni, I miss you.I could never have completed this book without the love, support, andsharp editorial eye of my partner, Chris Schweidler. Chris helped me shapethis book from its earliest incarnation onward. Thank you for helping mefinally push it out into the world! Among the boulder piles of Joshua Tree,the otherworldly red rock formations of Sedona, and the limitless skies of

AcknowledgmentsxixAbiqui ú , you have guided me toward a new understanding of love andliberation. I want to walk beside you always.As this book goes to press, President Obama has deported two millionpeople. The immigrant rights movement is mobilizing across the countryto demand an end to deportations and meaningful immigration policyreform. Yet the so-called comprehensive immigration reform bills thatCongress is debating begin with $46 billion for the deadly political theaterof border militarization: more walls, drones, and Border Patrol agents; moredeaths, detentions, and deportations. In the face of such cruel absurdity,I only hope that this book can contribute in some small way to the longstruggle for freedom of movement, social justice, and respect for the planeton which we all live and move, born sin patr ó n y sin fronteras . 1

Introduction: ¡ Escucha! ¡ Escucha! ¡ Estamos en la Lucha!“¡ Escucha! ¡ Escucha! ¡ Estamos en la lucha! ” (Listen! Listen! We are in thestruggle!) The sound of tens of thousands of voices chanting in unisonbooms and echoes down the canyon walls formed by office buildings,worn-down hotels, garment sweatshops, and recently renovated lofts alongBroadway in downtown Los Angeles. The date is May 1, 2006, and I ammarching as an ally along with more than a million people from workingclassimmigrant families, mostly Latin@. We are pouring into the streets atthe peak of a mobilization wave that began in March and swept rapidlyacross the United States, grew to massive proportions in major metropolitanareas such as Chicago, New York, L.A., Philadelphia, San Francisco, LasVegas, and Phoenix, and reached much smaller towns and cities in everystate. The trigger was the draconian Sensenbrenner bill, H.R. 4437. The billwould have criminalized more than 11 million undocumented people andthose who work with them, including teachers, health care workers, legaladvocates, and other service providers. 1 The movement ’ s demands quicklyexpanded beyond stopping the Sensenbrenner bill and grew to encompassan end to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, a fairand just immigration reform, and, more broadly, respect, dignity, and therecognition that immigrants are human beings.Another chant begins to build: “¡ No somos cinco, no somos cien! ¡ Prensavendida, cuentenos bien! ” (We aren ’ t five, we aren ’ t one hundred! Sold-outpress, count us well!) While the Spanish-language media played a crucialrole in supporting the mobilizations, the unprecedented magnitude of themarches caught the English-language media by surprise. Major Englishlanguagenewspapers, television and radio networks, blogs, and onlinemedia outlets only belatedly acknowledged the sheer scale of the movement.Some, in particular right-wing talk radio and Fox News, used the

2 Introductionmarches as an opportunity to launch xenophobic attacks against immigrantworkers, filled with vitriolic language about “ swarms ” of “ illegalaliens, ” “ anchor babies, ” and “ diseased Mexicans. ” 2 A forest of dishes andantennae bristles from the backs of TV network satellite trucks that linethe streets near City Hall. As the crowd passes the Fox News truck, theconsigna (chant) changes again, becoming simple and direct: “¡ Mentirosos!¡ Mentirosos! ” (Liars! Liars!)Emerging from Broadway into the open area around City Hall, I feel apowerful emotional wave course through the air. As a committed socialjustice activist as well as an engaged scholar and media-maker, I ’ ve beento many protests before. Often, these are composed of the same relativelysmall group of familiar faces. The wave of historic mobilizations againstthe Iraq War in 2003 is the last time I can remember being surrounded byliterally hundreds of thousands of people, many of them marching in thestreets for the first time in their lives, joined in a broad coalition by shareddemands. 3 “¡ Se ve, se siente, el Pueblo esta presente! ” (You can see it, you canfeel it, the people are here!) For decades, modern social movements haveaimed to capture mass media attention as a crucial component of theirefforts to transform society. 4 Those who marched over and over again forimmigrant rights during the spring of 2006 did so in large part to fight forincreased visibility and voice in the political process, and they explicitlydemanded that the English-language press accurately convey the movement’ s size, message, and power. Yet over the course of the last twentyyears, widespread changes in our communications system have deeplyaltered the relationship between social movements and the media. Followingthe Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eliminated national capson media ownership and allowed a single company to own multiple stationsin the same market, the broadcast industry was swept by a wave ofconsolidation. 5 Spanish-language radio and TV stations, once localized toindividual cities, built significant market share, attracted major corporateadvertisers, and were largely integrated into national and transnationalconglomerates. 6 This process delinked Spanish-language broadcasters fromlocal programming and advertisers while simultaneously constructing new,shared pan-Latin@ identities. 7In the 2006 mobilizations, Spanish-language print media, television,and radio stations provided extensive coverage, and also played a criticalrole in calling people to the streets. The massive demonstrations

Introduction 3underscored not only the power of the Latin@ working class but also thegrowing clout of commercial Spanish-language media inside the UnitedStates. 8 At the same time, the rise of widespread, if still unequal, access tothe Internet and to digital media literacy provided new spaces for socialmovement participants to document and circulate their own struggles. 9Movements, including the immigrant rights movement, have rapidlytaken to blogging, participatory journalism, and social media. 10 Someimmigrant rights activists, who recognize these changes while remainingwary of the exclusion of large segments of their communities from thedigital public sphere, struggle for expanded access to critical digital medialiteracy. They also strive to better integrate participatory media into dailymovement practices. Others, uncomfortable with the loss of messagecontrol, resist the opening of social movement communication to a greaterdiversity of voices. This book, based on seven years of experience withparticipatory research, design, and media-making within the immigrantrights movement, explores these transformations in depth.A Book Born on the BorderThis book was born on the southern side of an invisible line in the sandbetween Texas and Chihuahua. At the Border Social Forum in CiudadJu á rez, Mexico, between October 12 and 15, 2006, almost one thousandactivists, organizers, and researchers gathered for three days. We met tobuild a stronger transnational activist network against the militarizationof borders and for freedom of movement and immigrant rights. I traveledto the Border Social Forum to connect with immigrant rights organizerswho were enthusiastic about integrating digital media tools and skills intotheir work. Many were based in L.A., and after the forum was over, wefollowed up to meet and develop projects together. Over the next few yearsI worked with organizers from the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center,the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, the IndigenousFront of Binational Organizations, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance,and other immigrant rights groups and networks. Together we developedworkshops, tools, and strategies to build the media capacity of theimmigrant rights movement in L.A.These movement-based media experiences provided the foundationfor my understanding of the core issues addressed in this book. Working

4 Introductionwith community organizers inspired me to undertake research that mighthelp movement participants, organizers, and scholars better understandthe shifting relationship between the media system and social movements.I participated in or led more than one hundred hands-on mediaworkshops using popular education and participatory design approaches,conducted forty formal semistructured interviews, took part in dozens ofactions and mobilizations, and assembled an archive of media producedby the movement. Some of the research that led to this book took placein partnership with community-based organizations (CBOs), some didnot. A full description of the methods I employed can be found in theappendixes to this book.In general, my work falls under the rubric of participatory research, aterm subsuming a set of methods that emphasize the development of communitiesof shared inquiry and transformative action. 11 In other words, Iconsider the groups and individuals I work with to be coresearchers andcodesigners, rather than simply subjects of research or test users. As anengaged scholar, media-maker, and technologist, I have used these methodsto work with youth organizers, the global justice movement, the Indymedianetwork, antiwar activists, media justice and communication rightsadvocates, LGBTQ and Two-Spirit communities, Occupy Wall Street, workercenters, and the immigrant rights movement, among others. In some casesI identify as a movement participant, in others as an ally. I ’ m a white,male-bodied, queer scholar/media-maker/activist with U.S. citizenshipwho grew up in Ithaca, New York. In my teen years I lived in Puebla,Mexico, during the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA (the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement) and neoliberalism. I went to Harvard as an undergraduate,organized raves and electronic arts events with the ToneburstCollective, became involved in youth organizing in the Boston area, gotconnected to the global justice movement through the Indymedia network,produced movement films, and took my first job as a community artsworker in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I went to graduate school at the Universityof Pennsylvania, then focused on media policy advocacy for several yearswith Free Press. I then moved to L.A. to pursue a doctorate at the AnnenbergSchool for Communication & Journalism at the University of SouthernCalifornia and became deeply involved in the immigrant rightsmovement. I ’ m now assistant professor of civic media in the ComparativeMedia Studies/Writing Department at MIT. I work to leverage my race,

Introduction 5class, gender, and educational privilege to amplify the voices of communitiesthat have been systematically excluded from the public sphere. To thatend, I conduct research, write, teach, organize software developmentteams, and produce media in partnership with CBOs and movementgroups. My deepest and most long-lasting community engagement is asan ally of low-wage immigrant workers, especially those from Latin Americaand the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.I wrote this book because I believe that the immigrant rights movementhas a great deal to teach us all. Both scholars and activists recognize thatmedia and communications have become increasingly central to socialmovement formation and activity. 12 However, both scholarship and practicein this field suffer from at least three basic shortcomings. First, in thepast, most studies of social movements focused exclusively on the massmedia as the arena of public discourse. The ability of a social movementto change the public conversation was often measured by looking at articlesin elite newspapers or by counting sound bites in broadcast channels. 13Second, as movements became increasingly more visible online, a growingspotlight on the latest and greatest communication technologies began toobscure the reality of everyday communication practices. 14 On the ground,social movement media-making tends to be cross-platform, participatory,and linked to action. 15 In other words, as I note throughout this book,social movements engage in what I call transmedia organizing . Third, therise of the Internet as a key space for social movement activity cannot befully theorized without sustained attention to ongoing digital inequality. 16Understanding digital inequality means focusing on critical digital medialiteracy, in addition to basic questions of access to communication toolsand connectivity. 17 This book addresses these shortcomings by looking atthe broader media ecology rather than focusing exclusively on one or ahandful of platforms, by exploring daily movement media practices withina framework of transmedia organizing, and by confronting the challengesof digital inequality in the context of the immigrant rights movement. Myaim is to help us better understand how social movement actors engagein transmedia organizing as they seek to strengthen movement identity,win political and economic victories, and transform consciousness. Themain site of research is L.A., although I also incorporate examples fromBoston and elsewhere in the country, and the focus is the contemporaryimmigrant rights movement from 2006 to 2013.

6 IntroductionThe Revolution Will Be Tweeted, but Tweets Alone Do Not theRevolution MakeIn 2010, writing against the idea that specific media technologies automaticallyproduce movement outcomes, Malcolm Gladwell argued in awidely debated article that social media fail to produce the strong tiesand vertical organizational forms that he considered crucial to the successof the civil rights movement. 18 Gladwell did provide useful pushbackagainst technological determinism, and he reminded us that the keyforce in social movements has always been strong personal connections.However, he failed to acknowledge that social media are often used toextend and maintain existing face-to-face relationships, including the“ strong ties ” he values so much, over time and space. There ’ s actuallyno contradiction between the position that strong personal relationshipsare the key to social movements and the observation that social mediaare now important tools for movement activity. More problematic isGladwell ’ s conflation of strong ties with vertical organizational structure,which led him to argue that powerful social movements require a strong,military-style hierarchy. The idea that only vertically structured movementsare effective is both dangerous and wrong. It ignores the theory,practices, processes, and tools of social transformation that have emergedfrom the last fifty years (at least) of horizontalist organizing and theanti-authoritarian left. Feminists, ecologists, queer organizers, indigenousactivists, and anarchists of various stripes have long rejected top-downinstitutional structures and patriarchal and hierarchical styles of organizing.The turn toward power-sharing, consensus process, horizontalism,and networked movement forms has certainly been aided and enabledby networked information and communication technologies (ICTs).However, there is a much deeper history that underlies this shift. Horizontalism(or horizontalidad in the Latin American context, as describedso beautifully in Marina Sitrin ’ s book of the same name) 19 surged inpopularity from the late 1960s through the 1970s, spread by way ofunderground cultural scenes during the resurgence of the right in the1980s, and burst onto the forefront of globalized social movement activityin the mid-1990s with the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. Ittook off again following the 1999 World Trade Organization protests,dubbed the “ Battle of Seattle, ” when horizontally organized, networked

Introduction 7affinity groups (consisting mostly of people who had been friends for along time beforehand) shut down the WTO ’ s Ministerial Conference andcatapulted the global justice movement into high visibility. 20 This mobilizationwas also the birthplace of Indymedia, a ragtag band of mediaactivists who scooped the major news networks from inside the cloudsof tear gas with cheap handheld cameras and an open publishing newssite built with Australian free software. 21 Coders from the Indymedianetwork went on to play key roles in the development of many widelyadopted social media platforms, including Twitter. 22By 2010, even as Gladwell was repeating the tired claim that we don ’ tsee movements like we used to because everyone is too busy with clicktivism,horizontalist movements were laying the foundation for an explosiveglobal cycle of struggles that linked decentralized mobilizations across theplanet in what Manuel Castells has called “ networks of outrage and hope. ” 23It ’ s true that most people in most times and places don ’ t become movementmilitants, yet “ anti-clicktivism ” looks downright silly in the face ofthe current social movement wave. The global protest cycle includes antiausterityriots in Greece; student protests for the right to education inLondon, Santiago de Chile, and Quebec; and the uprisings of the so-calledArab Spring that brought the fall of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt (and ledto civil war in Libya and Syria). It resonates from Tahrir Square to theSpanish Acampada del Sol, from Gezi Park in Istanbul to Occupy WallStreet and back again to #IdleNoMore. These movements are wildly disparatein their composition, goals, and outcomes; each is based in the specificityof local histories and conditions, but all share certain key components.First, they involve the reclaiming of public space by mass mobilizations.Second, significant groups within each movement reject the formal aspectsof representative democracy (political parties, governance based on periodicballots to elect political leaders, and so on) and enact prefigurativepolitics . 24 In other words, within the self-organized spaces controlled by themovement they attempt to directly build the types of social relationshipsthat they would like to see reflected in broader society. 25 Third, as describedby Paolo Gerbaudo, all are characterized by their ability to maintain apresence in both tweets and the streets: these movements are based on thephysical occupation of key urban locations, while they simultaneouslycapture the imagination of networked publics through extended visibilityacross social media sites. 26

8 IntroductionThis cycle of struggles is also linked to a renewal of intense popular andscholarly debates about the relationship between social media and socialmovements. Each day brings a broader diffusion of digital technologies,and each day seems also to bring a rush to attribute the latest popularprotest to the tools used by the protesters. Iran is the “ Twitter Revolution,” 27 the Arab Spring is “ powered by Facebook, ” 28 and Occupy WallStreet is “ driven by iPads and iPhones. ” 29 However, every activist and organizerI interviewed for this book repeated some version of the idea that“ social media should enhance your on-the-ground organizing, not be youronly organizing space. ” 30 Digital media technologies cannot somehow besprinkled on social movements to produce new, improved mobilizations.On this point, Gladwell had it half right. Further complicating the debate,savvy activists, as well as critical scholars such as Siva Vaidhyanathan, alsonote the transition of the net from a relatively autonomous communicationspace to one dominated by the rise of corporate social media platforms,online versions of traditional media firms, and search and advertisingcompanies (Google). 31 The noted Internet skeptic Evgeny Morozov pointsout that movement participants face increased surveillance when they taketheir activities online; he has turned attacking social media boosterism intoa cottage industry by mixing valuable critiques of net-centric thinking withflashy rants against cyberutopian straw men. 32 My belief is that we canavoid both cyberutopianism and don ’ t-tweet-on-me reactions with a quitesimple strategy: learn from social movements about how they use variousICTs to communicate, organize, and mobilize, rather than start by researchingICTs and arguing about whether they are revolutionary. Indeed, carefulsocial movement scholars have done just that, and have begun to developa more nuanced understanding of the relationships between social mediaand social movements. For example, we know from the work of LanceBennett and others that social media are used by protesters to bridgediverse networks during episodes of contentious politics, 33 that coalitionsuse digital media to personalize collective action, and that digital mediaenable less rigid forms of affiliation while maintaining high levels ofengagement, a focused agenda, and high network strength. 34Much in this vein of scholarship resonates with the conclusions I drawhere about the ways that immigrant rights activists use social media. Atthe same time, I believe that an overemphasis on social media, and afailure to engage seriously with movement media across platforms, misses

Introduction 9the forest for the trees. 35 Social movement media practices don ’ t takeplace on digital platforms alone; they are made up of myriad “ smallmedia ” (to use Annabelle Sreberny ’ s term) that circulate online and off. 36Graffiti, flyers, and posters; newspapers and broadsheets; communityscreenings and public projections; pirate radio stations and street theater— these and many other forms of media-making abound withinvibrant social movements. Activists also constantly seek and sometimesgain access to much wider visibility through the mass media. Photographsand quotes in print newspapers, speaking slots on commercial FM radio,interviews on mainstream television news and talk shows — all these makeup part of the broader media ecology. The majority of people still receivemost of their information from the mass media, so social movements stillstruggle to make their voices and ideas heard in mass media outlets. It ismy contention that neither cyberutopians nor technopessimists (if eithertruly exist) have done a very good job of delving deeply into day-to-daymedia practices within social movements. This book attempts to do so,and to demonstrate that the revolution will be tweeted — but tweets alonedo not the revolution make.Si, Se Puede: Organized Immigrant Workers in L.A.It may at first seem strange, when discussing the transnational mobilizationwave that has inspired a new conversation about media and socialmovements, to focus on the immigrant rights movement in Los Angeles.Yet L.A. has long been a key location for new models of social movementorganizing, on the one hand, and the globalization of the media system,on the other. For example, innovative worker organizing models havecontinued to emerge from L.A. even as labor unions across the UnitedStates have steadily lost momentum from the 1950s on. In part, this isbecause Los Angeles is one of the few U.S. cities that still retains a substantialmanufacturing industry. L.A. has also been the site of importantadvances in service-sector organizing. The city is a global hub for immigrationand draws many migrants with strong organizing backgrounds,including political refugees who were organizers or revolutionaries intheir countries of origin. In their new home, migrants from diverse socialmovement traditions meet, and so the city has become a crucible of multiracial,cross-cultural organizing. 37

10 IntroductionThis was not always the case. Historically, organized labor in L.A. atworst attacked, and at best ignored, new immigrant workers. In additionto low-wage service work, L.A. has the largest remaining concentration ofmanufacturing in the country, 38 and labor unions for decades focusedon waging a losing battle to maintain their existing base in the privatemanufacturing sector. After the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) hamstrung the U.S.labor movement, regulated strike actions, banned the general strike, andoutlawed cross-sector solidarity, the old-guard labor unions, especially theAFL-CIO, shifted vast resources away from organizing new workers into alosing strategy of pouring money into Democratic Party electoral campaigns.They hoped to win new federal labor protections, or simply tomaintain existing ones. 39 The largest labor unions continued to follow thisstrategy, even as the Democratic Party moved ever closer to the businessclass and repeatedly sold out the labor movement. Union membershipsteadily declined as free trade became the consensus mantra among bothmajor political parties, and former union jobs in sector after sector wereoutsourced to cheaper production sites overseas. 40Yet starting in the 1990s, L.A. emerged as one of the key centers for thedevelopment of new models of labor organizing. This dynamic operatedin parallel with the rise of new leadership inside the massive service-sectorunions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), theHotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE),and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE).These unions, along with the United Farm Workers, United Food and CommercialWorkers, and the Laborers ’ International Union of North America,began to shift resources toward organizing new workers, including recentimmigrants. 41 In 2005 they launched the Change to Win Federation, anumbrella campaign designed to link service-sector workers across thecountry. As a result of organizing new immigrant workers instead ofattempting to exclude them, these unions saw a rise in new membership,rather than the steady decline suffered by manufacturing sector unions.SEIU, for example, grew from 625,000 members in 1980 to over 2.2 millionin 2013. L.A. ’ s SEIU Local 1877 pioneered a string of internationally visiblecampaigns with low-wage immigrant workers in the lead, such as Justicefor Janitors, Airport Workers United, and Stand for Security. 42 However,none of the major labor unions, including SEIU and UNITE-HERE, havebeen willing to devote significant resources to organizing garment workers

Introduction 11or day laborers in L.A. They have long seen these workers as unorganizable,based on their assumptions about the high proportion of undocumentedworkers in these sectors. 43Despite the assumption that undocumented workers are unorganizablebecause they fear deportation, a number of scholars have demonstratedthat there is no simple relationship between workers ’ immigration statusand their propensity to unionize. 44 Hector Delgado analyzed unionizationcampaigns in the light manufacturing sector in L.A. and found that otherfactors, such as state and federal labor law, organizing strategy, theresources committed to the effort by labor unions, and the resourcesdeployed by the employer to fight unionization, were all far greater determinantsof unionization outcomes than workers ’ immigration status. 45 Infact, in many cases new immigrant workers come from places with muchhigher rates of unionization, more militant unions, and stronger socialmovement cultures than their new home; they may arrive with a moreconcrete class identity than U.S.-born workers, and in some cases maythemselves have been trained as organizers. To take one example, daylaborers in L.A. have historically been largely unorganized, but this situationhas begun to change in recent years. A quarter of day laborers nowparticipate in worker centers, and the number of worker centers isgrowing. Day laborers in L.A. were the first in the country to organizeworker centers, and the model has spread. By 2006 there were sixty-threeday laborer centers in cities across the United States, with an additionalfifteen CBOs working with the day laborer community. 46 CBOs in L.A.,including the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California(IDEPSCA) and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles(CHIRLA), led the creation of the National Day Laborer OrganizingNetwork, which has now grown to include thirty-six member organizationsin cities across the country. 47Los Angeles has also been a site for innovative partnerships between theCatholic Church and labor, as well as for models of organizing that focusnot only on the workplace but also on building community more broadly.Faith-based organizing in L.A. is closely tied to the history of U.S. imperialadventures in Latin America. In the 1980s, many priests and laity whowere active in Central American popular movements against U.S.-backedmilitary dictatorships were forced to flee their countries of origin. Manycame to the United States and ended up in L.A., where they have continued

12 Introductionto organize their communities through the practice of liberation theology.48 Diverse histories have thus shaped the immigrant rights movementin L.A. as it has spread through community centers, worker centers, faithbasedcoalitions, multiethnic organizing alliances, and other innovativeforms of community organizing. During the last two decades, there hasalso been a shift away from “ turf war ” unionism and towards attempts toorganize entire sectors of the workforce at once, through networks ofunions, CBOs, churches, and universities. 49 L.A. ’ s racial, ethnic, and culturaldiversity has also generated innovative organizing forms. Aside fromthe labor movement and the churches, the immigrant rights movementincludes a vast and diverse array of less visible but highly active CBOs,student groups, cultural activists, media- and filmmakers, progressive lawfirms, radical scholars, musicians, punks, and anarchists, hip-hop artists,mural painters and graffiti writers, indigenous rights activists, queer collectives,and many others. The rich history of intersecting social movementsin L.A. — described by Laura Pulido as “ Black, Brown, Yellow, andLeft ”— has been extensively documented by many scholars and activists,and I encourage interested readers to explore that literature further ontheir own. 50At the same time, L.A. has long been a key site for the development andgrowth of the globalized cultural industries. Hollywood remains both thesymbolic and material center of global film production, despite trendstoward transnational coproduction networks, recentralization in cheapersites of production, and the rise of studios in New York, Toronto, and NewZealand, not to mention the steady growth of competitive regional filmexport industries in India (Bollywood), Nigeria (Nollywood), South Korea,and China. 51 Besides film, native media industries in L.A. include television,music, games, and, most recently, transmedia production companies.The city looms large in wave after wave of transformation in the broadermedia ecology. L.A. occupies a unique location in the global imagination:it is a city of dreams, image making, and myths. It symbolizes both thepromise and the deception of the American project, and it remains animportant site of popular resistance, radical imagination, and concretemovement-building work.The immigrant rights movement in L.A. is thus a rich, complex, multilayeredworld. It lies at the fertile confluence of the cross-platform powerof the globalized cultural industries and the innovative, intersectional

14 IntroductionChapter 2, “ Walkout Warriors: Transmedia Organizing, ” is an in-depthstudy of the media practices of the college, high school, and middle schoolstudents who organized the largest wave of student walkouts since theChican@ Blowouts in the 1970s. They did this through a combination offace-to-face organizing, especially by way of long-established studentgroups, and the abundant use of new media tools and platforms, in particulartext messaging and MySpace. They also leveraged culturally relevantprotest tactics. School walkouts, already part of what social movementscholars call the “ repertoire of contention ” 52 of Chican@ student activism,were made especially salient by the production process of the HBO filmWalkout, released in 2006 . Produced by Edward James Olmos and MoctezumaEsparza (one of the organizers of the dramatized events), the filmused East L.A. high schools as sets and hundreds of students as extras. LikeSpanish-language broadcasters and social network sites, as discussed in thefirst chapter, the film mediated and promoted specific movement tactics.At the same time, walkout participants produced and circulated their ownmedia across multiple platforms, linked media directly to action, and didso in ways accountable to the social base of their movement. In otherwords, they took part in what I have termed transmedia organizing. Theterm builds on media scholar Henry Jenkins ’ s concept of transmedia storytelling,53 as well as on transmedia producer Lina Srivastava ’ s transmediaactivism framework, 54 while shifting the emphasis from professional mediaproducers to grassroots, everyday social movement media practices. I arguethat transmedia organizing is the key emergent social movement mediapractice in a converged media ecology shaped by the broader politicaleconomy of communication. 55Chapter 3, “‘ MacArthur Park Melee ’: From Spokespeople to Amplifiers, ”explores the transition of allied media-makers from spokespeople for socialmovements to aggregators and amplifiers of diverse voices from the movementbase. On May Day of 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department(LAPD) brutally attacked a peaceful crowd of thousands of immigrantrights marchers in L.A. ’ s MacArthur Park. Using batons, rubber bullets, andmotorcycles, nearly 450 officers in full riot gear injured dozens of peopleand sent several to the hospital, including reporters from Fox News, Telemundo,KPCC, KPFK, and L.A. Indymedia. The police were later found bythe courts to be at fault for unnecessary violence against the protesters.LAPD Chief Bratton apologized, the commanding officer was demoted,

16 Introductionmedia literacy, tools, and skills than any other group in the United States.What is the immigrant rights movement doing to ensure that its socialbase gains access to digital media tools and skills? Many activists, organizers,and educators wrestle with this question. In chapter 5, “ Worker Centers,Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy, ” I describe howCBOs at the epicenter of the immigrant rights movement struggle tosupport their communities by setting up computer labs and organizingcourses in computing skills. Some go further and use popular educationmethods to link digital media literacy directly to movement building. Idiscuss the mobile media project VozMob and the community radio workshopRadio Tijera to illustrate the ways that immigrant rights organizersare creating popular education workshops that combine critical mediaanalysis, media-making, participatory design, cross-platform production,leadership development, and more. I argue that these organizers are developinga praxis of critical digital media literacy within the immigrant rightsmovement. They have a great deal to teach organizers in other social movements.Educators who are concerned about digital media and learningwould do well to learn from their example.Chapter 6, “ Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets:Pathways to Participation in DREAM Activist Networks, ” follows the diversepaths people take as they become politicized, connect to others, and maketheir way into social movement worlds. In this chapter I focus on DREAMers:undocumented youth who were brought to the country as youngchildren and who are increasingly stepping to the forefront of the immigrantrights movement. The term comes from the proposed Development,Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which offers a streamlined pathto citizenship for youth brought to the United States by their parents.Among other pathways to participation, I find that making media oftenbuilds social movement identity; in many cases, media-making projectshave a long-term impact on activist ’ s lives. DREAM activists, often youngqueer people of color, have developed innovative transmedia tactics as theybattle anti-immigrant forces, the political establishment, and sometimesmainstream immigrant rights nonprofit organizations in their struggle tobe heard, to be taken seriously, and to win concrete policy victories at boththe state and federal levels.Chapter 7, “ Define American, the Dream is Now, and FWD.us: Professionalizationand Accountability in Transmedia Organizing, ” explores the

18 Introductionimmigrant workers now make up a growing proportion of new unionmembers and organizers, especially in the service-sector unions. They arealso increasingly active in the fight for immigration reform, as well as inother social struggles, and constitute a large and growing political forceboth in L.A. and nationwide.However, even as the Internet steadily gains importance as a communicationplatform, a workplace, a site of play, a location for political debate,a mobilization tool, and indeed as a necessity in all spheres of daily life,low-wage immigrant workers are largely excluded from the digital publicsphere. Many are not online, and less than a third have broadband accessin the home. While most do have access to basic mobile phones or featurephones with cameras, few have smartphones. Yet at the same time, theimmigrant rights movement is one of the most powerful social movementsin the United States today. During the last decade the movement hasrepeatedly produced major episodes of mobilization, blocked key legislativeattacks at both state and federal levels, forced the Republican Party toabandon the Sensenbrenner bill, compelled the Obama administration toimplement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, won stateby-statevictories and fought hard against state-level defeats, and in 2013moved comprehensive immigration reform to the top of the nationalagenda. How? In this book, I explore this question, guided by insightsgained from my own participation as a movement ally, as well as frominterviews, workshops, media archives, and more.I wrote this book in part because I believe there are some big analyticalgaps in how we think about the relationship between social movementsand the media. I don ’ t believe it ’ s productive to try to prove or disprove acausal relationship between technology use and social movement outcomes.Rather than think of technology use as an independent variablethat can predict movement outcomes — a claim that may or may not betrue, and one that I ’ m not making and am not in a position to empiricallytest — I ’ m encouraging social movement and media scholars, as well asmovement participants, to stop treating the media as either primarily anenvironmental element, something external to the movement dynamic,or a dependent variable, something to be “ influenced ” by effective movementactions. Instead, I hope to demonstrate in depth the ways in whichmedia-making is actually part and parcel of movement building. I believethat this has always been true, but that it ’ s more obvious now because we

Introduction 19can see it unfolding online. Social movements have always engaged intransmedia organizing; organizers bring the battle to the arena of ideas byany media necessary.I hope this book can help us move past the current round of debatesabout social movements and social media. It is past time to challengenarrow conceptions of the movement-media relationship. Let ’ s replaceboth paeans to the revolutionary power of the latest digital platform andreductive denunciations of “ clicktivism ” with an appreciation of the richtexture of social movement media practices. Along the way, I hope thatthis book also may provide useful lessons for activists as they attempt tonavigate a rapidly changing media ecology while organizing to transformour world.

Figure 1.1May Day 2006: A Day Without an Immigrant.Source: Photo by Jonathan McIntosh, posted to Wikimedia.org at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:May_Day_Immigration_March_LA03.jpg (licensed CC-BY-2.5).

1 A Day Without an Immigrant: Social Movements andthe Media EcologyThe image in figure 1.1 depicts the streets of downtown Los Angeles onMay 1, 2006. This scene was mirrored in cities across the country as millionsof new immigrants, their families, and their allies joined the largestprotest in U.S. history. 1 They left their homes, schools, and workplaces,gathered for rallies and mass marches, and took part in an economicboycott for immigrant rights. This chapter explores the May Day 2006mobilization, known as A Day Without an Immigrant, through the lens ofthe changing media ecology. 2Our media are in the midst of rapid transformation. On the one hand,mass media companies continue to consolidate, more and more journalistsare losing their jobs to corporate downsizing, and long-form, investigativejournalism is steadily being replaced by less costly recycled press releasesand entertainment news. 3 Public broadcasters remain one of the mosttrusted information sources, but their funding is under attack. As audiencesfragment across an infinite-channel universe, the agenda-setting power ofeven the largest media outlets wanes. On the other hand, regional consolidationhas produced new channels that speak from the former peripheries.For example, Latin American media firms now reach across the UnitedStates, and Spanish-language print and broadcast media draw larger audiencesand wield more influence than ever before. 4 At the same time, widespread(though still unequal) access to personal computers, broadbandInternet, and mobile telephony, as well as the mass adoption of socialmedia, have in some ways democratized the media ecology even as theyincrease our exposure to new forms of state and corporate surveillance.Social movements, which have always struggled to make theirvoices heard across all available platforms, are taking advantage of thesechanges. The immigrant rights movement in the United States faces mostly

22 Chapter 1indifferent, occasionally hostile, English-language mass media. The movementalso enjoys growing support from Spanish-language print newspapersand broadcasters. At the same time, commercial Spanish-language massmedia constrain immigrant rights discourse within the framework of neoliberalcitizenship. Community media outlets that serve new immigrantcommunities, such as local newspapers and radio stations, continue toprovide important platforms for immigrant rights activists. Increasingly,social movement groups also self-document: they engage their base inparticipatory media-making, and they circulate news, information, andculture across many platforms, especially through social media. In thespring of 2006, the immigrant rights movement was able to take advantageof opportunities in the changing media ecology to help challenge anddefeat an anti-immigrant bill in the U.S. Congress.Immigration policy, border militarization, domestic surveillance, raids,detentions, and deportations are all key tools of control over low-wageimmigrant workers in the United States. These tools are not new. Theyhave been developed over the course of more than 130 years, at least sincethe Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major law to restrict immigration.This law, the culmination of decades of organizing by white supremacists,barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States and fromnaturalization. 5 Immigration policy, surveillance, detention, and deportationhave long been used to target “ undesirable ” (especially brown, yellow,black, left, and/or queer) immigrants 6 and thereby to maintain whiteness,heteropatriarchy (the dominance of heterosexual males in society), 7 andcapitalism. 8 The past decade, however, has been particularly dark for manyimmigrant communities. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the consolidationof Immigration and Naturalization Services into the Departmentof Homeland Security was followed by the “ special registration ” program,then by a new wave of detentions, deportations, and “ rendering ” of “ suspectedterrorists ” to Guant á namo and to a network of secret militaryprisons for indefinite incarceration and torture without trial. 9 In 2006,Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased the number ofbeds for detainees to 27,500, opened a new 500-bed detention center forfamilies with children in Williamson County, Texas, and set a new agencyrecord of 187,513 “ alien removals. ” 10 By the spring of that year, it hadbecome politically feasible for the Republican-controlled House of Representativesto pass H.R. 4437, better known as the Sensenbrenner bill.

A Day Without an Immigrant 23Sensenbrenner would have criminalized 11 million unauthorized immigrantsby making lack of documentation a felony rather than a civil infraction.It would also have criminalized the act of providing shelter or aid toan undocumented person, thus making felons of millions of undocumentedfolks, their families and friends, and service workers, includingclergy, social service workers, health care providers, and educators. 11 TheRepublican Party used the bill and the debates it provoked to play on whiteracial fears in an attempt to gain political support from the nativist elementof their base. The Sensenbrenner bill abandoned market logic: a CatoInstitute analysis found that reducing the number of low-wage immigrantworkers by even a third would cost the U.S. economy about $80 billion.By contrast, the same study found that legalizing undocumented workerswould grow the U.S. economy by more than 1 percent of GDP, or $180billion. 12The response to the Sensenbrenner bill was the largest wave of massmobilizations in U.S. history. A rally led by the National Capital ImmigrationCoalition on March 7 brought 30,000 protesters to Washington, D.C.;soon after, on March 10, 100,000 attended a protest in downtown Chicago. 13Yet these events were only the tip of the iceberg. March, April, and May2006 saw mass marches in every U.S. metropolis, as well as in countlesssmaller cities and towns. In the run-up to May Day (May 1), a date stillcelebrated in most of the world as International Workers ’ Day, immigrantrights organizers called for a widespread boycott of shopping and work.The economic boycott, also a de facto general strike, was promoted as “ ADay Without an Immigrant, ” a direct reference to the 2004 film A DayWithout a Mexican . The film (a mockumentary by director Sergio Arau)portrays the fallout when immigrant Latin@s disappear from California enmasse, leaving nonimmigrants to do the difficult agricultural, manufacturing,service-sector, and household work that is largely invisible, but providesthe foundations for the rest of the economy. Participation in the DayWithout an Immigrant mobilizations was immense: half a million peopletook to the streets in Chicago, a million in Los Angeles, and hundreds ofthousands more in New York, Houston, San Diego, Miami, Atlanta, andother cities across the country. In many places, these marches were thelargest on record. 14What produced such a powerful wave of mobilization? The surgingstrength of the immigrant rights movement was built through the hard

24 Chapter 1work of hundreds of organizations, including grassroots groups, nonprofitorganizations, regional and national networks, and policy-focused Beltwaygroups. 15 At the same time, the rapidly changing media ecology providedcrucial opportunities for the movement to grow, attract new participants,reach an unprecedented size, and achieve significant mobilization, cultural,and policy outcomes. 16A Day Without an ImmigrantEnglish-language TV news channels have long played important roles inthe information war that swirls around human migration. However, in thespring of 2006, all major English-language media outlets completely failedto anticipate the strength of the movement and the scale of the mobilizations.By contrast, Spanish-language commercial broadcasters, includingthe nationally syndicated networks Telemundo and Univision, providedconstant coverage of the movement. Spanish-language newspapers, TV,and radio stations not only covered the protests but also played a significantrole in mobilizing people to participate. 17 This was widely reportedon in the English-language press after the fact. 18 Indeed, by most accounts,commercial Spanish-language radio was the key to the massive turnout incity after city. In L.A., Spanish-language radio personalities, or locutores ,momentarily put competition aside in order to present a unified message:they urged the city ’ s Latin@ population to take to the streets against theSensenbrenner bill. Media scholar Carmen Gonzalez describes a historicmeeting and press conference held by the locutores :On March 20th all of the popular Spanish-language radio personalities gathered at theLos Angeles City Hall to demonstrate their support for the rally and committed todoing everything possible to encourage their listeners to attend. Those in attendanceincluded: Eduardo Sotelo “ El Piol í n ” & Marcela Luevanos from KSCA “ La Nueva ”101.9FM; Ricardo Sanchez “ El Mandril ” and Pepe Garza from KBUE “ La Que Buena ”105.5FM; Omar Velasco from KLVE “ K-Love ” 107.5FM; Renan Almendarez Coello “ ElCucuy ” & Mayra Berenice from 97.7 “ La Raza ”; Humberto Luna from “ La Ranchera ”930AM; Colo Barrera and Nestor “ Pato ” Rocha from KSEE “ Super Estrella ” 107.1FM. 19These and other locutores across the country had a combined listener basein the millions. They ran a series of collaborative broadcasts during whichthey joined each other physically in studios and called in to one another ’ sshows. They focused steadily on the dangers of H.R. 4437, the need to taketo the streets, and the demand for just and comprehensive immigration

26 Chapter 1While the mass marches were largely organized through broadcast media,especially Spanish-language talk radio, text messages and social networkingsites (SNS) were the key media platforms for the student walkouts thatswept Los Angeles and some other cities during the same time period. 23 Asthe anti-Sensenbrenner mobilizations provided fuel for the fires of the(mostly Anglo, middle-class) blogosphere, walkout organizers enthusiasticallyturned to MySpace and YouTube to circulate information, report ontheir own actions, and urge others to join the movement. At the same time,text messaging (also called SMS, or short messaging service) was used as atool for real-time tactical communication. Student organizers I interviewedmade it clear that both text messaging and MySpace played important butnot decisive roles in the walkouts. 24 Pre-existing networks of students organizedthe walkouts for weeks beforehand by preparing flyers, meeting withstudent organizations, doing the legwork, and spreading the word. Somesaid that text messages and posts to MySpace served not to “ organize ” thewalkouts but to provide real-time confirmation that actions were reallytaking place. For example, one student activist told me about checking herMySpace page during a break between classes. She said that it was when shesaw a photograph posted to her wall from a walkout at another school thatshe realized her own school ’ s walkout was “ really going to happen. ” 25 Thatgave her the courage to gather a group of students, whom she already knewthrough face-to-face organizing, and convince them that it was time to takeaction. 26 Another high school student activist explained:It was organized, there was flyers, there was also people on the Internet, on chat linesand MySpace, people were sending flyers also. So that ’ s also one of the ways that itwas organized. The thing is that students just wanted their voice to be heard. Sincethey can ’ t vote, they ’ re at least trying to affect the vote of others, by saying theiropinion towards H.R. 4437 affecting their schools and their parents or their family. 27This student activist, like many of those I worked with and interviewed,emphasized the pervasive and cross-platform nature of movementmedia practices during the spring of 2006. Staff at community-basedorganizations repeatedly described radio as the most important mediaplatform for mobilizing the immigrant worker base. By contrast, studentactivists often mentioned SNS (specifically MySpace, the most popularSNS at the time) as a key communication tool during the walkouts.A few also mentioned email (especially mailing lists) and blogs, butmost emphasized that organizing took place through a combination of

A Day Without an Immigrant 27face-to-face communication with friends, family, and organized studentgroups, printed flyers, text messages, and MySpace. I discuss the walkoutsin more detail in chapter 2; for now it is enough to say that media organizingduring the walkouts involved pervasive all-channel messaging, asyoung people urged one another to take action to defeat Sensenbrennerand stand up for their rights.Analyzing A Day Without an Immigrant and the student walkouts side byside, we can see the contours of the overall media ecology for the immigrantrights movement in 2006. Although ignored, if not attacked, by Englishlanguagemass media and bloggers, the movement against the Sensenbrennerbill was able to grow rapidly by leveraging other platforms. CommercialSpanish-language broadcast media reported on the movement in detail, and,in the case of Spanish-language radio hosts, actively participated in mobilizingmillions. At the same time, middle school, high school, and universitystudents combined face-to-face organizing and DIY media-making, andused commercial SNS and mobile phones to circulate real-time informationabout the movement, coordinate actions, and develop new forms of symbolicprotest. As these practices spread rapidly from city to city, the mobilizationscontinued to grow in scope and intensity. The vast scale of the movementwas reflected in the slogan, “ The sleeping giant is now awake! ” The movement’ s power briefly caught the opposition off guard, and the Sensenbrennerbill died, crushed by the gigante (giant) of popular mobilization.Movements and the Media Ecology: Looking across PlatformsWe ’ ve seen, briefly, how the changing media ecology presented opportunitiesfor the immigrant rights movement during the 2006 mass mobilizationwave. Next, we will explore how immigrant rights activists engage acrossall available media platforms, including English-language mass media,Spanish-language mass media, community media (especially radio), andsocial media. The immigrant rights movement can teach us a great dealabout how social movement media strategy today extends across platforms,despite the recent turn in the press, the academy, and activist circlestoward a nearly exclusive emphasis on the latest and greatest social mediaplatforms. At the same time, cross-platform analysis helps us understandwhat is really new in social movement media practices. For example, inthe past, the main mechanism for advancing movement visibility, frames,

28 Chapter 1and ideas was through individual spokespeople who represented themovement in interviews with print or broadcast journalists working forEnglish-language mass media. This mechanism is now undergoing radicaltransformation. For the immigrant rights movement, increasingly powerfulSpanish-language radio and TV networks provide important openings.At the same time, social media have gained ground as a crucial space forthe circulation of movement voices, as the tools and skills of media creationspread more broadly among the population. I begin, however, bylooking at the tense relationship between the movement and what activistscall “ mainstream media. ”English-Language Mass MediaMany immigrant rights organizers express frustration with “ mainstreammedia. ” By mainstream media they usually mean English-language newspapersand TV networks, especially those with national reach. Their feelingsabout unfair coverage are supported by the scholarly literature. Forexample, a recent meta-analysis of peer-reviewed studies of immigrationframing in English-language mass media (by Larsen and colleagues) foundthat when immigrants are covered at all, they are usually talked about interms that portray them as dangerous, threatening, “ out of control, ” or“ contaminated. ” 28 Despite some recent gains, such as the Drop the I-Wordcampaign that, in 2013, convinced both the Associated Press and the LosAngeles Times to stop using the terms “ illegal immigrant ” and “ illegalalien, ” professional journalists generally continue to use dehumanizinglanguage to refer to immigrants who lack proper documentation. 29 Indeed,a 2013 study by the Pew Research Center found that, despite some recentshifts toward the use of “ undocumented immigrant ” and away from“ illegal alien, ” “ illegal immigrant ” remains by far the most common termused in the English-language press. 30Nonetheless, by focusing on lifting up the voices of immigrants and portrayingthem as full human beings, the immigrant rights movement hassometimes been able to shift public discourse. For example, immediatelyafter the 2006 mobilizations, a research group led by Otto Santa Ana at UCLAconducted a critical discourse analysis of mainstream newspaper reportingon immigration policy, immigration, and immigrants. The group gatheredone hundred key newspaper articles from two time periods: first, immediatelyafter the May 2006 mobilizations, and second, in October 2006, after

A Day Without an Immigrant 29public attention had moved on. The authors found and categorized approximatelytwo thousand conceptual metaphors used to refer to immigrantsin English-language newspaper coverage during these time periods. Theydetermined that the discursive core of the immigration debate is about thenature of unauthorized immigrants: on one side, there is a narrative of theimmigrant as a criminal or animal, and on the other there is a narrative ofthe immigrant as a worker or a human being. Through a quantitative analysisof metaphor frequency, they found that, during coverage of the massmobilizations in the spring of 2006, newspapers did shift toward a balancebetween the use of humanizing (43 percent) and dehumanizing (57 percent)metaphors about immigrants. However, by October, after the mobilizationshad faded from public memory, newspapers switched back to employ dehumanizingmetaphors more than twice as frequently as humanizing ones (67percent of the time). 31 The discursive battle in English-language mass mediais thus a long, slow, and painful process for immigrant rights organizers andfor the communities they work with.Many organizers say they occasionally do manage to gain coverage inmainstream media, but only in exceptional circumstances. One, who workswith indigenous migrant communities, put it this way: “ It ’ s rare that weget the attention of the mainstream media unless there ’ s blood or something.Then they ’ ll come to us if it ’ s related to indigenous people. ” 32 Shefeels that she is called on to speak as an expert about indigenous immigrants,but only in order to add color to negative stories about her community.She also mentioned that the difficulty seemed specific to L.A., andto the Los Angeles Times in particular; she feels that local partners of herorganization in some other Californian cities have more luck with mainstreammedia. Many also express frustration that movement victories inparticular are almost never covered. They find it especially galling that themass media flock to cover the activities of tiny anti-immigrant groupswhile ignoring the hard day-to-day work done by thousands of immigrantrights advocates. One said, “ I feel like a lot of the great work that ’ s goingon with organizations, say day laborers won a huge settlement or claim,you ’ re not going to hear about it in the mass media. What we do hearabout immigrant rights is anti-immigrant rights and anti-immigrantsentiment. That ’ s pretty [much] across the board, that ’ s how it ’ s presented.” 33 A few feel that anti-immigrant rights activists get more coveragebecause they are more savvy about pitching their actions to journalists,and that the immigrant rights movement could do a much better job

30 Chapter 1of placing its stories and frames in English-language mass media. 34 Othersfeel that mainstream outlets consistently reject even their best mediastrategies. 35A few activists, mostly those who participate in more radical socialmovement groups, shared an explicit analysis of the mass media as a powerfulenemy. One said, “ We have an understanding that the media is noton our side. The corporate media is not on the side of the people, andthey ’ re actually an extension of the state, of these corporations. ” 36 Thesame activist, however, also talked about how the corporate media canoccasionally be used to the movement ’ s advantage:We know they can reach way more people than we can at this point. Until we takeover their TV stations, we ’ re not going to be able to trust them. But around specificcases of police murder, for example an incident that happened in East L.A. recentlywas Salvador Cepeda, who was an eighteen-year-old, [who was] murdered by thesheriffs in the Lopez Maravilla neighborhood. We put out a press release and theycame out to the vigil that we had. We try to encourage the families to speak out,to get it out there, but we ’ re not going to be dependent on them. 37Whether they believe mass media to be actively antagonistic to theimmigrant rights movement or not, most are frustrated by the way thatthey feel the media either ignore them or twist their words. Both activists ’experiential knowledge and qualitative and quantitative scholarly studiesdemonstrate the systematic difficulties immigrant rights organizers face asthey try to shape public discourse. Yet most continue to engage the massmedia. Only two activists I interviewed, both from a collective called RevolutionaryAutonomous Communities (RAC), said they had moved beyondanger and frustration and decided to stop speaking to “ the corporatemedia: ” “ RAC has the position that as RAC, we ’ re not going to rely on thecorporate media at all. We ’ re not going to speak to them. Anything we do,it ’ s not going to be popularized through the corporate media. Becausethey ’ re going to try to tell our stories their way. ” 38 One of the reasons RACdecided to stop speaking to corporate media was to avoid what theydescribed as the problem of media “ creating movement leaders ” throughselective decisions about whom to interview for the movement ’ s perspective,a dynamic I return to below.Most immigrant rights organizers, however, desire more and better coveragefrom English-language print and broadcast media. To achieve this,they emphasize the importance of personal relationships with reporters.

A Day Without an Immigrant 31Some talked about specific reporters with whom they had developed arapport. For example, one online organizer with a national group describedhow journalists who have a personal connection to immigration, especiallythose who come from immigrant families themselves, are easier to workwith and more likely to report on the movement in a positive light:It ’ s a lot easier to get your message across through someone who has a personalconnection to it. … I have a relationship with a writer from the Associated Press,he ’ s of Mexican descent, he loves us. I pitched him this piece about us going todonate blood as undocumented students, and he wrote an article about it. … It wasreally well written and just put us in a really positive light, there ’ s these studentsgoing out all across the nation, and going to donate blood around Christmas time,and so it was kind of like, is their blood illegal or something? 39Despite occasional examples of excellent coverage in English-languagemass media outlets, often based on the long-term cultivation of connectionswith reporters and sometimes facilitated by the relative ease of contactingjournalists through social media (especially Twitter), immigrantrights activists generally find themselves turning to other outlets that aremore receptive: Spanish-language mass media, community radio, and the“ ethnic press. ”Spanish-Language Mass MediaSpanish-language mass media, especially commercial radio locutores (orannouncers), played a key role in supporting the 2006 mobilizationsagainst the Sensenbrenner bill. This was by no means a new development.Spanish-language media in Los Angeles have historically provided supportfor the immigrant rights movement, as Elena Shore has extensively documented.40 More broadly, Juan Gonzales and Joe Torres have recently writtena detailed popular history of the U.S. media that traces the role of the blackpress, the Spanish-language press, and the Chinese American press in thelong struggle toward racial justice. 41 These accounts provide importantcontext for the experiences of many in today ’ s movement, who intimatelyunderstand the importance of Spanish-language mass media to their organizingefforts. For example, savvy immigrant rights organizers recognizethat Facebook and Twitter are crucial for reaching immigrant youth, butthey also know that to reach the broader Latin@ immigrant community,Univision and Telemundo are the most important channels to target:

32 Chapter 1When talking about immigrant youth, definitely, I would say [email, Facebook, andTwitter are] probably the biggest mediums. But when you ’ re talking about the immigrantcommunity broadly, Univision and Telemundo are huge. They ’ re some ofthe most watched TV channels in this country. 42Immigrant rights organizers across the spectrum share this opinion.Students, labor organizers, indigenous community activists, staff at independentworker centers, and members of radical collectives all agree thatcommercial Spanish-language media frequently provide coverage whereEnglish-language media are nowhere to be found. 43 When they talk aboutthe media used by the communities they organize, some mention not onlythe largest Spanish-language newspapers ( La Opini ó n ) and television channels(Univision, Telemundo) but also outlets focused on migrant workers ’city, state, or community of origin. For example, many Oaxacans follow themajor pan-Latin@ media but also read the Oaxacan newspapers El Oaxaqueñ o or El Impulso de Oaxaca 44 (I return to this dynamic, also known astranslocal media practices , in chapter 4.) These patterns are also generational:younger indigenous people, especially those born in L.A., are more likely to“ go to MySpace, listen to Rage Against the Machine, everything else. ” 45Media use, in particular the adoption of SNS, is also related to how long theperson has been a resident of the United States, although this is changingas SNS use rates increase in the home countries of migrant workers. 46The Spanish-language press is not the only important media ally forimmigrant rights activists in L.A. To some degree, similar dynamics applyacross all immigrant communities. For example, organizers from the KoreatownImmigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA) discussed gaining coverage inKorean-language media outlets during their supermarket workers ’ campaign,which ultimately secured a living-wage agreement in five differentsupermarkets in L.A. ’ s Koreatown. 47 Strategies for gaining newspaper coverage,whether the newspaper is in English, Spanish, Korean, or any otherlanguage, include building relationships with individual reporters, callingin favors from high-status allies, and the use of timely or familiar frames. 48In the case of KIWA ’ s Koreatown supermarket campaign, these strategieswere highly effective in generating attention from Korean-language media,which covered the campaign “ every step of the way. ” 49 KIWA ’ s experienceof positive coverage by Korean-language media thus mirrors many Latin@activists ’ experience with the Spanish-language press. However, there areimportant differences. Spanish-language media in the United States have

A Day Without an Immigrant 33grown into nationwide, and in some cases transnational, networks thatnow reach a massive pan-Latin@ market. 50 The reach and power of Spanishlanguagemass media thus dwarf that of other minority-language outlets.Leveraging this power does not come without complications. Whilecommercial Spanish-language radio stations provide important opportunities,many activists feel that these stations are also sensationalist, materialistic,sexist, racist, and homophobic.Those are very commercial outlets. They ’ re in favor of immigrant rights but in kindof a very general way. And then sometimes they’ll talk about raids and things likethat, which is a big concern in the immigrant community and in the immigrantrights community. But they don ’ t do what I would want them to do, which wouldbe very proactive about warning people, having people call in when they see ICEvans, warning people where they see them, that ’ s what I would really like to see thosemedia outlets do. … They ’ re as bad or worse as the mainstream media in English. 51Many immigrant rights organizers have mixed feelings about the roleof Spanish-language mass media. Their experiential knowledge is againsupported by critical scholarship, such as work by Beth Baker-Cristales,who analyzed the role of Spanish-language mass media in the 2006marches. 52 Baker-Cristales provides rich detail about the key media personalitiesand networks involved in supporting the protests. She argues that,even as they played an important role in mobilizing Spanish-speakingimmigrants to participate, print newspapers, TV, and radio networks alsoshaped the protests in ways that reproduced the dominant post-9/11 ideologyof neoliberal citizenship. In other words, Spanish-language mass mediasuccessfully shaped protesters ’ ideas, language, and protest tactics toconform to the narrative of immigrants as ideal citizens, hard workers, andconsumers who primarily desire cultural and political assimilation intomainstream, ‘ all-American ’ (Anglo, middle-class, heteronormative, U.S.nationalist) values. 53 Protesters were encouraged to portray themselves as“ good immigrants, ” as opposed to the negative (and racially coded) categories“ criminals ” and “ terrorists. ” Additionally, Baker-Cristales shows howthe media chastised those who engaged in nonsanctioned forms of protest,such as the high school (and middle school) walkouts. Spanish-languagebroadcasters also heavily discouraged protesters ’ attempts to assert theirown cultural or national identities alongside their desire for immigrationpolicy reform. Most visibly, this took place through repeated calls forimmigrant rights protesters to abandon flags from their own countries of

34 Chapter 1origin and replace them with U.S. flags. This was meant to demonstrate“ undivided ” loyalty, despite the reality that many migrants do feel connectedboth to their communities of origin and to their new homes, anddo participate meaningfully in binational or translocal citizenship. 54Community RadioWhile Spanish-language commercial radio locutores with daily audiences ofmillions played the most important role in catalyzing the marches of 2006,their support for the immigrant rights movement overall has been sporadic.Community radio stations, on the other hand, reach fewer peopleat any one time but play an ongoing role in covering, supporting, andstrengthening the movement. This should not be surprising. From Bolivianminers ’ radio 55 to the first pirate station in the United States, linked to theblack power movement, 56 from the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.South 57 to the international feminist radio collective FIRE, communityradio has long been a core tool of social movement communication. 58Movement-based radio played a key role in the Algerian national liberationstruggle, 59 the rise of the antiwar counterculture in the United States duringthe Vietnam War, and the Italian labor and social struggles of the 1970s,to name a few examples among many. 60 Today, the number of communityradio stations continues to climb, even as the number of firms that controlhundreds (or thousands) of full-power stations shrinks. Since the reregulationof radio in the United States in 1996, the radio giant Clear Channelhas snapped up more than 1,200 stations. At the same time, however, theWorld Association of Community Radio Broadcasters counts 3,000 memberstations across 106 countries. 61 In the United States, community radioactivists such as Philadelphia ’ s Prometheus Radio Project have struggledfor, and won, expanded access to legal low-power FM licenses. 62 These andother battles have led some to theorize community radio as a social movementin and of itself. 63 Indeed, despite the recent wave of enthusiasm forsocial media as the key strategic tool for social movements, there is littledoubt that community radio continues to play a critical role. In general,radio remains the primary news source for many of the world ’ s poorestpeople. This is true everywhere, but it is most marked in parts of LatinAmerica, Africa, and Asia, particularly where illiteracy rates are high andwhere there are communities of indigenous language speakers who are

A Day Without an Immigrant 35marginalized from national-language media. 64 These conditions describelow-wage immigrant workers on the margins of global cities everywhere,including Los Angeles.In L.A., a number of community radio stations support social movementson a daily basis. These stations include the Pacifica affiliate KPFK,which carries Spanish-language movement programming such as MujeresInsurgentes (Insurgent Women), Voces de Libertad (Voices of Freedom), andothers; the streaming Internet station Killradio.org, originally a project ofL.A. Indymedia; an unlicensed station run by Proyecto Jard í n (GardenProject), an unlicensed station run by La Otra Campa ñ a del Otro Lado (theZapatista-affiliated Other Campaign from the Other Side); and Radio Sombra(Radio Shadow) in East L.A. Other radio stations linked to the immigrantrights movement include Radio Campesina, the network of local stationsrun by the United Farm Workers, which started in 1983 with KUFW inVisalia and now includes stations in Bakersfield, Fresno, Lake Havasu(Arizona), Phoenix, Salinas, Tri-Cities (Washington), and Yuma (Arizona).Many, if not all, of these radio stations and networks participated extensivelyin immigrant rights organizing in 2006. A study by Graciela Orozcofor the Social Science Research Council analyzed coverage of the 2006mobilization wave by Radio Bilingue (Bilingual Radio), a more than twodecades-oldnonprofit network of Latin@ community radio stations withsix affiliates in California and satellite distribution to over one hundredcommunities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. She found thatthe nonprofit network played an important role in circulating informationand encouraging people to join the mobilizations. 65Some immigrant rights organizations have developed relationships withspecific community radio outlets over time. For example, the Frente Ind í-gena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations,FIOB) has a long-standing relationship with Radio Bilingue. Thenetwork will often air audio content, interviews, and public serviceannouncements (PSAs) provided by FIOB. For a time, FIOB ran a regularpublic affairs show called Nuestro Foro (Our Forum). 66 In similar fashion,KIWA was able to secure a monthly hourlong radio show called Home SweetHome on Radio Seoul, a Korean-language radio station that broadcasts inKoreatown. 67 Similar dynamics play out in many locales; for example, oneimmigrant rights organizer in Boston described community radio as animportant outreach avenue: “ Radio ’ s huge for a lot of different types of

36 Chapter 1immigrant communities. I ’ m working not only with the Spanish-speakingimmigrant community, but there ’ s Haitian radio, there ’ s Brazilian radio,that ’ s the way people get a lot of their news. ” 68 Community-based, minority-languageradio thus remains a key part of the media ecology for manyin the immigrant rights movement.Streaming Radio and Internet-Enabled DistributionAs I note throughout this book, the most dynamic social movement mediapractices often take place across platforms. By 2006, at the time of the massmobilizations against the Sensenbrenner bill, many movement-based radiostations were operating live streams over the Internet. Activists use streamingradio to transmit audio to remote listeners, who may listen via a computerlinked to speakers, a mobile phone with a data connection, a stereoin the home, or a portable music player. Movement radio producersthroughout the world also use the net to share and distribute both audiofiles and streams, which are picked up by community radio stations forlocal transmission on AM or FM bands. Examples in Los Angeles includeKill Radio, Radio Sombra, and Radio Insurgente, the EZLN station inChiapas that is rebroadcast locally by pirate radios throughout the Americas( http://radioinsurgente.org ). Several activists I worked with and interviewedwere involved in movement radio projects, and all were quitefamiliar with live streaming radio over the net.We have a show on killradio.org. … We ’ re able to do our own reporting, interviewswith people that are in different cities, organizing around ICE raids, immigration,indigenous rights, police brutality, other things that are happening, which is a goodthing. Eventually I think we want to maybe even do it where — I know one of ourmembers from Copwatch, he has raisethfist.org, where he has an Internet newsshow and then it ’ s through FM dial. He ’ s going to rebroadcast some of our shows,too. It ’ s heard throughout Compton, Long Beach, Southeast L.A. 69As this activist describes, pirate radio stations now operate their studiosin one location, then stream live over the Internet to a radio transmitter(or to multiple transmitters) for FM broadcast. This is known as a streamingstudio-to-transmitter link (STL). The increasingly common use of thisapproach in the United States is confirmed by FCC reports, which indicatethat in the majority of FCC raids on pirate broadcasters, the seized transmittersare remotely controlled. 70

A Day Without an Immigrant 37Movement-based audio production and distribution networks includethe Latin American Association of Radiophonic Education ( http://aler.org ),which distributes programming across the hemisphere via satellite andInternet, with eight uplinks, 187 satellite receivers, and 117 affiliates. FreeSpeech Radio News (FSRN, http://fsrn.org ) counts over two hundred journalistsfrom fifty-seven countries around the world and is broadcast on thefive Pacifica Network stations and more than fifty community stations inthe United States, as well as in 120 countries via the Internet, shortwave,and community radio stations. 71 Workers ’ Independent News Service(WINS, http://laborradio.org ) produces syndicated daily headline news segments,in-depth features and stories, economic reports, and raw audioarchives that are used by radio stations and print publications. The contentis created by local unions and allied activists, gathered together, edited,and repackaged, then distributed by audio streaming and podcast. TheInternet has thus facilitated the growth of distribution networks thatgather audio material from movement-based radio producers, package it,and amplify its impact through online streaming and delivery to networkaffiliates for AM or FM broadcast.Community MediaCommercial Spanish-language media, including large-circulation newspapersand major TV networks, are key allies of the immigrant rights movement.They regularly report on immigration as an issue, follow immigrationpolicy debates, and send reporters to cover immigrant rights activism.Sometimes, as in the spring of 2006, they also participate in efforts tomobilize the Latin@ community to take political action. At the same time,Spanish-language commercial media shape and constrain the language,strategy, and tactics of the immigrant rights movement. In addition, notevery immigrant community is Spanish-speaking, and so not every immigrantcommunity can count on access to the same kind of amplification.However, to some degree, every immigrant community does have accessto community media, sometimes in its mother tongue, sometimes inEnglish, and often bi- or multilingual. Indeed, the history of the U.S. mediasystem is largely a history of newspapers and radio stations founded toserve the needs of new immigrant communities. This field is sometimesreferred to as the ethnic press. Although the term is used by many

38 Chapter 1immigrant rights activists, I avoid it, since it tends to mask the ethnicityof the Anglo (white) press. 72 In any case, ethnic/community media outletssuch as newspapers, radio stations, and, increasingly, websites continue toplay a crucial role in the immigrant rights movement. Many immigrantrights organizers see a presence in these media as essential:Ethnic media has been one of our biggest resources. El Mundo, El Planeta, the BrazilianTimes , and all the Brazilian media outlets, because they get the narrative outthere. And they usually use the narrative that we want them to use, which is differentfrom the American media. 73Print newspapers especially still provide legitimacy for activists. Forexample, student organizers in Boston mentioned that newspaper coverageproduces credibility in working-class immigrant communities:It makes people trust us. When they see us in El Planeta, they ’ re like, “ Oh, I sawyou in El Planeta, so that ’ s why I want to be involved, ” or “ I saw you in the BrazilianTimes and I heard so much about you guys, here ’ s a hundred dollars, I want todonate to the campaign. ” So in terms of getting more support from your own community,it ’ s a good resource, ’ cause it almost makes you more legit, you know. Eventhough it ’ s your community, when they see you in the paper they ’ re like, “ Oh, thesekids are real. ” 74Community media thus act as legitimators of immigrant rights activists,and cover them far more frequently than mainstream English-languagepapers. Although community media have far less reach than either EnglishorSpanish-language mass media, the content they publish circulates acrossoutlets through both formal and informal distribution networks. In particular,some activists cited the community media content network NewAmerican Media as a key media ally. 75The strength of local community media outlets has direct impacts onthe strength of local organizing efforts. One activist who works as an onlineorganizer for a national immigrant rights organization noted that themovement in Wisconsin has been consistently able to turn out largenumbers of people for marches and mass mobilizations. He attributed thehigh turnout to the presence of a number of community media outlets,including newspapers and radio shows, produced by the immigrant community.76 In the Boston area, the same organizer mentioned an AM radiostation that sells hourly time slots. Organizations such as Centro Presenteand Better Youth Boston take advantage of this and help members producetheir own radio programs.

A Day Without an Immigrant 39There is a long history in the United States of new immigrants creatingmedia for their community of national origin, published in their mothertongue. However, many immigrant rights activists point to a shift in thepast decade toward increased access to these outlets. For example, onedescribed how what she termed “ ethnic media ” have emerged over thepast decade as a key space for community-based organizations to gaincoverage, where previously English-language print journalists and broadcastersignored them:For us, we always have to stop and think, “ What ’ s the best way? ”… And even tillnow, we still hit that mainstream newspaper, and then we realize other things thatwork because the mainstream doesn ’ t show up, but the ethnic does. So for us ethnicmedia was this huge opening. … We eventually learned how to navigate ethnicpress — really, pretty soon the mainstream were going to the ethnic press to get theinformation. 77The ethnic press is thus important not only because it covers storiesthat mainstream media ignore but also because it has become a source ofstories for the mainstream press. This closely mirrors the more widelyheard argument that the mass media now regularly draw stories from blogsand social media. The same organizer described the press strategy arounda campaign to gain increased fares for taxi workers in New York:So I worked on a project in New York, with Taxi Workers, and pitched it to the NewYork Times .… The reporter bought it, and he was totally down with it, had the coverof the local news, you know, “ Taxi drivers can ’ t support their families. ” And we ’ relike, “ Could it have been more perfect? ” That morning that it came out is when wesent out the press release for the wider “ report comes out today. ” We got thirty media,local radio, TV, newspaper, tons of ethnic press, and that led to both New York DailyNews and the New Yorker , the two smaller, the weeklies, to actually write editorialsthat support[ed] taxi workers in getting a fare increase. They never, ever, ever, eversay anything nice about the drivers. Which led to the fare increase victory. 78This story reveals the continued importance of the mainstream printmedia (the New York Times ). At the same time, it illustrates how coverageby a major media outlet is situated within a changed media ecology thatsavvy organizers have learned to exploit. The initial story in the Timesprovided important momentum and credibility to the campaign, whichorganizers then leveraged to increase visibility for a report release aboutconditions in the industry, thereby generating a flurry of coverage acrosslocal and community media and ultimately securing a fare increase forimmigrant taxi drivers.

40 Chapter 1Social MediaIn the current media ecology, the immigrant rights movement is generallydenied access to the English-language mass media, but is able to find openingsin Spanish-language commercial media, as well as in communitymedia outlets. In addition, despite deeply unequal levels of digital mediaaccess, 79 many grassroots media activists, immigrant rights organizers, andmovement participants do use the Internet extensively to promote, document,and frame their activities. By 2006, the time of the Sensenbrennermobilizations, social movements everywhere, including the immigrantrights movement, had widely adopted SNS. The first SNS to gain significantvisibility was Friendster, soon followed by MySpace, then Facebook andTwitter (as well as a host of other, nationally specific SNS, such as Orkutin Brazil, Cyworld in Korea, and Sina Weibo in China). Social movementshave used each of these SNS to advance their goals. For example, MySpacewas originally marketed as a site for independent musicians to promotetheir music and connect with fans, but it soon became the most popularSNS for young people in the United States. 80 By 2006, a wide spectrum ofactivist networks and social movement groups, including anarchists, environmentalists,and feminists, all had MySpace profiles. 81 Activists use SNSas tools to announce meetings, actions, and events, distribute movementmedia, and reach out to Internet-savvy demographics. 82 Some SNS focusexplicitly on facilitating face-to-face meetings based on shared interests.For example, in 2004, Howard Dean ’ s campaign recognized that MeetUpcould help the candidate ’ s base self-organize during Dean ’ s bid for theDemocratic Party presidential nomination. 83 The use of MeetUp emergedfirst from the base of Dean supporters and was then encouraged and fosteredby campaign leadership. 84 This case, and the social media – savvystrategy of the Obama campaign in 2008 and again in 2012, illustrate howparticipatory media practices have been used to revitalize vertical politicalorganizational forms. Movement appropriation of SNS takes place evenwhile these sites are also spaces where users replicate gender, class, andrace divisions — for example, see danah boyd on how Indian Orkut usersreplicated the caste system, and on teens ’ class- and race-based discourseabout MySpace versus Facebook. 85Movements extensively use the Internet and mobile phones as tacticalmobilization tools. For example, we have seen how students in the L.A.Unified School District used MySpace and SMS to help coordinate walkouts

A Day Without an Immigrant 41that saw 15,000 to 40,000 students take the streets during the week followingthe March 25, 2006, marches. 86 I return to the walkouts in chapter 2.Almost all the immigrant rights activists I worked with and interviewedsaid that social media are important organizing tools that can be used toconnect with and inspire new activists, even as they repeatedly emphasizedthat the core work of movement building takes place through face-to-faceconnection. Movements are about relationships, and in-person communicationis essential. 87 At the same time, many organizers also note that socialmedia can be used to develop or extend relationships not only with thenetworks of other activists but also with reporters. Personal relationshipswith reporters, in turn, are essential to garner positive coverage in printand broadcast media. For example, several DREAM activists talked aboutdeveloping Twitter relationships with reporters. They found that Twitterproduces higher response rates and faster response times from reportersthan traditional press releases: “ I could send a Twitter message to a reporterand that reporter will respond ten times faster than if I send a press release.And it ’ s ten times less work. ” 88Mobile phones are also key. Many organizers who talk about Facebook,Twitter, and email lists as important tools for connecting with immigrantyouth emphasize that mobile phones are a crucial platform in new immigrantcommunities: 89Folks that grew up in this country mostly, they use a lot of the newer tools, likeFacebook and Twitter, and e-mail lists is a way a lot of people communicate. But Iwork in a community [which] broadly uses cell phones a lot more. So for instanceI just sent out this tweet to ask people to sign a mobile petition to stop deportation,and I actually tried to get them to send me their emails, to get them to formallysign the petition. Also, I ’ ll hopefully follow up with them through email so I canexplain the case more broadly; it ’ s a little bit hard to do it with 140 characters. Alot of people signed, or wanted to sign, the petition and not as many sent the email.I mean, it shows that more people use mobile phones than emails, … so that ’ s whereI think the future is for our community. 90Widespread access to mobile phones has also produced an important shiftover the last few years, from the use of the web to document past actions andmobilizations to real-time social media practices. As one interviewee stated,I think right now we ’ re at this point where suddenly we ’ re kind of moving into this… different area of real-time web. … I mean I ’ m finding with video, for example,how feasible it is to make a video and put it up the day that it happens. … In thepast, I think in 2006, we wouldn ’ t really have thought like that. 91

42 Chapter 1He said that a few years earlier, activists would have mostly relied on commercialTV stations to provide video coverage of an action or mobilization,then recorded the TV broadcast and perhaps used it later to point to evidenceof successful organizing. Today, by contrast, social movements are increasinglyable to provide real-time or near real-time coverage of their ownactions. It is not uncommon, for example, for movement media-makers todocument a day ’ s action, then post the video to the web within a few hours.Increasingly, movement media-makers also broadcast their own actions viacommercial live-streaming sites. For example, DREAM activists used UStreamto provide real-time feeds from sit-ins at Department of Homeland Security(DHS) offices, congressional offices, and Obama campaign headquarters in2012. Most famously, media activists with Occupy Wall Street used UStream,Livestream, and other services to broadcast everything from General Assembliesto the violent displacement of protest camps by riot police. 92Some immigrant rights activists feel that the assumption that socialmedia makes organizing easier is not necessarily true. For example, oneonline organizer who works for a national media-savvy organizationdescribed both positive and negative aspects of what he calls “ new media ”in the context of community organizing. On the “ good side, ” he felt thatsocial media allow rapid list building and getting in touch with manypeople quickly, and he offered the example of Occupy Wall Street. He alsopointed to the ability to “ control and tell your own story, which is extremelypowerful. The power of narrative, public narrative is amazing. … It ’ s hugeto be able to say now, they don ’ t have to tell our story, we ’ re going to tellour own story. ” 93 On the other hand, he described social media as havingthree main drawbacks. First, it produces a mode of activism that he calls“ reactionary as opposed to intentional ”; in other words, activists end upresponding to online debates about various events rather than “ sittingdown and figuring out what you ’ re going for. ” Second, it blurs the boundariesof public and private, which he sees as potentially harmful. Organizerswho default to public by posting everything on social media end up makingmistakes and “ putting out all these fires that you don ’ t necessarily want tobe putting out. ” Third, he is concerned about social media ’ s ability toproduce the illusion of making a difference. His example of this dynamic:“ Someone puts out a Facebook status update ‘ Call your senator, ’ and thenyou click ‘ Like, ’ and you ’ re like ‘ Ah, I just did something good today. ’ If youclick ‘ Like ’ and you didn ’ t call a senator, you just did absolutely nothing. ” 94

A Day Without an Immigrant 43Immigrant rights activists also see great potential for the amplificationof their voices in digital space but are frustrated by the current lack ofrealization of that possibility. For example, many feel that progressiveEnglish-language bloggers don ’ t spend a lot of time engaging immigrationissues. 95 They see this as a crucial problem, especially since right-wing andanti-immigrant frames and language are widespread across the blogosphere.One interviewee noted that phrases like “ What part of illegal don ’ tyou understand? ” often dominate the comment sections of articles, blogposts, and other online spaces. 96 At the same time, he noted that the relativelysmall but highly motivated group of older white racists who systematicallypost negative comments are more familiar with “ older technologylike forums, but they ’ re not good at using some of the newer tools thatwe have. ” 97 Some online platforms are thus seen (if only temporarily) asfriendlier to immigrant rights advocates than others.Activists also note that social media can be used to reinforce powerinequality. For example, one online organizer observed that although revolutionaryuses of social media have been widely covered and discussed inthe wake of the so-called Arab Spring, social media are primarily used byelites. Those who have greater access to digital media tools and skills tendto be those who have class or educational privilege. He gave an examplefrom Guatemala, where an elite lawyer recorded a YouTube video criticalof the left-leaning president just before committing suicide. The video wascirculated widely via SNS and then amplified by right-leaning news websites,in a context in which only the wealthy have broadband Internetaccess. Elites used the video as a rallying tool against the democraticallyelected president, almost to the point of constitutional crisis. 98 Ultimately,none of my interviewees argued that social media or the Internet per sehave a transformational impact on organizing or social movements.Instead, they see them as tools that can be applied to organizing but arecurrently underutilized by their communities.The Power of Fox News: “ We Know the Law ’ s Racist But We StillSupport It Anyway ”Changes in the media ecology provide important new opportunities forthe immigrant rights movement. However, these changes should not beoverestimated. Even as the movement gains visibility, as activists develop

44 Chapter 1new relationships with journalists, and as movement participants increasinglyself-document their struggles, the media system remains dominatedoverall by language, frames, and metaphors that systematically dehumanizeimmigrants. 99 Many activists also emphasize that they still face dauntingopposition in the form of powerful right-wing broadcast media. Evenas the immigrant rights movement wins certain kinds of victories, bothsymbolic and political, it can be very difficult to withstand concertedattacks from the anti-immigrant media machine:When we get the full force of the media outlets, we generally get our asses kicked.I think a good example of that is [Arizona State Bill] SB-1070. We came out verystrong, framing that through our story of racial profiling and oppression. … The bestimage I had was the image of the Phoenix Suns wearing the “ Los Suns ” jersey, ’ causethey were saying “ solidarity with the Latino community. ” But you know, after FoxNews and all these folks started going after us, the polling changed on it. It was theworst polling ever, ’ cause they were like, “ We know the law ’ s racist but we stillsupport it anyway. ” 100In the fight against Arizona ’ s SB 1070 (key components of which have nowbeen struck down as unconstitutional), even support from a major sportsteam was not enough to counter the force of a sustained attack fromFox News and right-wing talk radio. The changed media ecology, while itprovides many important opportunities, is still often hostile terrain for theimmigrant rights movement.The Immigrant Rights Movement and the Media Ecology: ConclusionsIn the spring of 2006, the immigrant rights movement burst out of theshadows and into the streets. The Sensenbrenner bill was crushed by a massiveprotest wave, the largest in U.S. history. Organizers were successful in partbecause they leveraged new opportunities in a changing media ecology.The dominant component of the media ecology, English-language massmedia, remains challenging terrain for the immigrant rights movement.When activists do receive coverage in English-language print and broadcastmedia, they are often framed in ways that do not help them achievetheir goals. Occasionally, however, the English-language press does tellimmigration stories in ways that humanize immigrants. Organizers feelthat cultivating relationships with individual sympathetic reporters is keyto increasing the frequency of favorable frames. They also note that thiscan sometimes be more easily achieved with reporters who have a personalconnection to immigration.

A Day Without an Immigrant 45In general, the movement enjoys better access to commercial Spanishlanguageradio and television, even as these outlets grow in reach andpolitical power. Yet commercial Spanish-language media constrain theimmigrant rights movement within “ safe, ” and often deeply problematic,assimilationist narratives of neoliberal citizenship: “ good ” versus “ bad ”protesters and “ hard workers ” versus “ criminals ” and “ terrorists. ” Over thepast few years, organizers have become more savvy about how to generatecoverage in community media (the ethnic press), and how to further pushsuch coverage until it bubbles up to wider circulation via the mainstreammedia. Community media also provide access to more recent immigrants,and help legitimize immigrant rights activists within their own communities.As we shall discuss in chapter 4, translocal media practices also facilitatemovement building, as migrants increasingly access and sometimescreate content for media outlets in their hometowns, cities, or communitiesof origin.At the same time, the explosion of access to social media helps organizersmore directly involve movement participants, allies, and supporters inthe production and circulation of their own rich media texts. The rise ofSpanish-language commercial media and the spread of social media bothprovide important openings for the insertion of movement narratives intopublic consciousness. In addition, English-language mass media outletssometimes pick up and amplify stories that begin in social media, communitymedia, or Spanish-language mass media. More recently, movementparticipants have begun to produce real-time or near real-time selfdocumentationof their struggles. Yet even as social media have steadilygrown in importance, according to organizers, nothing displaces the powerof face-to-face communication.Overall, the media ecology is evolving: where once there were only afew pathways to public visibility, there are now more, and more flexible,routes. However, activists can effectively leverage this flexibility only ifthey recognize the opportunities available in the new media ecology ratherthan remain focused solely on gaining access to English-language printand broadcast media. The next chapter describes how the immigrant rightsmovement uses what I call transmedia organizing strategies to becomevisible across platforms, to open up the movement narrative to participatorymedia-making, to link attention to action, and to do all this in waysthat remain accountable to the movement ’ s social base.

Figure 2.1Walkout Warriors sticker, April 2006.Source: Unknown photographer, image widely circulated as a wall post on MySpace.

2 Walkout Warriors: Transmedia OrganizingIn the previous chapter, we explored the transformation of the mediaecology and the implications for the immigrant rights movement. Despitecontinued lack of access to English-language mass media, the growing powerof the Spanish-language press, together with the rise of social and mobilemedia, provides a clear opening for organizers. In this chapter I develop theconcept of transmedia organizing . I use this term to talk about how savvycommunity organizers engage their movement ’ s social base in participatorymedia-making practices. Organizers can push participatory media intowider circulation across platforms, creating public narratives that reach andinvolve diverse audiences. When people are invited to contribute to abroader narrative, it strengthens their identification with the movement,and over the long run increases the likelihood of successful outcomes. Yetmany organizations continue to find transmedia organizing risky. In part,this is because it requires opening up to diverse voices rather than relyingprimarily on experienced movement leaders to frame the narrative by speakingto broadcast reporters during press conferences. Those who embrace thedecentralization of the movement ’ s story can reap great rewards, while thosewho attempt to maintain top-down control risk losing credibility.Transmedia Organizing: A Working DefinitionThe term “ transmedia organizing ” is a mash-up of the concept of transmediastorytelling, as elaborated by media studies scholars, and ideas fromsocial movement studies. In the early 1990s the scholar Marsha Kinderdeveloped the idea of transmedia intertextuality to refer to the flow ofbranded and gendered commodities across television, films, and toys.Kinder was interested in stories and brands that unfolded across platforms,

48 Chapter 2and took care to analyze them in the context of broader systemic transformationof the media industries. She focused especially on the deregulationof children ’ s television during the Reagan years. Throughout the 1970s,Action for Children ’ s Television, a grassroots nonprofit organization with20,000 members, organized for higher-quality children ’ s TV and againstadvertising within children ’ s programming, with some success. 1 However,by the early 1980s both the Federal Communications Commission and theNational Association of Broadcasters were pushing aggressively to abandonlimits on advertising to children and product-based programming. It wasduring this shift that Kinder conducted a series of media ethnographieswith children. She was interested in better understanding young people ’ srelationships to franchises such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whichchildren experienced across platforms as a comic magazine, an animatedTV series, a line of toys, a videogame, and so on. She found that crossplatformstories and branded commodities not only increased both toyand ad sales but also produced highly gendered consumer subjectivity inchildren. 2 In 2003, Henry Jenkins reworked the concept for an era of horizontallyintegrated transnational media conglomerates, and defined transmediastorytelling as follows:Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction getdispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creatinga unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each mediummakes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. 3He went on to articulate the key points of transmedia storytelling inthe context of a converged media system. Chief among them are the following:transmedia storytelling is the ideal form for media conglomeratesto circulate their franchises across platforms; transmedia storytellinginvolves “ world building ” rather than closed plots and individual characters;it involves multiple entry points for varied audience segments; itrequires co-creation and collaboration by different divisions of a company;it provides roles for readers to take on in their daily lives; it is open toparticipation by fans; and it is “ the ideal aesthetic form for an era of collectiveintelligence. ” 4In the decade since Jenkins ’ s 2003 explanation of these key elements, themedia industries have increasingly adopted transmedia storytelling as a corestrategy. The term transmedia is now regularly used to describe the work ofprofessional producers who create cross-platform stories with participatorymedia components. 5 Individuals, consultancies, and firms, initially small

Walkout Warriors 49boutique shops but increasingly also units within larger media companies,have positioned themselves as transmedia producers. In 2010 the ProducersGuild of America announced the inclusion of “ transmedia producer ” in theGuild ’ s Producers Code of Credits for the first time. 6 More recently, institutionssuch as the Sundance Institute and the Tribeca Film Festival havebegun to recognize, fund, curate, and promote transmedia projects. 7In 2009 the media strategist Lina Srivastava proposed that activists andmedia artists might apply the ideas of transmedia storytelling to socialchange, through what she termed transmedia activism: “ There is a real anddistinct opportunity for activists to influence action and raise cause awarenessby distributing content through a multiplatform approach, particularlyin which people participate in media creation. ” 8 Several firms nowexplicitly describe themselves as working on transmedia activism. In 2008the Mexican film star Gael Garcia Bern á l and the director Marc Silver (withSrivastava as a strategy consultant) launched the transmedia activism productioncompany Resist Network. 9 New examples of transmedia storytellingfor social change emerge on a regular basis. 10 Many of these projects arehonest attempts to translate the lessons of transmedia storytelling fromentertainment and advertising into strategies that could be used for activismand advocacy. Others seem more ambiguous, as transmedia producerswho primarily work with corporate clients identify opportunities to wincontracts with social issue filmmakers, nonprofit organizations, and NGOs.In any case, by 2013 there were several high-profile, professionally producedtransmedia campaigns focused specifically on immigrant rights. JoseAntonio Vargas ’ s project Define American, Laurene Powell Jobs – backed(and Davis Guggenheim – produced) film The Dream is Now , and the SiliconValley campaign FWD.us (spearheaded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg)are probably the three best known, and I return to them in chapter 7.I am excited by the growing interest in transmedia storytelling for socialchange among media professionals. However, in this book the term transmediaorganizing does not center on the emerging professionalization of transmediastrategy, whether for entertainment, advertising, or activism. Insteadof carefully managed media initiatives, I primarily emphasize organic, bottom-upprocesses. More broadly, I suggest that social movements havealways engaged in transmedia organizing, and the process has become morevisible as key aspects of movement media-making come online. This is notto suggest that nothing new is taking place. However, I believe that therecent emphasis on technological transformation is misplaced, to the degree

50 Chapter 2that it blinds us to a comprehensive analysis of social movement mediapractices. In addition, while movements do already engage in transmediaorganizing, they can be more effective if they are intentional about thisapproach. To that end, I suggest the following definition:Transmedia organizing includes the creation of a narrative of social transformationacross multiple media platforms, involving the movement ’ s base in participatory mediamaking, and linking attention directly to concrete opportunities for action. Effectivetransmedia organizing is also accountable to the needs of the movement ’ s base.I contend that transmedia organizing involves the construction of socialmovement identity, beyond individual campaign messaging; it requiresco-creation and collaboration across multiple social movement groups; itprovides roles and actions for movement participants to take on in theirdaily life; it is open to participation by the social base of the movement;and it is the key strategic media form for social movements in the currentmedia ecology. While the end goal of corporate transmedia storytelling isto generate profits, the end goal of transmedia organizing is to strengthensocial movement identity, win political and economic victories, and transformthe consciousness of broader publics. Effective transmedia organizingalso includes accountability mechanisms so that the narrative and theactions it promotes remain grounded in the experience and needs of thesocial movement ’ s base. A concrete case study will better illustrate what Imean by “ bottom-up ” transmedia organizing. To this end, I now turn tothe student walkouts of 2006.Transmedia Organizing: WalkoutsIn chapter 1, we saw that students in Los Angeles used MySpace asan organizing tool during the 2006 walkouts in protest of the Sensenbrennerbill. Here I look much more closely at the fine-grained texture of movementmedia practices in the midst of the mobilization. Some commentators at thetime believed that immigrant rights organizations used social networkingsites (SNS) to push their organizing efforts out, from the top down, to anew youth constituency. However, for the most part my experience, theinterviews I conducted with protesters, and media archives suggest a differentstory. For example, almost none of the flyers that were circulated onMySpace were created by established immigrant rights organizations.Instead, they were produced and spread by students themselves:

Walkout Warriors 51Figure 2.2Spring 2006 walkout flyer.Source: Original source unknown, reposted to multiple MySpace walls.

52 Chapter 2Students created a wide range of these virtual flyers using graphicalstyles and techniques ranging from hand-drawn art to scanned paintings,from remix and photo-collage to text-heavy flyers with variedfonts, colors, and clip art. I found very few examples of MySpace flyerscreated by existing political organizations; the vast majority were madeby students and circulated through their friendship networks in the formof wall posts and bulletins. MySpace also functioned as a kind of digitalpublic sphere (if commercial, surveilled, and circumscribed) for studentsto debate the broader issues of immigration, as well as the specific tacticof the walkouts. One activist from Watsonville High recalled that afterthe first day of the walkouts, another student posted anti-immigrantcommentary on MySpace, which was then printed out and posted uparound her school. The printed anti-immigrant MySpace bulletin generateda firestorm of anger among immigrant students and prompted asecond day of walkouts. 11After the first round of walkouts took place, in early March, studentsused MySpace posts, bulletins, chats, and forums to document their actions,post and circulate photos and videos, and debate tactics:BIGGEST WALKOUT IN STUDENT HISTORY ON MARCH 31, 2006ON FRIDAY MARCH 31, 2006 ALL MEXICANS/LATINOS/HISPANICS/CHICANOSARE TO WALK OUT OF CAMPUS AFTER 1ST PERIOD AND ARE TO MARCH TOEVERY POLITICAL BUILDING THEY CAN REACH. IF YOU GOT FRIENDS THATAREN ’ T MEXICANS INVITE THEM TO PROTEST TOO TELL EM THEY COULD BELOSING FRIENDS/GIRLFRIENDS ECT … WEATHER THEY BLACK, WHITE, JAP., ECT… TELL EM TO HELP OUT THIS FRIDAY IS GONNA BE THE BIGGEST STUDENTPROTEST THE GOVERNMENT HAS SEEN BUT THERE IS TO BE NO WALKOUTS(WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY) LET THE SCHOOL AND THE GOVERNMENTTHINK WE HAVE STOPED PROTESTING AND THIS WAY THEY WON ’ T PUTSCHOOLS ON LOCKDOWN … WE GONNA MAKE HISTORY THIS MONTH 12MySpace became a venue not only to discuss tactics but also to contextualizethe walkouts within the larger histories of colonization, indigenousrights, and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:The senate has just approved that bill enforcing … the immigration law … this isbullshit … cuz there is no real american in this country … the real americanswere those natives, and they even immigrated, … we can ’ t have our liscenses but yetthey want us to go fight a war that isn ’ t ours … fuck this shit. … WEDNESDAYWALKOUT 13

Walkout Warriors 53In addition to posting comments and images to friends ’ walls, creatingand sending bulletins, and using forums, students also created numerousMySpace groups with names such as NO on HR4437, FUCK THA HR-4437,UNITED MEXICANS, !~PrOuD BeAnErs~!, Indigenous Resistance, ProtestBill HR4437!, undocumented immigrants ’ rights, Say No to HR 4437, andthe like. Student activists also found ways to appropriate technical affordancesoriginally designed for individual expression and repurpose themfor collective expressions of political engagement and group solidarity. Forexample, many changed their profile pictures to “ No on HR4437 ” imagesor flyers and changed their display names to walkout-related terms, suchas “ nohr4437, ” “ walkout, ” or “ 4 A Reason. ”Figure 2.3MySpace profile picture and display name changed in political protest.Source: Screen capture from MySpace.com.

54 Chapter 2They also used real-time tools such as AIM and other chat clients todiscuss past and upcoming walkouts, share experiences and tactics, andspread the word about future actions, as in this instant message exchange:kooky(7:44:47 p.m.): IT WAS SOO MUCH FUN!kooky(7:44:48 p.m.): < 3wiggle2(7:44:57 p.m.): HELLZ YEAHwiggle2(7:45:22 p.m.): like 500 students left the schoolwiggle2(7:45:39 p.m.): thats like half. lmaoo.kooky(7:53:59 p.m.): shit was CRAZYkooky(7:54:08 p.m.): ohh mannkooky(7:54:13 p.m.): I cant wait till next yearrkooky(7:54:15 p.m.): xDwiggle2(7:54:59 p.m.): werrd me either what i find funny is that u started from themiddle of the crowd nd ended up leadingkooky(7:55:48 p.m.): werrdd 14MySpace user wiggle2 (whose username I changed to preserve privacy)not only employed AIM to discuss the walkout with other students butdocumented this practice and then circulated it through wall posts toMySpace.In moments of mass mobilization, movement participants seize newmedia platforms for tactical communication, and simultaneously use themto document, share, and strategize around movement activity. Studentactivists documented their own walkouts with still and video cameras aswell as mobile phones, and also learned new media skills. For example,several people told me that in the immediate wake of the walkouts, friendsshowed them how to transfer documentation from cameras and phonesto computers, edit photos and video, and upload content to the web.Others described spending extensive amounts of time online during themobilization wave, not only posting and sharing movement media acrossSNS but also learning new photo and video editing skills, “ profile pimping ”for the cause, and so on. 15Middle school students as well as high school students participated inthe walkouts. One organizer, a middle school teacher at the time, told meabout daily conversations she had with her students about their own plansto participate. She noted that there was wide disparity in access to mobilephones among middle and high school students, based on income as wellas age. For example, most of her younger middle school students did nothave access to mobile phones or digital cameras. They heard about the

Walkout Warriors 55walkouts through their parents, elder siblings, or existing chapters ofstudent organizations such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztl á n). Their lack of access to digital cameras and mobile phonesmeant that police repression of middle school walkouts went largelyundocumented and unreported. 16The Sensenbrenner crisis and the walkouts produced a generativemoment, as young people appropriated social media tools to circulateinformation about the struggle in (nearly) real time. Simultaneously, thecrisis provided a crucible for the development and diffusion of emergentsociotechnical practices such as modifying display names or profile picturesto articulate political demands. 17 These practices, created organicallyby the students themselves and only later adopted by formal politicalorganizations, networks, nonprofit organizations, and policy advocates,take advantage of the changed media ecology to generate collective consciousness,enhance movement identity, and circulate knowledge of keyprocesses, actions, and events.The Walkouts: Beyond Social MediaHigh school and middle school students effectively used MySpace as aplatform to circulate calls for walkouts, document their experiences, anddiscuss strategies for political action. They also used SNS to reflect publiclyon the emotional power of mass mobilization. Yet it would be a mistaketo assume that SNS were the primary generative space for the success ofthe walkouts as a tactic. Rather, walkouts are a long-standing part of whatDoug McAdam, Sydney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly have called the repertoireof contention of Latin@ high school students in Los Angeles. 18 In 1968, morethan 20,000 Latin@ (mostly Chican@) high school students across L.A.walked out of their schools to demand educational justice. They protestedthe racism they suffered at the hands of administrators and teachers andcalled for equal treatment, the inclusion of non-European cultural historyin the curriculum, new investment in crumbling infrastructure, and an endto 50 percent dropout rates. 19 These events, also known as the Blowout,were a defining moment in Chican@ movement history. They set the stagefor the emergence of a new generation of social movement leaders, organizations,and networks, as well as for the rise of influential Latin@ politiciansand public officials. 20 High school students took up the same tactic

56 Chapter 2in 1994 during the battle against California ’ s Proposition 187, a referendumdesigned to exclude undocumented immigrants from access to publicservices and benefits. Thousands of students across the state walked out oftheir schools in protest in the weeks leading up to the Prop 187 vote. 21Even after Prop 187 passed, resistance continued until the proposition wasdeclared unconstitutional by the courts. Michelle Holling has describedhow struggles against Prop 187 mixed street actions such as walkouts withonline protest — although at the time, access to the Internet was mostlylimited to academics, and online protest participation primarily involvedposting to email lists, such the CHICLE Chican@ Studies listserv. 22Not only have walkouts been an important tactic throughout Chican@and immigrant rights movement history in Los Angeles, that history wasalso recirculated and pushed back into popular consciousness through themass media immediately before the 2006 wave of walkouts. In March 2006,HBO aired the film Walkout . This docudrama, directed by Edward JamesOlmos, tells the story of the Chicano high school teacher Sal Castro andthe student activist Paula Crisostomo, both key actors in the 1968 studentmovement.Although the broadcast of the film did not take place until the March2006 cycle of walkouts was already under way, prerelease versions of thefilm were seen by groups of high school student activists across L.A. inDecember and January. 23 Beginning in December 2006, student groupsaround the city (some, like the Brown Berets, first established in the late1960s) organized prerelease screenings and discussions of the HBO film.One article about the making of the film put it this way:The persistent educational problems faced by Latino students is one reason [directorEdward James Olmos] wanted to make this film — scheduled to air March 18 — aboutevents that for most people remain lost in L.A. history. “ The dropout rate is higherthan it was when these walkouts took place, ” says Olmos, citing recent (and disputed)statistics that have stirred new debates about the quality of education here,especially for ethnic minorities. “ That’s why we ’ re making this movie. We ’ re hopingthat the kids will walk out again. ” 24Perhaps most important, hundreds of students took part in the film ’ sproduction, acting as extras in scenes of Walkout . The film productionprocess linked present-day student struggles even more tightly to thecultural memory of the walkouts as a powerful movement tactic and provideda space for literally rehearsing mass mobilization. The film — in its

Walkout Warriors 57Figure 2.4Still from the HBO film Walkout.Source: Screen capture from HBO.com.production process, in prerelease screenings organized by student activists,and in student conversations on MySpace — contributed to the broadercirculation of tactics during the run-up to the mobilization against theSensenbrenner bill. For example, one post on the wall of a MySpace userput it this way: “[I] saw the movie walkout its really good it got me allemotional. actually i saw it exactly one day before the RHS walkout itinspired me i guess. i will try to go to the screening in reedley it really isa good movie. ” 25Walkout was not the only film that contributed to the political atmosphereduring the spring of 2006. The fictional feature A Day Without a

58 Chapter 2Mexican was also widely referenced prior to May Day 2006. Manyorganizers promoted May Day either under the rubric Gran Boicott (TheGreat Boycott) or, in a direct reference to the film, as “ A Day Without anImmigrant. ” 26 For example, a MySpace protest text (posted to http://groups.myspace.com/NoOnHR4437, ellipsis at end inserted ) read asfollows:If HR4437 is passed NO WORK or SCHOOLBody: Subject: May 1st will be the DAY WITHOUT LATINOSwear white tuesday!!!!!!!If HR 4437 is passed:no school or work on May 1sttell everyone you not to attend school and tell your parents not to workthe movie “ A Day Without a Mexican ” will become real … spread the word!Films thus provided inspiration for real-life protest tactics. In turn, thereal-life mobilizations served as sites for film production. Both amateurand professional media producers actively sought to weave video createdby immigrant rights marchers into music videos, documentaries, andfiction films. Examples include the music videos for the songs “ Cazador ”by the band Pistolera and “ Marcha ” by MC Malverde, film compilationssuch as Gigante Despierta (Giant Awake), and feature-length documentaryfilms, including Undocumented .For the most part, the larger, vertically structured social movementorganizations noticed the organic appropriation of SNS as a result of thewalkouts. A few then attempted to strategically adopt SNS as a distributionplatform for their preexisting messaging, with varying degrees of success,but none were able to effectively drive future mass mobilizations bystudents. In informal conversations with activists as well as in formalinterviews, immigrant rights nonprofit organizations noted that theybegan to set up or more actively promote their own MySpace accountsonly after the success of the 2006 walkouts, based on what they had seenof students ’ tactical innovation. 27 An organization called BAMN (By AnyMeans Necessary) was perhaps most successful in this strategy, but it wasnever able to mobilize more than a few hundred students. In some casesnonprofits were even attacked in MySpace posts by students denouncingthem as “ opportunists ” and gabachos (whites) attempting to capitalize onthe Latin@ student movement in order to advance their own political ends.

Walkout Warriors 59This provides an example of how organizations that attempt to adoptsocial media tools pioneered by movement participants or ad hoc networksrun the risk that the tactic will backfire. This can happen if the existingonline community, in this case students, perceive it as inauthentic, forced,or opportunistic. Simply having a presence on the latest SNS is not aneffective transmedia organizing strategy. The use of participatory mediain this case was most effective for the loosely linked, informal networkof student walkout participants, in combination with other media textsacross platforms.Transmedia Organizing PracticesSo far in this chapter I have described transmedia organizing as a processwhereby activists develop a narrative of social transformation across multiplemedia platforms, involve their movement ’ s base in participatorymedia practices, amplify movement voices by way of the mass media, andprovide concrete opportunities for action. I introduced a case study of thestudent walkouts for immigrant rights in 2006 to illustrate organic transmediaorganizing. The next section zooms out to a broader set of interviewsand examples that illustrate transmedia organizing across the immigrantrights movement.Basta Dobbs: Presente.org ’ s Cross-Platform StrategyMaking and circulating media across platforms was crucial to the successof Presente.org ’ s Basta Dobbs campaign. In 2009, immigrant rights groups,Latin@ civil rights organizations, celebrities, and local community-basedgroups across the country came together in a national campaign to removeanti-immigrant commentator Lou Dobbs from CNN. The campaign wascoordinated by Presente.org, at the time a project of Citizen EngagementLabs. It was designed to use online organizing methods developed byMoveOn.org, but applied to the Latin@ community. The Basta Dobbscampaign deployed a sophisticated transmedia strategy across the web,mobile phones, and broadcast radio, and rapidly built a database of tensof thousands of email addresses and phone numbers. Participants wereencouraged to write and call network executives, and they did so by thethousands. 28

60 Chapter 2One activist I interviewed felt that the campaign ’ s success was largelybased on the combination of broadcast radio, mobile phones, and socialmedia:The Basta Dobbs Campaign, I think that was one of the first times. I mean we hadorganizations or groups like Move On, and all these different groups that were doingadvocacy and very successful, Moms Rising, all these groups that have huge Internetpower bases. But the immigrant community wasn ’ t really involved in that, andneither were their supporters. So what we saw in Basta Dobbs was this, kind of thisnew model. 29The Basta Dobbs campaign was built to engage Latin@ activists first, andthe Latin@ community more broadly. Campaign organizers appeared onSpanish-language radio and television and asked listeners and viewers tosign up for the campaign by sending an SMS (text message) to a shortcode.This was combined with regular radio and TV appearances by organizers:They had a text messaging hub, through their web site. So they wanted everybodyto sign up on that. … Jet Blue was offering $600 flights, and you could travel anywhereyou wanted to in the country, wherever they flew for a month as many timesas you wanted for the $600. So they took advantage of that and they did this countrytour. And they went on all the radio spots, all the TV shows, and they were able tobuild up a list within a little bit over a month, maybe two months, about a hundredthousand people to join Basta Dobbs. 30The Basta Dobbs campaign illustrates the importance of the relationshipbetween broadcast media and social media. It was through a nationwidespeaking tour, organized in partnership with local community-based organizationsand broadcast by local radio stations, that Basta Dobbs organizerswere able to quickly build a critical mass of tens of thousands of peoplewilling to sign up to receive SMS action alerts for the campaign. SMS alertswere used not only to ask people to sign petitions, call CNN headquarters,or write letters to the editor but also to invite them to physical protests atCNN offices around the country. The campaign itself, because of the rapidgrowth of its SMS list, the high number of views on its professionally producedvideos, and the real-world mobilizations coordinated by local grassrootsgroups, augmented by SMS action alerts from the national campaign,quickly became a story that both Spanish-language and English-languagemass media outlets were interested in covering. As organizers unrolled apublic campaign to target Dobbs ’ s advertisers, network executives feltrising pressure to take action. The campaign ended in November 2009,

Walkout Warriors 61when Lou Dobbs announced the early end of his CNN contract and organizersdeclared victory.Effective transmedia organizers thus built a narrative around themomentum of the movement itself, even while providing multiple pointsof connection for further engagement. In this case, most people initiallybecame aware of the Basta Dobbs campaign from local radio stories or SMSmessages, later through social networking sites, and, once the campaignwas growing, through the mass media. The most effective use of socialmedia for social transformation occurs when it is coordinated with printand broadcast strategies, as well as with real-world actions.Cross-Platform ApproachI have explained that transmedia organizing takes place across multipleplatforms, and indeed, many immigrant rights organizers have explicitcross-platform media strategies. Most of those whom I interviewed insistedthat different platforms are crucial for reaching different constituentswithin the broader immigrant rights movement. Many said that socialmedia are useful tools for reaching younger people and students, whileradio and newspapers remain key for reaching parents and working-classcommunities. For example, in one interview, an activist with Dream TeamLA described the process her group uses to develop media strategy. Theybegin with a group brainstorming effort to identify shared values, and fromthere develop key points and sound bites to use during a specific campaign.Based on this shared messaging strategy, developed through a participatoryprocess, the group then conducts training sessions and works with themovement base to circulate messages across multiple platforms. This activistdescribed using print newspapers and Spanish-language TV news toreach the older generation (“ the moms, the dads ”) while connecting withthe younger generation via social media:For example, whenever we have a rally, an event, we make sure that we have keynetworks there, like Univision, Telemundo, Teleflash, Channel 2, Channel 7. Butwhen the news stories come out, we always post those news stories on our Twitterand our Facebook, because we know that ’ s the way, the only way that younger folks,and I would say, 80 percent of people get their news from, so we are very intentionalabout connecting the two. 31In another interview, a group of DREAM activists described the importanceof blogs and SNS for reaching younger audiences, while also

62 Chapter 2mentioning the continued power of print and broadcast media to shapereputation and increase visibility. They emphasized that social media campaignsare often most effective “ when people are already hearing about theDREAM movement through TV or newspapers. ” 32 In addition, they pointedto the spreadability of social media in the context of their campaigns,both in terms of participatory content creation and in terms of sharing viapersonal networks. They also felt that the videos they made were muchmore likely to be shared, and trusted, once their organization began toreceive coverage in the mass media: “ It ’ s been effective because of the reputationthat we [had] already built, and the personal connections we [had]already made. ” 33This is not to say that transmedia organizing is simple, or that strategicplatform selection is always obvious. Immigrant rights organizers, likeanyone, sometimes find the proliferation of media platforms bewildering.Some attempt to strategically choose platforms based on their campaigngoals and targets. For example, one organizer described the need to focuson the New York Times to reach most elected officials but emphasized theimportance of Spanish-language TV networks when trying to target CeciliaMu ñ oz, an immigrant rights advocate who became an Obama administrationofficial and an apologist for the controversial federal surveillance anddeportation program known as Secure Communities. In other cases, andwhen unable to secure mass media coverage, this organizer fell back todistributing media via his own blog, YouTube channel, Twitter, and Facebookaccounts. 34Media Bridging WorkIn the heat of large-scale protests, movement media and information oftenspread across platforms, including online, print, and broadcast. Duringpeak mobilization times, the immigrant rights movement also oftenreceives solidarity and support from other movements. At these moments,activists from other movements circulate immigrant rights media morewidely through their own social networks. Some people and organizationsdedicate themselves to ensuring that this takes place. Those who focus ontransferring media and information across media platforms and betweenmovement networks perform what Ethan Zuckerman calls media bridgingwork. 35 Bridging work has become increasingly important, and some intervieweesdescribed it as part of day-to-day communication practices within

Walkout Warriors 63the immigrant rights movement. For example, a participant in L.A. Indymedia(Los Angeles Independent Media Center) explained that postingnews stories and calendar events to la.indymedia.org is the main activityof his collective. However, for him, work on the Indymedia site is tightlyconnected to his ongoing participation in multiple channels of move -ment communication, including email, radio, print, and telephone. Healso finds SNS to be a key venue for the circulation of movement media.This interviewee stated that he systematically uses both MySpace andFacebook to distribute links to protest reports, articles, action alerts, andupcoming events:MySpace, everything I do, every time I write an article I’ll put it as a bulletin. Andon Facebook, too, I’ll put a link to it. And any event, any actions going on, I’llalways bulletin those. A lot of times people will repost my bulletins. I’ll even compilelists of events that are going on and I usually post them on Fridays ’ cause peoplewant to know what’s going on for the weekend. So Friday I’ll have, when I’m readingthe paper, when I’m reading my listservs, when I’m listening to the radio, everythingthat’s coming up I’ll put it on my calendar. Then I’ll take my calendar, make a listof the stuff going on that week, and Friday post it as a bulletin, and then a lot ofpeople repost those. 36Transmedia organizers thus engage in daily practices of media bridgingwork by taking information from one channel, reformatting it foranother, and pushing it out into broader circulation across new networks.Certain individuals and groups spend more time focused onmedia bridging work, but in transmedia organizing, all movement participantsare able to participate in this work to some degree. Movementscan also take steps to make this kind of activity as easy as possible. Inthe social media space, Henry Jenkins and colleagues call this principlespreadability. 37 I found that some of the most interesting media bridgingwork is done, and the greatest spreadability achieved, by organizers whounderstand the importance of linking broadcast and social media strategiestogether.Finally, many interviewees talked about the continued importance offace-to-face organizing. For example, one activist described media practicesin the Garment Worker Center campaign against the clothing label Forever21. Like other younger people, she had learned about the campaignthrough an email list, but face-to-face organizing was the key means ofreaching garment workers themselves. Social movements often contain

64 Chapter 2people from a mix of backgrounds, and transmedia organizers must provideforms of connectivity and points of entry for all of them:I was involved in [the Forever 21 campaign] back in 2001. And we were a prettysmall group. … I remember the first protest, the first anti-sweatshop protest againstForever 21. I found out through the internet, and I was like, “ I have no idea whereAlhambra is. But I guess I ’ m gonna drive out there. ” 38This activist learned about a protest via email, from a list called the FairTrade Network that she had joined in 2000 during protests at the DemocraticNational Convention in Los Angeles. She then followed an invitationto attend a protest action in an unfamiliar part of town. She later went onto get deeply involved in a successful campaign targeting the Forever 21clothing label for wage theft and abuse of immigrant workers.Transmedia Organizing 101: Relationships with Reporters and MediaHotlistsMass media continue to be a crucial arena of struggle, and activists developa range of specific strategies as they attempt to gain access to the mainstreampress. 39 For example, many of those I interviewed brought up theimportance of cultivating relationships with reporters. “ People think aboutmainstream media as a big monolithic thing, ” said one interviewee, “ butgenerally, it ’ s all about relationships. ” 40 This activist, who had experienceworking in a newsroom, described the various pressures that go into determiningwhether reporters choose to cover a particular event or not. Heemphasized the importance of personal relationships to this decisionmakingprocess, as well as to the kinds of frames that are deployed whenthe story is written. Others mentioned developing and sharing mediahotlists and circulating message memos within movement networks. Forexample, Dream Team L.A. has a media hotlist of about eighty journalists,including traditional reporters, bloggers, and people with large numbersof followers on Twitter. People on this list are known to show up foractions, write stories, and circulate stories. Dream Team L.A. uses this listto promote actions, events, and campaign communications. 41Dream Team L.A. also develops internal memos based on messagebrainstorming and on testing their framing ideas in focus groups. Thesememos lay out the group consensus on message framing, and are used for

Walkout Warriors 65messaging training as well as for “ refreshing ” prior to interviews. Activistswith Dream Team L.A. are quite clear about the structure of stories in traditionalmedia and intentionally develop short, one- and two-sentencesound bites that they practice and rehearse in order to get their pointsacross during interviews with reporters: “ In traditional media you havevery little space to get your point across. So, for example, a news clip willbe two minutes long, and that ’ ll include most bites, so then, you basicallyhave thirty seconds to make your point. ” 42Many activists find Twitter and Facebook to be very effective tools interms of generating support and getting messages out, but they also pointout that traditional print and broadcast news outlets remain importantbecause those are the platforms that reach the broader immigrant community.They describe this dynamic in terms of age and as a generationaldifference, as well as in terms of Internet access inequality. For example,the parents of DREAMers often don ’ t have access to Internet, or if they do,they are not users of social media. Some also mention a divide betweenthose who use the Internet on their mobile phones and those who do not.To reach their parents ’ generation, DREAMers emphasize the importanceof visibility in Spanish-language print press (“[they read] La Opinion everymorning ”) and evening television news (“ they ’ re going to turn on Univisionat 6 and at 11 ”). 43The collapsed category of “ social media, ” while useful in some ways,also masks important differences in the affordances of different tools. Forexample, one organizer described Twitter as “ the quickest, ” email as thebest space for dialogue (“ that ’ s when more people start figuring out what ’ sgoing on ”), and finally, articles in newspapers or coverage on television asthe indicator that the issue or campaign has reached larger significance. 44Additionally, traditional activist media practices, such as phone banking,remain important. One interviewee described using email and SNS as toolsto gather activists in a physical location in order to spend time together,face to face, making phone calls. 45 This is yet another example of the continuedimportance of copresent communication for core activists. Althoughregular communication with broader lists of members and participantsis often done through one-to-many email blasts or systematic Facebookoutreach, core activists in the immigrant rights movement continue tocoordinate through regular face-to-face interactions. 46

66 Chapter 2Transmedia Organizing: ConclusionsIn chapter 1, we saw that the changing media ecology sometimes providesimportant openings for movement organizers. In this chapter, we exploredspecific forms of transmedia organizing within the immigrant rights movementin L.A. A closer look at the student walkouts against the Sensenbrennerbill provided further insight into the dynamics of transmediaorganizing. Rather than attribute the success of the 2006 walkouts solelyto MySpace and SMS, it is possible to locate the protests within the historicalrepertoire of contention of the Chican@ movement in Los Angeles. Thewalkouts also functioned as part of a larger transmedia story that has beentold, retold, remixed, and recirculated by movement participants acrossbroadcast and social media platforms. In this case, transmedia organizingserves to represent and strengthen social movement identity, as well as toreproduce and encourage participation in specific movement tactics. Thestudent walkouts in protest of the Sensenbrenner bill were organized in ahorizontal, ad hoc network with citywide participation. Student activistsused social media (especially SMS and MySpace) to circulate calls to action,file near real-time reports from the streets, and generate multimedia documentationof protests. Their actions were rooted in the larger wave of streetmobilizations against the bill, circulated through new participatory spacesin the changing media ecology, informed by the tactical repertoire of theChican@ movement, and facilitated by the students ’ fluency in the skills,tools, and practices of network culture.Zooming out to explore other examples of transmedia organizing, wefound that many activists intentionally think about how to circulate mediaacross platforms, while engaging their base in media-making that strengthensmovement identity. Many emphasize the importance of using multiplecommunication platforms to reach various audiences, as well as the fundamentaland irreplaceable importance of face-to-face communication incommunity organizing and movement building. We also saw that certainactivists or groups serve as nodes within broader networks, transportingmovement media from one platform, location, or modality to another.This media bridging work has become increasingly important as movementparticipants and audiences fragment across hypersegmented mediamarkets. In addition, effective transmedia organizers in the immigrantrights movement work across broadcast platforms, especially radio, to build

Walkout Warriors 67participation through social media and SMS, as we saw in the Basta Dobbscampaign. At its most powerful, transmedia organizing engages mediamakersacross many platforms in generating a shared narrative about themovement while providing concrete actions and entry points for diverseaudiences. However, some organizations in the immigrant rights movementcontinue to operate with a firewall between their participatory mediapractice, if they have one, and their formal communication strategy. Communicationstrategy is often still based on top-down PR tactics designedfor a time when English-language mass media were the only game in town.The following chapter explores this dynamic more closely. Through a casestudy of the 2007 “ MacArthur Park melee, ” in which the Los Angeles PoliceDepartment brutally attacked a crowd of immigrant rights protesters, wewill focus on the tensions between acting as a spokesperson for the movementand becoming an amplifier for voices from the movement base.

Figure 3.1MacArthur Park May Day images posted to L.A. Indymedia.Source: Original images by various pseudonymous posters to la.indymedia.org;collage by author.

3 “ MacArthur Park Melee ”: From Spokespeople toAmplifiersPeople were getting their cameras smashed by the batons. … We had to get thoseimages because one, that ’ s what we were there to do, and two, we knew that themedia wasn ’ t going to show that.— KB, community organizerQuickly reorganizing after the defeat of the Sensenbrenner bill, anti-immigrantforces launched a new wave of ICE raids across the country duringthe fall of 2006. 1 Simultaneously, there was an explosion of right-winginformation warfare, stretching from the mass base of talk radio up throughthe national news networks and spearheaded by a parade of racist, antiimmigranttalking heads on Fox News and by Lou Dobbs on CNN. 2 Therenewed attack from the Right generated a baseline of tension for immigrantrights activists in the run-up to May Day 2007. On the anniversaryof the historic 2006 May Day marches, hundreds of thousands of peopleagain took the streets across the country. This time, though, the LosAngeles Police Department (LAPD) dealt a crushing blow to protesters inLos Angeles. In this chapter I describe the events of May Day 2007 andanalyze how savvy immigrant rights movement communicators are shiftingfrom spokespeople to amplifiers.Changes in the broader media ecology simultaneously produce newchallenges and new opportunities for social movements. On the onehand, local and national TV networks have largely abandoned close,sympathetic, and humanizing coverage of domestic nonviolent protests.Especially where there is police violence, English-language TV newstends to adopt a narrative of violent conflict that distances viewers fromidentification with protesters as human beings and fails to closely covermovement demands. On the other hand, movements no longer need to

70 Chapter 3rely entirely on broadcast media to circulate their stories, and they nolonger need to rely primarily on professional movement spokespeople.In the changed media ecology, effective transmedia organizers shift fromspeaking for movements to speaking with them. Transmedia organizingmarks a transition in the role of movement communicators from contentcreation to aggregation, curation, remixing, and recirculation of mediatexts across platforms.MacArthur Park, only a few city blocks west of L.A. ’ s main businessdistrict, was built in the 1880s as a white, middle-class vacation destinationsurrounded by luxury hotels. 3 The area around the park became a workingclassAfrican American neighborhood during the 1960s, and once thistransition took place, the city withdrew park maintenance resources. 4 Bythe 1980s the park had gained a reputation as a dangerous and violentplace. In the 1990s the area became a working-class Latin@ neighborhood.Gerardo Sandoval has written that Mesoamerican immigrants to theMacArthur Park area continue to build a strong local community even astop-down development plans, including a multi-million-dollar subwaystop, have recently transformed the area. 5 Despite fears that this developmentwould displace low-income residents, Sandoval argues that instead,the community has remained strong, while working people have gainedincreased access to labor markets and mobility. This process was based ona complex set of interactions among city agencies, developers, the businesscommunity, the police, and community-based organizations. Sandovalalso describes the role of the LAPD, and claims that the Rampart Division(which operates in the area that includes MacArthur Park), once notoriousfor brutal treatment of immigrant youth and for widespread corruption, 6shifted from a “ warrior police ” mentality during the 1990s to a new strategyof community policing under Chief William Bratton. 7 However,MacArthur Park is still represented in the English-language press as a racializeddanger zone of “ gangbangers, ” drug dealers, sex workers, and generalurban chaos. It is especially infamous as an area where fake identificationcards can easily be purchased. This portrayal of MacArthur Park persistsdespite the actual decline in crime in the area 8 and the park ’ s daily use byLatin@ immigrant families, especially by children, teens, and young adultson the soccer field, picnickers with food and blankets, and couples relaxingunder the park ’ s shade trees.

“MacArthur Park Melee” 71On the afternoon of May 1, 2007, I found myself in MacArthur Park,where the usual crowd of hundreds was multiplied tenfold as peoplestreamed in for a post-march rally organized by the Multi-ethnic ImmigrantWorker Organizing Network (MIWON). The rally was cosponsoredby a coalition that included the Garment Worker Center (GWC), theKoreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), the Pilipino WorkersCenter (PWC), the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California(Instituto de Educaci ó n Popular del Sur de California, or IDEPSCA), andthe Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA),with participation by the South Asian Network (SAN) and other organizations.White-clad families, including many small children and elderlyfolks, were relaxing in the park. The sound of ice cream vendors ’ bellsrang in the air, and the smell of bacon-wrapped hot dogs wafted on thebreeze. The atmosphere was festive, as speakers alternated with musicians,and the soccer field was soon transformed into a dance floor as bandsperformed from the MIWON sound truck. I was there that day to supportthe march and rally by performing live music with F ó sforo, a reggae-dubcumbia-jungleband in which I played keyboard, melodica, and sampler.Soon it was our turn to play. As we set up our equipment on the stage,I noticed several friends in the crowd. 9 We introduced ourselves over thePA system, and began our set. As we launched into our second song, aSpanish-language cover of the Bob Marley classic “ War, ” heads began tonod, and sunlight reflected off the mostly white shirts on dancingbodies. 10 Suddenly, I looked up to see thousands of people running enmasse from the other end of the park. A wall of riot police marchedbehind them, and two helicopters swooped low over the crowd, hoveringlike dark mechanical vultures. People screamed and ran in panic as nearly450 officers, many in full riot gear, used batons and rubber bullets toattack the peaceful crowd, injuring dozens and hospitalizing several. 11Members of the media, including Christina Gonzalez of Fox News affiliateKTTV 11, Pedro Sevcec of Telemundo, Patricia Nazario of KPCC, ErnestoArce from KPFK, and reporters from L.A. Indymedia were also attackedand injured by police. 12 The fact that reporters from mass media outletswere attacked resulted in broadcast TV coverage of police brutality.Footage from these TV news reports was then widely circulated onYouTube:

72 Chapter 3Figure 3.2Fox News coverage of May Day 2007, reposted to YouTube.Source: Screen capture from YouTube ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=v7xO-GKmH2c ).The LAPD moved quickly (and, at first, successfully) to reframe thebrutal attack as a “ melee, ” with the official line from Chief William Brattonbeing that a communication breakdown in the chain of command had ledto a “ significant use of force while attempting to address the illegal anddisruptive actions of 50 to 100 agitators who were not a part of the largergroup of thousands of peaceful demonstrators. ” 13 The Police Commission ’ sown report later found that the use of force was inappropriate, dispersalorders were not given correctly, and the chain of command had brokendown at multiple points, resulting in an incorrect decision to clear the parkby force, as well as the unnecessary use of less-lethal weapons, includingrubber bullets and batons. 14 However, the report did maintain the justificationthat the police action was an “ overbroad response ” to “ agitators, ”despite extensive documentation from police, news, and protester camerasthat revealed no aggression by protesters toward police until after the LAPDrode motorcycles into the peaceful crowd. 15 Many witnesses whom I interviewed,including two National Lawyers Guild members who were presentas legal observers, also questioned the early deployment of a riot squad onthe edge of the park, a move that demonstrated a decision by LAPD commandersto treat the event as one that might need to be dispersed byforce. 16 Sandoval argues that the brutal events of May Day 2007 were

“MacArthur Park Melee” 73perpetrated primarily not by officers from the local Ramparts Division butby a riot squad from downtown L.A. 17 Regardless of whether the policeattack on the peaceful crowd and reporters was a breakdown of communication,the product of a broader culture of aggression against immigrantpopulations within certain units of the LAPD, or a calculated tactic tochallenge the growing strength of the immigrant rights movement, theresult was the same: images of the brutal police riot filled TV screens inL.A. for days, sending a clear message that it was time for the gigante to sitdown, shut up, and get back to work. The repressive atmosphere continuedto escalate nationwide for the rest of the summer of 2007.Despite the facts about the LAPD ’ s responsibility for the violence thatoccurred that day (facts that would later emerge in both the LAPD ’ s ownreport and in the courts), in the immediate aftermath the LAPD ’ s narrativestrategy was largely successful at shaping the story. Otto Santa Ana,Layza L ó pez, and Edgar Mungu í a have written the definitive analysis ofTV news coverage of the incident. 18 They compared key events as narratedin the LAPD ’ s own report with local and national network TV coverageproduced before, immediately after, and the following day. Using frameanalysis, visual coding, and critical spoken discourse analysis to examinefifty-one news reports, they found that TV news systematically producednegative or dehumanizing portrayals of peaceful protesters, failed toportray those who were present at the march as full human beings, failedto convey the purpose or demands of the marchers, and framed the eventsin the park as a clash between two violent groups, police and unruly protesters.Only journalists who were injured by police received coverage thathighlighted their humanity, depicted their injuries, and allowed them tospeak directly to viewers by making eye contact with the camera. Protesterswere described using violent metaphors, were not visually shown in theclose to medium shots that most effectively humanize subjects, and werenot provided the opportunity to speak complete sentences on camera. Theauthors also found that local TV news coverage was critical of the policeactions in the hours immediately after the attacks but that by the followingday, both local and national TV news had shifted to a “ violent conflict ”frame that implied similar levels of violence by both protesters and police.These findings were consistent across the three methods the research teamemployed. The authors suggest that the coverage of the May Day eventsis consistent with a broader, deeply troubling shift in TV news coverage of

74 Chapter 3nonviolent protest in the United States. They point out that the CivilRights movement succeeded in mobilizing broad support for voting rightsand an end to legal segregation largely through nonviolent civil disobedience,which was covered by TV news in a way that emphasized civil rightsprotesters as full human beings, worthy of empathy. National TV networksthat commanded the attention of the entire country represented protestersas occupying the moral high ground against physical violence from multipleactors. This swayed public opinion and created strong pressure onlegislators to act. If national TV news networks reframe unprovoked policeviolence against peaceful protesters as “ violent conflict, ” and if reportersfail to depict the full humanity of protesters or to cover their actualdemands, then one of the most powerful avenues by which social movementsshape public opinion is blocked. 19This broader shift in network TV news, away from the close coverageof social movements and toward a simplified conflict narrative of violentclashes between police and protesters, is deeply troubling. In the caseof the immigrant rights movement, it is only partially mitigated by therise of more sympathetic coverage in Spanish-language print and broadcastmedia. However, immigrant rights activists should not be thoughtof simply as “ victims ” of a mass media framing battle over which theyhave no control. Instead, they are often active participants. Activists takepart in shaping media narratives by participating in news productionprocesses: they hold press conferences, create press releases, provideinterviews with journalists, and sometimes pass images and video footageto broadcasters. This type of activity is frequently structured around theactivities of movement spokespeople, who work to represent and speakfor the broader movement. Sometimes movement spokespeople participatein creating and maintaining discursive frames (versions of thestory) that mirror the conflict frame increasingly used by police andbroadcast news to cover domestic social movements. I return to thispoint below.At the same time, immigrant rights activists also produce and circulatetheir own media. Indeed, immigrant rights groups engaged in a wide rangeof media practices immediately after the May Day 2007 police attack. Forexample, I interviewed members of the Cop Watch L.A. Guerrilla Chapterand asked them to describe communication practices during a recent massmobilization. One focused on the MacArthur Park events:

“MacArthur Park Melee” 75I always think about May Day, 2007. Because there was a lot of — you could call itchaos. It was a police riot. There was bullets flying, there was tear gas, there wasbatons flying everywhere, and Cop Watch L.A., we were asked to observe, right? Sowe were there observing, and it was hard because we were trying to get our peopleout of the way. Our children were there. … A lot of our folks were getting hit withbatons while observing the police. People were getting their cameras smashed. …We had to get those images because one, that ’ s what we were there to do, and two,we knew that the media wasn ’ t going to show that. Even though they showed alittle bit of what happened, because they got the worst end of it too, but they endedup changing their story. 20Movement communicators such as those involved in Cop Watch, whowork daily to document abuses of power by the police in low-income communitiesof color, take on a special role during mass mobilizations. Theycome hoping for the best but prepared to document the worst: violentrepression of peaceful protest. In this case, Cop Watch activists gathered agreat deal of video footage of the police attack on the crowd. However, andcrucially in the context of our discussion of the changed media ecology, theyimmediately recognized that protest participants had themselves documentedthe police from nearly every angle, and that gathering this materialtogether would be critical both to creating a narrative of what had happenedand to the longer-term legal strategy against police brutality.From Spokesperson to AmplifierWhereas in the past, movement documentarians may have seen theirprimary role as shooting and editing footage, by 2007 even an organizationdedicated to documentation, one that counted many trained videographerswithin its ranks, recognized the importance of compiling videodocumentation produced by the multitude. The same activist quotedabove, KB, described how Cop Watch had “ put out a call for people to sendus their video, ” a call he felt was successful since it resulted in anonymousuploads of several hours of original footage. 21 He mentioned that betweenuploads to the Cop Watch site and to L.A. Indymedia, a great deal of rawfootage was made available to both movement filmmakers and to theprotesters ’ legal team. Cop Watch ultimately worked with other antiauthoritarianactivists to create a full-length documentary about the eventsof May Day 2007, titled We ’ re Still Here, We Never Left. The film tells thestory from the viewpoint of mobilization participants by gathering footage

76 Chapter 3from over a dozen cameras, and also focuses on disrupting the frame introducedby the LAPD.We were able to put together the people ’ s side of what happened, through the helpof the People ’ s Network in Defense of Human Rights that was created after MayDay. I guess we took the initiative to put that together, interview folks; we got thestories from the people in the community. … It meant a lot for our organization,because we were getting blamed for it, you know? The police were saying it was theanarchists, and so were some of the organizations. So it was important for us to getit out there. 22Much of the popular media work that Cop Watch and other movementactivists did in the aftermath of May Day took place through the ad hocPeople ’ s Network in Defense of Human Rights (PNDHR). The networkemerged out of a popular assembly held at the PWC within days of thepolice riot. Activists gathered video through the Cop Watch L.A. site,through L.A. Indymedia, from social media sites, and through the extendednetwork of immigrant rights groups throughout the city. This process wascoordinated not by an individual organization but through a loose workingcommittee of PNDHR. I participated on the PNDHR communications committeefor several weeks. One of our key tasks was to systematically combthrough videos from the MacArthur Park May Day events that people wereposting to YouTube and MySpace, then contact the videographers to see ifthey would be willing to share higher-quality versions of their footage, aswell as full access to their source tapes and files. All but one of the manyvideographers we contacted were happy to contribute copies of theirfootage to the legal team, and several of them joined the working committee.Besides locating footage and videographers, the group also logged andtagged clips to make them more useful to the legal team. During thisprocess, group members shared video capture, logging, and transcodingskills, as well as concrete knowledge about how to use video in court. Amoment of great crisis thus provided, in this case, a hands-on, peer-to-peerlearning opportunity for movement participants to share new mediaknowledge and production skills.Within the PNDHR committee, there were explicit internal debatesabout whether and how to relate to the mass media during a time of crisis.While logging and tagging footage, we came across many shots that werecompelling examples of police brutality. In one of the most memorable,an officer in full riot gear chops at the legs of a ten- to twelve-year old boywith his baton until the boy falls to the ground, then waits for him to

“MacArthur Park Melee” 77stand before shoving him away violently. We discussed whether to sendclips like these to the mass media for broader distribution. This kind ofconversation is common among horizontalist and autonomist factions ofthe immigrant rights movement, as in many social movements. One independentmedia-maker I interviewed, a student who participates in theimmigrant rights movement, put it this way:The better resourced nonprofits, the huge nonprofits that have huge funding andbigger ties to the state, the mayor, these huge corporations, the ones that are nonthreatening,they ’ re the ones that have a little bit more connections to the media.It seems like anytime the corporate media is out there, they want to be in front ofthem. … They used their connections to take the side of the police. To say the samethings the police were saying, which to us was like, wow. I guess it showed whatside people stand on. 23Cop Watch debated whether to set up its own press conference, but inthe end made a conscious decision to avoid the mass media. Instead, thegroup chose to focus on what it called a “ grassroots communication ”strategy of aggregating video, photographs, audio files, and other documentationof the police attack. The group engaged in systematic outreachto people who posted media to YouTube and MySpace, to L.A. Indymedia,and to local blogs. The members decided to focus all their energy on thisstrategy, even though it meant turning down opportunities to increasetheir visibility in broadcast television. They reviewed the aggregated mediaand acted as curators, remixing the most compelling media elements intonew texts, which could then be circulated more widely on social networksites. Eventually, they used this material to develop a feature-length documentarythat was screened for audiences in Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela,and South Africa, as well as in the United States. 24By contrast, one of L.A. ’ s larger immigrant rights nonprofits, an organizationwith a staff of about 40, worked hard in the hours, days, and weeksafter the police attack to implement a more traditional, top-down mediastrategy. The group ’ s communication staff attempted to control, or at leastinfluence, the mass media framing of the event. They did this by holdingpress conferences and distributing press releases to broadcast and printreporters. Perhaps in an attempt to anticipate the typical police strategy ofblaming police violence on protesters, this organization made repeatedstatements to journalists denouncing the violence but also taking care todistance the majority of “ peaceful protesters ” from the “ violent anarchists ”who had “ provoked ” police violence:

78 Chapter 3First and foremost, over 25,000 people gathered in the evening to demand theirrights and to demand legalization, a path to citizenship, and to peacefully assembleto ensure that their families have a better future in this country. And I want to makesure that their efforts are highlighted. It was unfortunate, and we are indignant atthe manner in which the police decided to deal with a group of people who werecausing disturbances. These were young anarchists who often join our marches. 25These remarks, and others like them, caused intense controversy withinthe movement. Face-to-face meetings of organizers, as well as discussionson email lists, forums, and other online spaces, were marked by heateddebates. Some attacked this organization and demanded that they apologizefor repeating what ultimately turned out to be a police lie, while othersdefended their statements either because they believed them to be true or(more often) because they respected the long history of the organization ’ swork to support immigrant communities. While the organization neverissued a public apology for laying the blame on anarchist youth of color,after a month of internal debate other groups, such as the MIWON networkcoordinators, did change the way they represented the May Day events inpublic. Subsequent public statements and press releases on the MIWONwebsite, for example, as well as on movement listservs, emphasized thatthe LAPD had instigated the violence and needed to be held accountablefor the May Day attack:LAPD must take Responsibility as the only instigators of the violence onMay DayChief Bratton ’ s Report does not address the systemic and cultural changes neededin the LAPD to counter racist and anti-immigrant sentiment plaguing thedepartment. 26In this press release, MIWON emphasized the demand for a full reviewof LAPD internal procedures, described “ blatant racism and anti-immigrantsentiment ” within the police force, and argued that the LAPD ’ s preliminaryreport indicated unwillingness to take responsibility for an unnecessaryand violent attack against a peaceful crowd. 27 Indeed, MIWON websiteadministrators even made the phrase “ LAPD must take responsibility asthe only instigators of the violence of May Day 2007 ” into a stream of redtext that followed site visitors ’ mouse arrow around the page. 28 However,even a year later, spokespeople for the larger immigrant rights nonprofitcontinued to publicly repeat the story that the police had been provokedby a band of youth agitators:

“MacArthur Park Melee” 79There was a small group of people that started kind of taunting the police. … Theorganizers approached the police and asked them, why not separate this smallgroup, isolate them, because they ’ re disturbing everybody else that ’ s having this,you know, peaceful event. … And then, suddenly, you know, there were rubberbullets flying. 29While relatively professionalized, top-down nonprofit organizationsspent time and energy trying to control the frame by acting as movementspokespeople on broadcast media outlets, horizontalist networks tookadvantage of the new media ecology to draw attention to images and videosproduced by everyday participants, and thereby to shape a different frame.Participatory media practices of aggregation, remix, and circulation amplifiedthis alternative frame to the point that it became possible to challengethe official narratives repeated by the LAPD, broadcast media, and somenonprofit spokespeople. Photographs, videos, and interviews of mobilizationparticipants all showed a peaceful crowd attacked by riot police. By2009, once the internal police review and legal proceedings had been completed,the verdict was clear: the police use of force was completely unwarranted,and the demonstrators ’ rights had been deeply violated. Based onLAPD ’ s internal review, extensive grassroots organizing, and the outcome ofmultiple legal cases, Chief Bratton apologized, demoted the commandingofficer, and imposed penalties on seventeen of the officers who had participatedin the violence against the protesters. The LAPD settled a massive classaction suit for $13 million, and other lawsuits for undisclosed amounts. 30Spokesperson or Amplifier? TensionsThe incidents just discussed exemplify the failure of English-languagebroadcasters to effectively cover domestic protest, and the reproduction ofa narrative of violent conflict by the police, the mass media, and somenonprofit organizations. This discussion also revealed grassroots mediaproduction practices, including aggregation and remix by movementmedia-makers, whom we might call “ amplifiers ” rather than spokespeople.These dynamics were all highly visible in the events around the MacArthurPark incident and its aftermath. Many of the immigrant rights activists Iworked with and interviewed described similar dynamics not only duringcrisis moments, but also in terms of an ongoing transformation of movementmedia practices. Movement communicators are shifting from being

80 Chapter 3spokespeople to being amplifiers, although few use these exact terms. Thistransition, however, is controversial. It means that movement groups losetight control of the message, and this makes many seasoned activistsdeeply uncomfortable. Media-makers who pride themselves on advancedproduction skills feel this tension as well, and also worry about the potentialloss of creative control.For example, some media activists who in the past saw themselves asmovement documentarians increasingly feel the need to shift to contentaggregation, curation, and amplification functions. One interviewee, aprofessional community organizer and media-maker, described a conversationbetween organizers discussing how to deal with media during anupcoming mobilization of about 10,000 people:In the whole process of being like, “ Oh, my God, tomorrow 10,000 people arecoming, ” we came up with the idea of creating these flyers. You know, if you ’ reputting your video up this way, tag it, send it here, or send it to this email or whatever,tag your photo or photography this way. We made I think about a thousandof those flyers, and we pretty much handed them all out, ’ cause it was probablythat many people filming and taking video. … Then for the next few days, all wewere doing was compiling all those videos and photography that people had individuallyput up on the Internet. … It definitely forced us to be like, how do we dealwith the situation of having a thousand people producing media for us? 31Transmedia organizers thus develop concrete practices to encouragepopular participation in movement media-making. In this case, they promotedparticular mobilization tags across social media platforms by printingout and distributing flyers during the mobilization itself. Later theygathered, aggregated, curated, and remixed media made by a large numberof people into a short, tightly edited video that served to amplify the voicesof the social movement ’ s base.Movement media-makers are not the only ones turning to social mediaplatforms to gather material. During the past decade, larger media outletshave increasingly institutionalized practices of systematic search throughsocial media for original story ideas, eyewitness photographs and videos,and contacts who can be interviewed to provide additional depth andcontext. Professional news operations have always included some contentproduced by “ everyday people, ” but many now regularly use and repackagematerial they find posted on blogs or social media sites. One intervieweedescribed his reaction to the plagiarism of one of his stories by a majormedia outlet in this way:

“MacArthur Park Melee” 81If one of our independent media stories gets into the mainstream media, even ifthey don ’ t give us credit it ’ s good because at least word is getting out. So I thinkthere ’ s a little bit of exploitation going on. I think that mainstream media and massmedia exploit us a little bit. All of our volunteer efforts and our labor. 32Another organizer mentioned that the most effective way to get commercialtelevision coverage of movement activity is to provide journalistswith sensational video footage, especially footage of police or protesterviolence. 33 Some media activists find it relatively easy to insert violentvideo footage of protest activity into broadcast or network TV coverage,but difficult or impossible to effectively frame such clips in ways thatwould support their goals. When collaborating with broadcast media firms,transmedia organizers often struggle to find an effective balance in thetrade-off between increased visibility and the loss of frame control.The combination of participatory media, which allows grassroots voicesto be heard in their own words, and broadcast media, which can amplifythose voices to much larger audiences, may be the most effective form ofmedia organizing. However, many groups, if they devote resources to a communicationsstrategy at all, still focus on traditional PR approaches. Forexample, one organizer felt that the immigrant rights movement wasincreasingly sophisticated at using digital media for top-down communications,but saw far less activity in the sphere of participatory media-making:There ’ s definitely a lot of the other stuff, press conferences and all the PR stuff, andcreating videos about the message, and putting it out there. … You ’ re more likely tohave a communications person in your staff that does all of this, than to have apopular media or multimedia coordinator. … They ’ re treated like two differentthings, but I think it will be really powerful to see what could they look like whenthey come together. 34Many organizations that do include participatory media-making tendto set it apart from their traditional communication strategy. In otherwords, most immigrant rights movement groups are not taking full advantageof the possibilities of transmedia organizing. Instead, they use the newtools of networked communication primarily to augment existing topdownmedia practices. This tension is discussed further in chapter 7.In general, many professional nonprofit organizations fear social mediabecause it is a space in which they are less able to control the message. Ofcourse, controlling the message is a difficult task in the broadcast mediaspace as well. When asked about organizational fears of letting people fromthe base speak for themselves, one interviewee described the following

82 Chapter 3scene. At a DREAM Act rally, the executive director of a well-known immigrantrights nonprofit organization took the stage to speak about immigrationreform. The interviewee described what happened next:She stayed on message about immigration reform. Right now the question is, shouldwe push at least one thing forward, and use it as a victory to build momentum, orreally just go for the whole thing and end up getting nothing, and continue to crushthe movement? But then right after her a worker spoke, and the worker ’ s messagewas “ if Obama doesn ’ t pass immigration reform, he will not count with our vote. ”He was immediately sort of pushed to the side, and [the executive director], youcould see her face right away was just like, “ Oh, I cannot believe he just said that. ” 35This activist went on to describe how the PR staff of the lead organizationthen approached broadcast media reporters and encouraged them toedit the worker ’ s “ off message ” statement out of their reports. The PR staffwere also deeply worried that citizen journalists, bloggers, or everydaymovement participants present at the event would distribute the statement.For organizations that have spent years to decades learning how tostay on message, shape frames through personal relationships with reporters,insert choice quotations into the mass media, and push forward campaignswith a unified voice, social media are a threatening, messy arena inwhich keeping “ message discipline ” becomes all but impossible.Individual cultural workers also experience profound tensions in thechanging media ecology. For example, some filmmakers have movedquickly to incorporate participatory media elements into long-form narrativeand documentary works. They gather media elements produced bymovement participants, then weave them into coherent stories, while providinghigher production value, color correction, tight editing, audio, intertitles,animation, and so on. This is not a new practice in a social movementcontext; indeed, there is a long history of movement documentariansremixing media produced by everyday participants into longer-form works.The award-winning civil rights movement documentary Eyes on the Prize isa good example. Producer Judy Richardson has described how, as shetransitioned from her role as community organizer with the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee to documentary film producer with Eyeson the Prize, a key part of her work was to gather Super 8 reels and photographsfrom the closets and basements of small civil rights organizationsand everyday movement participants, then work that material into theseries. 36 It is possible, in other words, to open up movement narratives to

“MacArthur Park Melee” 83participatory media made by the base while still making high-quality, highproduction-value,beautiful and creative works. However, not everyone seesit that way. Nonprofit PR staff, traditional filmmakers, and many othermedia-makers who take part in social movement messaging are often unfamiliarwith, made uncomfortable by, and feel threatened by participatorymedia. Individual creative workers sometimes feel the need to assert thevalue of strong, single-authored narrative and tight creative control in orderto produce high-production-value works that broader audiences will findcompelling. They argue against “ documentary by committee. ” 37Finally, it is worth noting that many organizers find value simply inincluding the faces and voices of their communities in multimedia movementtexts. They point out that this is especially true for immigrant communities,so often ignored or misrepresented by the mass media, but it mayalso apply to any group that feels excluded from broader visibility. Community-basedorganizations within the immigrant rights movement regularlyuse digital media tools to help generate feelings of group identity and solidarity.For example, one KIWA staff member talked about the power of visualmedia in connecting people to the movement. He described using the organization’ s website to highlight photographs and slide shows featuringmembers taking part in actions and campaigns. He felt that when people sawtheir own face, or their friends ’ faces, reflected on the website it helped themto identify with the organization. When asked whether this kind of inclusivemedia practice was something new, or simply the latest incarnation of existingpractices, he answered, “ It is very new. Nowadays those clips can betaken even with camera or telephone. ” 38 By contrast, in the past, most video,audio, and photographs recorded on analog media simply sat in boxes,unused. When asked whether KIWA had ever screened older VHS tapesrecorded with a camcorder owned by the organization, he replied, “ Never. ”Before digital camera came in, it was just paper photos. We have probably four tofive large boxes of those photos, but it just sits in there. One of our projects with avolunteer is to scan all those so it can be digitized and used. 39Digital photography and digital video offer small organizations hugeadvantages over their analog equivalents in terms of time, money, andequipment. Over the past decade, the affordability of digital recordingdevices has increased greatly, as has the usability of multimedia productionsoftware. The skills needed to transform the raw material of recordedactions into compelling media texts are now more widely distributed across

84 Chapter 3the population, although still unequally so (as I discuss in more detail inchapter 5). Broader participation in movement media production helpsstrengthen shared memory, feelings of belonging, and social movementidentity.The “ MacArthur Park Melee ”: From Spokespeople to Amplifiers:ConclusionsThis chapter has explored the shift in function from spokesperson toamplifier that many social movement media-makers experienced overthe past decade. The main case study was the “ MacArthur Park melee, ” orthe LAPD riot of May Day 2007. Although the courts ultimately found thepolice responsible for gross misconduct and massive violation of protesters ’rights, in the immediate aftermath of the event the more top-down (vertical)nonprofits focused on disseminating a frame of police “ overreaction ”to an “ anarchist threat ” via the mass (broadcast) media. This approachcapitalized on the extensive broadcast coverage by both English- andSpanish-language television news, based on the fact that broadcast televisionreporters were among those who suffered police brutality. At the sametime, an ad hoc network composed of horizontalist collectives and organizationsworked to aggregate, curate, remix, and amplify media producedby people who had themselves been attacked. Rather than claim that oneof these approaches was more successful, we can say that online audiences,especially young immigrant rights activists in Los Angeles, were more likelyto have seen one version of events, while those watching broadcast mediasaw another. For television viewers, police violence did receive extensivecoverage during the first day, but by the time the story reached a nationalbroadcast TV audience in the form of short sound bites and clips, it typicallycarried the headline “ MacArthur Park Melee ” and implicated youthand anarchist protesters as violent provocateurs. Members of larger nonprofitorganizations, following a traditional media strategy, acted as movementspokespeople. By aligning their frame with the police frame, theywere able to gain standing and have their voices carried widely in broadcastmedia. Ad hoc networks such as PNDHR, which advanced a more radicalframe while aggregating and circulating video produced by the social baseof the movement, were marginalized from broadcast spaces, as they hadexpected and in some cases chose. Yet their framing persisted and arguablyprevailed among activist networks within the immigrant rights movement

“MacArthur Park Melee” 85in Los Angeles. In the changed media ecology, professionalized nonprofitorganizations faced intense pressure from an ad hoc network to modifytheir frame, and ultimately some of them, such as MIWON, did so.Soon after the events described in this chapter, many of the antiimmigrantaspects of the 2006 Sensenbrenner bill were proposed again inthe Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Reform Act of2007 (S. 1348). This time the bill was portrayed as a “ compromise, ” butcontinued to focus on border militarization and policing: it included fundingfor 300 miles of vehicle barriers, 105 camera and radar towers, and 20,000more Border Patrol agents, while simultaneously restructuring visa criteriaaround “ high skill ” workers for the so-called knowledge economy. 40 It fellapart by June, but in July 2007, $3 billion in new “ border security ” fundingwas approved. 41 The transition to the Obama administration initially raisedhopes among many in the immigrant rights movement for a progressiverestructuring of immigration policy. However, it was soon clear that underPresident Obama, border militarization would continue, as would raids,detentions, and deportations, and at even greater rates than during the Bushadministration. 42 There was no comprehensive immigration reform inObama ’ s first term. In 2013, at the beginning of Obama ’ s second term, immigrationreform was once again placed squarely on the national agenda. Thelegislative proposal launched in 2013 was largely identical to the bill proposedin 2007: its main components included increased border enforcement;extension of the E-Verify system, which requires employers to checkemployee status with a federal database and increases the penalties leviedagainst noncompliant employers; and a “ pathway to citizenship. ” This proposedpathway involved payment of back taxes, fines, an application fee,and a background check, followed by a work permit and the possibility ofnaturalization after “ going to the back of the line. ” Overall, some analystsestimated the process might take thirteen to twenty-three years to completeand would exclude the majority of undocumented immigrants. 43 To date,there has been a complete, and completely unsurprising, failure of the massmedia to discuss either the root causes of migration or the possibility of truelong-term solutions, such as a human right to migration in an age of unrestrictedcross-border capital flows. Chapter 7 further explores the 2013comprehensive immigration reform bill and transmedia organizing effortsaround it. For now, I turn to a close analysis of mobilizations by Oaxacanmigrants living in Los Angeles, to better understand the role of translocalsocial movement media practices.

Figure 4.1APPO occupies Oaxacan state TV.Source: Screen capture from La Toma de Los Medios en Oaxaca ( http://vimeo.com/6729709).

4 APPO-LA: Translocal Media PracticesIn chapters 1 and 2, I explored how Spanish-language mass media, inparticular radio, as well as social media, specifically MySpace, transformedthe media ecology in Los Angeles. Changes in the media ecology openednew avenues for the public narrative of the immigrant rights movement.Chapter 3 explored the shift from top-down to participatory media practicesby immigrant rights advocates. Movement media-makers are rethinkingtheir roles, with some intentionally making a change from spokespeopleto amplifiers. At the same time, the media ecology itself is also undergoinga radical transformation in terms of geographic scale. From a top-downperspective, Latin American media companies are now part of transnationallyconverged media conglomerates. Spanish-language newspapers andbroadcasters in the United States are linked in nationwide and transnationalnetworks. Simultaneously, bottom-up processes are also reshapingthe media ecology as community media play an increasingly importantrole in maintaining connections between migrants and their places oforigin. The Latin American communication scholar Jes ú s Mart í n-Barberohas written extensively about the transnationalization of the media system,emphasizing hybridity, cultural flows across national boundaries, and localappropriation of media texts, while maintaining a critical stance towardthe erasure of local forms of cultural production by globalized capitalistcultural industries. 1 As mass media go global and community media moveonline, both serve to link diasporic communities and to heighten practicesof translocal citizenship. Social movements can take advantage of translocalmedia practices to circulate their struggles and to leverage supportfrom their geographically dispersed but increasingly connected allies.This chapter explores translocal media practices through a case study of

88 Chapter 4indigenous Oaxacan migrant workers and the powerful social movementsthey have formed across great distances.The Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones BinacionalesThe Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Indigenous Front ofBinational Organizations, FIOB) provides vivid examples of how translocalmedia practices have strengthened the immigrant rights movement in LosAngeles. Indigenous immigrants to the United States from the southernMexican state of Oaxaca founded the FIOB in 1991. Starting in the 1970s,thousands of indigenous Oaxacans migrated to northern Mexico and theUnited States in search of work; currently, about 500,000 of the 3.5 millionOaxacan-born people live outside their home state. 2 The FIOB was createdto provide a transnational structure for indigenous communities, splitbetween Oaxaca and the United States, to better organize around theirneeds and advocate for resources. As FIOB communications director, BertaRodr í guez Santos, states:FIOB has approximately 5,000 accredited members in both Mexico and the UnitedStates. FIOB members come from various ethnic groups including Mixtecos fromOaxaca and Guerrero, Zapotecos, Triquis, Mixes, Chatinos, Zoques from Oaxaca,and Pur é pechas from Michoac á n. The members are organized into community committeesin the Mixteca, Central Valleys, and Isthmus regions of Oaxaca as well asin Mexico City, Estado de M é xico, and Baja California. FIOB is also present in LosAngeles, Fresno, Santa Mar í a, Greenfield, Hollister, San Diego, Santa Rosa, andMerced, California. Support groups can be found in the states of Oregon, New York,Arizona, and Washington as well. 3Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, indigenous Mexican academicswho work with the FIOB, have done extensive work on emergenttransnational civil society among indigenous migrants. They have alsodescribed the importance of translocal media. For example, the newspaperEl Oaxaque ñ o , first published in 1999, is produced and distributed binationally,in both Oaxaca and Los Angeles, with a twice weekly print run of35,000 copies. The paper reports on everything from “ local village conflictsand the campaign to block construction of a McDonald ’ s on the mainsquare in Oaxaca City, to the binational activities of hometown associations(HTAs) and California-focused coalition building for immigrants ’right to obtain driver licenses and against cutbacks in health services. ” 4

APPO-LA 89Fox and Rivera-Salgado also write about the radio program produced byFIOB, Nuestro Foro (Our Forum), which aired for a time on KFCF 88.1FMin Fresno, and they highlight El Tequio magazine, which carries stories ofactivism across the U.S.-Mexico border. They show that “ migrant-run massmedia also report systematically on other community initiatives [and] theypromote ‘ virtuous circles ’ of institution building within indigenous migrantcivil society. ” 5 Migrant-run mass media help sustain what Fox and Rivera-Salgado call cultural citizenship, or citizenship beyond the nation-state.Cultural citizenship may be centered on cultural, ethnic, gender, or classidentities. Fox and Rivera-Salgado also emphasize the importance of transnationalcommunity, which for them means binational identity sustainedover time, and focus intensely on translocal community citizenship, or“ the process through which indigenous migrants are becoming activemembers of both their communities of settlement and their communitiesof origin. ” 6The dynamics they describe operate in many migrant communities,not only the Oaxacan indigenous migrant groups they work most closelywith. Migration scholars in recent years have emphasized that cheaperair travel and increased access to communications allow migrants toremain better connected to their communities of origin. 7 Financialremittances sent home by migrant workers have become increasinglyimportant to local, regional, and national economies. Ideas, practices,and norms also circulate more quickly and extensively than ever beforewithin dispersed communities, in a process that sociologists refer to associal remittances. 8Overall, transnational dynamics in the immigrant rights movement arequite complex. On the one hand, migrant workers are by definition transnational(or translocal). They often participate in transnational civicengagement through self-organized social processes such as hometownassociations (HTAs). 9 HTAs organize community-based development projects,and to do so they readily adopt new information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) for ongoing discussion, decision making, and persistentcontact. For example, many HTAs take advantage of the Sprint-Nextelnetwork ’ s push-to-talk feature, which allows low-cost real-time audiostreaming between the United States and Mexico during transnational HTAassemblies. 10 At the same time, undocumented immigrants face constraintson transnational forms of social and political participation because it is

90 Chapter 4difficult for them to move back and forth across borders. While those withlegal status are sometimes able to travel between places, those without theappropriate papers are able to visit their hometowns far less frequentlythan they desire (although some do make the voyage occasionally). 11 Inaddition, increased border enforcement since the 1990s has made it moredifficult for migrant workers to move back and forth. This has disruptedprevious patterns of translocal citizenship. At the same time, local hometownnewspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets have come online, whilesocial media have become more widespread. This produces new possibilitiesfor migrant workers to maintain continual connection to family, political,and cultural life in their hometowns. 12 The growing popularity of livevideochat services, especially Skype and Oovoo (and, more recently, GoogleHangouts), also modifies the dynamics of family separation and translocalcommunity.As an example of how media practices are used to support translocalcommunity citizenship, Fox and Rivera-Salgado recount how Nahuamigrants from the Mexican state of Guerrero organized a successful campaignto block the construction of a hydroelectric dam in 1991. The damwould have resulted in the destruction of their villages, the displacementof 40,000 people, submersion of an important ecosystem, and the loss ofa major archaeological site in the Alto Balsas Valley. The campaign capitalizedon the upcoming quincentennial of the Spanish Conquest to mobilizefunds, social networks, and media attention. Protest participants purchasedvideo cameras (at the time, bulky shoulder-mounted VHS cameras)to document their direct actions. As Fox and Rivera-Salgado describethe scene,This tactic not only served to inform paisanos [countrymen] in the United States, italso inaugurated what became the Mexican indigenous movement ’ s now widespreaduse of video to deter police violence. Migrant protests in California also drewthe attention of Spanish-language television, which led to the first TV coverage ofthe Alto Balsas movement within Mexico itself. 13The FIOB ’ s use of video technology in the early 1990s contributed toan important policy outcome. It also demonstrated the feasibility ofgaining increased visibility for movement-produced media on commercialTV networks. This case also illustrates how movement media texts sometimesserve multiple functions: when picked up for broadcast, they canreach larger audiences; at the same time, they circulate among family,

APPO-LA 91friendship, and hometown networks in ongoing practices of translocalcommunity citizenship.Alongside video activism, the FIOB has a long history of media productionacross multiple platforms. In 1991 the FIOB began publication of anewspaper called Puya Mixteca , and in 1995 the organization inaugurateda radio show, La Hora Mixteca (The Mixteca Hour), which was broadcastacross the San Joaquin Valley. Soon after it began to coproduce anothershow, Nuestro Foro (Our Forum), on KFCF 88.1. 14 The FIOB also helped setup two community radio stations in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. 15 Asearly as 1997, the FIOB had a web presence at http://fiob.org , establishedwith help from La Neta, a Mexican NGO that is part of the internationalAssociation for Progressive Communications. La Neta also helped networkthe Zapatista communities during the 1990s. 16Despite its strong history of media and technology use, as an explicitlybinational organization that organizes indigenous migrant workers,both in Los Angeles and in their communities of origin, the FIOBfaces severe digital access challenges. ICT access levels in rural Oaxaca,where many of the HTAs operate, are much lower than among even themost excluded populations of urban Los Angeles. As one FIOB staffmember emphasized, many of the communities they work with haveno electricity. 17 In this context, FIOB organizers see the Internet primarilyas a resource for movement leadership and allies rather than formembers:Definitely the leaders and people that aren ’ t at the base, because unfortunately,Oaxaca is the third poorest state in Mexico, so it ’ s hard in a village up in the Sierrasto have access to Internet. But sometimes when they come to the local city there,the FIOB members show them, hey, this is what we have. They might not be ableto fully access it all the time, but they know it ’ s out there because when they cometo our meetings, when we have a binational meeting, we show them the Internet:this is how it works, this is where everything is at. But not everyone has access toit; it ’ s actually for others, friends and allies of the Frente, to know our work. Andalso to make a political stand that we are here as indigenous people, there ’ s anindigenous organization that does all this work. 18For FIOB staff, the fact that their membership is not online does notdiminish the importance of the Internet as a tool for information circulationand mobilization. Like many organizations, they use the Internetextensively in their work. FIOB staff spend much of each day online,

92 Chapter 4communicating across their network, circulating key information, andworking on strategy and campaigns. At the same time, they have developedother forms of media to reach their digitally excluded base. For example,in 2000 the FIOB began production of a TV show called El Despertar Indigena(Indigenous Awakening) for Fresno ’ s KNXT. In 2003 it began a coproductionpartnership with filmmaker Yolanda Cruz, who made thedocumentaries Mujeres Que Se Organizan Avanzan (Women Who OrganizeMake Progress), Sue ñ os Binacionales (Binational Dreams), and 2501 Migrants:A Journey (figure 4.2). Cruz continues to create documentaries about theFIOB and the indigenous communities that constitute its base, using participatoryvideo methods to involve the communities in the filmmakingprocess. 19Figure 4.2Promotional image for the film 2,501 Migrants , by Yolanda Cruz.Source: Photo by Johnny Simmons for Petate.org.The FIOB and its allies, who have a long history of using VHS forsocial movement ends, are now turning to web video for new translocalmovement media practices. They deploy a broad range of media, in -cluding web videos, theatrical documentary releases, and community

APPO-LA 93screenings, as well as radio, print, popular theater, and other media, tocreate a movement media “ world ” with space for participation bytheir social base. 20 In other words, the FIOB engages in transmedia organizing.These daily communication practices help inscribe indigenousidentities across media platforms and articulate translocal communitycitizenship.Of course, migrant indigenous communities also use digital media toolsmore casually and personally, to share records of daily life and culturalevents with friends, family, and people in their home towns. One interviewee,a staff member at FIOB, remarked that Oaxacan HTA memberscommunicate extensively through YouTube by uploading videos of musicalevents, celebrations of saints ’ days, funerals, and other cultural activities,then sending links by email to family and friends:In my community, it started probably in what, 2004, 2003? We started seeing allthese events, whatever was happening back home. Somebody ’ s funeral, they wouldput it there, you could go see it. Or if something happened here, a patron saint ’ sparty or celebration, they would put it on the YouTube and the people back homewould, you kind of know now that you go on YouTube and you find it. My mom,she doesn ’ t know how to read and write. So she says, hey, can you go to the computerand put the pueblo stuff on there? And I say, “ Sure, let ’ s put it on! ” So she’llhave other comadres call and say, hey, can you tell [your daughter] to teach me howto get into our webpage? So it ’ s really interesting that YouTube is a way to maintain,to inform and gossip on your HTA.Q When was the first time you saw something like that? Or, what was the first thingthat you saw?Oh, the parties! … Well, I shouldn ’ t call them parties. They ’ re celebrations of thesaint. So if someone donated a cow to feed the community, a certain band showedup to do their guelaguetza [celebration of indigenous culture] in the community, itwould be put on the YouTube. 21As can be seen in this interview, migrant communities often use socialmedia to reproduce binational and translocal identities. However, it wouldbe an oversimplification to suggest that the social web has introducedradically new tools, or has completely transformed the communicationpractices of the FIOB and the HTAs. The same interviewee noted thatessentially the same practice — videotaping and sharing recordings of keyfamily and cultural events across borders — was formerly done using VHScamcorders and sending tapes through the mail. In fact, this practice stillexists, alongside video sharing via the Internet:

94 Chapter 4I remember those huge video cameras when they first came out. Everybody had oneto document all their events, all of the meetings.Q At that time would they send the tapes to each other? Like between here and there inthe mail?Yeah. And they still do now, some. Like quincea ñ eras . For example, my sister ’ s onein the United States was completely this big thing, and it was sent to all my familyin Mexico. So when something happens, a wedding happens there, everybody getsa copy here. 22The experience of this FIOB staff member is not unique. As in othercommunities, for Oaxacan migrants, audiovisual skills often developthrough the desire to document and share life experiences and popularcultural events such as weddings, quincea ñ eras , guelaguetzas , and funerals.Daily community media practices thus accumulate over time to shape newpathways through the changing media ecology. These practices might alsobe read as everyday forms of digital resistance against the erasure of translocalcommunity citizenship. 23 In times of social crisis, these same mediaskills are used for transmedia organizing. It is the FIOB ’ s regular use ofdigital video to circulate cultural practices, combined with the organization’ s long history of using video as a tool for struggle, that has proveddecisive for their members ’ effective use of digital video during momentsof translocal mobilization.The Cultural and Political Logic of the TequioSome immigrant rights activists use the term horizontalism , adopted fromArgentine social movements, to talk about organizing in ways that aredirectly democratic, nonhierarchical, rooted in consensus decision making,and consciously cultivate shared leadership. 24 Many movement groups useother terms to refer to similar directly democratic decisionmaking processes,such as popular assemblies. For example, the structure of the FIOBis based on the cultural and political logic of the tequio, an indigenous termfor “ community work for the benefit of all. ” 25 Formally, it could be saidthat the FIOB is a kind of representative democracy, with the membershipelecting officers to three-year terms. However, the overall decision makingprocess is more directly democratic. The FIOB follows indigenous law (Usesand Customs), and makes decisions about goals, strategies, campaigns, andresource allocation after extensive discussion during a general assembly of

APPO-LA 95the FIOB base, rather than by a simple ballot or through representatives.Leadership is also considered accountable to the base, and is responsiblefor reporting back on organizational activities, keeping members informedabout the work of the FIOB, and bringing key decisions back to theassembly. 26For some of the FIOB organizers I talked to, the idea of separating mediawork from other aspects of organizing made little sense. They describedmedia making as a supporting activity that ends up “ just happening, ”based on community members and supporters stepping up whennecessary:I think one quality of the FIOB actually for being indigenous … is the fact thateverybody does everything. As far as a strategy on how do we shoot, do outreachthrough the media, independent media, we don ’ t have one. But everything happensbecause we have so many allies. [An ally] will probably write something about themobilization and send it to us. Or somebody else will document the mobilizationand send us pictures. 27The community the FIOB organizes does have members who are consideredto be “ specialists ” in video production. One FIOB intervieweementioned a man who receives regular payment to shoot and producevideos of community events. Thus, it would be inaccurate to assumethat the FIOB has no dedicated movement videographers because theircommunity “ lacks capacity. ” Rather, as a migrant indigenous socialmovement organization, the FIOB draws on existing community normsto operate with a cultural structure of decision making that is morehorizontal than seen in most of the incorporated nonprofit organizationsin the immigrant rights movement. Hiring a videographer todocument social movement activity seems unnecessary, because thiswork will be done by community members who have those skills, withinthe ethic of the tequio . Yet the FIOB also makes decisions to investresources in higher-production-value media projects, and invites specificmedia-makers to work more closely with them, when it makes senseto do so.APPO-LAThis section explores how the translocal media practices used by theFIOB and by Oaxacan migrant workers in Los Angeles, discussed in the

96 Chapter 4previous section, enable transmedia organizing among indigenousmigrant workers who otherwise have very limited access to digital mediatools and skills. The example I focus on is a movement group called theAsociaci ó n Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca de Los Angeles (APPO-LA).This group was born out of political violence, electoral fraud, and indigenousresistance.Ulises Ruiz Ort í z, governor of Oaxaca, took office in 2004 following aquestionable electoral victory. 28 By June 2006, a mass mobilization by theOaxacan Teachers ’ Union against job cuts had been joined by other unions,as well as by indigenous, women ’ s, student, and other groups, in a generalstrike and occupation of the central plaza of Oaxaca City. The movementcoalesced around the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO),and launched demands for, first, Ort í z ’ s resignation, and second, that aconstituent assembly be called to rewrite the state constitution. 29 In August2006, at the end of a women ’ s strike and a cacerolazo (a march accompaniedby the beating of pots and pans) involving some 20,000 participants,Oaxacan women in the movement leadership entered and took control ofthe studios of Channel 9 at the Oaxacan Radio and Television Corporation.They also occupied several commercial radio stations. The state governmentresponded by expelling activists from the stations, and so themovement generalized the media insurrection, seizing commercial TV andradio stations across the state. 30 Police attempts to invade and shut downbroadcasts by “ Radio APPO ” were met with determined resistance from ablockade of several thousand people, who fought a pitched battle thatlasted for days. The battle ended with the police in retreat and the radiostation still in the hands of the movement. This series of events, nowreferred to as the toma de los medios (taking of the media), inspired socialmovements and media activists around the world, and increased the visibilityof media infrastructure as a key space of contestation for Oaxacanactivists both in Oaxaca and in Los Angeles. The toma is documented inthe film Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (A Little Bit of So Much Truth) and inThe Taking of the Media in Oaxaca, two films that were screened widelyaround the world at events organized by activists from the globaljustice movement (see La Toma de Los Medios en Oaxaca , http://vimeo.com/6729709 ). Traditional forms of social movement media, such as feature-lengthdocumentary films, thus continue to serve as key vehicles for

APPO-LA 97the global circulation of media strategies and tactics, beside newer transmediaorganizing practices.As the struggle in Oaxaca City intensified, the state government escalatedits tactics and began to employ armed gunmen to attack the APPO.On October 27, 2006, New York City Indymedia video activist, BradleyRoland Will, was shot and killed in Oaxaca City, in the neighborhood ofSanta Luc í a del Camino, while filming an armed attack by undercoverstate police. 31 Will ’ s death, although only one in a string of politicalmurders that occurred during the 2006 struggles, resulted in greatlyincreased international attention to the mobilizations in Oaxaca. At leasttwenty-six Oaxacan activists were murdered (including Jos é Alberto L ó pezBernal, Emilio Alonso Fabi á n, Fidel S á nchez Garc í a, and Esteban L ó pezZurita), with many more detained and disappeared during this mobilizationwave. 32Figure 4.3Bradley Roland Will.Source: The Indypendent.

98 Chapter 4I had worked with Will in 2003 as part of an Indymedia video collectivethat produced The Miami Model, a participatory documentary about theFree Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the gentrification of Miami, andthe brutal police repression of the 2003 anti-FTAA protests. 33 SinceBrad Will was connected to the global Indymedia network, his murderbrought the situation in Oaxaca into the consciousness of the globaljustice movement, and since he was a U.S. citizen, the story made internationalnews.In Los Angeles, the FIOB organized a series of protests and actionsagainst the increasingly violent repression of the movement, first bythe Oaxacan state government and later by the Mexican federal forces.APPO-LA imaginatively renewed the tradition of Las Posadas , a nine-daypre-Christmas celebration in Mexico in which groups of friends andfamily walk together to other community members ’ houses, playingmusic and singing carols and in return being offered hospitality in theform of food and drink. On December 16, 2006, the APPO-LA organizedan APPOsada at the church of St. Cecilia in Santa Monica. The eventwas attended by around three hundred people, who gathered to celebrateresistance against the slayings in Oaxaca City. The event raisedthousands of dollars, which went to support the movement in Oaxaca.At the height of APPO-LA mobilizations, the Koreatown ImmigrantWorkers Alliance (KIWA) lent its sound system and video projector tothe FIOB. One of KIWA ’ s staff was Oaxacan and had spent considerabletime organizing the Oaxacan community in the Koreatown area. Videoscreenings of material from Oaxaca (much of it shot by the video collectivesMal de Ojo and Indymedia Oaxaca) became regular eventsduring the winter of 2006 and the spring of 2007, with screenings heldat KIWA offices in the evenings and in front of the Mexican Consulatein the northwest corner of MacArthur Park.At one such gathering I attended, along with forty to fifty other people,several musical groups and a troupe of Aztec dancers performed. Peoplebought tamales and atole (a hot, hearty drink) from FIOB members, whowere selling them to raise funds to send to the movement assembly inOaxaca City. I helped the event organizers hang signs and banners aroundthe space, set up crosses on the ground to signify those killed in politicalviolence, and set up KIWA ’ s video projector and screen. One of the organizersplaced a mobile phone call to an activist in Oaxaca and amplified the

APPO-LA 99ensuing conversation through the sound system. The audience was thenshown a video from the previous day ’ s mass march of some 20,000 peoplein Oaxaca City. One FIOB interviewee, who was also a key organizer of theAPPO-LA, described these media practices as follows:We don ’ t document everything because we do so many things, but that mobilizationthat I was talking to you about on November 11, we got video. I actually have thevideo how they leave, and show up to Oaxaca City. And the pictures, I could sharewith the members here. 34During this time, along with other allies from the global justicemovement, I worked closely with activists from KIWA and the FIOB tosupport the APPO-LA ’ s media work. We created a dedicated website forAPPO-LA, built using the free/libre open-source content managementsystem Wordpress, with graphics created by a designer from Oaxaca City.I recall coordinating in real time with Oaxacan activists via Internetrelay chat (IRC) rooms on the irc.indymedia.org servers. Tech activistsfrom around the world gathered there regularly, and worked especiallyhard to maintain servers that mirrored a live audio stream from the keyAPPO radio station. We also set up local phone numbers in several citiesso that callers could listen to the radio stream on their (usually prepaid,non-Internet-enabled) phones. During one mobilization, we downloadedphotographs of violent repression in Oaxaca from Indymedia Oaxacaand other sites (such as the blog El Enemigo Com ú n ), then printed thephotographs and taped them to the gates of the Mexican embassy.Similar actions occurred outside Mexican embassies and consulatesaround the United States, especially in New York, Los Angeles, Houston,and Portland, and around the world.The image in figure 4.4 was taken during a mobilization on the northernedge of MacArthur Park, across the street from the Mexican consulate inLos Angeles. The sign reads “ Ulises, fascist, assassin of journalists. ” At thesame mobilization, organizers used a projector to show videos producedby the FIOB and its allies (e.g., Sue ñ os Binacionales), as well as raw footagefrom recent protests in Oaxaca City, often shot just hours or days before.Although the mobilizations did not directly force Governor Ul í ses RuizOrt í z from power, on October 14, 2009, the Mexican Supreme Court foundOrt í z “ culpable for the human rights violations that occurred in Oaxaca asa result of teacher protests and political and social unrest in May 2006 –January 2007 as well as July of 2008. ” 35

100 Chapter 4Figure 4.4APPO-LA protest at the Mexican consulate.Source: Photo by pseudonymous poster Rogue Gringo, posted to L.A. Indymedia athttp://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/186082.php .Translocal Media Practices: ConclusionsThis chapter has explored how translocal media practices developed byOaxacan migrants were deployed during a translocal mobilization betweenOaxaca City and Los Angeles. Translocal media practices do not take placeexclusively online. Instead, community members and allied activists spreadmedia texts across platforms, as well as into offline (‘ real-world ’) spaces.At the same time, while it is true that digital media literacy enables newexpressions of translocal citizenship, earlier media practices provide an

APPO-LA 101important foundation. Everyday forms of media use (such as VHS recordingof cultural events) by transnational Oaxacan migrant indigenous communitiesserve as important precursors to, if not a precondition for, theeffective use of new digital media tools during key moments in the mobilizations.This is especially important in the context of a community thathas one of the lowest general levels of Internet access among all demographicgroups in the United States. The immigrant rights movement isbest able to use digital media when the base of a particular movementgroup is already familiar with the tools and practices of network culture. 36For indigenous migrant workers, this familiarity evolves out of the mediapractices of translocal community citizenship.Within the APPO-LA, everyday video sharing by indigenous migrantworkers laid the groundwork for transmedia organizing. For other movementorganizations, media-making must be fostered in other ways. Thenext chapter explores approaches that worker centers are taking to developa praxis of critical digital media literacy among low-wage immigrantworkers in Los Angeles.

Figure 5.1VozMob (Voces M ó viles / Mobile Voices).Source: Images from VozMob.net, collage by author.

5 Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical DigitalMedia LiteracyIt is June 2010. We ’ ve been driving for fourteen hours, and our van isstarting to feel a bit cramped. Our route from Los Angeles to Detroit hastaken us an extra 150 miles out of the way to avoid passing through thenorthwest corner of Arizona, where we ’ ve heard there are immigrationcheckpoints on the I-15. The Popular Communication Team from theInstituto de Educaci ó n Popular del Sur de California (the Institute ofPopular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA), comprised of daylaborers, household workers, and high school students, supported by acommunity organizer, project coordinator, and volunteers from the MobileVoices (VozMob) project, 1 is on a trip to the Allied Media Conference(AMC), 2 back to back with the United States Social Forum (USSF). The AMCis focused on media-makers and cultural workers, and will be attended byabout 1,500 people. The USSF is a social movement megaconference; it willdraw more than 30,000 activists, especially those from base-building organizationsand those who work with low-income communities of color,from all across the country and around the world. When we get to Detroit,we ’ ll be running a series of popular education workshops for more thanone hundred grassroots activists. In our workshops, we ’ ll share the storyof the VozMob project, critically analyze mass media coverage of day laborers,and conduct hands-on small-group training sessions on how to blogfrom inexpensive mobile phones. Our workshops are one small part of amassive cross-movement convergence.Our group is a bit overwhelmed by it all, but not too much so — afterall, we ’ ve conducted similar workshops many times before over the pasttwo years. The Popular Communication Team has provided VozMob workshopsto day laborers at five Day Labor Centers around Los Angeles, forstudents and professors at the University of Southern California, and in an

104 Chapter 5online webinar with remote participants from the Humanities, Arts, Sciences,and Technology Advanced Collaborative (HASTAC) Digital Mediaand Learning Network, underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation. 3We ’ ve rented a shared house for the two weeks we ’ ll be in Detroit.As soon as we arrive, we scramble to set up a computer and video projector,connect to the neighbor ’ s wifi, and start projecting a live streamof a World Cup game on the wall. Over the course of the AMC and theUSSF conferences, our house becomes a welcome resting place from theelevated energy of the daily combination of workshops, meetings, streetmarches, presentations, and interviews. We share cooking and exchangerecipes; Manuel Mancia ’ s Salvadoran chimol salsa, purple and white, withradishes, cilantro, tomatoes, and onions, is a huge hit. After dinner oneevening, Manuel demonstrates a streaming Internet radio station he anda friend have created using a hosted service, and Madelou shows ushow she uses the free audio editing software Audacity to edit clips forEnfoque Latino , a radio show she now volunteers with on local Pacificaaffiliate KPFK.The AMC and USSF are important convenings. They both host deepstrategy sessions that inform the evolution of some of the most powerfulsocial movement networks, campaigns, and coalitions to emerge in theUnited States in decades. At these events, as at any conference or largegathering, much of the most valuable work takes place not during the bigplenary sessions but in the margins. A mix of formal and informal learning,structured workshops, and peer-to-peer skill sharing takes place, includingin the realm of transmedia organizing. Our VozMob group shares mediaskills through workshops but also informally, along with cooking recipes;this is true for many social movement participants. People build criticaldigital media literacy through both formal and informal processes: howto record and edit photo, video, and audio content, how to talk to thepress, how to use social media, how to critically analyze mass media stories,how to remix commercials, how to effectively integrate new tools withtried-and-true organizing techniques, and so on.Both formal and informal media skill-sharing efforts are important,because critical digital media literacy is a fundamental precondition fortransmedia organizing. As we have seen, transmedia organizing takesadvantage of changes in the media ecology to amplify social movementvoices. Yet which voices get to speak? On the one hand, more people have

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 105access to media-making tools and skills now than ever before in humanhistory. On the other, access remains deeply structured along intersectinglines of class, race, gender, age, and geography. Indeed, as transmediaorganizing emerges as a crucial strategy for social movements, digitalinequality is more troublesome than ever. Digital inequality may have agrowing impact on the trajectory of social movements as transmedia organizingbecomes increasingly important to the circulation of struggles, theformation of movement identity, and the transformation of public consciousness.The immigrant rights movement, especially, operates in acontext of radically unequal access to digital media tools and skills. Adetailed review of statistics on digital inequality is beyond the scope of thisbook; here it is enough to point out that multiple studies, conductedat neighborhood, city, state, and federal levels, find that foreign-born,Spanish-speaking, low-wage immigrant workers have less access to digitalmedia tools, skills, and connectivity than any other group of people in theUnited States. 4 Yet at the same time, the immigrant rights movement usesdigital media in innovative ways. Community organizers are taking stepsto integrate critical digital media literacy into their daily work. This chapterbegins by grounding our understanding of critical digital media literacy inPaolo Freire ’ s ideas about popular education. I then trace the developmentof a praxis of critical digital media literacy within the immigrant rightsmovement in L.A.Core Concepts: Praxis, Popular Education, and Critical Digital MediaLiteracyTo understand how immigrant rights activists use digital media, it is importantto discuss the concept of praxis . IDEPSCA, the community-basedorganization (CBO) that is the home of the VozMob group (described inthis chapter ’ s introduction), uses the term to describe its approach to communityorganizing. For IDEPSCA, whose motto is “ Reading reality to writehistory, ” praxis denotes an iterative process whereby liberatory theory isused to inform action, which changes reality. This, in turn, requiresthe modification of both theory and action to reflect and reshape thenew reality. 5Praxis originates in the ancient Greek term meaning “ practical knowledgefor action. ” In the 1970s it was widely popularized by radical educator,

106 Chapter 5organizer, and (post-dictatorship) Brazilian minister of education PaoloFreire. Freire is perhaps best known for his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed ,in which he opposed what he called the “ banking model ” of education,or the one-way transmission of knowledge from educator to student, andposited instead a practice of critical pedagogy. He encouraged educators topose problems, creating space for learners to build shared critical consciousness,plan for action, and develop agency. Freire defined praxis as“ reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. ” 6 LatinAmerican popular educators, using the methods of critical pedagogy andpraxis, taught hundreds of thousands of rural peasants and urban poorhow to read and write while also working together to expose oppressionand question unjust power relationships. For popular educators, literacy isa key tool that can enable oppressed individuals to become subjectswho are able to act on the world and transform their conditions ofoppression. 7Many popular educators linked to Latin American liberation movementsfled U.S.-backed state and paramilitary repression in the 1970s and1980s; some ended up in the United States, and many came to Los Angeles. 8Popular education had already long played a role in U.S. social movements,from labor organizing to the civil rights movement and beyond. Forexample, the Highlander Research and Education Center, in New Market,Tennessee, had a history of using popular education to provide training ingrassroots organizing and leadership. 9 Project South, based in Atlanta,Georgia, has used popular education since 1986 to organize young peoplein the struggle against poverty, violence, and racial injustice. 10 The traditionof popular education that emerged from the context of the U.S. civilrights movement, bolstered by a new wave of people, ideas, and practicesfrom Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, thus informs present-daysocial movements in Los Angeles. 11While these histories provide important grounding, at the same time,the changed media ecology requires new approaches to popular education.If print literacy was the primary tool of liberatory pedagogy duringthe era of popular struggle against the centralized power of authoritarianLatin American nation-states, critical digital media literacy assumes centralimportance as a tool of liberation against the networks of corporateand state power in the information society. 12 This may seem selfevident.Yet if we take the long view, the present moment is only the

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 107beginning of the growth of critical digital media literacy. The tools ofaudiovisual production and distribution are being spread, if unevenly,across an ever-growing proportion of the population. The history of printliteracy offers clues to what this will mean for social movements. Forexample, in “ The Growth of the Reading Public ” and “ The Growth of thePopular Press ” in The Long Revolution , as in his work on television,Raymond Williams draws evidence from a wide range of sources to arguefor the strong social impact of the spread of print literacy. 13 He also analyzesthe class needs fulfilled by the expansion of print literacy. Initially,Williams writes, literacy was the province of the church and the aristocracy,or a small group of elites. The growth of commerce and of a middleclass in the 1800s required an expansion of access to literacy to meet thedemands of accurate accounting and to increase the exchange of tradeknowledge. Higher literacy rates provided fertile ground for new forms ofliterature and for the growth of reading publics, which came to see themselvesas political actors. Nick Dyer-Witheford takes a similar historicalapproach, but uses the lens of critical political economy of communicationto analyze the rise of digital literacy. He argues that capital requiresan ever-increasing number of knowledge and information workers, whomust be trained and given access to advanced information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs). In addition, the production of ICTs as masscommodities for profit impels their diffusion to the widest possible consumerbase. 14 However, until very recently, the structure of the globaleconomy limited advanced ICT tools and skills to the 1/3 world (residentsof the wealthiest countries, plus local elites in the global south. 15 Earlier,powerful computers were available only to nation-states, multinationalfirms, and large institutions. Now they are pushed out for home use inever-greater numbers. In the new millennium, Dyer-Witheford writes, thediffusion of ICTs took hold on a global scale. Even more than the personalcomputer, the arrival of mobile telephony further extended this logic.Networked ICTs are now, for the first time, in the hands of the majorityof the planet ’ s population.As Dyer-Witheford suggests, the present moment is the beginning of ahistoric expansion of media-making skills. Everyday people are nowmaking media, far beyond the small class of cultural producers who dominatedthe arts of audiovisual manipulation until the end of the twentiethcentury. 16 Indeed, a certain degree of digital media literacy is increasingly

108 Chapter 5a basic requirement for participation in society. In many ways, the growingubiquity of social media works in favor of social movements. The spreadof print literacy laid the groundwork for the revolutions of the new middleclass against the old aristocracies. The spread of critical digital media literacy— the ability to analyze, produce, remix, and circulate multimedia texts,not just consume them — may not determine a new wave of social transformation,but it is certainly a key enabling factor.At the same time, however, the cultural industries continue to retainthe lion ’ s share of power over the creation and circulation of symbolsand ideas. These industries, increasingly globalized, have also movedrapidly to monetize social media, transforming what Manuel Castellscalls mass self-communication 17 into profitable platforms and services.The owners of social networking sites extract free labor from their users 18and engage in both corporate data mining and state-backed surveillanceof social movement activity. 19 Although social movements in communitiesof color have long been targeted by extensive state surveillance andsystematic disruption, as in the infamous COINTELPRO program, 20 thewidespread adoption of ICTs has spawned new and unprecedented surveillancethreats. In 2013, the extent of the surveillance state becomethe subject of widespread debate when whistleblower Edward Snowdenand journalist Glenn Greenwald released hitherto undisclosed informationproving the extent of collaboration between the U.S. NationalSecurity Agency (NSA) and the largest web companies through PRISMand other massive data gathering programs. 21 For these and otherreasons, it would be a mistake to assume that digital media literacyalone produces critical consciousness or supports the growth of liberatorysocial movements. On the contrary, participation in Internet cultureall too frequently feeds patriarchy, heteronormativity, and racism.Without conscious intervention by organizers, educators, and criticalthinkers, people use digital media literacy to reproduce all manner ofhistorical and structural inequalities. 22Recently, the MacArthur Foundation ’ s Digital Media and Learning initiative,and the associated conference series and network, have broughtsustained scholarly attention to the importance of digital media literacy.A network of scholars engaged in ethnographic fieldwork and surveys ofteenagers has developed a growing body of work to characterize the waysthat digital literacies develop and circulate. For example, Henry Jenkins

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 109and co-authors have identified low barriers to participation, a supportivecommunity, and informal mentorship as key characteristics of a participatoryculture. They also note a persistent “ participation gap, ” described as“ unequal access to opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge. ” 23Mizuko Ito and coauthors explore the ways that digital media literacy isacquired through peer networks and through social practices of “ hangingout, messing around, and geeking out. ” 24 Samuel Craig Watkins found thatyoung people increasingly access media “ anytime, anywhere. ” He notesthat they struggle to overcome “ digital gates ” that reinforce race and classinequality, and his work explores youth ’ s use of social media to organizearound the 2008 elections. 25These ideas also inform a new set of pedagogical interventions, as scholarsworking with the digital media and learning network develop approachesthat are increasingly deployed both by existing institutions (such asschools, libraries, and museums) and in new digital learning spaces. Thiswork is quite valuable and has an important role to play in pushing educatorsand institutions toward more flexibility. At the same time, most(although certainly not all) research conducted under the aegis of theMacArthur Foundation ’ s Digital Media and Learning initiative focuses ona broad cross section of teenagers, with less attention to youth who arealready involved in transformative social movements. 26 The model oflearning and of civic engagement is primarily individualized, rather thanfocused on collective action. Broadly speaking, this framework emphasizesthe individual acquisition of technical skills and social capital rather thanthe development of either a critical consciousness or a social movementidentity. Unsurprisingly, within the formal educational system there isactive resistance to the idea that it is important for young learners todevelop a critical consciousness, much less participate in social movements.Existing community-based media literacy organizations, some ofwhich have decades of experience, strong ties to community organizing,and active roles in social movement networks, are often marginalizedwithin the digital media and learning initiative ’ s discourse, funding, andproject implementation.Within social movements, the conversation is quite different. Ratherthan assume that the acquisition of digital media literacy will guide usunerringly toward a more just and sustainable world, savvy organizersunderstand the importance of a praxis of critical digital media literacy . This

110 Chapter 5means that critical digital media literacy can be taught, learned, and sharedin ways directly linked to both critical analysis and community organizing.Paolo Freire urged popular educators to teach print literacy using texts thatsimultaneously developed critical consciousness and an awareness ofhuman rights. This was done through print literacy (reading and writing)workshops embedded in grassroots social movements. For example, theBrazilian Landless Workers ’ Movement (Movimento dos TrabalhadoresSem Terra) teaches peasants to read and write using the Brazilian constitution,which includes a section that guarantees land to those who productivelyuse it. They do this in the context of a movement that has successfullyacquired millions of acres of land previously unused by large landowners,now productively farmed by thousands of formerly landless families. 27 Insimilar fashion, some organizers in L.A. are developing a praxis of criticaldigital media literacy grounded in the experiences of the immigrant rightsmovement. Worker centers are key sites for this work.Worker Centers and the Praxis of Critical Digital Media LiteracyIn the introduction to this book, I described the rise of worker centers aspart of the broader transformation of the labor movement. Vanessa Taitand Janice Fine have both written excellent accounts of the growth of theworker center model, in which community organizing is being rewired forintersectional liberation strategies. 28 Worker centers are geographicallyfocused, tightly linked to their communities, and engage in cultural work,as well as in organizing, policy, and electoral strategies. Advocating forworkers ’ rights remains at the core of what worker centers do, but organizingworkers into unions has become only one part of a larger nexus ofintersectional strategies that link together land use and gentrificationbattles, LGBTQ rights and gender justice, education and health, environmentaljustice, the prison system, and immigration rights. 29 Los Angeles isan important location in the history of the worker center model. 30 In thelate 1990s and early 2000s, worker centers in L.A. won a series of importantvictories: the Garment Worker Center (GWC) won a major settlementagainst the clothing label Forever 21; the Koreatown Immigrant WorkersAlliance (KIWA) helped win significant gains for sweatshop, restaurant,hotel, and supermarket workers; 31 and IDEPSCA made advances in

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 111education reform and day labor organizing. Worker centers have alsostruggled to increase affordable housing, gain regularization for undocumentedpeople, maintain affirmative action, raise the minimum wage, andincrease access to public transportation, as well as fight for LGBTQ rights.During the seven years I lived in Los Angeles, I spent time at each of theseorganizations. At IDEPSCA, GWC, and KIWA, I organized, conducted, ortook part in digital media workshops with staff members, organizers, volunteers,workers, and community members. I also interviewed key staffand members at each center about the way they saw media work in relationto community organizing. This section draws on my experience andthese interviews to explore the praxis of critical digital media literacy inL.A. worker centers.The Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA)IDEPSCA uses popular education to educate and organize low-incomeimmigrant families from Mexico and Central America. Established twodecades ago during a struggle for better schools in Pasadena, by 2013IDEPSCA had grown and expanded to a number of organizing projectsacross the city. IDEPSCA has a contract with the City of Los Angeles tooperate six Day Labor Centers; runs a K – 6 children ’ s educational programcalled Aprendamos (We Learn); trains community health promotoras (promoters),who provide basic health care and education; created a GreenGardeners certification program and a household cleaning co-op calledMagic Cleaners; provides ESL and Spanish literacy classes for adults in aprogram called La Escuelita de La Comunidad ; and has a youth organizingcomponent called Teens In Action, among other programs. IDEPSCA alsoacts as a key node in national networks. It is an anchor organization forthe National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the NationalDomestic Workers ’ Alliance (NDWA), and the Media Action GrassrootsNetwork (MAG-Net).From 2007 to 2010 I volunteered on a weekly basis for IDEPSCA ’ spopular communication project. During that time I also interviewed anumber of IDEPSCA staff, volunteers, and workers. Organizers fromIDEPSCA described their long-term efforts to develop comunicaci ó n popul á r(popular communication) capacity among their base of low-wage immigrantworkers. They had many years of experience working with day

112 Chapter 5laborers and domestic workers to create and distribute their own media,including several radio and audio projects, video projects, and a newspapercalled Jornada XXII . One IDEPSCA staff member had a long history of usingpopular communication in social movement struggles in Central Americaduring the late 1970s and 1980s. He described popular communication ashis main activity in those times, during which he worked with a team ofthree other organizers to create a nationwide network of social movementradio, as well as a newspaper that collected and distributed articles bystudents, workers, peasants, and women ’ s organizations throughout Honduras.32 He migrated to the United States as a refugee fleeing right-wingpolitical violence. Once in L.A., he connected with IDEPSCA, and duringthe early days of the organization he helped create a newspaper, a radioprogram, and later a short video documenting the organization ’ s activities.In the mid-2000s, IDEPSCA partnered with the Bay Area Video Coalitionto produce a video titled Neidi ’ s Story. 33IDEPSCA works to provide computers and Internet access to the communityat sites around L.A. The organization ’ s facilities include six computerslocated in the main office in Pico Union, four computers in theHollywood Day Labor Center, and four computers in the Downtown DayLabor Center, among others. It also provides intermittent classes in basiccomputer literacy. Organizers at IDEPSCA are interested in developing thecapacity of their base to critically analyze the mass media, and they run anumber of workshops with this aim. For example, in 2006 they screeneda series of documentaries about the anti-immigrant group the Minutemen,with screenings taking place at their main office, at Day Labor Centers,and at community sites. One organizer said that seeing the way the Minutemenand other anti-immigrant hate groups used the Internet to spreadtheir message and circulate racist depictions of Latin@s filled her with rage,but also inspired her. She wanted to see IDEPSCA ’ s base become digitallyliterate and gain access to ICTs so that they could “ become subjects whospeak, and authors of our own history. ” 34One of the organization ’ s long-term goals is to organize L.A. ’ s 26,000day laborers, using the network of Day Labor Centers and organizingcorners spread throughout the city. They run a streaming radio station outof the Downtown Day Labor Center, and are exploring the possibility ofsetting up low-power FM stations to reach workers on the corners. However,mobile phones are the communication technology that day laborers have

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 113the most access to. By 2006, IDEPSCA organizers had become very interestedin the possibilities of appropriating phones as tools for popularcommunication.VozMob (Voces M ó viles / Mobile Voices)In 2006, as a doctoral student at the University of Southern California ’ sAnnenberg School for Communication & Journalism, I worked withAmanda Garc é s, a community organizer from IDEPSCA, to develop a participatoryresearch project focused on media, organizing, and immigrantrights. In 2007, this project grew to include day laborers, householdworkers, students, and volunteers from IDEPSCA, as well as additionalgraduate students and a faculty member from USC, Fran ç ois Bar. Wechose to focus on researching the potential of mobile phones as amedia production platform, and together we planned, then implemented,a survey of mobile phone use by day laborers at IDEPSCA ’ s Day LaborCenters around the city. We found that nearly 80 percent of day laborershad mobile phones, although half had never used a computer and lessthan a quarter owned a computer. 35 In addition, we worked together toproduce a successful application to the Social Science Research Council ’ s2008 Large Collaborative Grants program, followed by a successful applicationto the MacArthur Foundation – funded HASTAC Digital Media andLearning initiative. We created a community mobile blog at VozMob.net,where several thousand digital stories created by IDEPSCA ’ s communitycan now be found.VozMob (Voces M ó viles / Mobile Voices) has several components,including critical media literacy training, popular education workshops,participatory research, and free/libre software development through participatorydesign. The team continues to produce Jornada XXII , a printnewspaper that contains edited versions of stories initially seeded asposts from mobile phones to VozMob.net. The newspaper comes outseveral times a year and is printed in runs of 10,000 copies that aredistributed throughout L.A. at Day Labor Centers, community spaces,on public transportation, and during mass mobilizations. VozMob participantsalso work with other CBOs. Workers and staff from IDEPSCAhave led VozMob workshops for low-income downtown L.A. residentsfrom the Los Angeles Community Action Network, for youth at theSouthern California Library, and for organizers from across the city and

114 Chapter 5around the country, to highlight just a few examples. VozMob membershave also traveled widely to domestic and international conferences toconduct workshops, training sessions, and presentations. In 2011 theproject won the United Nations World Summit Award for mobile contentin the e-empowerment category. 36In 2013 the VozMob team continued to meet every week at IDEPSCA ’ smain office and spend time together learning how to use mobile phonesas tools for popular communication. For IDEPSCA, VozMob also providesa means to incorporate new technology into its existing popular communicationpractice. The VozMob project coordinator described these efforts:I ’ ve always believed in pop ed [popular education]. … These stories that happen hereevery day at the Centers are not told, and the media obviously doesn ’ t have theworkers ’ humanity in mind. … [We] use open-source tools to empower workers totell their own stories. 37The project is designed to counter anti-immigrant voices, to enableimmigrant workers to participate in the digital public sphere, and toserve as a space for the development of critical digital media literacy.Organizers from IDEPSCA have developed an intentional approach todigital media literacy that is tightly linked to struggles over communityrepresentation, base building, and the long history of popular communicationas articulated through Latin American social movement struggles.At the same time, they are able to meaningfully engage thediscourses of funders and academics, especially digital inclusion, digitalstorytelling, and technological empowerment, and this enhances theirability to gather resources for popular education and a praxis of criticaldigital media literacy.Garment Worker Center (GWC)While IDEPSCA organizes day laborers and household workers, the GWCorganizes among L.A. ’ s approximately 60-80,000 workers who labor in theapparel industry, largely concentrated in the Fashion District just south ofdowntown ’ s financial district. Garment workers suffer extensive abuses andviolations, from unpaid wages to unsafe working conditions, sexual assault,and more. 38 GWC, created in 2001, is an independent worker center thathas trained more than one hundred garment workers as organizers, successfullypushed for the implementation of antisweatshop laws, conducted

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 115a three-year boycott against the clothing label Forever 21, and won morethan $3 million for workers in back wages and penalties. The organization ’ smission is “ to empower garment workers in the Los Angeles area and towork in solidarity with other low wage immigrant workers and disenfranchisedcommunities in the struggle for social, economic and environmentaljustice. ” 39In 2007, GWC had a computer lab with about five computers and a DSLconnection. One of the computers was a G4 tower capable of running FinalCut Pro (professional grade video-editing software); this was donated by afilm student from USC who occasionally helped with technical supportand who started a video workshop with workers during the fall of 2006.GWC workers played key roles in, and participated extensively in the productionof, the award-winning documentary Made in L.A . At the time,GWC also had two recording devices, one digital camera and one “ oldschool” camera (VHS or Hi8). They estimated that about 50 percent ofgarment workers had cell phones, mostly prepaid, and in their experienceworkers kept them turned off a lot because of the high cost of credit.In general, at the time garment workers at GWC did not have access tothe Internet, although some said they were connected. A few young adultscame in to the GWC space on Saturdays to use the computer lab, mostlyfor email and video games. There were sporadic computer classes, but theorganization did not have staff capacity to keep the machines maintainedor to turn the lab into a real media production and distribution hub. GWCoften tried to recruit volunteers to participate in projects or conduct trainingsessions but found it difficult to get people to commit time over thelong term on a volunteer basis. 40Garment workers, volunteers, and staff produced a semiregular newsletter,but also said that they would like to see a lot more happen with multimediaproduction. Specifically, they dreamed of having a radio station,since radio remains the most popular form of media used by the majorityof garment workers. GWC ’ s long-term aim was for worker-produced audioto reach the 60,000 to 80,000 workers concentrated in the Fashion District.GWC workers said that they listened to the radio with headphones at work,especially when employers told them that they were not allowed to talkto each other. 41 One worker added that in some shops they were neitherallowed to talk nor listen to music with headphones. Staff felt that audio

116 Chapter 5content circulation would ideally be via FM radio, but might also be doneinitially via CDs.Radio TijeraBased on this reality, beginning in 2007 I worked with organizers AmandaGarc é s and simmi gandi and garment workers Mariarosa, Cristian, Nayo,Edilberto, and Consuelo to create a critical digital media literacy workshopfocused on audio production. From 2007 through 2009, the group of threeto eight garment workers, one to two community organizers, and alliesmet regularly (every week, sometimes every other week) in a workshopinitially called El Proyecto de Radio (The Radio Project), later Radio Costurera(Radio Garment Worker), and finally Radio Tijera (Radio Scissors). Between2007 and 2009 we produced interviews, PSAs (public service announcements),know-your-rights clips, news, poems, calls to action, oral histories,and a range of other audio material. This material was distributed via CDaudio magazines dubbed Discos Volantes . 42 We pressed hundreds of copiesof CDs packed with worker-produced audio materials mixed with music,and garment worker organizers distributed these CDs inside downtownL.A. ’ s garment sweatshops (audio from these CDs is available online athttp://garmentworkercenter.org/media/radiotijera ). Workers also designedand completed an evaluation survey through which they documented thenumber of CDs distributed, the number of new contacts made during thedistribution process, and the number of new workers who came in to theGWC based on the process of distributing the CD.This distribution process offers a powerful example of how the principlesof transmedia organizing can apply offline as well as online. GWCworkers saw value not only in the recordings per se but also in the opportunitythey provided for face-to-face contact between garment workers.Radio Tijera was therefore a useful space not only for building the mediaproduction skills of workshop participants but also as one componentof a larger organizing process. The Discos Volantes provided a focal pointfor conversations about industry conditions, workers ’ rights, and GWC ’ sorganizing efforts. 43 During the summer of 2008, the group also built alow-power FM transmitter with the help of activists from the PrometheusRadio Project. This transmitter was later used for live microradio broadcastsfrom the 2008 Fast for Our Future hunger strike for immigrant rights inPlacita Olvera. 44

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 117Figure 5.2Building the transmitter for Radio Tijera.Source: Photo by author, for the Garment Worker Center, Los Angeles.In 2009, participants in the Radio Tijera workshop were invited topresent some of their interviews and other material on Pacifica affiliateKPFK (90.7), which reaches the entire city. 45 In the week leading up tothe KPFK appearance, GWC organizers took the broadcast as an opportunityto initiate face-to-face contact by distributing flyers on thestreets and inside the factories, announcing the air date and time forgarment worker – produced radio segments. In many ways, this projectwas a success: garment workers gained skills in digital audio recording,mixing, editing, and distribution, as well as increased computer literacyand live radio broadcast experience. Audio produced by garmentworkers was distributed inside sweatshops and over the air, spreadingimportant messages about labor law, wages, health and safety, immigrationpolicy, and organizing history. However, Radio Tijera was neverable to become self-sufficient, with a process entirely run by garmentworkers themselves.

118 Chapter 5While low initial levels of digital literacy contributed to the challenges,the problems in building Radio Tijera into a self-sustaining projectwere not primarily about access to resources or technological skills. Itwas relatively easy for the project to raise the funds necessary to purchasedigital audio recorders, microphones, a mixer, the parts for theradio transmitter, and other equipment. Rather, the biggest challengeswere those faced by any organizing effort in an industry with longhours, bad conditions, and low pay: limited time and energy. No garmentworkers were able to step forward to consistently lead the project. Forlarger labor organizations, this problem is to some degree mitigatedthrough the use of paid organizers — a solution that introduces its owndifficulties with respect to accountability and sustainability. However,during 2006 – 2007 the GWC collective decided to move away from anonprofit model of paid staff or a union model of paid organizers. Thisdecision was based on the ideal that any sustained organizing effortmust be firmly rooted in the desires and organized efforts of garmentworkers themselves, and eliminating paid organizer positions wouldensure the greatest possible degree of accountability to the base. At thesame time, this model is very difficult to sustain. Over the course ofthree years, three different groups of garment workers came into theproject and produced audio material, before Radio Tijera was put onhold. More recently, GWC has decided to switch back to a worker centermodel with paid staff and organizers, and at the time of writing it isgearing up for a major new participatory research study of industryconditions and a new organizing drive.Informal Learning and Key SitesAs we have seen, many CBOs involved in the immigrant rights movementwork to develop a praxis of critical digital media literacy with their community,largely through workshops, projects, and formal classes in computerlabs. Yet research has shown that a great deal — perhaps the bulk — ofdigital media literacy develops through peer-to-peer learning and informalskill sharing. 46 This is also the case in the immigrant rights movement,where digital media learning takes place constantly between friends andwithin families. For example, many organizers whom I interviewed andasked about where they learned media skills mentioned friends and

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 119coworkers: “ From my friends, I think that ’ s the truth. … It ’ s not like youlearn base building, campaign strategizing, and media. It hasn ’ t becomethat yet. I have been exposed to this because of friends, of people whohave an interest in it. ” 47 Peer-to-peer learning also takes place betweenfamily members. Youth often spend time teaching parents or grandparentshow to use computers, the Internet, and mobile phones:Nowadays we get more parents coming and say, “ Oh mira , I just got Internet but Idon ’ t know how to use it, ” or something like that. And so there ’ s been a few timeswhere we ’ ll come into the home and set it up, or teach them how to do their email,set up their account. Even in my family I still get phone calls from my tio or mymom. I was trying to get my grandma to learn how to text, and that became aproject on its own. 48Informal learning remains important even for organizations that dooffer formal digital media literacy training. At IDEPSCA, where popularcommunication is a strategic goal, there are computer labs in the mainoffice and in Day Labor Centers. In the previous section, we explored theVozMob project, itself largely a formal, weekly, face-to-face workshop organizedaccording to the principles of popular education. Yet an organizer atIDEPSCA emphasized that informal learning is key: “ For me it ’ s reallyamazing actually to see some of the workers very interested in computers.Now the non-Mobile Voices workers … a lot of people are coming to learncomputers very informally. ” 49 Sometimes formal critical digital media literacyprojects serve to gather resources and capacity that then becomemore readily accessible to the social base of the movement, even to thosewho do not “ officially ” participate.Many immigrant rights activists also talked about developing theirmedia skills in the context of ongoing media work within broader campaigns.An organizer with the UCLA Labor Center (the generally usedpublic name for the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education)described cutting her teeth on media organizing as a high school student.At that time, she worked on access to education with a youth organizinginitiative called Inner City Struggle. She described intensive afterschoolworkshops with the group ’ s media collective. They analyzed and deconstructedmass media messages, learned about media ownership, and, mostimportant, according to her, learned how to create their own media inthe context of campaigns, as well as how to control the message duringinterviews with reporters:

120 Chapter 5It was work around how do we get the Los Angeles Unified School District to investmore resources into low-income schools, when the message that goes out there isthat Latino low-income children cannot learn, they can ’ t go to college, they can ’ tmaster these skills. For us, it was great turning that around and asking the questions,one, that we deserve to go to college, why aren ’ t resources being placed in our communities?That was my first experience in really shifting the public discourse interms of messaging, framing, and using media as a tool and as a resource. 50Youth organizers with Inner City Struggle thus learned to challengemass media narratives about Latin@ youth. They took these skills withthem into future movement activity, including in the immigrant rightsmovement. This experience is consistent with recent research observingthat youth media projects succeed in producing longer-term outcomeswhen they are directly integrated with community organizing effortsrather than compartmentalized into “ skills-focused ” training programs. 51Both formal and informal digital media learning takes place in keylearning sites, where people have access to equipment, connectivity, andmentorship. This is especially important in the context of the low levelsof computer and broadband access in low-wage immigrant worker households.Many new immigrants build their digital media skills in computerlabs at libraries, schools, universities, and community based organizations.These skills can later be applied to movement building. One organizer saidthat despite her lifelong involvement in the immigrant rights movement,she did not think seriously about how digital media could be used as anorganizing tool until pushed to do so by the university environment:I gotta be honest. … Technology is not my strength. But I realized that I had to.Little things, like being able to share documents, and things like that. I had to learnhow to do it, and even though I had been organizing here in L.A. for so long, it wasreally in [UC] Santa Cruz that I learned that all these tools existed for me to be abetter organizer. 52The same organizer talked about how students at UC Santa Cruz, as wellas at nearby Cabrillo College, took advantage of their access to universitycameras, editing equipment, and computer labs to produce video andaudio testimonials that were useful organizing tools on campus and in thecommunity. She also described a process of peer learning that developedinto more structured approaches based in popular education. She laterapplied this experience to the development of IDEPSCA ’ s Aprendamos (WeLearn) educational program for kindergarten through sixth graders. In

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 121turn, workshops developed for children through Aprendamos proved usefulin the context of adult education:For example, a camera might have the button that says On and Off, which is a wordin English, right? But if you ’ re able to teach the “ O ” and the “ N ” and then at thesame time be able to say, “ The On is Prender and Off is Apagar ,” it ’ s like you ’ re doingthree things at the same time for a person, and also learning how to use a camera.We have to do a lot of that because we realize that a lot of the workers that we werealso organizing with, they didn ’ t know how to read and write as well. 53Another interviewee, who had worked as a high school teacher, relatedher experience with working-class youth who had access to the Internetonly at school or in public libraries: “ I would have at least ten of my thirtystudents ask if they could use my computer during lunchtime because theyjust wanted to be on the Internet, you know? When I would take them tothe library, they would just go straight to the Internet. ” 54 Her experiencepoints to the continued importance of public computer labs. Anotherorganizer discussed how computer labs at Day Labor Centers were oftenthe only place where day laborers could connect to the Internet: “ There ’ sno access, really. Many people that I speak with at the centers don ’ t havea computer at home. Only the ones that have kids that are born here, orthat have kids in school, have computers. ” 55Other interviewees noted that many spaces for informal technologylearning, including computer labs at libraries and schools, as well as DIYsites such as hackerspaces and makerspaces, are deeply gendered. 56 Theyare often dominated by straight white men and can be difficult to accessfor women, people of color, and queer and transgendered people. Thisdynamic stands in sharp contrast to many of the critical digital medialiteracy efforts taking place at worker centers in L.A. That is not to say thatworker centers are ideal spaces, free of racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.However, many organizers promote an explicit intersectional understandingthat includes race, class, gender, and sexual identity. Digitalmedia workshops at worker centers often include developing this understandingas one of their goals. For example, when digital stories created byworkshop participants reproduce oppressive assumptions about gender,facilitators at GWC or IDEPSCA often step away from the planned agendain order to hold a conversation directly addressing the issue. Many organizersuse digital media workshops to build a shared space where everyonein the room feels able to speak up and challenge the reproduction of

122 Chapter 5oppressive images and narratives in mass media, popular communication,and everyday conversation. It is possible to develop this kind of spaceintentionally. In this way, critical digital media literacy can be integratedinto a broader strategy of popular education, designed to develop criticalconsciousness and build movement capacity. Critical digital media literacythus spreads through both formal and informal learning between friends,family, coworkers, and peers in the movement. Digital tools and skills areaccessible, to some degree, to the base of the immigrant rights movementat key sites, including schools, universities, public libraries, and workplaces.Yet many barriers remain.Barriers to the Praxis of Critical Digital Media LiteracyWhile worker centers in L.A. have begun to build critical digital medialiteracy into their organizing work, for the most part these efforts remainsmall in scale and sporadic, and reach only a limited part of the relevantcommunities. Lack of resources, inadequate training capacity, fear of technology,generational divides, and a lack of vision remain key barriers. Thebiggest obstacle, according to most of those I interviewed, is lack ofresources, specifically money to hire dedicated staff. Money is also necessaryto purchase computers, nicer digital cameras, and high-bandwidthInternet access, as well as to invest in other kinds of media production.For example, one FIOB (Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones Binacionales)staff member hoped to make the organization ’ s flagship communicationplatform, a print and online magazine called El Tequio , self-sufficient. 57I asked her what she saw as the biggest obstacle to realizing that goal, andher answer was unequivocal:Money. We don ’ t have money. Money ’ s a challenge. But you know, one of mywishes is for the ally organizations, the immigrant movement, to buy ads in thismagazine that could make us self-sufficient. 58While this organizer, like many others, said that money was the biggestobstacle, most also mentioned the need for increased capacity to conducttraining. This was the case for KIWA ’ s attempts to increase digital medialiteracy among both staff and membership. One staff member describedthe biggest barriers as follows:Our own capacity, I think. If we can hire someone to be just assigned to do somethinglike that, it ’ ll benefit the organization a lot. … Like we were talking about

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 123earlier, the computer class, if you have someone that could dedicate their time interms of curriculum development and running it, it would be really helpful. 59Another interviewee emphasized that the inconsistent pedagogicalquality and time commitment of volunteer teachers were major obstaclesto successfully building digital media literacy capacity, and expressed hopethat a new grant her organization had received to teach computer classeswould allow it to hire a teacher and improve the quality of the program. 60The chief barrier to an effective praxis of critical digital media literacy islack of resources to hire dedicated, paid staff. Most interviewees believedthat dedicated staff would be able to transform underutilized computerlabs into hubs of training, formal and informal skill sharing, mediamaking,and transmedia organizing.In a few cases, organizers said that fear of unfamiliar technology wasthe biggest barrier to access:I know my mom went to school to get trained on computer lit. … They just havethis fear, and I think the scary part is that technology and this tech equipmentchanges so much that they don ’ t understand the fact that if they learned the skill,it could be applied to any machine. To my mom it ’ s like, “ Oh my God, it ’ s a newmachine, I can ’ t touch it, I have no idea where to turn it on. ” 61The rapid pace of technological change and the endless marketing ofnew digital media technologies exacerbate this fear. It ’ s also important tomention that the discourse of technophobia is highly gendered, as well asbased on age. In other words, women and elders are assumed to be fearfulof technology, which is portrayed as the domain of men and youngerpeople. 62 Unsurprisingly, these broader societal assumptions are often replicatedwithin movement spaces.Even for those who are unafraid of digital media, have relatively highlevels of access to ICTs and critical digital media literacy, and actively seekto incorporate digital media into their organizing, figuring out how to doso can be confusing, time-consuming, and unsettling. Organizers often feelpressure to stay up to date with emerging social media tools, practices, andnorms. They frequently end up participating in new media spaces evenwhen the value of doing so seems vague. The executive director of oneorganization described the experience of creating a blog, a Twitter persona,webinars, an online survey through Survey Monkey, and a Facebookpresence:

124 Chapter 5We started this project, and we had an intern who created a blog for us. I mean weshould check to see if anyone actually visits us, but we ’ re pretty sure no one does.And I think that that ’ s the thing, it was great because we had someone who coulddo it, but there ’ s actually — you can ’ t just create it, there ’ s a maintenance level.There ’ s a participation, there ’ s a relationship that you have to build within it for itto work. 63In this organization, younger staff and volunteers were asked to create theentirety of the organization ’ s social media presence, and resources werenot available for maintaining that presence.Younger staff members often act as de facto “ online organizers, ” andend up working to adopt and integrate online tools into the life of movementorganizations. Many enjoy this role. Others, however, point out thatalthough students are often assumed to be so-called “ digital natives, ” 64innately familiar with all digital media tools and skills, there is a wide rangeof digital media literacy among young people. At the same time, older staffwho may have extensive experience with campaign communications,effective messaging, and movement strategy may not work together withyounger staff or volunteers to figure out how to strategically use new toolsfor movement goals. 65 Younger organizers are often frustrated by the slowpace of organizational adoption:I see more organizations using video and all these things to bring more awarenessor put themselves out there. But still in the most immediate ways we could use it,it ’ s sort of on the back burner. … It always is that one person that is into it thatbrings it up, but it hasn ’ t become a basic tool. 66Put plainly, nonprofit leaders are only beginning to think of socialmedia as key spaces for organizing, even as many younger activists feelthat all organizers should now be trained in effective social media use, justas they are currently training in meeting facilitation, note taking, and doorknocking.Developing digital media literacy is also constrained by the moral panicinduced by sensationalist broadcast media accounts of online spaces.Caught up in such panics (moments of intense, usually raced and gendered,fear that the social order will be disrupted, often used to justifyrepressive policies), adults often limit young people ’ s access to social media,even as social media have become key platforms for political participation.67 Parents and teachers sometimes restrict young people ’ s access, especiallyif they are not comfortable with the technology or if their primary

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 125information source is the mass media, which tend to emphasize storiesabout scary, sensational, and negative uses of the net:These were middle schoolers, these are what, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen?Well, first there was a whole craze of not allowing kids to go on MySpace because,you know, crazy men go after girls. Or even — what was the one controversial caseof a mom harassing a teenager and the teenager killed himself? … And it ’ s just soTV perpetuating this craze about MySpace being a bad space. … I think a lot of mystudents hadn ’ t seen that was just crap the media was putting in their parents ’ eyes.And then their parents weren ’ t allowing them to do that. 68As this interview reflects, moral panics are also deeply gendered. 69 Theintroduction of new communication technologies is often accompaniedby narratives of moral, physical, and sexual disorder, and especially bypatriarchal fear of loss of control over female sexuality. 70 As a result ofmoral panics, parents, educators, and administrators impose different constraintson boys and girls. 71 Even when parents are not afraid of digitalmedia, they may not recognize its educational value. 72 Parents sometimespush back against educators and organizers when they attempt to spendtime developing children ’ s digital media literacy. As one organizer noted,“ Parents don ’ t necessarily feel that teaching their kids how to use a camerato take pictures is as important to teaching them how to do math, youknow? And it ’ s not that we ’ re replacing either/or, it ’ s that they could doeverything. ” 73 To try to persuade parents that digital media literacy isimportant, she would tell them, “ Look, there ’ s so many people out therethat write about our lives, that document our lives, that come into ourcommunities and then all of a sudden, write about it to try to createchange. And it ’ s in a good intention, but at the same time what makes usso different that we can ’ t do it ourselves when we have these tools nowmuch more accessible to us than before? ” 74Finally, some immigrant rights organizers talked about vision as themost important obstacle. They felt that resources were available but thatorganizations failed to effectively grasp the strategic and tactical possibilitiesof digital media. One interviewee said that the biggest obstacle toreaching her goal of teaching digital storytelling skills to workers who cameto the UCLA Labor Center was “ getting people on board. Is this somethingthe Labor Center would like to dedicate resources to? ” 75 Without a strongvision of the possibilities, even the best-resourced movement organizationscan remain far behind in developing a praxis of critical digital media

126 Chapter 5literacy. Another activist described what he called a “ disconnect ” betweenthe organizing approaches of a majority of movement groups and thepossibilities enabled by broader access to digital media. He felt that thisdisconnect was increasingly based not on lack of access to technologybut rather on a lack of understanding on the part of the organization ’ sleadership. 76 He also noted that concrete transmedia organizing examples,such as the Basta Dobbs campaign (discussed in chapter 2), would go along way toward generating buy-in from movement leaders.A Praxis of Critical Digital Media Literacy: ConclusionsDigital inequality is a persistent and powerful force. Low-wage immigrantworkers, who form the social base of the immigrant rights movement, onaverage have less access to media-making tools and skills than most people.Movement groups that work with them have not yet tightly integratedcritical digital media literacy into their broader organizing efforts. However,organizers increasingly consider digital media literacy to be important, andhave taken steps to try to advance these skills in their communities. ManyCBOs now have computer labs and offer computer literacy classes. Indeed,the falling costs of equipment and connectivity have meant that evenless well-resourced organizations are better able to acquire computers,media-making equipment, and broadband Internet access. However,higher-quality digital video cameras and other high-end equipment oftenremain out of reach due to cost. At the same time, mobile phones areapproaching near ubiquity, even among the lowest income and leastconnectedpopulations of immigrant workers. The immigrant rights movementis learning to take advantage of mobile phones, with innovativemedia projects like VozMob providing inspiration across the field. 77 Thereis great potential for community organizers to fully integrate mobile mediainto their efforts. Some CBOs, among them IDEPSCA and GWC, havecreated popular education workshops around digital media. They areactively working to build a praxis of critical digital media literacy.Besides formal digital media literacy trainings, tools and skills circulatethrough the immigrant rights movement through informal and peer-topeerlearning among friends, family, and coworkers. Critical digital medialiteracy develops at key sites, including universities, schools, libraries, andcommunity computer labs. The major challenges include funding, training

Worker Centers, Popular Education, and Critical Digital Media Literacy 127capacity, and lack of familiarity with new tools. Language issues, trust, andlow-wage workers ’ lack of time and energy to participate also make developingfacility with digital media a challenge. Fear of new technology andthe moral panic induced by TV coverage of the Internet and digital culturecreate additional, gendered obstacles. There is also a generational divide.Younger people and students who volunteer with immigrant rights organizations,as well as younger staff, are often the ones who initiate onlineorganizing strategies. Frequently, staff at CBOs feel pressure to adopt newdigital media tools without a clear understanding of how they work, orhow to evaluate whether they are effective.In the past, digital media literacy was usually seen as peripheral notonly to organizing but also to communication strategy. Until the late2000s, online tools were still considered experiments by many senior staffand were not necessarily part of strategic communication plans. This beganto change by the end of the decade, especially with the high visibility ofdigital tools and social media as fully integrated components of the 2008and 2012 presidential campaigns. Still, besides low levels of access amongthe immigrant worker base, the greatest barriers to adoption and integrationof transmedia organizing by the immigrant rights movement areinsufficient resources to hire dedicated staff and the lack of a shared visionabout the possibilities.Overall, critical digital media literacy is crucial to effective transmediaorganizing. Digital media literacy on the part of a movement ’ s social baseshapes and constrains that movement ’ s ability to take advantage of thechanging media ecology. In the long run, media-making tools and skillsare becoming available to an ever-broader proportion of the population,but the distribution of skills and tools remains highly unequal. Someimmigrant rights activists are developing a praxis of critical digital medialiteracy that has the potential to transform the lives of immigrant workers,students, and their allies and to reconfigure the movement.While this chapter has focused on worker centers, it would be a mistaketo impose an artificial separation between low-wage immigrant workersand student activists. The next chapter focuses on transmedia organizingby undocumented youth.

Figure 6.1Undocuqueer artist Julio Salgado with his poster, “ Out of the Closets! Out of theShadows! Into the Streets! ”Source: Culturestrike.net, photo by Juan Castillo Alvarado.

6 Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into theStreets: Pathways to Participation in DREAM ActivistNetworksAs the 2012 election built up steam, the Obama campaign focused increasingresources on Latin@ voters in key battleground states. Both Democratsand Republicans knew that these voters would be crucial. The Obamacampaign was also aware that it would need strong Latin@ support, despitethe administration ’ s systematic increases in border militarization, detentions,and deportations, the controversial Secure Communities program,and the lack of progress on comprehensive immigration reform. Whilemainstream immigrant rights organizations and Beltway insiders concentratedtheir efforts on TV advertisements and get-out-the-vote campaigns,undocumented youth (widely known as DREAMers, after the proposedDevelopment, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, first introducedin Congress in 2001 by Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch) decided totake bold, risky steps to force concessions from the administration. OnJune 5, 2012, Veronica Gomez and Javier Hernandez, undocumented youthleaders with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, entered the Obamacampaign offices in Denver to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Apicket line of supporters circled outside the campaign office doors, chantingslogans in time to the staccato roll of snare drums. Veronica and Javier,wearing graduation caps as symbols of DREAMer demands for education,not deportation, sat calmly in the middle of the office, with friends andsupporters taking pictures and starting a live video stream. 1 Over the nextsix days, these young undocumented activists conducted a sit-in andhunger strike that captured attention across social media, print, TV, andradio. Thousands watched their live stream, and thousands more signedpetitions in support of their demands. Veronica and Javier, and overlappingnetworks of immigrant rights groups of which they were a part,demanded that President Obama take immediate administrative action to

130 Chapter 6halt deportations of DREAM Act – eligible youth. They threatened thatfailure to do so would result in similar actions at campaign headquartersacross the country, especially in key battleground states. 2This was not the first time that DREAMers had employed the sit-in asa tactic, nor was it the first time they live-streamed their own acts of nonviolentcivil disobedience. For example, in 2010, queer undocumentedyouth activists Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo, and Tania Unzuetaoccupied the Arizona offices of Senator John McCain, and in 2011, DreamTeam Los Angeles activists Adrian, Francisco Javier, Nancy Meza, NeidiDominguez, and Tony Ortu ñ o staged and live-streamed a sit-in at Immigrationand Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices in Los Angeles. 3 By 2012 themovement had grown stronger and the networks of DREAM activists morerobust; their media connections across platforms were much broader, andthey had developed a degree of leverage over the Latin@ vote. On June 15,2012, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for ChildhoodArrivals (DACA) program, which provides a two-year, temporary permitthat allows some DREAM Act – eligible youth to remain in the United Stateswithout fear of detention and deportation. 4 The DACA program is onlya small step on the long path toward justice for immigrants, and someactivists refer to the program as the smallest possible bone the Obamaadministration could have credibly thrown the immigrant rights movementin the run-up to the election. 5 However, it was a hard-won victory:undocumented youth battled for more than a decade to gain even thistemporary administrative reform. It came through their dedication, creativity,and bravery.As Prerna Lal, undocuqueer founder of DreamActivist.net, has so eloquentlydescribed, DREAM activism and the broad new wave of immigrantrights organizing have not only been led by undocumented youth,they have been disproportionately led by young, undocumented, queerpeople of color. 6 How did undocumented youth create such compelling,cutting-edge strategies and develop so many new leaders? How didDREAMers become one of the most powerful organizing forces in theUnited States, not only for immigrant rights but across social movements,from LGBTQ struggles to the resurgent labor movement andbeyond? This chapter addresses these questions by focusing on transmediaorganizing, pathways to participation, and public narrative in DREAMactivist networks.

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 131These terms bear explanation and review. In this book, I have proposedthat transmedia organizing is the strategic practice of cross-platform, participatorymedia-making for social movement ends. DREAMers, like manygrassroots activists, have organically developed effective transmedia organizingmethods. Pathways to participation are the trajectories by whichpeople come to identify with, and take part in, social movements over thecourse of their lives. Undocumented youth become DREAMers throughfriends, family, community-based organizations, and movement groups.Many also follow mediated pathways: for example, their entry point intosocial movement identity is through taking part in movement media production,circulating information during crises and mobilizations, and otherwiseengaging in transmedia organizing. A public narrative is a story abouta social movement that is intended for public consumption and has specificpublic goals: to build a shared identity among movement participants,draw in sympathizers, and generate new allies. DREAM activists havestruggled to develop their own public narrative, reject discourse they feelharms them and harms the broader immigrant rights movement, andshape the ways they are framed across the media ecology. This chapterbegins with a short discussion of DREAM activism and transmedia organizing,then moves on to explore the larger issues of pathways to participationand the development of public narratives. Along the way, I ’ ll trace the linksbetween social movement media and the rise of a new generation of committedorganizers.DREAM Activists Make Media and Make TroubleAccording to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 approximately 4.4million immigrants under the age of thirty were undocumented. 7 Manywere brought to the United States as children by their parents, eitherwithout documentation or on temporary visas that have since expired. InCalifornia, there are about 26,000 undocumented youth. Nationwide, eachyear about 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools. 8Yet without access to federal or state financial aid, many are unable to goon to university study, even if they are academically prepared to do so. Inmost states they are also denied driver ’ s licenses and are not allowed toparticipate in the formal labor market. Over the last decade, undocumentedyouth, along with their families, communities, and supporters,

132 Chapter 6have organized an increasingly visible campaign to gain access to highereducation, become eligible for driver ’ s licenses, achieve the right to worklegally, and normalize their status as U.S. citizens.In California, undocumented youth initially organized around key statelegislative initiatives. The California Assembly Bill 540 (A.B. 540), whichbecame law in 2001, did not provide access to financial aid but did allowundocumented youth to qualify for in-state tuition fees within the Californiauniversity system (including community colleges, California statecolleges, and the University of California). The California Senate Bill 65(S.B. 65), or the California Dream Act, allows A.B. 540 students to accessfinancial aid to attend any of the state ’ s institutions of higher education.At the federal level, the DREAM Act would authorize temporary legal residencefor young people who were brought to the country without documentsbefore they were fifteen. The bill was introduced in the U.S. Congressmultiple times between 2001 and 2011; in most versions, the bill wouldallow high school graduates to apply for up to six years of legal residence.Those who graduate from a two-year college, complete at least two yearsof a four-year degree, or serve in the military for at least two years duringthis six-year time period would become eligible for permanent residence. 9Early versions of the bill also offered a community service option as analternative to military service. After organizing for more than a decade, byDecember 2010, DREAM activists had managed to build bipartisan supportfor the DREAM Act in the U.S. Senate. However, support fell five votesshort of the sixty needed to overcome a filibuster. More recently, in 2013,most provisions of the DREAM Act were incorporated into various federallegislative proposals for comprehensive immigration reform.DREAM Act DebatesIn addition to predictable resistance from the anti-immigrant right,DREAM Act organizing has been contentious within the broader immigrantrights movement. Some immigrant rights organizers, includingmany undocumented youth themselves, are concerned that proposals fora stand-alone DREAM Act play into a broader narrative that delinks undocumentedyouth from workers — often their own parents. One organizer Iinterviewed, a staff member at a worker center, noted that the most visibleDREAMers are what she called the “ cream of the crop: ” the most successful

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 133immigrant youth who managed to make it to college. She worried thatthe outcome of organizing undocumented youth primarily around theirown ability to advance in higher education and in high-skilled employmentwould be to separate them from the larger immigrant rights movement.10 Others I interviewed, including some who themselves identifiedas DREAMers, voiced criticism of the military recruitment implications ofprovisions in the currently proposed DREAM Act legislation. The militaryprovision offers a pathway to citizenship to students who enter militaryservice. In the immigrant rights movement, this has mostly been framedas “ the military option, ” in comparison to the much more visible pathwaythrough higher education, despite the reality that actual passage of thelegislation would result in far higher numbers of immigrant youth enteringthe armed forces (half a million or more would be eligible) than highereducation. 11 Some interviewees thus questioned DREAM Act organizing,which they felt divided the movement by allowing a small group of studentswith higher education to become citizens while providing a largernumber of immigrant youth a pathway to enter the military directly outof high school in order to achieve the same benefits. 12 The likely outcome— potentially hundreds of thousands of new Latin@ military recruits,in a time of war — prompted some critics to suggest that the DREAM Actwas actually a military recruiter ’ s dream in disguise. 13 A small but vocalcontingent of undocumented youth has made this charge publicly, forexample in the film Yo Soy El Army . 14 The group 67 Seu ñ os, which organizesworking-class immigrant youth in Oakland, also emerged in part outof frustration with a DREAM Act narrative that its members felt was dominatedby college students. 15 In response to these criticisms, other DREAMershave defended the military option, pointing to the historical importanceof military service as a pathway to immigrant integration and the U.S.middle class. Others, while themselves also critical of the U.S. military,have responded that military recruiters already target Latin@ youth andwill continue to do so regardless of what takes place in the realm of immigrationreform. 16DACAIn June 2012, President Obama announced the DACA program. DACAprovides approximately 1.6 million DREAMers with a formal mechanism

134 Chapter 6by which they can be recognized by the state, a promise that they won ’ tbe detained and deported for at least two years, and legal permission towork in the United States. 17 Most of those I talked to felt that this wasan important victory. At the same time, some also saw it as a cynicalelectoral ploy by the Obama administration. A few worried that DACAmight serve, along with both the Secure Communities program and thefederal E-Verify employment verification system, to build a database ofundocumented people that would be used to feed the steadily risingnumber of detentions and deportations. The growth of the detention anddeportation industry over the past decade is not surprising, in light ofthe power of lobbyists from the for-profit prison industry to advocate forbuilding new private prisons and detention facilities. These lobbyistscoauthored the infamous Arizona S.B. 1070 and then, through the AmericanLegislative Exchange Council, transformed it into “ model legislation ”that has spawned numerous copycat state bills. 18 Obama ’ s victory in the2012 election proved to be, unfortunately, no safeguard against thisprocess. Indeed, the Obama administration has broken records for detentionsand deportations year after year: from 369,221 removals in 2008 to396,906 in 2011, according to figures released by ICE. 19 Under the Obamaadministration an average of 33,000 people are deported per month, comparedto 21,000 per month under the George W. Bush administrationand 9,000 per month under the Clinton administration. 20 By 2014, theObama administration has overseen more than two million deportations.Among immigrant rights activists, this has earned Obama the nickname“ Deporter-in-Chief. ” 21Still, despite disagreements about the overarching implications of theDACA program, most immigrant rights activists agree that it was a victoryfor the immigrant rights movement, won by a combination of tactics thatincluded both lobbying and highly visible, heavily mediated direct actions.Meanwhile, the debates over the merits and problems of a stand-aloneDREAM Act were (at least temporarily) suspended in April 2013, whenmost provisions of the proposed bill were rolled into the comprehensiveimmigration reform package introduced by the Senate ’ s bipartisan “ Gangof Eight. ” 22 Regardless of the outcome of the current round of legislativedebates over comprehensive immigration reform, DREAM activists haveclearly been among the most effective organizers within the broader fieldof the immigrant rights movement.

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 135Undocuqueer LeadershipAs noted earlier, the leadership of the immigrant youth movement disproportionatelyidentifies as queer. Many DREAM activists are publicly out asgay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and/or jot@ . DREAMer leadership also includesmany transgender people, as well as others who claim unconventionalgender identities or whose gender expression is non-normative. Prerna Lalhas summarized the role of queer undocumented people in a highly accessiblearticle covering the last decade of the immigrant rights movement. 23Undocumented queer immigrant rights activists created the web portalDreamActivist.net in 2007, helped organize Education Not Deportation(END) campaigns beginning in 2009, and in 2010, led by Chicago ’ s ImmigrantYouth Justice League, launched the National Coming Out of theShadows Day. 24 In 2011 the National Immigrant Youth Alliance coined theterm “ undocuqueer, ” which has emerged as a powerful shorthand for anumber of complex, intersectional, collective political identities with concretepolitical demands, such as the inclusion of same-sex couples in thefamily reunification provisions of comprehensive immigration reform.Also in 2011, United We Dream (the largest national DREAMer network)launched the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP). Queerundocumented youth led a nationwide escalation of nonviolent civil disobedienceon the streets, in political offices, in campaign headquarters,and even inside detention centers. 25Queer DREAMers face additional burdens and pressures. For example,undocumented people who marry opposite-sex partners may gain legalstatus more rapidly, whereas same-sex marriages, possible only in somestates, don ’ t confer the same advantages. In this way, the nation-statecontinues to regulate sexual identity and exclude queer folks from fullintegration. As one activist stated,[Immigrant youth] are often able to find, whether it ’ s a friend or someone theygenuinely love, [a way] to get married to them and they ’ re able to get status thatway. But there ’ s a whole group of immigrant youth that don ’ t get married becausethey ’ re identified as queer, and so disproportionately the leadership in immigrantyouth movement actually identifies as queer. 26At the same time, queer DREAMers often find themselves in the positionof challenging oppressive norms internalized by communities they otherwisefeel a part of. Another interviewee described this struggle succinctly:

136 Chapter 6“ If you ’ re in a queer space, do you tell them you ’ re undocumented, or ifyou ’ re in an undocumented space, do you tell them you ’ re queer? ” 27 Theartistic collective DREAMers Adrift addresses these challenges in partthrough illustrations, poster art, and videos that explore intersectionalidentity and the idea of a “ movement within the movement. ” They challengehomophobia within immigrant communities more broadly and theimmigrant rights movement specifically, and also challenge anti-immigrantnarratives within the queer community. As Julio Salgado fromDREAMers Adrift put it, “ Guess what? You ’ re part of an oppressed group;do not oppress other groups. ” 28Undocuqueer leadership has also played a key role in innovative mediastrategies, such as “ coming out ” as undocumented. Undocuqueer leadersorganized a national day of action on which undocumented youth publiclydeclared their immigration status on Facebook:The DREAM Act has been around for more than ten years, and it had taken a wholedecade for us to do something like this. And not even publicly, although in Chicagothey had a public event where seven students went to the Federal Plaza and had awhole press conference, and one by one said “ My name is blah blah blah, and I ’ mundocumented, and I support the DREAM Act. ” … The conversations were tough.There ’ s a lot of fear. Some people said it ’ s the perfect way of just giving ourselvesup. … So it ’ s a risk, but I think for many of us it ’ s just been too long. 29The same interviewee said that a DREAMer collective she was part ofhad extensively discussed and been inspired by LGBTQ coming-out videoson YouTube as a strategy to build queer visibility. Their Facebook campaignmade intentional reference to the long history of the queer movement,and to the YouTube genre of the coming-out video. 30 Overall, undocuqueeryouth mobilize their own fluency with digital media tools and skills in theservice of visibility strategies that parallel (and are part of) those of theLGBTQ movement.DREAM Activists and Transmedia OrganizingTransmedia organizing involves creating cross-platform media, inviting themovement base to participate in media production, and linking attentiondirectly to action. DREAM activists employ all three strategies. First, whileDREAMers have been highly visible in social media spaces, they by nomeans limit their media activism to the Internet. Rather, they use social

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 137media within a broader set of media practices, including print publishing,appearances on Spanish-language commercial radio and television shows,and, most crucially, face-to-face presentations in high schools, at communitycenters, and in other spaces across the country. Second, DREAMers ’generally participatory approach to media-making is notable. Rather thanattempt to produce a homogenous message and convince others to disseminateit, DREAM activists use social media to create spaces for conversation.They focus on featuring the stories of undocumented youth and on sharinginformation about the legislative process across their networks, and theyuse participatory media to build shared identity. Third, DREAMers makemedia designed to attract more undocumented youth to the movement.DREAM activists are producing their own powerful stories, in a widerange of media; these accounts should be the first stop for those interestedin learning from the movement. 31 The history of the last decade of organizingby undocumented youth can be seen in the gorgeous graphic art ofJulio Salgado, 32 in compelling, humorous, and emotional videos, 33 inthoughtful blogs like Undocumented and Unafraid and DreamActivist.net; inpoetry, theater, and films, such as Mi Sue ñ o , Papers , 34 Define American , andThe Dream is Now, and more. Indeed, media-making across platforms hasbeen one of the key strengths of DREAM activism. 35Many (although by no means most) DREAMers are university students,and their cultural work also includes publication of both popular andscholarly texts about their movement. In Los Angeles, DREAM activists atthe UCLA Labor Center ´ s Dream Resource Center have produced two booksthat are must-read accounts of the organizing history of the undocumentedyouth movement. The first, Underground Undergrads: UCLA UndocumentedStudents Speak Out, was published in 2008. It provides personalstories from undocumented immigrant student leaders, has sold more thanten thousand copies, and has been used as an organizing tool at eventsacross the country. 36 The second, Undocumented and Unafraid: Tam Tran,Cinthya Felix, and the Immigrant Youth Movement , published in 2012, highlightsthe lives of Tran and Felix, pioneering undocumented student organizers.It also narrates the decade-long transformation of a legislativecampaign, focused on the first version of the DREAM Act, into a vibrant,multifaceted nationwide movement that brought together those workingon immigrant rights, workers ’ rights, LGBTQ rights, educational justice,and more. 37

138 Chapter 6Rogelio Alejandro L ó pez has developed a comparative analysis of themedia practices of the present-day immigrant youth movement and thefarm workers movement. He draws on interviews, findings from participantobservation, content analysis, and movement archives to explore howmedia strategies are situated within organizing models; how strategies fromthe broadcast era persist, evolve, and change; and how social movementactors articulate their relationship to the media system. In analyzing mediapractices, repertoires, and tactics from both movements, he finds that bothdeploy transmedia mobilization, take great care to shift mass media frames,have participatory media cultures, ground their media practice in organizingneeds, and are innovative under conditions of scarce resources. 38 L ó pezalso finds that, in comparison with the farm workers movement, immigrantyouth today have a more developed intersectional analysis of thedynamics of race, class, citizenship, gender, and sexuality in oppressionand resistance, have less visible leaders, and use more horizontal organizingstructures. Additionally, he proposes that media strategies need not beinstitutionally formalized or technically sophisticated to have a powerfulimpact, and that digital media should be seen as an important part ofimmigrant youth media practices, but not mistaken for the whole. He alsonotes that grassroots activists all agree on the preeminent importance offace-to-face organizing in movement building. 39Transmedia organizing by DREAM activists provides an interestingcounterpoint to media literacy efforts in worker centers (as we saw inchapter 5), in part because DREAM Act organizers have grown up surroundedby digital media, social networking sites, and mobile phones.Immigrants to the United States, they are also so-called “ digital natives. ” 40I use the term cautiously both because it unthinkingly reproduces nativistdiscourse and because it ’ s important to be wary of universalizing assumptionsabout young people ’ s facility with computers and digital media.Nevertheless, many DREAM activists I worked with and interviewed didexpress the view that, in their experience, youth activists in the immigrantrights movement have been among the earliest adopters of digital toolsand skills. For example, one student organizer described the importance ofblogging to the growth of the Underground Undergrads campus organizingnetwork. Underground Undergrads emerged out of student organizing atUCLA, with support from the UCLA Labor Center. The group later wenton to produce a book about its organizing efforts, then launched the

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 139Dream Resource Center. As early as 2006 it set up and maintained a blogabout legislative progress, student organizing efforts across campuses, andimmigration issues more broadly. 41 This organizer also described the originof United We Dream, which as of 2013 was the largest, best-resourced, andmost visible national organization advocating for DREAMers, though itstarted as an informal, nationwide blogger network:That ’ s a really interesting story. It actually was a small group of students that cametogether and realized the power of media, and felt like they could contribute to theDREAM Act and to issues of undocumented youth through a blog. So they featurea lot of stories of students, they have YouTube videos, they are updating peopleabout the issue. It’s also a place where they conduct polls, things like that. Thatstarted as something small but spread because this issue obviously affects a lot ofstudents nationwide. 42Underground Undergrads was created when an intern decided to puttogether a blog; it began as a zero-budget, ad hoc project. In comparisonwith some larger, better-resourced immigrant rights organizations thatinvest a great deal of resources, time, and energy in top-down public relationsstrategies, the visibility, size, and impact of DREAM activist organizinghave grown rapidly.This growth can be attributed in large part not just to the technologicalskills of younger, digitally capable people but to DREAMers ’ active approachto a praxis of critical digital media literacy. DREAM Act organizers systematicallyshare media-making and communication skills across their networksin formal and informal workshops as well as online skill-sharingevents. Rather than attempt to produce a homogenous message and convinceothers to disseminate it, they use commercial blogging and videoplatforms to create spaces for conversation. These spaces are open to immigrantyouth across the country who occupy similar positions, and whocome to develop shared identities and political goals. DREAM Act organizersand activists focus on the stories of other undocumented youth, as wellas on sharing information about the legislative process. They also use socialmedia to build a conversation, create a shared identity, and develop participatorystrategy. Perhaps most important, DREAM activism is not “ onlineactivism ” alone. For example, Underground Undergrads developed a bloghand in hand with a printed book that was used to organize face-to-facepresentations to high school students across the country. The blog wasinitially conceived as a way to maintain contact with high school students

140 Chapter 6who attended presentations by DREAM activists. DREAM activists thusengage in their own forms of transmedia organizing. They provide multipleentry points to a larger narrative that extends across platforms, beginningwith face-to-face presentations and maintaining contact online, whileencouraging participatory media-making throughout.Like any social movement, DREAM activism has its share of internaltensions. One organizer described a split between student groups at one ofthe University of California campuses, and provided insight into the wayactivists use social media to facilitate the development of ad hoc movementgroups. Students frustrated with a vertical organizing model at UCLAformed a Facebook group, initially as a kind of backchannel where theycould express discontent and critique. This group was soon perceived byothers as a new organization: “ They gave us an identity — because weformed a Facebook group, we were automatically a group. ” 43 This tookplace even though the initial creators of the group considered it a “ loosenetwork. ” The influx of students who were interested in developing a moreparticipatory movement space brought additional energy, and soon thegroup expanded beyond UCLA to additional campuses, as well as to studentsfrom high schools and middle schools. Other people I interviewedalso gave examples of how social media had facilitated the ad hoc formationof new movement groups. For instance, in the aftermath of Proposition8, the organizer of a Facebook group called Queer Koreans individuallycontacted all those who had joined the group. Almost overnight, theyagreed to launch a new organization, called KUE (pronounced “ Q, ” forqueer), Korean-Americans United for Equality. 44I suggest that DREAMers ground their media practices in concrete organizingneeds and use every opportunity to invite deeper engagement withthe movement. The work of the graphic artist Julio Salgado provides anadditional window into this dynamic. Salgado creates artwork that, in itsonline forms, includes links to actions that viewers can take. For example,he produced a series of illustrations of undocumented, DREAM Act – eligibleyouth who were detained and facing deportation. These illustrationsincluded links to online petitions organized by families and supporters ofthese youth, as well as to campaigns encouraging calls to elected officialsand detention center administrators to urge their release. In an interview,Salgado also repeatedly emphasized that his artistic work is used by

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 141activists as they organize. For example, videos produced by DREAMersAdrift are played in community meetings:In my case, I can draw, and Jes ú s is an amazing spoken word artist. He does thesegreat things with editing. So using that talent definitely goes into the movement,because people use those videos when they ’ re having a meeting, when they ’ refacilitating a know-your-rights campaign, they ’ ve used these things that we ’ vemade. 45Movement media, whether social media, videos, books, spoken word,posters, or other forms, provide opportunities for organizers to engagepeople face to face. This leads us to the central question of this chapter:How did isolated, undocumented youth come together over the pastdecade to form new political identities, step into leadership roles in theimmigrant rights movement, and win both cultural shifts and policyvictories?Pathways to ParticipationMany social movement scholars argue for a biographical or “ life-course ”analysis of social movements. Put simply, this means exploring thoseaspects of social movement participation that unfold over the course of anindividual ’ s life, rather than focusing solely on the shorter-term, moreeasily quantifiable elements. For example, Doug McAdam explored thebiographical consequences of participation in Freedom Summer by interviewingparticipants decades later. 46 Donatella Della Porta calls for socialmovement scholars to pay careful attention to the life histories of individualactivists. 47 Silke Rothe, in a long-term study of the Coalition of LaborUnion Women, takes a biographical approach to understanding women ’ ssocial movement participation. 48 Manuel Castells dedicated the entiresecond volume of his Information Age trilogy to the power of social movementidentity, including an extensive analysis of how individuals arrive atshared “ resistance identities ” and “ project identities ” through long-termsocial movement participation. 49 Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, in a casestudy of lesbian feminist collectives, explored how individual activistscome to take part in collective identity formation over time, 50 whileJames Jasper emphasized the role of both cultural context and individualbiography in the formation of strong social movements. 51 A biographical

142 Chapter 6or life-course approach is also useful to understanding the contemporaryimmigrant rights movement.Biographical social movement scholarship tells us that the most commonpathways to movement participation are through family, friends, community,and direct lived experience. We also know from both surveys andbiographical studies that many activists move from one group to another.An initial movement experience often shapes the subsequent life courseof participants. Put plainly, people become engaged in one movementgroup, and that experience shapes the rest of their lives. They often becomemore deeply politicized, and go on to participate in additional social movementactivity. This is the case for many DREAM activists. For example, oneactivist described her politicization as a high school student by the organizationInner City Struggle in the early 2000s: “ I always go back to thatorganizing because I think that is where I learned all those skills I then putinto use, to the immigrant rights organizing work. ” 52 Several years later, asan undergraduate at UCLA, she became involved with the student immigrantrights organizing group IDEAS. This is not an uncommon experience;many immigrant rights activists describe moving from group to group.Often, they cut their teeth on student organizing, then pass through multiplemovement organizations, from informal groups and collectives topaid organizing positions:I ’ ve been doing immigrant rights work for about, I guess it ’ s six years now, maybegoing on seven. … I locally organize here with the Student Immigrant Movement,so I consider myself a member of the Student Immigrant Movement. NationallyI work with the United We Dream Network, and I was also a part of DREAMActivists.orgas that came together, which is another kind of national network. Sothat ’ s where I kind of cut my teeth organizing, and now I became associated withpresente.org. 53I heard many stories like this one, beginning with activists ’ participationin an initial ad hoc or informal movement group, followed by connectionto national or transnational networks, and then occasionally moving intofull-time organizing work.Taking part in mass mobilizations and large-scale protest actions alsoprofoundly shapes one ’ s sense of social movement identity. Mass mobilizationshave life-course impacts, as well as their more frequently studiedif less often successful policy impacts. One interviewee who now worksas a paid online organizer at a national immigrant rights organization

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 143described the massive 2006 marches against the Sensenbrenner bill (discussedin chapter 1) as a key inspiration for his own decision to applyhis blogging and media-making skills to immigrant rights work. 54 Followingthat experience, he decided to use the media skills he had honed aseditor of a college newspaper to create a blog tracing the steps of animmigrant coming to the United States on a long, dangerous route fromCentral America. He also noted that by creating media about their ownexperiences, undocumented youth become movement actors and takepart in shaping history.In addition to politicization along the path from group to group, orthrough participation in mass mobilizations, activists deepen their involvementby learning directly from other, more seasoned activists. For example,the DREAMers I interviewed often wove a complicated tapestry whendescribing where they learned how to use media as an organizing tool.Most teach themselves new tools and techniques; they consider socialmedia to be something they understand “ naturally ” as part of everydaylife. At the same time, many also attend formal training sessions, events,and conferences, where they learn media tools and strategies from otherDREAMers, immigrant rights activists, or other progressives. Many mentionconferences such as Netroots Nation, capacity-building organizations suchas the New Organizing Institute, and progressive blogs as influences. Inaddition, they talk about past social movements, as well as key individualorganizers and educators. For example, many United We Dream leaderslearned about public narrative from Marshall Ganz, who worked with SaulAlinsky and Cesar Chavez as an organizer with the United Farm Workers. 55Learning from Other MovementsWhile some interviewees felt that certain kinds of student organizing hada tendency to split the interests of immigrant students away from those ofworkers, others noted a reverse dynamic. Students organizing against theUniversity of California fee hikes specifically went to great lengths to linkstudent and worker organizations. In addition, these partnerships occasionallychallenge the assumption that youth organizers are always on thecutting edge of digital media use. In at least one case, interviewees pointedout that student organizers also learned digital media practices frommigrant worker organizations. For example, when I asked where student

144 Chapter 6activists got ideas about how to use digital media as an organizing tool,one interviewee had this to say:They set up a television in the park while there was a basketball game, like thisOaxacan town was battling another Oaxacan town, and in the basketball court,around the side, the research center had a huge television with [Video conferencingplatform] Oovoo running. So that way, they made a convocaci ó n [invitation to participate]out in the town, saying, “ There ’ s going to be a basketball game in LosAngeles in this hour, if you want to talk to your family, come to the plaza, andthere ’ ll be a television and you could see your family. ” First to teach them how touse a phone over Oovoo, but also so they could just say hi. So a lot of people wouldbe, like, “ Oh God, I haven ’ t seen you in ten years! ” and they would see each otherover television and we would all get to watch them. 56As we saw in chapter 4, migrants use digital media tools to build translocalcommunities. Translocal media practices in the Oaxacan communityinspired student organizers to use videoconferencing tools during theirown movement events. New tools and skills flow across interconnectedsocial movement networks, to be deployed when the moment arises.Organizers also look to other social movement media practices (frombeyond immigrant rights activism) for ideas. For example, one intervieweedescribed a specific style of participatory video production used by theOccupy movement that she hoped to incorporate into the repertoire ofDREAM activist media practices:Something we talked about before is like with the Occupy movement, they havevideos where they show people holding up this paper that say their story. So kindof incorporating that and trying to humanize the issue of being undocumented. 57Activists talk about looking to predecessors within their own organizations,as well as to other movement groups and networks, for inspirationaluses of media as an organizing tool. Many choose to explore new toolsafter seeing an example of their effective deployment elsewhere, and doso in an ad-hoc, hands-on process of experimentation rather than throughformal training. One described this as a “ do and learn process. ” 58Mediated Pathways: Make Media, Make TroubleAs I participated in immigrant rights mobilizations, engaged in mediaworkshops, and interviewed organizers, I noticed an interesting pattern.When I asked people how they initially became involved in the immigrant

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 145rights movement, many (although certainly not all) described some combinationof being inspired by a media text, connecting to others throughsocial media, or taking part in a media-making activity. Among otherpathways, many individuals become connected to social movementsthrough viewing, sharing, and making media. Most conversations aboutsocial movements ’ use of ICTs emphasize their importance as tactical toolsfor mobilization, fundraising, or information circulation. Some focus onthe ways in which social movements are able to reach new audiences onthe net. Few emphasize the importance of the media-making process itself.Yet making media, especially making media together with others in theheat of a campaign or mass mobilization, can be a powerful force for socialmovement identity formation. 59As digital media literacy spreads, more people than ever before are creatingsocial movement media, with largely unstudied implications. Manyimmigrant rights activists expressed the idea that the media-making processitself is a powerful movement-building force. Recent work by scholars atthe University of Southern California also supports this point. Arely Zimmermanconducted an extensive case study of how DREAM activists usenew media to foster what she and the Civic Paths working group describeas participatory politics . Based on interviews, fieldwork, and content analysis,Zimmerman argues that the affordances of new media support youthpolitical engagement. She emphasizes that undocumented youth use blogs,social media, and video to build shared identity, create community, andform networks, and that these activities in turn increase their feelings ofself-worth and political efficacy. Zimmerman also finds that online communitiesinitially focused on friendship and interest-driven activity canbecome politicized spaces, feeding into formal political participation. Shemaintains that DREAMers ’ use of new media strategies is grounded intraditional community organizing approaches, and encourages scholars toview new media strategies from a perspective that recognizes the continuedimportance of face-to-face movement organizations and communityinstitutions. 60Made in L.A.Active participation in documentary film production can also be importantto social movement identity formation. One organizer I met took part in

146 Chapter 6the creation of Made in L.A., an award-winning documentary about garmentworker organizing, and described this process as crucial to her own politicization.She emphasized that one of the most important outcomes of thefilm was the set of connections formed between people and organizationsthat worked with the filmmakers:I became involved with the anti-sweatshop student movement at Cal State L.A.because I worked at a sweatshop, my mother worked at a sweatshop, my wholefamily, my uncles, they worked for, they had a little business. They were the costureros[clothesmakers] themselves, right? … I think the one project that I was themost proud of was helping Almudena Carracedo transcribe interviews with garmentworkers for her film, Made in L.A. She actually interviewed me, but gosh! Thatwoman interviewed a bunch of people and it was a three-, four-year project thattook her four years to finish. And it was great! And I liked the outcome, and especiallythe connections that she made. And the fact that that film got distributed allover the world. 61Following this experience, she became increasingly involved in socialmovement activity. Currently she works with the Amanecer Collective, ananarchist affinity group that she calls her “ political home. ” The groupmeets regularly via phone conferences, and once a year face to face. Theyalso have a radio collective, Echos de Libertad (Echoes of Liberty), thatproduces a two-hour radio show for the online radio station Killradio.org.At the time of the interview they were preparing to begin broadcasts on anew pirate FM station in East L.A.Media production practices in the immigrant rights movement thusgenerate new movement participants. Digital media tools enable thesepractices, and the media that emerges is widely circulated via the Internet.However, the Internet is not always the primary point of connection formedia-makers, and transmedia organizing practices do not necessarilyrequire always-on Internet connectivity. Another interviewee, who worksas a social media consultant for immigrant rights organizations, emphasizedthat he finds the process of participatory video production to havegreat value, even in situations of limited Internet access. 62 Of course, thevideos produced in his media-making workshops are later circulated online,but he maintains that a significant part of the value for movement buildingis in the actual experience of face-to-face collaborative production.Propagandists of all ideological stripes have long shared a dream: tomake media so compelling that the reader or viewer feels moved to join

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 147the cause. Although this does occasionally take place, it may be the leastcommon pathway to participation. However, it does happen: one activistdescribed how an organization ’ s online presence, specifically its Facebookpage, served as a tool to recruit her as a DREAM activist. She stronglyidentified with a video produced by the Student Immigrant Movementthat described the personal story of one of the organizers:I was undocumented, my family was going back to Brazil and I really, really felt likethese students from the stuff that they put on their Facebook. They had videos ofthe kids running after the bus, they had a video of Mario telling his story, and thenwhen I saw those videos I was like, “ I am one of those students. ” Right away Iwanted to be a part of them, and that ’ s what I did. I was living forty-five minutessouth of Boston and I came all the way on the commuter rail, just to check ’ emout. When I met the organizer I was like, “ I want to be a part of you guys, tell mewhat to do. ” 63In this case, DIY video not only helped generate shared movementidentity among the video producers, it also provided a touchpoint to bringa new person into the movement through face-to-face organizing.Who Controls the Story? Public Narrative, Messaging, and Framing.Public narrative is a key mechanism for the production of collective identityand for social movement formation. The messages and frames employedin that narrative have important implications for the kind of movementthat emerges. In a certain sense, whoever controls the story controls — orat least shapes — the movement. Indeed, over the past decade, DREAMactivists have struggled mightily over the public narrative that swirlsaround them. They have argued with mainstream immigrant rights groupsover the issue of whether to push for stand-alone DREAM Act legislationin the absence of comprehensive immigration reform and debated internallyover the ‘ good immigrant/bad immigrant ’ narrative they were placedinto by political operatives from both parties. They have wrestled with thelanguage of “ we are not criminals ” and “ we are not terrorists, ” discoursethat reinforces the master narratives of an out-of-control criminal justicesystem and the “ war on terror. ” DREAMers have discussed, and decided tomove away from, the argument “ we were brought here through no faultof our own, ” a statement that pits “ good ”’ DREAMers against their own“ lawbreaking ” parents. Most recently, as they have gained visibility, they

148 Chapter 6have encountered the challenge of how to work with powerful, highlyskilled media producers. These ostensible allies sometimes create highproduction-valuemedia that are compelling and beautiful, but delinkedfrom accountability to existing social movement processes. (I return to thisdynamic in chapter 7.) This section explores how DREAMers make collectivedecisions about the public narrative of their movement. DREAMersconsciously shape public narratives, struggle to control the frame, andwork to shift public opinion, while building their own movement baseand coordinating with other elements of the immigrant rights movementand beyond. They do this through face-to-face organizing, developing andexecuting strategic media plans, making decisions about shared messaging,forming media teams, and through formal and informal learning focusedon both traditional PR skills and new media tools.Several recent scholarly works provide an in-depth analysis not only ofDREAM activism but specifically of DREAM activists ’ attempts to shapepublic discourse. Claudia Anguiano ´ s 2011 doctoral dissertation uses criticalrace theory to analyze shifts in the discursive strategies of undocumentedyouth over the period 2001 – 2010. 64 She draws on her own extensiveparticipation in the movement as well as on interviews with activists, andfinds three key phases in DREAMer discourse. From 2001 to 2007, Anguianoobserves, DREAM activists focused on creating a shared group identityas “ exceptional students ” to counter the dehumanizing right-wing frameof the “ illegal alien. ” From 2007 to 2009, she found, self-identification as“ undocumented and unafraid ” served to build national coalitions thatwere able to take the stage as political actors. After 2010, she describes amarked identity shift to “ unapologetic DREAMers, ” who burst into nationalconsciousness through high-risk civil disobedience tactics. 65 My ownmovement-based research, including media training, mobilization participation,and interviews, supports these arguments. Notably, each of theseshifts was accomplished not through top-down “ message discipline ” butthrough discussions and intentional processes of shared storytelling amongcommitted activists. Today, in 2014, storytelling strategy continues to bean important component of immigrant rights organizing. While it oftenemerges organically during the formative stages of social movements, laterit is increasingly adopted by more formal organizations and institutions.For example, groups like Underground Undergrads and DreamActivist.orginitially emerged in part as avenues for participatory storytelling by

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 149undocumented youth. Later, many of the most visible DREAM activistorganizations and networks formalized this approach. In part, this happenedthrough workshops and training sessions that integrated MarshallGanz ’ s “ public narrative ” approach to organizing. Ganz famously urgedorganizers to develop a “ story of self, story of us, and story of now. ” 66DREAM activist summer training sessions, workshops, gatherings, conferencecalls, webinars, and the United We Dream National Congress allprominently feature this approach. 67As the immigrant youth movement gained steam, DREAM activist organizationsproliferated. Since 2000, DREAM activism has developed from adhoc and informal, campus- and city-level groups and collectives to multipleoverlapping multistate and national networks and coalitions. Oneinterviewee described how her work with University of California DREAMersshifted to citywide work with Dream Team L.A. Next, she talked aboutthe process of connecting to a statewide network called the CaliforniaDream Team Alliance, followed by participation in the national United WeDream network. 68 As these networks and organizations grow, the processof constructing shared movement identity involves ongoing discussionsabout messaging and framing, as well as attempts to ensure that membersare able to project the shared message and talk to reporters. DREAM activistsexplicitly create plans to circulate key messages across all platforms,both online and via traditional media (print and broadcast).One interviewee from Dream Team L.A. described a “ traditional mediastrategy ” designed to reach print media, broadcast news media, and magazines,as well as a “ social media strategy ” to stay connected to supportersand participants via Facebook and Twitter. She said, “ For us, it ’ s reallyimportant to merge the two. ” In addition, she mentioned systematic presstraining at the beginning of campaigns:Right before we engage in any campaigns, before we engage in any interviews, anylead or source, we really focus a lot on developing our messaging, and really framingour messaging, and developing our members to be able to project that message,right, and be able to really know how to talk to reporters. How not to talk to reporters,how to bring things back to our main goals and objectives. 69She talked about how DREAM activists struggle to shape the framing oftheir movement, not only against anti-immigrant forces but also againstlarger, better-resourced, immigrant rights groups. DREAMers had to startforming their own media teams in part to redirect frames by ostensible

150 Chapter 6policy allies that depicted them as “ model immigrants ” and criminalizedtheir parents. In 2010, during the height of the federal DREAM Act campaign,many DREAMers felt uncomfortable with the messaging used bymainstream immigrant rights organizations. For example, one intervieweetalked about how professional nonprofits developed PSAs (public serviceannouncements) about undocumented youth that described them as“ model immigrants ” who came to the United States “ through no fault oftheir own. ” She and other activists I interviewed felt that this message wasdeveloped without input from undocumented youth. They created alternativeframing and used it to push back. As she said,We use to come back at it like: we were brought here by our courageous parents,who are responsible parents, and wanted their children to have a better life, right?Because we don ’ t want to — we don ’ t have to criminalize our parents. 70This activist brought sophisticated media skills she had developed as ahigh school educational justice organizer to her work on the federalDREAM Act. She discussed writing press releases, developing relationshipswith reporters, testing messaging and framing with focus groups, anddeveloping clarity about the core values that underlay the frames. Yetrather than assign messaging tasks to single spokespersons or professionalcommunications staff, many DREAMers work to make collective decisionsabout framing, sound bites, media strategy, and spokespeople. 71 As mediaand communications chair for an organizing collective, this activist nowfocuses on working with other DREAMers to help them develop moreeffective media strategies. Her goal is not only to ensure that DREAMers ’voices are heard but also to lift up and humanize the entire immigrantcommunity, which remains under heavy discursive attack. In addition, sheemphasizes a media strategy that is led by, and run by, undocumentedyouth. Another DREAM Act organizer noted the important role of bothspecialist training and peer-to-peer learning in gaining key skills, such ashow to cultivate press contacts, write press releases, and organize pressconferences. At the UCLA Labor Center, interns working on A.B. 540 andaccess to education received media training from professional P.R. consultants.The training sessions focused on how to organize a press conference,establish contacts with professional journalists, and tell the story of undocumentedyouth without mistakenly placing people at risk. 72 In this case,undocumented student organizers used a “ train the trainer ” approach. Thefirst training session was provided by a media consultant, and subsequent

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 151training sessions were conducted by trained students who also had handsoncampaign experience.Pathways to Participation: ConclusionsUndocumented youth have been organizing for more than a decade toattain regularization of their immigration status, both as part of thebroader immigrant rights movement and in the struggle for a standaloneDREAM Act. The Obama administration ’ s 2012 announcement ofthe DACA program, while only a small step forward, was a hard-wonvictory earned by undocumented youth through a combination of insideand outside tactics, including direct action and sit-ins in streets, offices,and campaign headquarters across the country. DREAMers use innovativetransmedia organizing tactics to build visibility, circulate theirmessages, and strengthen movement identity through participatorymedia-making.DREAMers travel diverse pathways into the immigrant rights movement.Some move from group to group, for example by getting involvedin high school organizing around access to education, fair trade, or workers ’rights, then connecting to the immigrant rights movement. Others arepoliticized through mass mobilizations: many specifically joined the movementafter the mass marches and walkouts of 2006. Still others are mentoredby seasoned activists who are respected members of their communities.In addition, there are a number of mediated pathways to movementparticipation. Media production, circulation, and reception all providepossible entry points to movement work. Making media, in particular,often provides a powerful experience that shapes social movement identityand, frequently, has longer-term impacts on people ’ s lives. Among theimmigrant rights activists whom I worked with and interviewed, someinitially became involved through working on a media production project,such as a film. Others connected through media bridging work, by actingas curators or amplifiers of movement media made by others — for example,by helping to promote an action by circulating flyers, physically or throughsocial media. A smaller number described media reception as their pathwayto participation: they saw a video, contacted a local organization toattend a face-to-face meeting, and eventually became movement leadersthemselves.

152 Chapter 6Participation in movement media-making thus provides an entry pointto further politicization and deeper involvement. This dynamic is notlimited to social media. For example, it also had an impact on those whotook part in the production of the documentary film Made in L.A, andthose involved in participatory video and audio production workshops.Media-making may have always provided pathways to participation insocial movements, but the growth of digital media literacy has greatlyexpanded these paths. The spread of audiovisual production skills to abroader set of participants also influences the movement ’ s public narrative.Undocumented youth are increasingly able to tell their own stories, andconnect their own story to the larger story of the movement, throughmedia that they themselves produce. At the same time, traditional pressstrategies, including skills such as organizing press conferences, developingtalking points, staying on message, and deploying frames and messagesthat adhere to the movement ’ s objectives, are all seen by organizers asfundamental components of movement media strategy. Transmedia organizersexplicitly understand the need to develop participatory media strategiesthat play out in social media while simultaneously mobilizing resourcesto gain coverage in print and broadcast outlets.The development of a powerful public narrative has been crucial toDREAM activism. During earlier stages of the movement, most undocumentedyouth kept their citizenship status hidden from public view. Asmore and more DREAMers abandoned secrecy, came out as undocumented,and became more visible across the media ecology, they found it increasinglyeasy to organize actions, gather supporters, and increase eventturnout. One organizer spoke of 2010 as a year of “ big victories ” in termsof mobilization and public visibility. Although the federal DREAM Actfailed to pass (by five votes), more than 250 undocumented students mobilizedon Capitol Hill for weeks. The organizer described the shift as follows:We just became fearless, and it just became a lot easier to organize people to ouractions because we didn ’ t have to keep it a secret. We could put it all over Facebook,we could tell the media. At one of our events, we did it at a church and we got over400 people inside the church. We didn ’ t even take, it was two weeks of organizingto get 400 people there. It wasn ’ t an extensive amount of organizing that we did.So it was really powerful that a lot of people came, and we didn ’ t expect that. 73Ultimately, transmedia organizers hope to build movement participation,shift public opinion, win policy victories, and win both symbolic and

Out of the Closets, Out of the Shadows, and Into the Streets 153material gains. Although passage of the federal DREAM Act was initiallythe key policy outcome around which DREAM activists organized, it is nolonger their main goal. One interviewee described the DREAM Act vote in2010 as a huge victory, even though the bill failed to pass. He felt thatorganizing around the vote “ changed the public opinion in this countryof what undocumented workers are, ” citing polls at the time that showedbetween 60 percent and 70 percent of the American people supportingDREAMers. 74 He emphasized that this was an unprecedented level ofsupport, and an indicator of a broader cultural shift. The same organizeralso felt that some of the most important victories came from localorganizing that led to state-level DREAM Acts, specifically in Maryland,Connecticut, Illinois, and California. 75Queer undocumented youth have led the DREAM activist movement,and the broader immigrant rights movement, into ever-greater visibilityand power. They have developed innovative forms of transmedia organizingacross social media, mass media, and community media spaces.DREAMers receive extensive print and broadcast coverage as they engagein nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action. They develop mediasavvyprotest tactics that leverage arrests, detentions, and deportations tobuild awareness of their struggle. Print and broadcast media now regularlycover these activities and help DREAMers reach a much broader audience,although many activists find message control in these platforms difficult.Faced with tactical escalation, nonviolent civil disobedience, sit-ins, anddirect actions, increasingly sophisticated management of public narrative,and a broader cultural shift that includes public opinion tilting towardwidespread support for regularization of undocumented youth, in 2013 theU.S. Congress had no choice but to put comprehensive immigration reformback on the table. Also by 2013, multiple professionally produced transmediacampaigns focused on the DREAMers and on immigration reform.The next chapter explores the opportunities and challenges these campaignspresent for the immigrant rights movement.

Figure 7.1Screenshot from FWD.us.Source: FWD.us.

7 Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us:Professionalization and Accountability in TransmediaOrganizingReal reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress myadministration has already made — putting more boots on the southern border thanat any time in our history, and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40years. Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship —a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningfulpenalty, learning English and going to the back of the line behind the folks tryingto come here legally. … Our economy is stronger when we harness the talents andingenuity of striving, hopeful immigrants. And right now, leaders from the business,labor, law enforcement, and faith communities all agree that the time has come topass comprehensive immigration reform.— President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, 2013As President Barack Obama ’ s second term unfolded, comprehensive immigrationreform again took center stage. At the beginning of 2013, a groupof U.S. senators known as the “ Gang of Eight, ” including Republican senatorsMcCain, Graham, Flake, and Rubio and Democrats Schumer, Durbin,Menendez, and Bennet, announced their intentions to develop a bipartisancomprehensive immigration reform bill. Soon after, the Obama administrationleaked its own version of an immigration bill, and signaled that itwould be introduced to both houses of Congress unless representatives andsenators moved quickly to bring their own bills out of committee. Boththe Senate framework and Obama ’ s proposal contained the same set ofprovisions as the last several attempts at comprehensive immigrationreform. Both began with an emphasis on heightened enforcement, continuedborder militarization, and a nationwide expansion of the federal E-Verifysystem to all employers. Both included a process to naturalize DREAMers,if they enrolled in college or the military and were “ morally upstanding. ”Each proposal included an expanded guest worker program, designed to

156 Chapter 7allow the agricultural industry to bring in migrant workers to harvest cropsat low wages. Finally, both included a “ pathway to citizenship ” for undocumentedimmigrants who registered, paid a fine, paid back taxes, learnedEnglish, and “ went to the back of the line. ”The immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2013 was nearly identicalto the proposed 2007 bill, but the political context had shifted. Mitt Romney’ s defeat in the 2012 elections drove home a reality that the RepublicanParty was no longer able to ignore: the Latin@ electorate is huge, overwhelminglyin favor of immigration reform, and voted for Obama by amargin of 44 percentage points nationwide. 1 Latin@s now make up 17percent of the U.S. population, and their numbers are growing, includingin many states that have traditionally been Republican Party strongholds. 2To put it bluntly, the Republican leadership knows that the party mustshift on immigration if it hopes to attract Latin@ voters. What ’ s more, thefact has hit home that the party must broaden its base beyond Angloconservatives if it wants to remain viable in the twenty-first century.Transmedia Organizing: The New Normal?One of the most striking aspects of the current stage of mobilizationaround immigration reform is the rise of transmedia organizing as a mainstreamstrategy. Organizing efforts that center storytelling by undocumentedpeople, that operate across platforms, and that provide multipleopportunities for people to contribute their own voice have begun to proliferaterapidly. This approach is moving quickly from the margins to thecenter. Most of the transmedia organizing practices described throughoutthis book arose organically from grassroots networks, in part out of necessity.The transmedia organizing we have explored so far was often cobbledtogether, in a context of lack of access to the resources needed to run traditional,top-down messaging campaigns. However, by 2012 – 2013 larger,better-resourced groups and institutions had begun to adopt transmediaorganizing. There are many examples, but it is worth describing the threebest-resourced efforts to date in more detail: Define American, The Dreamis Now, and FWD.us.Define AmericanOn June 22, 2011, Pulitzer Prize – winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargascame out as undocumented in an essay in the New York Times Magazine

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 157titled “ My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant. ” 3 He was inspired todo so by four undocumented students who walked from Miami to Washingtonto raise awareness of the federal DREAM Act, in an action knownas the Trail of Dreams. 4 In the essay, Vargas tells his story. He revealshow, as a young undocumented student born in the Philippines andsent to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, California, henegotiated one hurdle after the next. He had help from family, friends,and allies: the grandfather who doctored his Social Security card atKinko ’ s so that he could find employment; the high school choir teacherwho changed a planned class trip from Japan to Hawaii so that Vargascould participate; the school principal who helped him find a collegescholarship that was agnostic about his immigration status. In onemoving section, he describes coming out as gay in his high schoolhistory class after watching a documentary about Harvey Milk, thenwrites, “ Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less dauntingthan coming out about my legal status. ” 5 Vargas describes the delicatedance he performed as a staff reporter at the Washington Post ,working hard and climbing the ladder, but always living in fear that hisstatus would be discovered.After his essay appeared in the New York Times Magazine , Vargas becamea visible and vocal activist for immigrant rights. In June 2012 he wrote acover story for Time magazine that described the long struggle of undocumentedimmigrants for public visibility and the battle for comprehensiveimmigration reform. 6 He was accompanied on Time ’ s cover by the faces ofmore than a dozen undocumented youth, themselves DREAMers andleaders in the immigrant rights movement, several of whom I interviewedfor this book. Vargas, who is queer and undocumented, has continued touse his visibility and credibility in both mainstream and movementcircles to launch a transmedia campaign called Define American ( http://defineamerican.org ). Define American encourages people to produce andupload videos discussing what it means to be American; material fromthese videos has been woven into Vargas ’ s feature-length documentaryfilm, Documented , that at the time of this writing is appearing in majorfilm festivals and is scheduled for broadcast on CNN. Define Americanwas explicitly conceived, implemented, and promoted as a transmediaorganizing campaign.I talked with one of the project staff, who has worked in the pastwith the Harry Potter Alliance to foster fan activism and connect people

158 Chapter 7to civic action through transmedia strategies and “ cultural acupuncture.” 7 He described working with the project team to leverage the theatricalrelease of the film Man of Steel to generate attention to immigrationreform through the meme “ Superman is an Immigrant ” (see http://wearetheamericanway.tumblr.com ). 8 Several activists who were interviewedfor this book specifically mentioned Vargas ’ s coming out and theDefine American campaign as catalysts for their own decision to publiclyreveal their own undocumented status, as well as for inspiring their ownjourney to deeper social movement participation. 9 The campaign hasthus successfully linked a powerful narrative frame, participatory mediamaking,and a media strategy that crosses platforms. Vargas has sustainedthis narrative from the New York Times to the Colbert Report , fromTime magazine to YouTube videos, and from social media platforms toa feature-length documentary. Define American has also linked storytellingdirectly to legislative action, as well as to community organizingefforts; Vargas frequently includes DREAM Act organizing and thebroader immigrant rights movement when discussing his own historyand immigration status.Define American is a transmedia organizing campaign that is largelyled and staffed by undocumented people, immigrant rights activists, andclose allies. The campaign often highlights the stories of immigrantrights activists. It frames these stories in ways that are consistent withthe public narrative the broader movement decides to project. Forexample, Define American avoids the problematic “ we are not criminals ”framing. This frame has been extensively promoted by Spanish-languagemass media (as we saw in chapter 1) but has the unintended consequenceof dividing immigrants into “ good ” and “ bad, ” while reinforcinga master narrative about criminality that provides support for the continuedgrowth of the already bloated prison industry. From its inception,the Define American campaign also intentionally moved away from a‘” DREAMers-first ” narrative to include voices across a wide range of agegroups, countries of national origin, class backgrounds, educationallevels, and so on. While it lacks a formal accountability mechanism, theleadership and staff of Define American, many of them activists withdeep ties to the immigrant rights movement, have kept the project ’ sgoals, messaging, and actions linked to the needs of the movement ’ ssocial base.

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 159The Dream is NowIn 2012, Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs,launched a transmedia campaign called The Dream is Now ( http://www.thedreamisnow.org). This campaign initially focused on building supportfor the passage of stand-alone DREAM Act legislation. Jobs funded thecampaign through the Emerson Collective, her philanthropic organization,and teamed up with Academy Award – winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim,director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman , toproduce the project. The Dream is Now was conceived as a public communicationscampaign designed to educate a broad spectrum of peopleabout the human stories that lie behind the highly politicized debates overimmigration policy. Visitors to TheDreamisNow.org are encouraged towatch videos of DREAMers telling their stories, and, as on the DefineAmerican site, to record and upload their own videos. Those who do soare encouraged to think about the act of sharing their personal story as“ joining the movement, ” and storytelling is framed as a radical new formof political organizing. In addition, visitors are asked to sign a petitionsupporting passage of the DREAM Act (or at least, this was the case duringthe first several months of the site ’ s launch).As The Dream is Now built momentum in the spring of 2013, I had theopportunity to participate in several meetings and calls with the projectteam. The producers had many conversations with immigrant rights activists,some of whom repeatedly asked how they planned to use the atten -tion their campaign was sure to generate to help support the existingorganizations and campaigns that DREAMERs themselves had built overthe years. In general, The Dream is Now team seemed to feel that informalconversations with activists would be enough to guide their efforts. Inaddition, they soon put out a call for paid community organizers, whosemission would be to travel to college campuses across the country, organizescreenings, and capture more stories in HD video. Many activists questionedhow The Dream is Now organizers would relate to existing movementnetworks like United We Dream (UWD), DreamActivist.net, theNational Immigrant Youth Alliance, and so on. For example, UWD hadbeen running a Share Your Story project for some time. 10 Videos submittedthrough UWD ’ s Share Your Story project were nowhere near as nicelyproduced as those uploaded to The Dream is Now, yet the process of gatheringthe stories was more closely linked to UWD ’ s nationwide ground

160 Chapter 7game. UWD ’ s Share Your Story project was designed to directly connectDREAMers to an existing network of organizers, training, actions, andevents built up over a decade of community organizing. Participatorymedia-making was, for UWD, linked to a complex strategy involvingmovement identity building, public narrative and public opinion shifts,and state- and federal-level policy demands.Most critically, The Dream is Now project was initially developed withan exclusive focus on passage of a stand-alone DREAM Act. However, ascomprehensive immigration reform came back on the table in early 2013,most DREAM activists switched from an emphasis on stand-alone DREAMAct legislation to efforts to move a comprehensive bill, one that wouldinclude the best possible provisions for undocumented youth alongsideregularization of all eleven million undocumented people. This shift wascarefully discussed at face-to-face convenings of DREAM activists acrossthe country, including at the nationwide UWD summit in Kansas City inDecember 2012. There, more than six hundred “ Dream Warriors ” fromacross the United States came to consensus to switch from a focus on astand-alone DREAM Act and a public narrative that primarily emphasizedthe stories of DREAMers to a focus on comprehensive immigration reformand a narrative of “ all 11 million. ” This meant a different demand: immigrationpolicy reform that would benefit every undocumented personliving in the United States. 11 In light of the broad consensus amongDREAMers themselves about how to frame their stories in 2013, multipleactivists asked The Dream is Now team to consider shifting its overallmessage, including the language of the petition drive, to reflect the newcontext. The team declined to make the change, and when the projectlaunched, it included a petition calling for passage of a stand-aloneDREAM Act.Eventually, The Dream is Now did change its petition language to fit thecontext of the actual comprehensive immigration reform bill. More important,it began to shift its frame to call for immigration reform that wouldprovide a pathway to citizenship not only for undocumented youth but alsofor their families. Yet initially, by launching its own petition over the expressobjections and criticism of movement activists, using an outdated framing,and failing to link to existing campaigns and organizations, The Dream isNow team ’ s efforts were delinked from the organizing priorities of the immigrantrights movement. At each step of the way, this team of experienced

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 161media-makers fumbled attempts to connect with the movement on theground. Charitably explained, this may well have been from a lack of experience,as they also seemed ignorant of movement history. For example, theoriginal version of the DREAM Act had three pathways to citizenship:through a college degree, military service, or community service. MostDREAMers I talked to preferred that the community service option beincluded, since most can ’ t afford a college degree and many oppose the militaryon moral grounds. Yet The Dream is Now petition mentioned onlycollege and the military, ignoring the community service option, and theshort film produced by the team prominently highlights the potentialimportance of DREAMers to the future viability of the U.S. military.The site also had weak “ do no harm ” protections. Along with otheractivists from the UndocuTech project, I advised The Dream is Now teamthat, as people uploaded their stories, it would be crucial to warn themprior to upload that they not share any story that could potentially putthem at greater risk, trigger deportation, negatively impact their chancesto apply for DACA or for other regularized status once the bill wentthrough, and so on. However, the site designers implemented only a boilerplateprivacy warning.As mentioned, the organization also hired a team of community organizerswho focused on visiting college campuses, where they met withstudent groups that already supported immigration reform. These organizerswere tasked with shooting and uploading high-quality video storiesfrom supportive students. This took place at the same time as movementgroups such as UWD received large grants to hire additional communityorganizers in the push for comprehensive immigration reform, thus placingThe Dream is Now and UWD in direct competition to hire media-savvyimmigrant rights activists. Some organizers floated an alternative proposal:The Dream is Now could work closely with community organizers fromexisting DREAM activist networks and provide movement activists withmedia production trainings and higher-quality cameras in exchange forgood-quality videos of DREAMer stories. This proposal was ignored.Although The Dream is Now producers eventually agreed to change someof their language to reflect the broader movement ’ s goals, at each stepof the way, grassroots organizers as well as D.C. insiders struggled tocommunicate with the media production team about the evolving socialmovement strategy.

162 Chapter 7Overall, the project created a beautiful, nicely produced video, andmanaged to attract a good deal of mass media attention. It amplifiedthe voices of undocumented youth, including Erika Andiola, one of theleaders of the Arizona DREAM Coalition, and contributed to the movement’ s broader efforts to use public narrative, shift public opinion, andadvance concrete policy goals. The Dream is Now has evolved, learnedfrom past mistakes, and made significant strides toward becoming anamplifier of stories from within the immigrant rights movement. Mypoint here is thus not at all to denigrate the efforts of The Dream isNow project. It is a powerful, high-production-value, transmedia campaignthat has served an important purpose, not least in helping toshape the public conversation during the 2013 debates in Congress.However, at least in the initial stages, the project repeatedly stumbledbecause it lacked accountability. It did not build a strong connection tothe immigrant rights movement. It included undocumented youth ascamera subjects and as powerful voices, but it failed to meaningfullyinclude them in framing, decision making, and strategic process. Byfailing to implement a concrete accountability mechanism, The Dreamis Now suffered both ethical and practical problems. Ethically, the projectsacrificed accountability and democratic process for speed and efficiency.Practically, this resulted in demands that were out of sync with themovement and overall reduced impact: a transmedia campaign delinkedfrom the social movement base is far less able to leverage attention formeaningful action.FWD.usThe first transmedia campaign this chapter explored came more or lessorganically from the immigrant rights movement: as described above,Define American is a transmedia organizing campaign led by queer undocumentedauthor and activist Jose Antonio Vargas, and staffed by manyDREAMers themselves. The second transmedia campaign discussed here,The Dream is Now, was initiated by a professional filmmaking team. It toldDREAMer stories through a very high-production-value, professional documentaryaesthetic. However, it had a slightly rocky relationship with movementnetworks on the ground, wrestled with framing decisions that shouldhave been clear, and tended to move ahead with a centralized approachto action alerts that weren ’ t necessarily linked to grounded movement

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 163strategy. The third transmedia campaign for immigrant rights, FWD.us,was created by Silicon Valley.FWD.us is the most recent entrant into the growing set of transmediaorganizing campaigns around immigration reform, and it is another animalentirely. The project was launched in the spring of 2013 by a group oftechnologists and businesspeople, including Facebook founder and CEOMark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, various executivesfrom Dropbox, several Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and Bill Gates.Some of the founders identify as immigrants, and the main narrative theyadvance is that of the immigrant entrepreneur. In addition, the organizationhired experienced political operatives such as Clinton administrationofficial Joe Lockhart and Republican Senate adviser Rob Jesmer to guidetheir policy strategy. 12FWD.us employs many of the same techniques as Define American orThe Dream is Now. Like these campaigns, FWD.us calls on the public toshare their immigration stories. It models this request by providing short,nicely shot videos of immigrant tech entrepreneurs talking about their lifeexperiences, their desire to become citizens, and the difficulty of doing sounder the current system. The website calls on viewers to sign up for acampaign via their Facebook, Twitter, or email account; asks for a signaturefor an online petition; and asks people to upload their own immigrationstories to contribute to the growth of “ the movement. ” The campaign hasalso hired “ community organizers, ” whose responsibilities focus on organizingthe tech community to support comprehensive immigration reform.By the summer of 2013, FWD.us had also begun to organize face-to-facemeetups in multiple cities.On a technical level, FWD.us is cutting edge. The campaign is poweredby Nation Builder, a for-profit platform for constituent relationship managementbuilt by techies with backgrounds at Facebook and in the Obamacampaign. Nation Builder provides sophisticated tools for campaign managers,such as the ability to integrate, manage, and visualize contacts acrossplatforms, including email, Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phones. It haspowerful analytics that reveal the views, open rates, and conversion ratesto an asked-for action (such as liking, sharing, calling a congressperson, ordonating money).While it launched as a sophisticated transmedia organizing campaignaround immigration reform that used the latest digital tools, FWD.us (at

164 Chapter 7least initially) had very little connection to the existing immigrant rightsmovement (although this relationship has changed over time). At launch,the campaign rhetoric advanced demands based on the narrow needs ofhigh-skill knowledge industry employers while ignoring the reality, agency,and movement history of the more than 12 million undocumented peoplewho have fought for decades to make immigration reform a political possibility.FWD.us supports border militarization proposals that run counterto the spirit of the immigrant rights movement and that would causeincreased deaths on the border. The organization also supports expansionof the E-Verify employment verification system. E-Verify will make thelives of millions of working-class undocumented people significantly moredifficult; in addition, according to U.S. Citizenship and Iimmigration Services’ own evaluation, the system suffers a 50 percent failure rate. 13 In atangential but telling development, shortly after launch, FWD.us generateda wave of criticism from across the immigrant rights movement and theenvironmental movement when it paid for a series of political ads supportingthe controversial Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry oil from theCanadian tar sands to the United States. 14 The leadership of FWD.usresponded to these criticisms by arguing that these are simply the politicalcompromises necessary to attain their objectives.FWD.us thus represents a new level of corporate-led transmedia organizing.It is cross-platform, combining a sophisticated social media strategywith the ability to place stories in mass media outlets. It is participatory,calling on people to produce and upload their own stories as well as to“ like ” and “ share ” nicely produced videos on social networking sites. Itlinks attention to action by asking supporters to sign an online petitionand call their elected representatives in Congress. However, it lacks bothformal and informal accountability mechanisms to the social base of theimmigrant rights movement. Instead, the campaign ’ s strategy, narrative,and calls to action are guided from the top down by paid staff, ultimatelyaccountable primarily to the interests of the Silicon Valley firms that arethe financial backers of the “ movement. ” While it may be logical for thesefirms to support policy positions that primarily advance their own interests,in the name of “ building a movement ” for immigration reform, FWD.us takes stances, such as support for border militarization and E-Verify, thatare directly harmful to the vast majority of undocumented people. What ’ smore, the organization actively positions itself as “ the immigrant rights

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 165movement, ” erasing the history of decades of grassroots organizingled by young people of color, many of them queer and undocumentedthemselves.In summary, Define American is a transmedia campaign led by undocumentedactivists, with organic ties to the broader movement that producea strong if informal accountability mechanism. The Dream is Now is atransmedia campaign led by well-meaning funders and professional mediamakers;it produces high-quality video stories and generates mass mediaattention but struggles to link its framing, calls to action, and strategy tothose of the broader immigrant rights movement. FWD.us is a tech-industrybacked transmedia campaign that (at least initially) consciously positioneditself at a distance from the broader immigrant rights movement.It has a clear main goal: to increase the number of visas available for highskillinformation workers. Many immigrant rights activists dismiss FWD.us as “ astroturf: ” a campaign that attempts to leverage the credibility ofgrassroots organizing to advance a policy goal but is backed directly bypowerful private corporations that stand to directly benefit. More recently,this analysis has become more complicated, as FWD.us has partnered withDefine American and Mark Zuckerberg has helped Jose Antonio Vargaspromote his film, Documented. Yet speaking broadly, we can say that eachtransmedia campaign has more resources, produces higher-productionvaluemedia, and is more professionalized than the last, but each is lessaccountable to the immigrant rights movement.Professionalization and Accountability in Transmedia Organizing: TheRevolution Will Not Be FundedThe trend toward the professionalization of transmedia organizing, andthe questions about accountability that it raises, must be seen as part of abroader process. Social movement professionalization is not unique to theimmigrant rights movement, and it is not new. In the wake of the civilrights, anti-Vietnam War, gay liberation, and feminist movements duringthe 1960s and 1970s, social movements in the United States underwent aperiod of increasing professionalization. Social movement scholars such asJohn McCarthy, Meyer Zald, Suzanne Staggenborg, and others have documentedhow, over time, private foundations stepped in to fund, mediate,and increasingly shape social movement activity in the United States. 15

166 Chapter 7Social movement groups outside the academy have also developed a critiqueof foundations and incorporated nonprofits over the last two decades.In 2004, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence organized the conference,“ The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. ” INCITE! members and otherconference attendees unpacked the ways that many feminist organizations,initially committed to ending all forms of violence against women and todismantling patriarchy, ended up spending all their time as professionalservice providers for battered women. Service provision is important, theyargue, but if it is decoupled from movement building, the root causes ofviolence will never be addressed and violence against women will neverend. The conference invited organizers from multiple social movementsto reflect on the dynamics of private foundation support and the rise ofprofessional nonprofits.The conference proceedings were published as the book The RevolutionWill Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex . 16 The mainarguments of the authors are as follows: all foundation money is in asense “ stolen ” money. It is initially stolen from the workers who producevalue for corporate owners, and it is “ stolen ” again when wealthy donorsavoid taxes by creating private foundations. These funds would otherwisebecome available to the state, and would thereby be subject to formaldemocratic accountability. Instead, they are used to establish privatelygoverned organizations with mandates to spend funds according to directiveswritten at the will of their individual (white, male, ruling-class)founders. The book ’ s authors go on to argue that the creation of professionalizednonprofits has in many ways served to weaken social movementsin the United States and, increasingly, internationally. Case studiesof the civil rights movement, the women ’ s movement, and the environmentalmovement demonstrate how what the authors term the nonprofitindustrial complex (NPIC) has systematically drawn movementleadership away from radical or even broad-based progressive social movementbuilding and into issue-specific, organization-centric, professionalcareerism. 17 People who otherwise might be building value-driven socialmovement networks, able to mobilize large-scale societal shifts, insteadend up isolated into issue silos. There they compete with one anotherfor limited foundation funds. They spend much of their time writingproposals and project reports instead of organizing and movement building.18 Additionally, organizations registered as nonprofits under section

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 167501(c)3 of the U.S. tax code are prohibited by law from engaging in manyforms of political activity, including lobbying and supporting politicalparties or candidates. Nonprofits are thus quite literally instruments ofdepoliticization. 19Elements of this critique are widely shared in social movement circles.In the immigrant rights movement, almost all the activists I worked withand interviewed, whether they had jobs in nonprofits or not, were criticalof foundations and of the nonprofit system. As the financial crisis triggeredby the collapse of the housing market struck the endowments of privatefoundations, ambivalence about the nonprofit sector became especiallysalient. Many nonprofit organizations and movement groups found themselvesdefunded in the midst of a climate of economic austerity. 20 Someimmigrant rights activists used their experience within the NPIC to developnew movement structures with strong internal policies that govern whothey will accept funds from, and under what conditions. A few decidednot to accept any funds from either the state, or the corporate sector, orprivate foundations. In some cases this was based on their critique of theNPIC; in others, it was simply because they desired to maintain autonomyfrom foundations and avoid the professionalization of social movementactivity. For example, when I asked an FIOB organizer about foundationsupport, she had this to say:No, we ’ re pretty much autonomous. We don ’ t want any foundation money, we ’ renot a nonprofit. We want to maintain our autonomy, not committing with anyoneon what stand we ’ re going to have on any issue, don ’ t want to owe anybodya favor. 21However, this is the exception that proves the rule. Overall, it would befair to say that the immigrant rights movement has undergone a long-termprocess of professionalization. Today, incorporated nonprofit organizationswith paid staff often present themselves, and are presented by the massmedia, as “ the immigrant rights movement. ” Yet almost all immigrantrights activists, including most nonprofit staff, recognize that the movementis much broader than the incorporated nonprofit organizations thatoperate within it. 22Many organizers discussed their own personal experience of the ongoingshift to movement professionalization and centralization. They talkedabout how the past ten to fifteen years especially have seen a transitionfrom social movement groups fully governed by those most directly

168 Chapter 7affected to incorporated nonprofit organizations controlled by boards ofdirectors, executive directors, and paid staff. 23 One interviewee describedthe transformation of day laborer organizing in Los Angeles, from a daylaborers ’ union that was governed directly by general assembly to thecurrent formal network governed by a committee of executive directors ofimmigrant rights organizations. 24 He stressed that the intentions of thedirectors remain good, the services offered by the organizations are important,and many of the directors came from the base they now represent.However, he also felt that the consolidation of organizing within formallyincorporated nonprofits led, in the long run, to the progressive removalof decision-making power from the hands of day laborers themselves. Forthis organizer, the implications for movement media strategies were clear:Classically what tends to happen is that there ’ s a centralization. Within that centralization,even within the messages, even if the base is asking for another message,once that request gets filtered through their communications department, throughtheir EDs, and through their board, it ’ s changed completely. It ’ s become maybea little bit more acceptable, or more responsible of a message, or not as extreme amessage. 25Like many activists, he felt that the professionalization of immigrant rightsorganizations tends, over the long run, to distance the social base of themovement from decision making. This is a dynamic that social movementtheorists have long observed. 26As the movement professionalizes, many smaller and mid-size organizationsstruggle to keep up with larger, better-resourced nonprofits. Thisplays out in specific ways when it comes to communication strategy morebroadly, and in transmedia organizing specifically. For example, mostsmaller immigrant rights organizations do not employ full-time communicationstaff, but are under increasing pressure to develop an online presence.Organizers who work for less-resourced nonprofit organizationsdescribe experiencing tension between their own desire to include theirsocial base in meaningful decision making, framing, and media-makingand the need to “ just get it done. ” They often want to share communicationand technology skills more broadly with their communities but feelpressure from funders and organizational leadership to complete communicationprojects quickly. In addition, without resources to hire full- oreven part-time staff with media production skills, many told me that theymove from volunteer to volunteer, with an occasional small contractor, in

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 169efforts to release more professional-looking multimedia materials, withoutthe time to establish full accountability to their base. 27As movement organizations grow into nonprofits, at a certain pointmany do hire full-time communication staff and develop an explicit socialmedia strategy. This process is supported by funders and advanced by communicationconsultants within the nonprofit field. However, increasedcapacity does not necessarily lead organizations to develop a praxis ofcritical digital media literacy, as discussed in chapter 5. In other words,the voices of the movement base do not always become the center ofprofessional nonprofit communication strategy. Instead, better-resourcednonprofit organizations often approach social media strategy from theperspective of building a brand, fundraising, and constituent relationshipmanagement. Often, they hope to appropriate some of the functionality —and excitement — of “ Web 2.0 ” while retaining top-down control overmessaging and framing. 28 The desire to adopt social media is in part drivenby the apparent success of other professionalized nonprofit organizations,which also happen to be competitors for a limited pool of philanthropicfunds. Social media adoption among nonprofits also accelerated after thedisplay of the power of online organizing by the Obama campaign machinery.29 However, even as the idea of social media is valorized by nonprofitleadership, social media labor is frequently devalued. Thus, even in betterresourcednonprofits, social media work often ends up relegated to therealm of underpaid labor, assigned to volunteers or to the lowest-paidstaff. 30 This makes it quite difficult to develop transmedia organizing strategiesthat are tightly linked to organizing, policy, and broader communicationsefforts.At the same time, an industry of ‘ new media consultants ’ has sprungup around the nonprofit sector. In interviews with some of these consultants,I found that many are deeply interested in pushing top-down immigrantrights organizations toward more horizontal, or conversational,media practices and strategies. However, they expressed that this oftenends in failure and frustration. 31 In some cases, social media consultantstold me that they were able to move new media initiatives forward withmuch more success as outside ‘ experts ’ than as organizational staff. Forexample, one described how he ultimately left full-time nonprofit employmentin order to work more independently with different organizationsand networks on a contract basis:

170 Chapter 7I just found, within organizations there ’ s a strange dynamic that when you ’ re in anorganization it ’ s really hard to move through new initiatives and new approaches,yet when you ’ re on the outside, and they have to pay for it, they ’ re moreinterested. 32Thus, in some cases, participatory media strategies can make headway intop-down organizations, if pushed by someone operating from outside thatorganization ’ s structural constraints.One of the main barriers to effective transmedia organizing comes fromwhat several interviewees described as “ old-school ” cultures of organizing.According to some interviewees, “ old-school ” organizers fail to engage inthe social practices of sharing that characterize newer movement groupsand networks. One activist described his experience with organizationsrefusing to share contact information, and the lack of trust between similarnonprofits, as the main block to successful online organizing during anational campaign against Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. 33 In thiscase, organizers within a movement network were unable to move a socialmedia strategy forward because the leadership of vertically structuredmember organizations were wary of sharing contacts with each other.Sharing of resources, contacts, content, and platforms, so crucial to thecultural logic of networked activism, 34 is not well developed among professionalimmigrant rights organizations:Part of the challenge with a lot of the larger organizations, the immigrant rightsorganizations that receive a lot of funding — they ’ re kind of these institutions,they ’ re very wary of sharing. They ’ re very wary of, well, then who gets the creditfor this, you know? And unfortunately it leaks back to kind of the funding issue,’ cause whoever gets the credit is the one that ’ s going to get the funding. The fundersaren ’ t just going to fund this undefined movement, you know? This uncentralizedmovement, they ’ ll just move on to the next topic on their funding list. 35In other words, funders currently play an important role in pushingmovement organizations away from horizontalist organizational logicsand away from the norms of network culture. In part this may be becausefunders themselves do not understand the new cultural logic of networking;in part it may be because they have a different model of social change;in part it may be because individual program officers do not want to (orin some cases are legally not allowed to) fund a diffuse “ network. ” Funderswant to build organizations and institutions, and want to be able to quantifydeliverables such as service provision or key policy changes. 36 In this

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 171context, interviewees described how professional nonprofit organizationswithin the immigrant rights movement often compete for funding andproject ownership rather than work toward network coordination andresource sharing. 37Many organizers are also deeply frustrated by what they find to be pervasiveattempts by nonprofits to use social media as a new kind of broadcastchannel. Interviewees described various organizations that have thisproblem and said that it was a constant struggle to get “ old-school organizers” to realize the possibilities of creating a conversation with their onlineaudience. This is especially a problem for national organizations:Some of these national groups are using social media, but they kind of use it as abroadcast medium. … It ’ s really hard for organizations to understand about openingit up and allowing people to add content to what they have to say, you know? Andit ’ s kind of scary to them, and they ’ re very wary of it. 38This social media consultant mentioned two national organizationsbased in D.C. as examples, and said that many movement organizationsin L.A. suffer from the same problem. When I asked for a specific exampleof top-down social media use in L.A., he began by describing how onewell-known immigrant rights organization tried to use Twitter:They cut and paste different things from the [conference] program, like “ We ’ regonna have a workshop on social media, ” and they put that in the Twitter feed andjust sent it. And there was no kind of — they didn ’ t follow anybody, they didn ’ t askany questions, it was “ This is what we ’ re doing, and maybe somebody out there willbe intrigued enough by the title of this workshop that they ’ ll want to come to ourconference. ” 39In another instance, the same organization hired a consulting firm tomanage its Facebook page, but then got upset when the firm changed theprofile picture without authorization. 40 The logic of social media, whichrequires constant attention to human connections, conversation, andregular foregrounding of “ new and fresh ” content, conflicts deeply withthe practices of branded identity that nonprofits have inherited from theprivate sector. 41 In the social media space, nonprofits often struggle toimplement the advice they have received from corporate communicationsconsultants who counsel them to maintain strong brand identity. Thismanifests in the micropolitics of daily communication practices. Nonprofitstaff especially push back against the more fluid social media practicesof youth. 42

172 Chapter 7As we have seen, the danger that a movement ’ s base will be exposed asmore radical than the leadership is one reason why nonprofit leadersremain wary of opening up to social media. The fear of too much transparencycomes into play not only in terms of political positioning but also inthe potential for social media to expose the behavior of organizational staffas ‘ unprofessional. ’ Another interviewee talked about a situation in whichthe executive director of a nonprofit angrily called in the younger staff toberate them for posting pictures of people drinking and dancing at anorganizational fundraiser on Facebook. 43 In this case, social media againgenerated tension: on the one hand, the executive director worried thatrevealing staff and members drinking, dancing, and having fun wouldappear unprofessional and reduce the chances of securing foundationfunds in the future; on the other hand, staff members felt that showingthis side of the organization on social media would make it easier to attractinterest from new potential members and volunteers.Finally, younger organizers talked about how organizational leaderssimply do not understand social media as a space for the production andcirculation of digital culture. For example, one articulated a concern thatmore hierarchical movement organizations are unable to effectively bringarts and music into their culture of organizing, in contrast to the dynamicuse of social networking sites by youth activists. 44 When asked how art,creativity, and music within social movement groups relate to communicationtechnology, she responded, “ I feel like these are different organizingstrategies. … Alternative media strategies or tools are in line with art andculture and music. So I feel it ’ s about us thinking and using these as waysto organize and to develop. ” 45 She also expressed concern about the professionalizationof social movement activity, and said, “ I think that organizingsometimes is very businessy. I think about unions, or nonprofits thatare very hierarchical. ” She felt that hierarchical organizations approachcommunication technology from a “ hard ” utility perspective. They assumethat information and communication technologies are worth investing inonly if they can be applied directly to nuts-and-bolts organizing, withoutcomes that can be measured in clear quantitative terms, such asincreased membership, greater donations, or more efficient use of stafftime. In her analysis, this perspective fails to grasp the key value ofnetworked communication, so evident from the transmedia organizingexperience of high school and college student activists that we saw in

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 173chapter 2: direct participation in the production and circulation of movementnarratives.Media-makers who understand that social media are about creating aconversation but who work within movement groups that are afraid toabandon a “ broadcast ” model sometimes find that the only way to moveforward is to “ ask forgiveness rather than permission. ” When consultingon social media for a national immigrant rights network, one activist wasgiven relatively free rein:So I started this MySpace page and tried to reach out to a lot of these kids, ’ cause alot of what those kids were saying was stuff about enforcement issues. … I think thisis part of the problem that we ’ re finding now with the whole immigration reformdebate. There ’ s this very superficial statement about the need for reform, but nothingabout necessarily what that means. So a lot of the groups very focused on enforcementfeel shut out a lot, because we ’ re seen as kind of too radical. We want to releaseall the criminals or something like this. But a lot of these kids, they were sayingthings like “ Don ’ t criminalize my family ” and “ Don ’ t take my parents awayfrom me. ” 46This interview also highlights the fact that conversations on socialmedia, as framed by those most directly affected by immigration enforcementpolicies, are often more radical than the “ safe ” messages put forwardby national or Washington, D.C.-based immigrant rights organizations.Others described how national messaging in 2006 often promoted a“ we are not criminals ” frame that emphasized “ hardworking, Christianimmigrant families who pay taxes and just want a shot at the AmericanDream, ” while conversations by young people on MySpace at the timeoften included critiques of racism, colonialism, genocide, and culturalimperialism. 47Organizers who hope to engage their base in social media spaces mustbe prepared to have difficult conversations, and cannot assume that theframes they have chosen will be the same ones generated through trulyparticipatory communication processes. Effective transmedia organizingthus requires a significant cultural shift for movement organizations thatare used to a top-down strategy of message control. In other words, oneof the key goals of transmedia organizing is to create a space within whichpeople can contribute to defining the larger movement narrative:It goes back to looking at it as a tool for organizing. It ’ s not about going into acommunity and being like, “ Okay everybody, you all have to get together now, and

174 Chapter 7you have to think this way and do it this way because we ’ re right, ” even though alot of people follow that model in organizing. And it ’ s ridiculous because that shitfalls apart anyways. The whole thing about organizing is, I think, and at least thepeople I ’ ve worked with that I really respect, it ’ s about the creation of a space inconjunction with the people that you ’ re working for. 48The accountable transmedia organizer sets up a space and then facilitatesconversation, but does not impose one model or idea from the topdown. In theory, transmedia organizing thus integrates the praxis of criticaldigital media literacy with more traditional strategies for outreach tomass media, since member-created media texts can serve as key “ hooks ”to generate interest from professional journalists. 49 In practice, evenwithout engaging the deeper critiques of the NPIC, we can say thatmany professionalized nonprofits have failed to grasp the new mediaecology. They continue to develop social media strategies that replicatetop-down communication processes, don ’ t take advantage of the possibilitiesof transmedia organizing, and in many cases lack communityaccountability.The Reproduction of Structural Inequality through VolunteerismMost immigrant rights organizers have quite complex feelings about movementprofessionalization. On the one hand, as we have seen, it can easilylead to distance from the movement ’ s social base. Professional transmediaproducers sometimes create narratives that are not grounded in communityvoices and desires, and calls to action that are delinked from the actualneeds of the movement. Of course, transmedia strategy was initially developedby the cultural industries in order to capture attention and sell morebranded commodities. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that professionalnonprofits are beginning to employ transmedia strategy primarilyto build brand visibility, increase the size of their mailing lists, and raisefunds. In the worst cases, top-down organizations that lack accountabilityare using transmedia approaches to advance goals, narratives, and actionsthat are directly harmful to the immigrant community. At the same time,the professionalization of social movement organizations brings increasedresources, staying power, and access to decision makers. In terms of transmediaorganizing, professionalization can mean the ability to create

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 175higher-production-value media, reach a broader audience, and ultimatelyincrease a movement ’ s power to shape public consciousness.INCITE! ’ s critique of the NPIC has been challenged by some theoristsand activists. Pushback has come from those who work within more professionalizedmovement organizations, as well as from some who work insmall, grassroots collectives and groups that are staffed largely by volunteers.One scholar and activist who has written extensively about thestruggles of integrating digital media into community organizing put itthis way: “ As a member of a small grassroots welfare rights and economicjustice organization with an extraordinarily horizontal structure, I have tosay that we ’ d kill for a half-time staff member. ” 50 Many immigrant rightsactivists I worked with and interviewed, including those who volunteeredfor informal or ad hoc movement groups, expressed similar sentiments.Indeed, the most frequently mentioned barrier to effective transmediaorganizing is lack of access to resources. Specifically, immigrant rightsorganizers frequently say that lack of paid staff is the greatest obstacle tosuccessful implementation of communication strategies. In the absence ofpaid staff, those with the most free time typically end up running movementgroups, and free time is shaped by class, age, and gender. In otherwords, failure to professionalize can make it difficult to set up structuresthat allow more people from the movement ’ s base to fully participate,thereby strengthening accountability. While professionalization may distancemovement organizations from their base, not professionalizing mayreproduce structural inequality along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality,age, immigration status, and geography.Ultimately, most activists thus have a complicated relationship with thenonprofit system. While many are critical of the demobilizing effects of501(c)3s, few argue for the actual deprofessionalization of social movements.The harsh critique of “ service providers ” that some radicals employoften rings false when set against the daily realities of organizing amonglow-wage immigrant workers, who are often focused first and foremost onthe struggle for survival. Many organizers with radical, intersectional analyseshave jobs with nonprofits that provide direct services, meet people ’ smaterial needs, and work to develop critical consciousness while organizingtoward broader political goals. Although it is beyond the scope of thisbook, it is important to develop a nuanced discussion of the tensions

176 Chapter 7between volunteer and paid labor in the social movement sector. There aremany potential problems with, as well as synergies between, both ad hocand professionalized movement groups. This discussion will have crucialimplications for the future of transmedia organizing.Professionalization and Accountability in Transmedia Organizing:ConclusionsThe normalization of transmedia organizing is a powerful shift. We areturning an important corner: transmedia organizing is increasingly wellresourced.Advocacy campaigns have come to regularly include participatorymedia-making components, and media campaigns are hiringcommunity organizers as core team members. This shift offers incredibleopportunities. At the same time, it also reveals troubling dynamics. Theprofessionalization of transmedia organizing has in some cases led todecreased accountability to the movement base. This is not only unfortunatein a normative sense, it also leads to numerous tactical problems, suchas poor frame selection, or calls to action that miss the mark based on thecurrent political opportunities. Unaccountable transmedia organizing projectsare less likely to deploy frames that reflect the desires of the supposedsubjects of the story. Sometimes this can mean strategic failure, missedopportunities, or irrelevance; in other cases it can actually be harmful tothe movement ’ s goals. Another pitfall is the failure to transform attentioninto meaningful action. In some cases these problems may be due to asimple lack of experience. For example, filmmakers who may know thecraft of filmmaking quite well and desire to use their skills for good maybe unaware of, and unconnected to, existing social movements that havea great deal of knowledge, experience, and strategic insight concerninghow to move social change processes forward. In other cases, transmediaorganizing strategy is used by “ astroturf ” organizations to advance thepolicy agendas of powerful industries, under cover of “ popular ” crossplatformmobilization.The professionalization of transmedia organizing is only one smallcomponent of the long term professionalization of social movements.The segmentation of grassroots movements into issue-based nonprofits,dependence on foundation funding, and the adoption of top-down governancestructures all militate against accountability to the movement

Define American, The Dream is Now, and FWD.us 177base. Professionalized movement organizations that receive funding fromprivate foundations, while they have greater access to resources than grassrootsgroups, organic networks, or ad hoc collectives, are almost alwaysorganized with top-down decision making structures. These organizationsmay come from and maintain strong ties to their base, but they also oftencentralize decision making. What ’ s more, they are placed in the positionof competing against each other for a relatively small pool of resources.Accountable transmedia organizing may be incompatible with the modelof social change increasingly favored by private philanthropy, wherechange is driven by efficient, professionalized nonprofits engaged in singleissue,policy-centric advocacy rather than by broad-based, directly democratic,media-literate social movements.Few grassroots movement groups think systematically about how to useonline media to drive broadcast media coverage, or vice versa. In part, thismay be a function of the fact that in smaller, understaffed movementorganizations, there is a division of labor between “ new ” and “ old ” media:younger staff or volunteers spend time building the movement ’ s onlinepresence, while older and more experienced organizers focus on generatingmass media coverage through press conferences and relationships withprint and broadcast journalists. By dividing communications work in thisway, movement organizations miss opportunities to effectively amplifyinteresting social media texts produced by their communities throughmass media coverage. By the same token, they may miss opportunities touse mass media coverage to drive greater attention to online movementspaces. In addition, younger staff within professional nonprofits are oftenfrustrated when their efforts to use social media for movement ends areblocked by organizational leaders. This often happens when nonprofitleaders fail to understand that social media are spaces for conversation, orwhen they fear losing control of the message. Overall, professional nonprofitculture does not usually mix well with transmedia organizing.Organizers experience a catch 22: transmedia organizing strategies thatreflect community voices emerge most organically from decentralized,open social movement networks. Yet these networks are difficult to sustain.They also often reproduce structural inequality along lines of race, class,gender, sexuality, and education, since those with the most access to timeand resources may be able to participate more heavily in all-volunteerorganizing. At the same time, professionalized nonprofits are increasingly

178 Chapter 7adopting transmedia organizing strategies but struggle to remain accountableto the movement ’ s base rather than to their own institutional imperativesor to the demands of funders. The development of accountable,well-resourced, transmedia organizing campaigns remains for the mostpart a tantalizing possibility. Immigrant rights activists are working hardto realize this possibility, and to engage in transmedia organizing thatremains accountable to the movement base, recognizes and lifts up grassrootsmovement history, and connects people to meaningful action guidedby the movement ’ s needs.

ConclusionsThis book began with an account of the unprecedented mobilizations forimmigrant rights that swept the country in the spring of 2006. As I writethese conclusions, in the fall of 2013, the movement has launched a newseries of actions reminiscent of the moment that the “ sleeping giant ”awoke. While making final edits to the manuscript, I can ’ t resist regularlyswitching tabs to look at my Twitter feed, where I find a steady stream ofupdates from the October 5 National Day for Dignity and Respect. 1 Immigrantrights supporters, including movement organizations, religiousgroups, businesses, radio hosts and journalists, musicians and celebrities,and thousands upon thousands of individuals across the country, aretaking part in marches, rallies, vigils, and concerts this weekend. A newgeneration of queer undocumented activists is stepping up the level ofboth analysis and action, speaking out about the importance of intersectionalorganizing while committing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.With bold moves that shook up both the Democratic Party and manyWashington, D.C.-based immigrant rights nonprofit organizations, theDream 9 and the Dream 30 immigration activists recently organized directactions at the U.S.-Mexico border. These DREAMers, who at some point inthe past had been deported to Mexico, publicly recrossed the borderwithout papers and now face detention, endure solitary confinement, andengage in hunger strikes to pressure the Obama administration to takeexecutive action and halt deportations. 2 These actions will be followed inthe coming weeks by a new wave of nonviolent civil disobedience, massmarches, protest, and lobbying. All this activity takes place alongside rapidgrowth in the visibility and sophistication of transmedia organizing effortsby the immigrant rights movement.

180 ConclusionsThe past few years have also seen policy gains, including the DeferredAction for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Although criticized bysome as a stopgap measure, or as a political ploy aimed at bolstering theLatin@ vote in the 2012 presidential election, the DACA program has providedtemporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of previouslyundocumented youth. For many, this has meant increased access to jobs,credit, and driver ’ s licenses. 3 While DACA is nationwide, most immigrantrights policy gains have occurred at the state level. For example, a federaljudge recently ordered that unapologetically anti-immigrant Sheriff JoeArpaio, of Phoenix, Arizona ’ s Maricopa County, must have a courtappointedmonitor for at least the next three years. California governorJerry Brown signed A.B. 60, allowing more than 1.4 million Californianimmigrants to register for driver ’ s licenses starting in 2015, after more thanten states passed similar bills. 4 On October 5, 2013, Brown also signedthe Trust Act, limiting California ’ s cooperation with the federal SecureCommunities (SCOMM) program.However, despite pushback from some states, the Obama administrationhas expanded SCOMM across the entire country, linking local law enforcementwith Department of Homeland Security databases in a network ofalgorithmic immigration enforcement designed to autodetect the citizenshipstatus of every person detained by police. 5 In part because of theexpansion of SCOMM, the Obama administration has now passed thehistoric milestone of two million deportations. 6 Meanwhile, comprehensiveimmigration reform, seemingly so close in 2010 and again in 2013,has come to a near standstill; the odds of both houses of Congress adoptinga federal bill that includes a path to citizenship for all 11 millionundocumented people living in the United States seem more remote eachday. If a bill becomes law, it will most likely include more than $46 billionfor increased border militarization, mandatory expansion of the federalE-Verify biometric employment database, and a winding, expensive pathto citizenship that some analysts estimate would exclude more than halfof all undocumented immigrants. 7If we step back from the immediate round of immigration policy battlesin the United States, it is possible to see the broader context of a globalpolitical economy that has eliminated barriers to cross-border capital flows,while human beings face militarized borders, harsh migration policies, andever more sophisticated systems of algorithmic surveillance and control.

Conclusions 181Still, on the scale of human history, tight controls on migration are quitenew. There is nothing natural or inevitable about closed borders. Migrationpolicy is shaped in part by social movements — nativists on one side, immigrantsand their allies on the other — that battle over attention, framing,and credibility. This battle is expressed and fought through a communicationsystem that is increasingly globalized and is converging across platforms.The shifting media ecology also includes the ever-expanding,participatory, and frequently unruly space of social media, which coexistbeside long-established immigrant media channels such as minority languageprint, radio, and television broadcasters. This book represents anattempt to make sense of how social movements negotiate such a rapidlychanging media ecology, and how they leverage the opportunities it providesto build movement identity, mobilize people for action, shift culturalnarratives, and advance policy goals.My attempt to understand these dynamics is based on insights gainedfrom participating in nearly one hundred media workshops, actions,events, and day-to-day media practices as a movement ally. This experientialknowledge was augmented by analysis of media texts produced by theimmigrant rights movement over the past decade, and by the views thatemerged from forty semistructured interviews I conducted with movementparticipants. Together with a wide network of organizers, students, mediaactivists, community-based organizations, ad hoc collectives, and immigrantworkers, I worked to develop research, theory, and practice aroundwhat I call transmedia organizing. Along the way, I took part in a socialmovement that is learning how to take advantage of transformations inthe media ecology. Immigrant rights activists are adopting transmediaorganizing strategies: they tell stories across multiple platforms, invite theirbase into participatory media practices, and connect attention directly toaction by leveraging the affordances of new information and communicationtechnologies. Some have shifted their role, from speaking for themovement (as “ the voice of the voiceless ”) to aggregation, curation, andamplification of voices from the movement ’ s social base. Many worktoward a praxis of critical digital media literacy: they combine hands-ondigital media workshops with popular education methods. This approachfosters critical consciousness and develops movement leadership amonglow-wage workers, while simultaneously strengthening their ability toparticipate in the digital public sphere. Over time, I also observed that

182 Conclusionsmedia-making frequently provides a powerful pathway to deep, ongoingsocial movement participation. At the same time, I also found that transmediaorganizing has become increasingly professionalized. Professionalizationbrings a new level of resources, high production values, and greatpotential power, but for both normative and pragmatic reasons, it requiresaccountability mechanisms. Otherwise, the public narrative can quicklybecome separated from the voices of the movement ’ s social base. Theseclosing pages summarize the key arguments I have made in each chapter,then end with a note about the implications for scholars and for socialmovement participants. I hope that my arguments here have been interesting,if not persuasive, and that they will be useful to scholars and communityorganizers alike.Summary of FindingsWe live in a culture that romanticizes the liberatory potential of new mediatechnology. Too often, scholars and journalists credit social media withplaying a lead role in mass mobilizations. Many funders, perhaps hopingfor quick, relatively cheap fixes to structurally persistent problems, havebegun to move away from long-term investment in community organizingand toward “ seed grants ” for tech-centric approaches. These projects, whileexciting, are too often delinked from real-world movement needs. Evenactivists are sometimes seduced by the same logic. Although I am a mediascholar, activist, and to some degree a technologist, I urge readers toreject mediacentric approaches to thinking about social movements. Ibelieve it is possible to pay close attention to social movement mediapractices without insisting that they are the most important aspect of socialmovements.In this book, I have described many cases in which social media use wasindeed key to movement processes. For example, during the walkouts inprotest of the Sensenbrenner bill (described in chapters 1 and 2), highschool students used MySpace in innovative ways. During the struggle forthe DACA program, DREAM activists live-streamed sit-ins in DHS buildings,congressional offices, and Obama campaign headquarters (chapter 6).In the aftermath of the MacArthur Park “ melee, ” horizontalist organizerswere able to leverage social media platforms to challenge the top-downnarrative of the police, the mass media, and professional nonprofit

Conclusions 183organizations (chapter 3). Yet social media, new technologies, and horizontalorganizing processes are not necessarily the most important variablesin social movement success, if it is even useful to analyze socialmovements in such mechanistic terms. Other factors are frequently morecrucial: access to resources, elite allies, splits between different factionsamong formerly unified opponents, support and solidarity from thebroader public beyond the movement ’ s base, tactical innovation, highlypublicized acts of police repression, or a compelling narrative, to name afew. All of these, and many more, have long been identified by socialmovement scholars, as well as by organic intellectuals, as key to socialmovement success. I believe that transmedia organizing is importantbecause it is a crucial part of movement building, not because it is the mostimportant factor in social movement outcomes. Through media-making,social movement participants build collective identity. When movementsopen their narratives to participation from their social base, and when theyapply directly democratic decision making to the stories they tell aboutthemselves, they prefigure a more just and democratic world. I hope thatit is possible to recognize this dynamic without placing media at the centerof our stories about movements. Movements are ultimately about thepower of organized people, not the power of any particular platform ortechnology — even a platform as revolutionary as the Internet.A Changing Media EcologyIn chapter 1, I proposed that the immigrant rights movement, like all socialmovements, operates within a rapidly changing media ecology. On the onehand, most immigrant rights organizers still lack consistent access to English-languageprint or broadcast media. These channels continue to playthe most important role in framing and agenda setting for the dominantpolitical class, both locally and nationally. On the other hand, most of theorganizers I interviewed agreed that they enjoy a steadily growing abilityto generate coverage in the Spanish-language press (and in other minoritylanguage media), including print, radio, and television stations that haveincreasing reach and power. At the same time, commercial Spanishlanguageradio is the single platform with the most power to galvanize thesocial base of the immigrant rights movement to action, as we saw in the2006 marches against the Sensenbrenner bill. When Spanish-language

184 Conclusionslocutores (radio hosts) decided to call for mass mobilization, they were ableto bring literally millions of immigrant workers into the streets. Minoritylanguage media, especially Spanish-language commercial radio, television,and newspapers, thus provide important new possibilities for the immigrantrights movement.At the same time, the media ecology has been transformed from thebottom up by the widespread use of the Internet, social media, and mobilephones. The rapid adoption of social media by the children of new immigrants,and mobile phone access rates soaring above 90 percent evenamong the most marginalized groups of low-wage immigrant workers,enable new participatory practices of movement media-making. As we sawin chapter 2, this was evident as early as 2006, with the widepread use ofthe social networking site MySpace by middle school, high school, andcollege students during the walkouts. New tools and skills help everydayparticipants in the immigrant rights movement coordinate, document,and circulate their own actions in near real time, and generate space forbottom-up agenda setting, framing, tactical media, and self-representation.The power of social media extends beyond the obvious ability to distributemovement messages rapidly through extended friendship networks, asimportant as that may be. Media produced by activists and initially circulatedthrough social networks also frequently passes into broadcast distribution,as print, TV, and radio journalists seek news tips and content thathas “ bubbled up ” from social media and blogs. Movement actors whorecognize these new openings in the media ecology and take steps tooccupy them are more successful than those who continue to address allof their communications efforts directly to English-language broadcastoutlets.Transmedia OrganizingThe most successful movement media practices can best be theorized interms of what I call transmedia organizing. Transmedia organizing denotescross-platform, participatory media making that is linked to action and,ideally, accountable to the movement ’ s social base. During the 2006walkouts, and in the aftermath of the 2007 police attack in MacArthurPark, transmedia organizers engaged both skilled media-makers and the

Conclusions 185movement ’ s social base in the production and circulation of movementnarratives across multiple media platforms (see chapters 2 and 3). Transmediaorganizing provides opportunities for participation to people withvarying skill levels. For example, transmedia organizers often invitemovement participants to contribute simple media elements such asphotographs, texts, or short video clips, which they later aggregate,remix, combine, and circulate more broadly. Some movement groupsconsciously employ social media solidarity tactics that encourage alliesand supporters to identify more closely with the movement by personalizinglarger shared texts, as we saw in chapters 6 and 7. Transmediaorganizing is not limited by genre; it may also incorporate elements ofcommercial films, television programs, comic books, songs, and so on,which are then referenced, sampled, remixed, and recirculated in themovement context. These practices provide multiple entry points thatstrengthen movement identity across networked publics (chapters 1,2, and 6).Transmedia organizers strengthen movement identity formation by providingclear opportunities for supporters to produce and circulate theirown movement media. For example, immigrant rights “ artivists ” such asJulio Salgado and Favianna Rodriguez lead face-to-face workshops to teachmedia-making techniques, such as how to create stenciled posters andcardboard protest signs. They also provide downloadable stencil templates,make instructional videos, and post them to YouTube and Vimeo, wherethey are circulated via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. 8Transmedia organizers thus value the act of media-making as in and ofitself a movement-building process (chapters 3, 5, 6, and 7). At the sametime, transmedia organizing can result in broader movement visibility tononparticipants, through cross-platform distribution. In addition, immigrantrights advocates are taking advantage of new tools for “ constituentrelationship management, ” such as ActionNetwork.org. These services helporganizers translate attention to action by building and maintainingcontact lists of supporters that span email, mobile phones, Facebook, andTwitter, replacing the previous generation of clunky list management andaction alert services. Movement groups that become hubs of transmediaorganizing are able to take advantage of the changed media ecology, buildstronger movement identity among participants, link attention to action,

186 Conclusionsand gain greater visibility for the movement, its goals, its actions, andits frames.Changing Roles: From Spokespeople to AmplifiersMany immigrant rights organizers are caught between the desire to act asspokespeople for the movement — a strategy that retains tight control overmessaging and framing — and the need to become transmedia organizers.The latter approach requires learning new skills and can feel risky to thosesteeped in previous public relations paradigms. It marks a move from afocus on content production toward aggregation, remix, curation, andamplification. As we saw in chapter 3, in the example of the People ’ sNetwork in Defense of Human Rights, transmedia organizers amplify messagesand frames generated by the movement ’ s social base. Some characterizethis shift as a conscious decentralization of the movement voice.Top-down communicators inside social movements find it increasinglydifficult to retain control over messaging, as “ approved ” frames are challengedby media produced by a social base with ever-growing digital medialiteracy. In some cases, as we saw in the aftermath of the MacArthur Park“ melee ” (chapter 3), bottom-up transmedia organizing forces movementleaders to modify their messages in order to regain credibility and the trustof the broader movement base. However, the tools and skills of transmediaorganizing are only beginning to become an established part of daily communicationpractices within movements. Press conferences and actionsstaged specifically to draw mass media coverage continue to be the go-toforms of social movement media strategy. Over time, the many small tasksrequired to effectively organize a press conference have become tacit organizationalknowledge. By contrast, effective use of social media tools, letalone an integrated transmedia organizing strategy, requires a new anddifferent skill set. These skills often mystify the older generation of organizers.Many older organizers are used to dealing with broadcast media eventsbut do not yet truly understand the new media ecology — the shiftingterrain of communication power. 9 Even those who do pay close attentionto changes in the media ecology and who have intellectually committedto adapt digital media to movement needs continue to struggle to transformtheir daily practices. This is slowly changing, as we saw in chapter 5.Many organizers feel that over time, the new tools and skills will fade into

Conclusions 187the background, and the ability to effectively deploy and integrate themwithin overall movement strategy will grow.Translocal Media PracticesTranslocal media practices also modify the broader media ecology. Inchapter 4, we discussed this dynamic in the context of the Frente Ind í genade Organizaciones Binacionales and the Associaci ó n Popular de los Pueblosde Oaxaca – Los Angeles (APPO-LA). Although access to information andcommunication technologies (ICTs) and to digital media literacy remainsdeeply unequal, immigrants often appropriate ICTs to strengthen practicesof translocal community citizenship. In some cases, immigrant workers areearly adopters of new digital media tools that allow them to remain closelylinked with family and friends in their places of origin. In chapter 4, wesaw that the Oaxacan community in Los Angeles has long engaged intranslocal media practices. For decades, Oaxacan migrants have used homevideo technology to send VHS tapes of weddings, quincea ñ eras , and culturalfestivals back and forth to friends and family in their hometowns. In thepast, these practices also played an important role in social movementactivity, as in the mobilization against the Alto Basas dam. As video sharingmigrated online, primarily to YouTube, Oaxacan migrants followed, despiterelatively low levels of ICT access. More recently, indigenous migrantOaxacans have also appropriated real-time communication technologiessuch as push-to-talk, Skype, and Oovoo to support collective decisionmaking and community governance by hometown associations and assemblies( asambleas). During mass mobilizations in Oaxaca against GovernorUlises Ruiz Ort í z, migrant Oaxacans in Los Angeles used these and otherdigital media tools and skills to share movement media with networks ofsupporters and media outlets in their communities of origin and aroundthe world. They also generated transnational support by circulating footagefrom Oaxaca to the Spanish-language press in the United States. As we alsosaw in chapter 4, transmedia organizers who led the APPO-LA protestsat the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles were able to establish real-timecommunication with protest leaders in Oaxaca City, rapidly downloadand project video from major mobilizations taking place thousands ofmiles away, and attract the attention of Spanish-language commercialmedia outlets.

188 ConclusionsPraxis of Critical Digital Media LiteracyTransmedia organizing has great potential. It can be used to help strengthenparticipatory democracy within social movements, and as a strategy toleverage changes in the media ecology. However, widespread disparities inaccess to ICTs and in digital media literacy pose significant challenges.In the worst-case scenario, activists may transfer most of their time andenergy to “ organizing in the cloud. ” This may lead some to becomeremoved from their social base, and draw resources and attention to onlineactivity that appears significant but lacks accountability to any real-worldcommunity. While some see this as a problem, few in the immigrant rightsmovement argue that the solution is to move away from online organizing.Instead, as we saw in chapter 5, community organizers are building on thehistory of popular education to develop a praxis of critical digital medialiteracy that links ICT training directly to movement building.Overall, many community-based organizations (CBOs) know thatcritical digital media literacy is important for their communities. Often,they maintain computer labs, which they make available to communitymembers. However, most struggle to sustain digital media literacy trainingalong with their many other responsibilities as overworked, underresourcednonprofit organizations with few staff and constant crises. Many communitycomputer labs are staffed by occasional volunteers, and the type oftraining that takes place often focuses primarily on job skills such as learninghow to use Microsoft Office, creating r é sum é s, and conducting jobsearches. Media production is not typically taught, and social media use isoften prohibited or even blocked by filtering software. 10 Partly as a result,community computer labs are often underutilized. In other words, thereis a great deal of untapped potential for CBOs to foster critical digital medialiteracy among their social base.There are some CBOs that prove the exception to the rule; they developinnovative media-making projects, hold critical media literacy workshopson how to analyze and remix mass media messages, and systematicallycultivate transmedia organizing skills among their base. For example, mostimmigrant workers now have access to mobile phones. As discussed inchapter 5, the Instituto de Educaci ó n Popular del Sur de California(IDEPSCA) and the VozMob project are taking advantage of this fact todevelop a popular education approach that begins with the mobile phone

Conclusions 189as a point of entry to broader critical digital media literacy. Hundreds ofday laborers and other workers have now been through VozMob workshops,and the group ’ s Popular Communication Team has produced thousandsof stories for the web (see VozMob.net). They also remix mobilestories for Jornada XXII, a print newspaper they distribute across LosAngeles, and incorporate audio from voice posts into a radio show onPacifica affiliate station KPFK. Additionally, the project has repeatedlyattracted mass media coverage from Spanish-language newspapers and TVnetworks, as well as from the Los Angeles Times . 11 Media-making workshopsthus build the digital media literacy of immigrant workers while emphasizingboth critical analysis of mass media frames and the integration ofmedia-making skills into movement building and leadership developmentprocesses.As we saw in chapters 5 and 6, there is also a great deal of informallearning that takes place within the immigrant rights movement. Criticaldigital media literacy may flow back and forth across generations andbetween social movement networks in largely informal processes of peerto-peerlearning. Workshops, community computer labs, courses, and convenings,as well as informal and peer-to-peer learning, are all importantvehicles for the circulation of media skills. The key to an effective praxisof critical digital media literacy is to connect tools and skills-based trainingto concrete organizing practices, and to avoid siloed, technology centrictrainings.Pathways to ParticipationMore than 4.5 million immigrants under the age of thirty are undocumented,according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. 12 Over the pastdecade, undocumented youth have created a shared movement identity as“ undocumented, unafraid, and unapologetic. ” Through highly visiblepublic narrative campaigns, including everything from coming-out videoson YouTube to nonviolent civil disobedience in congressional offices, DHSfacilities, Obama campaign headquarters, and at border checkpoints, theyhave become visible as DREAMers. The name came initially from federallegislation that would regularize their status but has been transformed tosignify a shared movement identity. DREAMers, often led by queer, undocumentedyouth of color, have been at the forefront of the new wave of

190 Conclusionsimmigrant rights activism. In chapter 6, we explored diverse pathways toparticipation: trajectories by which people, over the course of their lives,come to identify with and join social movements.DREAM activists have worked hard to shape their own public narrative,even as their enemies, and sometimes ostensible allies, often reproducediscourse that they feel is harmful to them. Public narrative is the creationof a story about a social movement, one that can build a shared identityamong movement participants, draw in sympathizers, and generate newallies. For example, DREAMers are actively challenging the frame that theywere brought to the United States “ through no fault of their own, ” sincethis supposedly supportive message works to criminalize their own parentsand divide the broader immigrant rights movement. Instead, many prefera frame that emphasizes the courage of their parents, who suffered greathardships to bring them to the United States as young children, in searchof a better life.In general, DREAMers leverage youth familiarity with digital mediapractices and network culture to strengthen their organizing efforts. Thesteady growth of digital media literacy among those under thirty doesmake it easier to create ad hoc groups and route around top-down organizations.For example, in chapters 2 and 6 we saw how back-channel conversationsvia social media were able to rapidly coalesce into new, ad hocmovement groups with horizontalist decision-making practices. At thesame time, it would be a mistake to assume that critical digital media literacyis simply “ natural ” for immigrant youth (or for any young people).While immigrant youth do generally enjoy greater digital media literacythan older low-wage immigrant workers, this facility is unequally distributedacross socioeconomic backgrounds. Instead of assuming an equalplaying field, DREAM activists make conscious efforts to share media andorganizing skills both informally and via workshops. As described in chapters5 and 6, they also learn from and adapt media practices from othersocial movements, such as the translocal video practices of immigrantindigenous communities (which we first saw in chapter 4), or the genre ofLGBTQ coming-out videos on YouTube.Undocumented youth become DREAMers through a wide range of pathways,including friends, family, CBOs, and movement groups. Many alsofind their way into movement participation through mediated pathways:by helping to produce a media project, by circulating information during

Conclusions 191mobilizations, or by taking part in an existing transmedia organizingcampaign. Making media and making trouble are thus often tightlyinterlinked.The Professionalization of Transmedia OrganizingFinally, in chapter 7 we explored the dynamics of professionalization andaccountability in transmedia organizing. In recent years, transmedia organizinghas begun to shift from a process that emerged organically frommovements to a domain of experts and professional producers. Professionaltransmedia projects such as Define American, The Dream is Now,and FWD.us urge people to submit their own immigration stories, thenremix these DIY videos into short- and long-form documentaries forbroader distribution. Along the way, they invite people to take specificactions, such as share a link, contact an elected official, or take part in amobilization. Sometimes professional transmedia organizing projects linkparticipants to networks of grassroots organizers and to a broader socialmovement; in other cases the producers themselves claim to be “ the movement.” However, the lack of accountability to the social movement baseproduces both normative and pragmatic problems for transmedia organizing— normative, because values of self-representation, self-determination,horizontalism, and direct democracy require that the actual participantsin a social movement have control over the movement ’ s public narrative,messaging, and framing, as well as over the actions and proposals itadvances; pragmatic, because even well-meaning transmedia producers, ifthey are out of touch with the movement base, may use frames that nolonger resonate or support policy proposals that no longer make sensegiven the political opportunity structure. For example, in chapter 7 we sawthat The Dream is Now campaign site initially launched with a petition insupport of a stand-alone DREAM Act, although a bill for comprehensiveimmigration reform had already been introduced in the U.S. Senate andthe immigrant rights movement had shifted away from a piecemeal legislativeapproach.In the same chapter, I suggested that the professionalization of transmediaorganizing is best understood within a broader historical contextthat includes the long-term professionalization of social movements, theincorporation of movement groups as 501(c)3 organizations, and the rise

192 Conclusionsof competition with other organizations for scarce resources. Private foundationsoften push organic movement networks toward issue-based policyadvocacy, professionalization, and clear brand identity, all of which requiretop-down communication strategies and tight control over messaging andframing. For these and other reasons, nonprofit organizations often leantoward tighter message control. Nonprofit staff are under pressure to takecredit for mobilization successes and increase their organization ’ s visibility,to reframe broader social struggles in terms of issue-based campaigns, andto advance winnable policy proposals over deep structural transformation.Funders, program officers, and media specialists are also often experiencedwith communication strategies that have not caught up with recent transformationsin the media ecology, the possibilities of transmedia organizing,or the growth of critical digital media literacy. In capacity-building workshopsand professional training sessions, they therefore often replicate adiscourse about the importance of top-down message control based oncommunication strategies geared toward the production of “ news hits ” inEnglish-language broadcast media.These realities should not necessarily be read as an argument for asimple solution, such as the deprofessionalization of social movements.Indeed, without funding, movement groups often end up dominated bythose who are able to volunteer the most time. Reliance on volunteerismcan easily become another way of replicating class, race, or gender privilegein movement leadership. The point is rather that any given group, organization,or network faces contradictory pressures in response to the newmedia ecology. Besides implicit and explicit pressure from funders, manyfeel that older organizers, who occupy leadership positions inside verticallystructured nonprofit organizations, ignore, dismiss, or deprioritize the possibilitiesof transmedia organizing. In some cases, leaders actively pushback against social media use because they fear loss of control in networked,participatory spaces. As discussed in chapters 1, 3, and 6, othersworry that by hosting conversations rather than promoting talking pointsthey will appear unprofessional or too radical to secure funding. Some arewilling to take risks, open movement communication practices to theirbase, and incorporate the praxis of critical digital media literacy into theirwork. They are shifting from speaking for the movement to speaking withthe movement. In the long run, as noted in chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6, theserisk-takers are the most likely to reap the rewards of transmedia organizing.

Conclusions 193By engaging in cross-platform, participatory, action-linked campaigns thatare accountable to the social base of the immigrant rights movement, theyare able to leverage the new media ecology, strengthen movement identity,win political and economic victories, and transform consciousness.Key GapsThere are, of course, many gaps in the arguments I ’ ve made here. First,and perhaps most critically, it will be important in the future to more fullyelaborate and understand the very real dangers of transmedia organizing.I have touched on this only briefly, but in a post-Snowden world, it bearsemphasis that transmedia organizing enables heightened surveillance, datamining, and social network analysis by state, corporate, and countermovementactors. As a social movement ’ s activity comes online, its enemies areable to take advantage of a new set of tools to surveil, map, understand,and potentially disrupt that movement. Transmedia organizing makessocial movements more visible to friends and enemies alike, and movementparticipants often create and circulate content online without regardto the potential implications for privacy and for future repression. Thelong-term persistence of online data generates unforeseen effects, as movementparticipants who leave traces of their daily practices in social mediaspaces may retroactively be held accountable for their activity far into thefuture. This is especially problematic in environments of extreme staterepression, but it is potentially harmful to movement participants ’ lifechances even in the most (supposedly) open environments. In the wakeof revelations about the extent and lack of accountability of NSA surveillanceunder PRISM and related programs, this dynamic deserves muchmore sustained attention. Overall, transmedia organizing potentiallyenables heightened surveillance by adversaries. For immigrant rights activistsin the United States, a country that now performs approximately halfa million deportations per year, this is a daily reality rather than a potentialdark sci-fi future.Second is the matter of censorship. While social media platforms aregreat enablers of peer-to-peer movement communication, at the sametime, overreliance on commercial platforms leaves social movements vulnerableto multiple forms of both intentional and algorithmic censorship.Censorship of movement media takes place for a variety of reasons:

194 Conclusionscontent that contains music or video clips from commercial sources maybe deleted by algorithms designed to eliminate copyright violations;images of police, military, or vigilante brutality are removed for violatingterms of service that disallow the graphic display of violence; groupaccounts and pages are deleted for advocating positions seen by site moderatorsas too extreme. Terms of service tend to leave activists high anddry when web service providers hide or delete their content or accounts.In some countries, the state requires service providers to implementextensive content filtering, and in most countries, almost all commercialsites cooperate extensively with law enforcement and intelligence agencies.Transmedia organizing also opens the door to new forms of socialcontrol, such as user-generated censorship, 13 as well as to the incorporationof movement communication practices as free labor for the profitabilityof corporate media platforms. 14A third issue is the inadvertent contribution to the hegemonic powerand legitimacy of for-profit, private, corporate media systems. Most of theself-documentation of struggles that takes place in the immigrant rightsmovement is circulated through commercial sites like YouTube, Facebook,Twitter, and Tumblr. While movement media may find broader audiencesin these spaces, at the same time, activists are contributing to the profitabilityof transnational communication firms, some of which (especiallyRupert Murdoch ’ s Fox News) are active mouthpieces for anti-immigrantsentiment. Many activists and organizers I talked to were quite aware of,and critical of, their own use of corporate tools to do movement work.They use these spaces strategically in order to reach wide audiences.However, if viable autonomous alternatives were available, many woulduse them. On the margins, some media activists are working to constructstronger autonomous communication infrastructure, built using free/libreand open-source software. However, these tools are little known and areoften difficult to use. Since corporate social media sites already havemassive audiences, autonomous tools have much less chance of uptakeeven if they are functionally equivalent or superior. However, this situationcan change rapidly during moments of great crisis, ruptures in the glossyfacade of friendly corporate culture, or at other moments based on thefickle feelings of the multitude. Additional research into and concreteinitiatives concerning free/libre infrastructure for transmedia organizingare much needed.

Conclusions 195ImplicationsIn the past, few social movement scholars focused sustained attention onthe movement-media relationship. Press attention as measured by printand broadcast coverage was taken as a dependent variable, or outcome, ofsuccessful movement activity. While some scholars wrote about mediaproduced by movements themselves, media-making was rarely considereda core aspect of social movement activity. The spread of digital media literacyand the increased visibility of participatory media in the broadercultural landscape require that we retheorize this relationship. The politicaleconomy of the communication system itself is being reconfigured aroundthe social production and circulation of digital media. Social movementsare becoming transmedia hubs, where new visions of society are encodedinto digital texts by movement participants, then shared, aggregated,remixed, and circulated ever more widely across platforms. Despite persistentdigital inequality, the praxis of critical digital media literacy canproduce subjects able to fully participate in transmedia organizing. Transmediaorganizers take advantage of the changed media ecology to mobilizenetworked social movements. Participatory media-making can helpstrengthen movement identity, win political and economic victories, andtransform consciousness.Within the immigrant rights movement, as in other social movements,this process is increasingly visible. However, activists and social movementorganizations are continually pushed in contradictory directions vis- à -visparticipatory media practices. Private foundations steer movements towardprofessionalization and vertical structures, and toward tight message discipline.Old-school organizers, often in leadership positions within nonprofits,often misunderstand, distrust, or fear the loss of message control.To build stronger social movements, transmedia organizers work to diversifyresource streams and reduce dependency on private foundations. Atthe same time, they struggle to build trust relationships with old-schoolorganizers, who have a wealth of knowledge about community mobilizationbut who learned a different model of communications work. Transmediaorganizers are pushing nonprofit organizations and other socialmovement groups to share the elaboration of public narratives with theirown movement base. In this context, social movement scholars mustretheorize movements and the media as interlocking systems. 15 It would

196 Conclusionsalso be fruitful to further examine the role that media production plays inmovement identity formation.Recommendations for Organizers and ActivistsOne of my main aims as an engaged scholar is to develop new knowledgealongside the communities I work with, in order to advance both theoryand real-world practice. 16 In accordance with that aim, I end this book witha brief set of recommendations for organizers and activists, based on keyresearch findings. In addition, at the end of each interview I asked intervieweesto reflect on what they felt the most important goals of the immigrantrights movement should be, with respect to media strategy. I alsoasked interviewees to imagine and describe the media system they wouldlike to see in five years ’ time. This section therefore draws from organizers ’responses to an invitation to imagine the future of social movement media.Analyze the Media EcologyVery few organizers systematically analyze the media ecology for newopportunities and threats. This book demonstrates that it is worthwhile todo so, since rapid changes in the media ecology have implications for howsocial movements might best approach media strategy. In plain language,this means that effective organizers think about who they are trying toreach, research which media platforms will be most effective at reachingthat group of people, and shape their communication strategies accordingly.In addition, they integrate participatory media-making into theirplans from the beginning. This form of analysis needs to be iterative andbuilt into overall movement strategy, since the media ecology involvesrapidly changing platforms, tools, and services. The process involves learningabout the audiences and reach of various print, TV, and radio channels,as well as blogs, social media, and mobile media services and platforms.Movements can also take advantage of the changing media ecology bydeveloping relationships with and allies among journalists, bloggers, andmedia-makers across various platforms.Develop a Transmedia Organizing StrategyWe have also seen that effective organizers have learned to involve theirsocial base in making media about the movement. Media created by the

Conclusions 197movement base can be aggregated, remixed, and amplified across platforms.Transmedia organizing also means systematically linking movementmedia in any one channel to the broader public narrative of themovement, a narrative that takes place across multiple platforms. Forexample, interviews with broadcast media should always mention a websiteor an SMS number where the viewer or listener can find out more. If amovement participant creates an interesting video about an action, a linkto the video can be included in tweets or press releases that organizers sendto journalists and bloggers. A high-quality version can be made availablefor download by TV and web video outlets. Online news sites and localbloggers can be contacted to embed the video in their stories, and so on.Transmedia organizing also requires reconceiving the communicator ’ s role,from content creator to curator or from spokesperson to amplifier. Part ofthe responsibility of effective transmedia organizers is to constantly payattention to media created by the movement base. When they find somethingpowerful, transmedia organizers repost it on their sites, send it totheir social networks, and leverage press contacts to get it picked up bymedia outlets with greater reach. These practices privilege participation bythe social base of the movement in messaging, framing, and the constructionof larger movement narratives, and help build movement identityamong those who participate. It is also possible to conduct workshopswhere people from the movement ’ s base are invited to develop messagingand framing. Those social movement organizations that are willing to relaxtop-down control over messaging and framing will benefit from strongermovement identity, greater participation, and ultimately more power.Actively Foster Critical Digital Media LiteracyMovements whose social base is largely excluded from the digital publicsphere are also developing a praxis of critical digital media literacy.Transmedia organizers in the immigrant rights movement link mediaproduction training directly to movement building. We have seen thatthe praxis of critical digital media literacy is most effective when technicaltraining is combined with organizing efforts, rather than when theyare placed in separate silos. A praxis of critical digital media literacyinvolves more than volunteers teaching basic computer skills. Activistsand organizers can strengthen the praxis of critical digital media literacyby sharing tools and skills in both formal and informal settings across

198 Conclusionsmovement networks. Regular hands-on skill-sharing workshops, open toall, can greatly strengthen a movement ’ s capacity for transmedia organizing.The more people in the movement ’ s social base that learn tomake, remix, and circulate media across platforms, the more powerfulthe movement becomes.Transmedia organizers are also challenging the tendency to assumethat media production is too complex or too expensive. Effective mediaproduction is increasingly fast, cheap, and DIY. Movements with fewresources can use free tools to make quick, inexpensive, multimedia thattells their story effectively. Expert advice or fears about poor productionvalues should never be allowed to hamper the creative use of media formovement ends. Videos with high production values can be importanttools if the resources are available, but movement groups do not needbig budgets to have big impacts. Those who make a practice of regularlyproducing and circulating their own media improve their skills and abilitiesover time.Community computer labs can become vibrant spaces for the developmentof critical digital media literacy and are key assets for transmediaorganizers. It is possible to transform existing computer labs, which oftensit empty and are used only for basic computer literacy trainings, into hubsof transmedia organizing. Social movement organizations have for themost part not thought creatively about how to find staff or volunteers tohelp make this happen. Partnering with community colleges, universities,and other institutions that have students skilled in media production isone possibility. Movement organizations might also explore poolingresources with others to help make dynamic media labs a reality.In the long run, many activists and organizers I interviewed also feltthat social movements should consider the possibilities of communitycontrolledcommunications infrastructure. For example, although cableaccess TV stations are rapidly disappearing, many of them still haveresources to teach video production; the long struggle by microradio activistshas finally begun to bear fruit in the form of new low-power FMlicenses; organizers in L.A., Detroit, and Brooklyn created communityownedwireless networks, and so on. 17 Community control of media andcommunications infrastructure, combined with the development of criticaldigital media literacy, has the potential to be a decisive factor in buildingstrong social movements in the United States.

Conclusions 199Create Strong Accountability Mechanisms for Transmedia OrganizingCampaignsThe structure of social movement groups shapes, but does not determine,the ways in which they use media as an organizing tool. Social movementgroups in the U.S. context have become increasingly professionalized andvertically structured, in part because of the influence of private foundationsand the rise of the issue-based nonprofit sector. Within the immigrantrights movement, some professionalized nonprofits and verticalorganizations have been able to take advantage of the new media ecologyand engage in transmedia organizing, when their leadership is open toshifting their communication strategy away from a top-down model.However, junior staff within nonprofit organizations are often frustratedby senior staff ’ s refusal to abandon top-down communication practices. Incontrast, horizontally structured movement groups are more easily able todeploy transmedia organizing approaches.Regardless of the decision-making structure of the movement group,I have argued in this book that for those who want to take advantage ofthe possibilities of the new media ecology, it is essential to follow principlesof democratic decision making. Social media provide a platform for a conversation,not a broadcast. Movement leaders who try to control themessage across social media platforms will fail, since no one wants toparticipate if they are not allowed to speak. It is also crucial to let peopleinnovate, play, and take risks. Those who try to overplan social mediastrategy will never get off the ground, while those who allow interestedmovement participants to set up accounts and play with new online servicesand networks, then incorporate them into overall communicationstrategy if they seem to be working well, will have more success. Movementgroups must also avoid technological “ lock-in ”: tools that do not seem tobe working should be dropped in favor of others that seem more intuitiveor effective. Perhaps most crucially, accountable transmedia organizingmeans opening the story of the movement to the voices of those who makeup its social base. If movement participants want to push messages otherthan those preferred by the leadership, then the leadership needs to eitherdo a better job of articulating the importance of the frame or a better jobof actively listening to what the social base demands. The solution, in asocial movement organization that actually wants to build shared power,can never be to silence or marginalize the voices of the community.

200 ConclusionsEffective movement leadership respects and values community knowledgeand information. An effective praxis of critical digital media literacy anda strong transmedia organizing strategy should thus also serve to constantlystrengthen movement accountability.Finally, those I worked with and interviewed for this book repeatedlyemphasized the importance of both sustainability and autonomy. A diversifiedstream of resources is important not so much to avoid explicitcontrol by funders (although that does occasionally present a problem) butto escape the long-term process of social movement professionalizationthat tends to shift movements away from value-driven base building andtoward issue-driven, top-down models of social change. This is not to saythat social justice – oriented foundations cannot play a positive role inencouraging transmedia organizing among social movement organizations.However, so far most have not. Exceptions during the period of thisresearch included the Funding Exchange ’ s Media Justice Fund, now closed,and certain program officers within the Ford Foundation, the Open SocietyFoundations, and a handful of others. These programs supported a greatdeal of important community-based media work while also urging CBOsto get involved in media and communications policy battles. The CaliforniaEmerging Technology Fund, Zero Divide, and the Instructional TelecommunicationsFoundation (now Voqal.org) have also all been importantsources of funding for media-making capacity within the immigrant rightsmovement in California. Some foundations fund CBOs to train communitymembers in basic computing skills, but usually in a “ job readiness ”framework that delinks digital media literacy from critical analysis orsocial movement participation. Others urge their grantees to develop professionalizedpublic relations strategies, and too often see social media asa broadcast or branding tool. Yet we have seen that movements are mosteffectively able to incorporate networked communication tools and skillswhen their base is digitally literate, when they use digital media tools andpractices in everyday resistance, and when they are willing to shift fromtop-down communication strategies to approaches that involve the baseas much as possible in shaping the movement ’ s public narrative. A longtermvision for community control of media thus requires a diversifiedfunding model that does not remain wholly dependent on foundations forthe bulk of resources.

Conclusions 201The immigrant rights movement has already pioneered transmediaorganizing, in organic forms built on top of existing media practices. Thesteady growth of critical digital media literacy makes broader adoption oftransmedia organizing approaches possible. By beginning from the actuallyexisting practices of social movement groups and tracing the ways thatthey create and circulate media across various platforms, we gain a deeperunderstanding of social movements in the twenty-first century. By listeningto the experiences of those involved in day-to-day organizing withinthe immigrant rights movement and by learning from those experiences,it is possible to build stronger, more democratic social movements in theinformation age.

Appendixes

Appendix A: Research MethodologyIn appendix A, I summarize my research methodology. I briefly discussparticipatory research and collaborative design, communication for socialchange, and popular education. I also describe the media workshops, semistructuredinterviews, field recordings, and movement media archives thattogether provide the bulk of material I analyze and synthesize in this book.The appendix ends with a brief note about intersectionality, and thoughtson the limitations of my research approach.Participatory Research and DesignI conduct most of my work within the broad frameworks of participa -tory research, popular education, and participatory design. Participatoryresearch is not a unified methodology; rather, it denotes an orientation toresearch that emphasizes the development of communities of sharedinquiry and action. 1 I consider the groups and individuals I work with tobe coresearchers rather than simply subjects of my research. Along thesame lines, for me, participatory or collaborative design takes place withcommunity members as codesigners rather than simply “ test users. ” 2I value participatory research and collaborative design on both normativeand practical grounds. Ethically, I believe in democratic decisionmaking, including decision making in research and design processes. I alsobelieve in shared ownership of the outcomes of research and design. Practically,I believe that participatory methods involving people at all stages ofa research or design process are most likely to produce innovative knowledgeand tools that respond to people ’ s goals, strengths, and needs ineveryday life. A commitment to these approaches has connected me tostrong communities of participatory research and codesign and helped me

206 Appendix Aproduce a range of work, including scholarly and popular publications;video, audio, web-based, and interactive media; free/libre and open-sourcesoftware; and other texts.That said, the incentive structures of the academy militate against participatoryresearch. Single-authored publication is the gold standard inmany fields, including media studies, and this is largely incompatible withshared community ownership of research. Thus, while this book doesreflect insights gained from years of participatory research, media, anddesign projects that I have taken part in within the immigrant rights movement,it is not itself a participatory research project. The research questions,study design, and authorship are mine, along with responsibility forerrors, omissions, and any misrepresentation. Between 2006 and 2012,I participated in more than one hundred popular education workshops,played a key role in multiyear, ongoing collaborative design processes, andtook part in immigrant rights movement actions and events. I alsoemployed traditional research methods, primarily semistructured interviews,field recordings, and textual analysis of movement media archives.At the same time, many of the projects that I describe in these pages fitwithin the umbrella of communication for social change.Communication for Social ChangeIn participatory research, typically a community-based organization collaborateswith a researcher or research team to generate a study that documents,deepens, and validates community knowledge. 3 This approach canhelp provide legitimacy and increased visibility for community demandswhile advancing broader scholarship by circulating community-basedknowledge. This kind of work is also often used to generate attention frommass media and policymakers, often with the end goal of a specific campaignvictory. For example, in Los Angeles Andrea Hricko ’ s work withcommunity-based environmental justice organizations, 4 Gary Blasi andJacqueline Leavitt ’ s work with the Los Angeles Taxi Workers ’ Alliance, 5 andVictor Narro ’ s engagement with worker centers 6 all follow this model.My own work with the immigrant rights movement has focused onbuilding long-term communication capacity rather than on winning aspecific campaign. All of the movement groups I became involved withalready had histories of popular communication practice. They also hoped

Appendix A 207to build critical digital media literacy among their base. My role, over aperiod of about seven years, was to help plan, fundraise for, and supportthe implementation of various participatory media projects based inpopular education approaches. I attempted as much as possible to do thisnot by imposing my ideas about what kind of project might be most fruitfulbut by employing communication for social change methods to explorethe possibilities and develop plans together with community partners.Communication for social change (CFSC) is both theory and method.It is an approach strongly influenced by the work of Paolo Freire. CFSCdraws especially on the Freirian focus on conscientization and politicaleducation through literacy. 7 In this theoretical and practical tradition,literacy is seen as a process through which people acquire more thansimply technical skills, such as reading and writing. Rather, literacy is seenas a process that builds our awareness of ourselves as actors who havethe ability to shape and transform the world, as well as of the structural(systemic) forces that stand in our way. 8 CFSC emerged as a subfield ofdevelopment communication that emphasizes dialogic communicationrather than a one-to-many “ knowledge injection ” or “ banking method ”approach to education. 9CFSC overlaps with participatory research approaches and has beenelaborated over time by several generations of communication scholarsand activists. Contemporary proponents of CFSC include Alfonso GumucioDagron, 10 John Downing, 11 Cees Hamelink, 12 and Clemencia Rodriguez, 13among many others. CFSC emphasizes principles of community ownership,horizontality (as opposed to verticality), communities as their ownchange agents, dialog and negotiation (instead of persuasion and transmission),and outcomes measured by changes in social norms, policies, andsocial structure rather than solely by individual behavioral change. 14 CFSCpractitioners are also attempting to rethink critical literacy for the digitalage. Practitioners work with community partners to develop a sharedanalysis and vision, create strategy, construct curriculum, work on mediaproduction and circulation, and evaluate project impacts. 15 Ideally, thecommunity actively participates in each aspect of the communicativeprocess, as far as possible. The outside researcher acts as a catalyst for ashared process with the community rather than as an observer of the community.Community participants are thus coproducers of knowledge andpractice rather than objects of study.

208 Appendix AI began to engage in this methodology, in partnership with immigrantrights organizations in Los Angeles, beginning in May 2006. In January2007, Amanda Garc é s from the Institute of Popular Education of SouthernCalifornia, simmi gandi from the Garment Worker Center, and I receiveda Small Collaborative Grant in Media and Communications from the SocialScience Research Council (SSRC). This grant provided a small amount offunding to work together to map the communication ecology of immigrantrights organizations in L.A. The project planted the seed that eventuallygrew into this book. Along the way, it catalyzed the creation of theGarment Worker Center radio project that would later become Radio Tijera(Radio Scissors). 16 It also laid the foundation for a larger universitycommunitypartnership. The following year, I worked with leadership,staff, and members of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California(IDEPSCA), as well as with faculty and students at the University ofSouthern California ’ s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism,to secure a follow-up Large Collaborative Grant from the SSRC for theMobile Voices project (VozMob). 17As described in more detail in chapter 5, VozMob was built by membersof IDEPSCA ’ s Popular Communication Team, including Madelou Gonzales,Manuel Manc í a, Adolfo Cisneros, Crisp í n Jimenez, Marcos and DianaMendez, Alma Luz, and Ranferi, as well as organizers Amanda Garces,Natalie Arellano, Brenda Aguilera, Luis Valent í n, Pedro Joel Espinosa, andExecutive Director Raul A ñ orve (later Marlom Portillo). At USC, researchpartners included Annenberg School faculty member Fran ç ois Bar and PhDstudents Carmen Gonzales, Melissa Brough, and Cara Wallis, later joinedby Benjamin Stokes and Veronica Parades. Software developers MarkBurdett, Gaba Rodriguez, and Squiggy Rubio played key roles, as didgraphic designer Poonam Whabi from Design Action Collective. Thisproject later received a MacArthur/HASTAC Digital Learning grant toexplore the use of mobile phones for digital storytelling by day laborersand household workers. Over time, VozMob has created thousands ofstories, conducted workshops with hundreds of day laborers, householdworkers, and students, and won international recognition. The projectcontinues today (see http://vozmob.net ), and more can be read about it inthe co-authored chapter “ Mobile Voices: Projecting the voices of immigrantworkers by appropriating mobile phones for popular communication,” by VozMob, in P. M. Napoli and M. Aslama, editors, Communications

Appendix A 209Research in Action: Scholar-Activist Collaborations for a Democratic PublicSphere (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).Although projects such as Radio Tijera and VozMob are not at the centerof this book, I met many activists, friends, and colleagues through workingwith them. Several of my interviewees are participants in these projects.In addition, taking part in these projects through weekly face-to-faceworkshops over a period of several years provided me with a great deal ofcontextual knowledge. I was given the opportunity to develop key insightstogether with an extended and supportive community. That experience,more than any other, grounds this research in an understanding of dayto-daymedia practices in the immigrant rights movement.WorkshopsDuring the years 2006 – 2012 I took part in more than one hundred skillsharingsessions and workshops in the immigrant rights movement. Theseworkshops spanned a wide range of areas, from critical media analysis toaudio and video recording and editing, from “ social media 101 ” to how towork with developers and designers through agile development, userstories, and issue trackers. The workshops include a three-year ongoingaudio production workshop at the Garment Worker Center and a weeklyworkshop in mobile digital storytelling (VozMob) that began in June 2008at IDEPSCA and continues today. For an example of workshop facilitationguides I helped develop during this time period, see “ Dialed in: A cellphone literacy toolkit, ” produced by the Center for Urban Pedagogy, witha section by VozMob (available at http://welcometocup.org/Store?product_id=42). There is also quite extensive process documentation available onthe VozMob wiki at https://dev.vozmob.net/projects/vozmob/wiki .InterviewsI conducted forty semistructured interviews with people who consideredthemselves part of the immigrant rights movement. Interviews were conductedboth with individuals and in small groups, although the majoritywere one-on-one interviews lasting one to two hours. I conducted nearlyall interviews face-to-face, but in a few cases they took place via phone,videochat, or IRC (chat). I recorded interviews using a small digital audio

210 Appendix Arecorder, with the explicit permission of interviewees. These audio recordingswere fully transcribed, some by the author and the majority by aprofessional transcriber. 18 The full questionnaire that guided the semistructuredinterviews is available in appendix C. The confidentiality of interviewsand Institutional Review Board requirements preclude inclusion ofa full list identifying individual interviewees, unedited transcripts, or audiorecordings. Anonymized transcripts are available on request. For more onsemistructured interviewing, see Sharan B. Merriam ’ s excellent book on thedesign and implementation of qualitative research. 19I conducted interviews with individuals active in immigrant rightsorganizations, independent worker centers, service-sector labor unions,indigenous organizations, immigrant student networks, and day laborer,household worker, and garment worker associations and unions. Manyindividual activists and organizers in the immigrant rights movement arenot single-issue organizers; they also fight for workers ’ rights, indigenousrights, the rights of youth, gender justice, environmental justice, access tohealth care, access to education, the right to the city, lesbian, gay, bisexual,transgender, queer (LGBTQ), and Two-Spirit rights, sex workers ’ rights,lower remittance tariffs, and against ICE raids and police brutality. Inseeking interviewees in Los Angeles, I began with activists from key workercenters that focus primarily on organizing immigrant workers, then snowballedoutward from there to include individuals from groups and networksthat my initial interviewees considered important to the movement.After arriving at MIT, I worked closely with Comparative Media Studiesgraduate student Rogelio Alejandro L ó pez. Together, in 2011 – 12 we conducteda round of interviews that I transcribed, analyzed, and now referencein this book. This round of interviews also informed Rogelio ’ s thesis,titled “ From huelga! to undocumented and unafraid! A comparative studyof media strategies in the farm worker movement of the 1960s and theimmigrant youth movement of the 2000s ” (available online at http://cmsw.mit.edu/rogelio-lopez-from-huelga-to-undocumented-and-unafraid ).Recordings and NotesI took photographs, recorded video and audio material, and took extensivewritten notes during many immigrant rights mobilizations, meetings, andevents. I used these recordings and notes both as primary source material

Appendix A 211for analysis and to incorporate into multimedia presentations of theresearch findings and/or design iterations. At no point did I make recordingsof nonpublic meetings or events without seeking explicit permissionfrom those present. For the purposes of writing this book, I organizedrecordings and notes using the software package Scrivener for Linux (availableat http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33 ).Movement MediaDuring the course of research for this book, I compiled an extensive archiveof movement-produced media. As with the interviews, recordings, andnotes, I frequently incorporate clips, stills, and short excerpts of movement-producedmedia into digital presentations of findings. Multimediatexts include photographs, audio and video recording, and texts posted tomovement websites, as well as to popular social networking sites andvideo-sharing sites. I also gathered screen captures and transcriptions ofSMS messages, and a large number of physical flyers, posters, and newspapers.I assembled a small library of physical CDs and DVDs produced bymedia-makers linked to the immigrant rights movement. This archiveprovided extensive primary source material for textual analysis.IntersectionalityThroughout this book I deploy race, class, gender, sexuality, and othercategories from a nonessentialist position and from the perspective ofintersectional analysis. Intersectionality denotes the position, developed byKimberl é Crenshaw and other feminist theorists in the late 1980s and early1990s, that class, race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of identity, power,and resistance never operate independently from one another. 20 All subjectivityis located at their intersection. For example, there is no categoricalsubject position of “ woman ” who experiences gender oppression independentof her race and class position. A white middle-class woman willexperience different forms of raced, classed, or gendered oppression thana working-class Latina. At the same time, as articulated by Judith Butler,identity categories are themselves constructed and performative. 21 SandraHarding describes how social scientists have come to understand race,class, and gender as interlocking axes that form a matrix rather than as

212 Appendix Aparallel but basically separate systems. 22 According to Patricia Hill Collins,each axis operates on three levels: the individual, the structural, and thesymbolic; and every person is located (raced, gendered, classed) by societyat a particular position within this matrix. These categories are mutuallyinterlocking and reproduce each other, in addition to dividing subalternsubjects from seeking solidarity and constructing a unified project forsocial justice. 23Intersectional and anti-essentialist analysis may appear to be in conflictwith institutional data categories and standard research methods. Yet datagathered by state agencies, corporations, and mainstream researchersaccording to essentialist identity categories often provide the best availableindicator of the impacts of structural inequality. This is true even as uncriticalreproduction of fixed identity categories by researchers also tends tonormalize a reductive view of subjectivity. Wherever I use such data tosupport my arguments, I invite the reader to retain the critical perspectiveof intersectional analysis.Limitations of the Research ApproachMy own subject position as a white, male-bodied, queer, U.S. citizen,university-affiliated scholar with extensive training in multimedia productionshapes both my theoretical and methodological approach. In addition,it shapes my regular interactions with activists, organizers, andcommunity members in the immigrant rights movement. The limitationsand advantages introduced by my own standpoint are further complicatedas I gain increasing visibility and credibility based on institutional affiliationwith a well-known university. My own participation in movementspaces, both off- and online, is additionally complicated by my multipleroles as ally, activist, and researcher.Language also limits my research. My language fluency is limited toEnglish and Spanish, with some limited ability to communicate in Portuguese(Portu ñ ol, really). This means that all of my formal interviews wereconducted in English and Spanish, and the movement media materials Iexamined were also almost all in these two languages. Given the immensediversity of immigrants to the United States, this fact undermines thegeneralizability of my study. That said, I did work with and interview activistsfrom immigrant rights organizations, collectives, and networks that

Appendix A 213organize Korean, Chinese, South Asian, and Southeast Asian immigrantworkers, and their perspectives also inform this work.Finally, this study does not employ a comparative design. This factlimits any strong claim that my findings in the immigrant rights movementnecessarily hold for other social movements, or even across geographiclocations. It may be that the analysis in this book is unique to themovement actors I worked with and studied, at this particular historicalmoment. In the future, I plan to develop a comparative analysis of thetransmedia organizing framework by exploring its applicability to othermovements. I invite other scholars to do the same.

Appendix B: IntervieweesThis appendix provides brief descriptions of interviewees, to provide morecontext for the reader. The interviewees participated in formal, recorded,semistructured interviews that were transcribed and analyzed for this book.To preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, the descriptions are of avery general character. The initials of all interviewees have been changedand do not reflect their real names.Brief Descriptions of IntervieweesBC, radio producer, interviewed July 2008BD, day laborer, interviewed October 2009BE1, college student, DREAM Act organizer, interviewed spring 2011BE2, college student, DREAM Act organizer, interviewed spring 2011BH, staff member of a community-based organization, interviewed February2010CP, funder, interviewed March 2008CS, volunteer with a news website, interviewed January 2009DM, volunteer with various media projects, interviewed July 2008DN, online organizer with a national immigrant rights organization, interviewedApril 2013EN, high school student, interviewed August 2009EQ, director of a small nonprofit organization, interviewed May 2009GN, video producer, interviewed December 2007HH, taxi worker, interviewed November 2009IQ, funder, interviewed September 2008

216 Appendix BKB, volunteer for multiple collectives, interviewed July 2009KD, staff member of a community-based organization, interviewed July 2009KE, executive director of an activists ’ and artists ’ nonprofit organization,interviewed spring 2011KL, tech activist, interviewed September 2008KT, member of an undocuqueer activist and artist group, interviewed fall2011LC, online organizer with a national immigrant rights organization, interviewedfall 2011LN, IT staff member of a large nonprofit organization, interviewed February2010NB, community organizer and media-maker, interviewed April 2009ND, immigrant rights lawyer, interviewed April 2010NH, household worker, interviewed August 2009NI, student, interviewed May 2008NN, day laborer, interviewed October 2009NQ, community organizer, interviewed February 2010OE, staff member of a medium-sized nonprofit organization, interviewedJanuary 2010ON, core member of a DREAM activist collective, interviewed fall 2011PS, organizer with an indigenous organization, interviewed May 2009QH, labor organizer, interviewed October 2008QX, director of a community-based organization, interviewed April 2008RF, student and media-maker, interviewed November 2009SM, student, member of an undocumented student organizing group,interviewed spring 2011TD, staff member of a community-based organization, interviewed July2008TH, member of various horizontalist collectives, interviewed February 2010TX, employee of a small nonprofit organization, interviewed March 2010WO, public interest lawyer, interviewed April 2009XD, social media consultant, interviewed February 2010ZP, radio host, interviewed February 2009

Appendix C: Interview GuideThe following guide was used to conduct all semistructured interviews. Notevery question was asked of every interviewee, but each interview touchedon the following main themes: an overview of the work the intervieweedid in the immigrant rights movement; media practices in the movement;access; appropriation and learning; professionalization; organizationalstructure; and long-term vision.Overview• Organization: Briefly describe the organization or network you workwith, its main areas of work, how you frame your work, and what socialmovements you consider yourself part of. What ’ s the best source for moreoverview information?• Personal engagement: How and why did you get involved?• Daily communication practices: Please describe the day-to-day communicationpractices: within the organization, between the staff and theleadership of the movement network, with the base, with alternative andpopular media, with the ethnic media, with the “ public ” media, with themass (Anglo) media.• Media use by those you are trying to organize: What media does thecommunity you are trying to organize use most? What are the community’ s three most popular communication channels (specific radio stations,TV channels, newspapers, etc.)?• Are the most popular channels the same for men and women? Foryounger and older people?• How do you know?

218 Appendix C• Networks: Are you, your organization, or movement part of a networkor networks? What are they?• Are any of them transnational? How has it helped or made things moredifficult to be part of a network?• Describe how communication flows through the network.Mobilization• Victory: Describe something you consider to be a major victory of yourorganization or of the movement.• Crisis: How about something that was a major setback or crisis?• Communication: Describe your own communication practice duringthese key moments.Access• Relationships to the media: Please describe the movement ’ s relationshipto: the mass (Anglo) media, the ethnic media, public media, independentand popular media, the print press, radio, TV, blogs, social networking sites,mobile phones, other forms of media.• Relationship to the Internet: Describe how your organization and themovement use the Internet. In what ways has the Internet helped you,and in what ways does it present challenges or dangers?• Barriers: What do you think are the key barriers for your organization ingaining access to the media?• What are the barriers to learning and using new communication toolsand skills?• Do you think these same barriers are faced by other groups or networksin the movement?• What do you think the key barriers are for your base or members?Appropriation and Learning• Popular communication strategy/practice: Is there or has there ever beenany? If so, describe it. What worked or failed, and how do you know?

Appendix C 219• Describe an example of how the immigrant rights movement has effectivelyused the mass media, and an example of how the movement haseffectively used new media.• Where do you get ideas for how to use new media as an organizingtool?• Are there specific people, organizations, trainings, or examples youlook to?Specialists and Professionalization• Specialists: Describe your following relationships:• With tech activists in the movement.• With movement media-makers.• Do you have a dedicated communications person on staff?• Do you work with outside communications consultants or strategists?• Do you have an IT person you work with, or a software programmer?• Do you have an online organizer?• Do you use any corporate application service providers (for example,Democracy In Action)? Talk about that experience: what has been goodand bad?Structure• Accountability: Describe whom your organization is accountable to, andthe mechanisms for accountability.• Structure: What is the decision-making structure in your organization ornetwork?• Technology: Do you think communication technology has any impacton accountability in the movement? If so, what is it?• Traits: Please describe the gender, sexual identity, race/ethnicity, class,and age of the staff and leadership, the membership, and the communicationactivists. How do these features have an impact on communicationpractice in the movement?• Funders: What role do funders play in developing movement communicationtools, skills, and practices?

220 Appendix CLong-Term Vision• History: Has your use of media and communication technology changedover time? How?• Desired capabilities: Are there communication projects or goals that youhave as an organization or as a movement? What would you like to see infive years ’ time?• Barriers and blocks: What is in the way of realizing your best-casescenario?Thank you so much for your time!

Appendix D: Online Resources for OrganizersAdditional resources for community organizers can be found online athttp://transformativemedia.cc .

NotesAcknowledgments1. “ Without a boss and without borders. ”Introduction1. Jesse D í az, “ Organizing the brown tide: La gran epoca primavera 2006, an insiders ’story, ” PhD diss., University of California, 2010, http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/3m92x4nb (retrieved August 1, 2013).2. Leo Ralph Chavez, The Latino Threat (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,2008); Priscilla Huang, “ Anchor babies, over-breeders, and the population bomb:The reemergence of nativism and population control in anti-immigration policies, ”Harvard Law and Policy Review 2 (2008): 385.3. W. Lance Bennett, Christian Breunig, and Terri Givens, “ Communication andpolitical mobilization: Digital media and the organization of anti-Iraq war demonstrationsin the U.S., ” Political Communication 25, no. 3 (2008): 269 – 289.4. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmakingof the New Left: With a New Preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).5. Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics inDubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).6. Alan B. Albarran, “ Mergers and acquisitions in Spanish language media, ” in TheState of Spanish Language Media: 2007 Annual Report , 38. Center for Spanish LanguageMedia, University of North Texas, Denton, 2008.7. Arlene D á vila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2012).8. Adri á n F é lix, Carmen Gonz á lez, and Ricardo Ram í rez, “ Political protest, ethnicmedia, and Latino naturalization, ” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 4 (2008):618 – 634.

224 Notes to Introduction9. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations(New York: Penguin, 2008); Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits ofStruggle in High-Technology Capitalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).10. Dan Gillmor, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People(Sebastopol, CA: O ’ Reilly Media, 2008); Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage andHope (New York: Polity Press, 2012).11. Orlando Fals-Borda and Muhammad Anisur Rahman. Action and Knowledge:Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action-Research (New York: Apex Press, 1991).12. John Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001); William A. Gamson and Gadi Wolfsfeld, “ Movementsand media as interacting systems, ” Annals of the American Academy of Politicaland Social Science 528 (1993): 114 – 125; Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, Vol. 2of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); idem,“ Communication, power and counter-power in the network society, ” InternationalJournal of Communication 1, no. 1 (2007): 238 – 266.13. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).14. R. Kelly Garrett, “ Protest in an information society: A review of literature onsocial movements and new ICTs, ” Information Communication and Society 9, no. 2(2006): 202.15. Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism(London: Pluto Press, 2012).16. Virginia Eubanks, Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the InformationAge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).17. Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share, “ Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts,debates, organizations, and policy, ” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education26, no. 3 (2005): 369 – 386; Shelley Goldman, Angela Booker, and MeghanMcDermott, “ Mixing the digital, social, and cultural: Learning, identity, and agencyin youth participation, ” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham,185 – 206 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).18. Malcolm Gladwell, “ Small change, ” New Yorker, October 4, 2010, 42 – 49.19. Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA:AK Press, 2006).20. Jeffrey S. Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).21. Dorothy Kidd, “ Indymedia.org: A new communications commons, ” in Cyberactivism:Online Activism in Theory and Practice, ed. Martha McCaughey and Michael

Notes to Introduction 225D. Ayers, 47 – 69 (New York: Routledge, 2003); Victor W. Pickard, “ Assessing theradical democracy of Indymedia: Discursive, technical, and institutional constructions,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, no. 1 (2006): 19 – 38.22. Tad Hirsch, “ TXTMob and Twitter: A reply to Nick Bilton, ” http://publicpractice.org/wp/?p=779 (retrieved October 18, 2013).23. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope .24. David Graeber, “ The new anarchists, ” New Left Review 13, no. 6 (2002): 61 – 73;Marina Sitrin, “ Prefigurative politics: Weaving imagination and creation: The futurein the present, ” in Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a BetterWorld, ed. David Solnit, 263 – 277 (San Francisco: City Lights Press, 2004).25. Zeynep Tufecki, “ New media and the people-powered uprisings, ” MIT TechnologyReview, August 30, 2011.26. Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets .27. Andrew Sullivan, “ The revolution will be Twittered, ” The Daily Dish, The Atlantic, June 13, 2009.28. Philip Howard, Aiden Duffy, Deen Freelon, Muzammil Hussain, Will Mari, andMarwa Mazaid, “ Opening closed regimes: What was the role of social media duringthe Arab Spring?, ” Project on Information Technology and Political Islam, Universityof Washington, Seattle, September 2011, http://pitpi.org/index.php/2011/09/11/opening-closed-regimes-what-was-the-role-of-social-media-during-the-arab-spring/(retrieved May 22, 2012).29. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “ Mic check! Media cultures and the Occupy movement, ”Social Movement Studies 11, nos. 3 – 4 (2012): 375 – 385.30. Personal communication, ON, July 2013.31. S. Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2010).32. Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York:PublicAffairs, 2012).33. Stefaan Walgrave, Lance Bennett, Jeroen Van Laer, and Christian Breunig,“ Multiple engagements and network bridging in contentious politics: Digital mediause of protest participants, ” Mobilization 16, no. 3 (2011): 325 – 349.34. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, “ Digital media and the personalizationof collective action: Social technology and the organization of protests against theglobal economic crisis, ” Information, Communication & Society 14 (2011): 770 – 799.35. Leah Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media (Malden, MA: Polity Press,2011), provides a welcome exception. Lievrouw first locates contemporary activist

226 Notes to Introductionmedia practices within a larger historical context, then traces five basic genres:culture jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism, mediated mobilization,and commons knowledge production.36. Annabelle Sreberny and Ali Mohammadi, Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication,Culture, and the Iranian Revolution (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1994).37. Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).38. Jack Kyser, “ Manufacturing in Southern California, ” Los Angeles County EconomicDevelopment Corporation, Los Angeles, 2007.39. Rick Fantasia and Kim Voos, Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).40. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2005).41. Vanessa Tait, Poor Workers ’ Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below (Cambridge, MA:South End Press, 2005).42. Jonathan Walters, “ Justice for janitors: ‘ Your hands make them rich, ’” withKamilo Rivera, Rafael Ventura, Dolores Martinez, and Marisela Salinas, ResearchCenter for Leadership in Action, New York University/Wagner, September 2003,http://wagner.nyu.edu/leadership/reports/files/8.pdf .43. Personal communication, KL, PG.44. Edna Bonacich and Fernando Gapasin, “ Organizing the unorganizable: Challengesof globalized manufacturing for the California labor movement, ” in TheState of California Labor, ed. Paul Ong and James Lincoln, 345 – 368 (Berkeley/LosAngeles: UCLA and UC Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations, 2001).45. Hector Delgado, “ The Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project: An opportunitysquandered?, ” in Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in ContemporaryCalifornia , ed. Ruth Milkman, 225 – 238 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).46. Abel Valenzuela, Jr., Nik Theodore, Edwin Melendez, and Ana Luz Gonzalez. Onthe Corner: Day Labor in the United States, Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Studyof Urban Poverty, 2006, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/uploaded_files/Natl_DayLabor-On_the_Corner1.pdf.47. Maria Dziembowska, “ NDLON and the history of day labor organizing in L.A., ”Social Policy 40, no. 3 (2010): 27 – 33.48. P. Hondagneu-Sotelo, God ’ s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists AreWorking for Immigrant Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010).

Notes to Chapter 1 22749. Ruth Milkman, “ New workers, new labor, and the new Los Angeles, ” in Unionsin a Globalized Environment: Changing Borders, Organizational Boundaries, and SocialRoles, ed. Bruce Nissen, 103 – 129 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002).50. For example, see Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left.51. David Hesmondhalgh, The Cultural Industries, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2007);Toby Miller, Nitin Govia, John McMurria, et al., Global Hollywood 2 (London: BritishFilm Institute; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).52. See Tarrow, Power in Movement .53. Henry Jenkins, “ Transmedia storytelling, ” MIT Technology Review , January 15,2003, http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/13052 .54. See http://transmediaactivism.wordpress.com .55. Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996).Chapter 11. Jesse D í az, “ Organizing the brown tide: La gran epoca primavera 2006, an insiders ’story, ” PhD diss., University of California, 2010, http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/3m92x4nb (retrieved August 1, 2013).2. Communication scholars have long used the term “ media ecology ” to examinethe relationship between media technologies, media content, and social structure.In this book I use the term in its more popular sense, as a synonym for “ mediasystem ” or “ media across all channels and platforms. ” This is how the term is usuallydeployed by the activists and organizers I interviewed. I use it to highlight flows ofinformation across multiple channels, including mass, community, and socialmedia. Readers interested in the scholarly literature on media ecology should exploreHarold Adams Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 2008); Neil Postman, “ The humanism of media ecology, ” Proceedings of theMedia Ecology Association 1 (2000): 10 – 16; and Lance Strate, Echoes and Reflections:On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006).3. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs: The DemocraticStruggle against Corporate Media (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011).4. Arlene D á vila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People: Updated Editionwith a New Preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).5. Erika Lee, “ The Chinese exclusion example: Race, immigration, and Americangatekeeping, 1882 – 1924, ” Journal of American Ethnic History 21, no. 3 (2002):36 – 62.

228 Notes to Chapter 16. Andreas Peter, Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2000).7. For more on heteropatriarchy, see Andrea Smith, “ Heteropatriarchy and the threepillars of white supremacy, ” in Color of Violence: INCITE! Women of Color AgainstViolence, ed. Andrea Smith, Beth E. Richie, and Julia Sudbury, 66 – 73 (Cambridge,MA: South End Press, 2006).8. Ibid.9. Wahab Twibell and Ty Shawn, “ The road to internment: Special registration andother human rights violations of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, ” VermontLaw Review 29, no. 2 (2005): 407 – 553; Rachel Ida Buff, “ The deportation terror, ”American Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2008): 523 – 551.10. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ Fact Sheet: ICE Office of Deten -tion and Removal, ” Washington, D.C., ICE, 2006. http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/dro110206.htm (retrieved August 20, 2007).11. Immigrant Legal Resource Center, “ Dangerous immigration legislation pendingin Congress, ” Immigrant Legal Resource Center, San Francisco, December 23, 2005.12. Peter B. Dixon and Maureen T Rimmer, Restriction or Legalization? Measuring theEconomic Benefits of Immigration Reform, Trade Policy Analysis 40, Cato Institute,Washington, D.C., August 13, 2009, http://www.cato.org/publications/trade-policy-analysis/restriction-or-legalization-measuring-economic-benefits-immigration-reform (Retrieved April 7, 2014).13. Otto Santa Ana, Sandra L. Trevi ñ o, Michael J. Bailey, Kristen Bodossian, andAntonio De Necochea, “ A May to remember: Adversarial images of immigrants inU.S. newspapers during the 2006 policy debate, ” Du Bois Review: Social Science andResearch on Race 4, no. 1 (2007): 207 – 232.14. Laura Pulido, “ A Day Without Immigrants: The racial and class politics ofimmigrant exclusion, ” Antipode 39, no. 1 (2007): 1 – 7.15. D í az, “ Organizing the brown tide. ”16. Suzanne Staggenborg, “ Can feminist organizations be effective?, ” in FeministOrganizations: Harvest of the New Women ’ s Movement, ed. Myra Marx Ferree andPatricia Yancey Martin, 339 – 355 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).17. Adri á n F é lix, Carmen Gonz á lez, and Ricardo Ram í rez, “ Political protest, ethnicmedia, and Latino naturalization, ” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 4 (2008):618 – 634.18. Mandalit Del Barco, “ Spanish-language DJ turns out the crowds in LA, ” NationalPublic Radio, April 12, 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5337941 (retrieved September 1, 2007).

Notes to Chapter 1 22919. Carmen Gonzalez, “ Latino mobilization: Emergent Latino mobilization viacommunication networks, ” Unpublished paper, Annenberg School for Communication& Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 2006.20. Ibid.21. Interview, NB.22. Interviews, NB, XD, KB, BH, DH, CX.23. Wayne Yang, “ Organizing MySpace: Youth walkouts, pleasure, politics, and newmedia, ” Educational Foundations 21, nos. 1 – 2 (2007): 9 – 28.24. Interviews, BH, XD, NB.25. Interview, EN.26. Ibid.27. Source Code , “ Students Unite in LA, ” Season 3, Episode 10: “ Immigration emergency?,” 2006, video, http://www.archive.org/details/freespeechtv_sourcecode3_10(Retrieved April 6, 2014).28. Knud Larsen, Krum Krumov, Hao Van Le, Reidar Ommundsen, and Kees vander Veer, “ Threat perception and attitudes toward documented and undocumentedimmigrants in the United States: Framing the debate and conflict resolution, ”European Journal of Social Sciences 7, no. 4 (2009): 115 – 134.29. A letter signed by more than one hundred psychologists in support of the Dropthe I-Word campaign and the AP changes describes in detail the way this termfunctions on a cognitive level to dehumanize those it is applied to.30. Emily Guskin, “‘ Illegal, ’ ‘ undocumented, ’ ‘ unauthorized ’: News media shiftlanguage on immigration, ” FactTank, Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C., June17, 2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/17/illegal-undocumented-unauthorized-news-media-shift-language-on-immigration (retrieved October 13,2013).31. Santa Ana et al., “ A May to remember. ”32. Interview, PS.33. Interview, NB.34. Interview, XD.35. Interview, TX.36. Interview, KB.37. Ibid.38. Interview, RF.

230 Notes to Chapter 139. Interview, LC, online organizer.40. Elena Shore, “ What is the role of Hispanic media in immigrant activism?, ” SocialPolicy 36, no. 3 (2006): 8.41. Juan Gonz á lez and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Raceand the American Media (New York: Verso Books, 2011).42. Interview, LC.43. Interviews, DH, PS, LC, BH, EQ.44. Interview, PS.45. Ibid.46. Interview, LC.47. Interview, EQ.48. William A. Gamson and Gadi Wolfsfeld, “ Movements and media as interactingsystems, ” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528 (July1993): 114 – 125.49. Interview, EQ.50. D á vila, Latinos, Inc.51. Interview, CY.52. Beth Baker-Cristales, “ Mediated resistance: The construction of neoliberal citizenshipin the immigrant rights movement, ” Latino Studies 7, no. 1 (Spring 2009):60 – 82.53. Ibid.54. Ibid.; Alvaro Lima, “ Transnationalism: What it means to local communities, ”Boston Redevelopment Authority, Boston, Winter 2010. http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/40c9373f-d170-4ed7-91bf-300f2b7daeb9/ (Retrieved April 6, 2014).55. Alan O ’ Connor, Community Radio in Bolivia: The Miners ’ Radio Stations (Lewiston,NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004).56. Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).57. Brian Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (Gainesville:University Press of Florida, 2004).58. Lawrence Soley, Free Radio: Electronic Civil Disobedience (Boulder: Westview,1999).

Notes to Chapter 1 23159. Frantz Fanon, “ This is the Voice of Algeria, ” in Studies in a Dying Colonialism,trans. Haakon Chevalier, 69 – 98 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1965). Firstpublished 1959, in French.60. John Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements(Mountain View, CA: Sage, 2001).61. See the website of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters(AMARC), an international nongovernmental organization serving communityradio, at http://amarc.org .62. Andy Opel, Micro Radio and the FCC: Media Activism and the Struggle over BroadcastPolicy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004).63. Kevin Howley, “ Remaking public service broadcasting: Lessons from Allston-Brighton free radio, ” Social Movement Studies 3, no. 2 (2004): 221 – 240.64. For examples, see Alfonso Gumucio Dragon and Thomas Tufte, Communicationfor Social Change: Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (South Orange, NJ:CFSC Consortium, 2006).65. Graciela Orozco, “ Understanding the May 1st immigrant rights mobilizations. ”(New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007).66. The FIOB coordinator in Santa Maria, Jesus Estrada, was also able to secure aregular TV show on Telemundo at one point (interview, PS).67. Interview, KZ.68. Ibid.69. Interview, KB.70. See DIYMedia.net ’ s FCC Enforcement Action Database at http://www.diymedia.net/fccwatch/ead.htm.71. See the website of Free Speech Radio News, at http://fsrn.org .72. Simon Cottle, Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries(Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2000).73. Interview, SU.74. Ibid.75. Interview, LC.76. Ibid.77. Interview, TX.78. Ibid.

232 Notes to Chapter 179. To be explored in more depth in chapter 5.80. danah boyd, “ Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networkedpublics in teenage social life, ” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. D. Buckingham,119 – 142 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).81. See http://myspace.com/infoshopdotorg (anarchist infoshop), http://myspace.com/gpus (Greenpeace), and http://www.myspace.com/feminists for examples.82. Kara Jesella, “ The friendster effect, ” AlterNet, January 29, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/story/31103 (retrieved June 29, 2010).83. Araba Sey and Manuel Castells, “ From media politics to networked politics:The Internet and the political process, ” in The Network Society: A Cross-CulturalPerspective, ed. M. Castells, 363-384 (Cheltenham, UK / Northampton, MA: EdwardElgar, 2004).84. Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).85. danah boyd, “ White flight in networked publics? How race and class shapedAmerican teen engagement with MySpace and Facebook, ” in Race After the Internet,Eds. Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, 203 – 222 (New York: Routledge, 2011);boyd, “ Why youth (heart) social network sites. ”86. Jenna M. Loyd and Andrew Burridge. “ La Gran Marcha: Anti-racism and immigrants’ rights in Southern California, ” ACME: An International E-Journal for CriticalGeographies 6, no. 1 (2007): 1 – 35.87. Interviews, SU, MO.88. Interview, ON.89. Interviews, BH, LC, QK.90. Interview, LC.91. Interview, XD.92. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “ Mic check! Media cultures and the Occupy movement, ”Social Movement Studies 11, nos. 3 – 4 (2012): 375 – 385.93. Interview, LC.94. Ibid.95. Interviews, LC, ZD, LN.96. Interview, LC.97. Ibid.98. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter 2 23399. Otto Santa Ana, “‘ Like an animal I was treated ’: Anti-immigrant metaphor inUS public discourse, ” Discourse & Society 10, no. 2 (1999): 191 – 224.100. Interview, LC.Chapter 21. Donald P. Ranly, “ Action for children ’ s television, ” Action for Children ’ s Television,Newton, MA, 1976.2. Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: fromMuppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1993).3. Henry Jenkins, “ Transmedia storytelling, ” MIT Technology Review, January15, 2003. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-storytelling(retrieved May 19, 2007).4. Ibid.5. For example, see Google Books Ngram viewer visualization of the increasinglyfrequent appearance of the term “ transmedia ” from 1960 to 2008, http://bit.ly/10IB6aF .6. Producers Guild of America, “ PGA Board of Directors approves addition of transmediaproducer to Guild ’ s Producers Code of Credits, ” Producers Guild of America,Los Angeles, April 6, 2010, http://www.producersguild.org/news/39637 (retrievedMay 2, 2013).7. Amanda Lin Costa, “ At Tribeca Film Festival, ‘ Storyscapes ’ brings trans -media projects into real life, ” PBS MediaShift, May 1, 2013, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/digital-storytelling-up-close-in-person114 (retrieved May 3,2013).8. Lina Srivastava, “ Transmedia activism: Telling your story across media platformsto create effective social change, ” National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, SanFrancisco, March 4, 2009, http://www.namac.org/node/6925 (retrieved November1, 2013).9. See http://resistnetwork.com .10. For examples, see the blog transmedia-activism.com, maintained by Srivastavaand the feminist media scholar Vicki Callahan.11. Soraya Hernandez, “ Watsonville High walk out, ” Bay Area Indymedia,San Francisco, March 28, 2006. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/03/28/18118141.php (retrieved August 10, 2009)

234 Notes to Chapter 212. This text was widely reposted across MySpace, as well as to bulletin boards,blogs, and in comments to news articles. For example, it can be found in the commentssection of the Free Republic page “ Live thread: Some students walk out despitelockdown (Day 3 of LAUSD walkouts), ” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1604770/posts?page=203 (retrieved November 1, 2013). The first two ellipses are inthe original text; the third was introduced in editing for this book.13. Wall post by anonymous MySpace user. All ellipses are in the original postexcept that after “ immigrated. ”14. Transcribed from a screenshot of a chat session posted to a MySpace groupdedicated to student actions against H.R. 4437. Usernames have been changed topreserve privacy.15. Interviews, TH, BH, EN.16. Interview, TH.17. Judith Donath and danah boyd, “ Public displays of connection, ” BT TechnologyJournal 22, no. 4 (2004): 71 – 82.18. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, “ Dynamics of contention, ”Social Movement Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 99 – 102.19. Paula Crisostomo, “ Ethnic pride, civil rights and young people: Parallelsbetween the Chicano walkout of 1968 and the Latino demonstrations of 2006, ”The Lavin Agency, New York, October 2006; Dolores Delgado Bernal, “ Grassrootsleadership reconceptualized: Chicana oral histories and the 1968 East LosAngeles school blowouts, ” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 19 (1998):113 – 142.20. Mario T. Garc í a and Sal Castro, Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle forEducational Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).21. Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Hinda Seif, “ Wise up! ’ UndocumentedLatino youth, Mexican-American legislators, and the struggle for highereducation access, ” Latino Studies 2, no. 2 (2004): 210 – 230.22. Michelle A. Holling, “ Forming oppositional social concord to California ’ sProposition 187 and squelching social discord in the vernacular space of CHICLE, ”Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3, no. 3 (2006): 202 – 222.23. Agustin Gurza, “ Reborn in East L.A.: An HBO film by Edward James Olmos resurrectsa 1968 L.A. Chicano student walkout that roused an activist spirit, ” Los AngelesTimes , December 25, 2005, E1, http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view& friendId=38303221 & blogId=72823076 (retrieved September 10, 2008).24. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter 3 23525. Post on anonymized MySpace user ’ s wall, 2006.26. Jesse D í az and Javier Rodr í guez, “ Undocumented in America, ” New Left Review47 (2007), http://newleftreview.org/II/47/jesse-diaz-javier-rodriguez-undocumented-in-america (retrieved November 1, 2013).27. Interviews, BH, XD.28. Interview, LN.29. Ibid.30. Ibid.31. Interview, ON.32. Interviews, BE1, BE2.33. Interviews, BE1, BE2.34. Interview, LC.35. Ethan Zuckerman, “ Meet the bridgebloggers, ” Public Choice 134, nos. 1 – 2 (2008):47 – 65.36. Interview, CX.37. Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, Joshua Green, et al., Spreadable Media: Creating Valueand Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2012).38. Interview, TH.39. Charlotte Ryan, Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for Grassroots Organizing(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1991).40. Interview, LC.41. Interview, ON.42. Interview, ON.43. Interview, NM.44. Interview, LC.45. Interviews, BE1, BE2.46. Interviews, BE1, BE2.Chapter 31. Bill Ong Hing, “ Institutional racism, ICE raids, and immigration reform, ” Universityof San Francisco Law Review 44 (2009): 307.

236 Notes to Chapter 32. Jes ú s Velasco Grajales, Lou Dobbs and the Rise of Modern Nativism (Mexico City:Centro de Investigaci ó n y Docencia Econ ó micas [CIDE], 2008).3. James Strawn, “ Whose park: An architectural history of Westlake-MacArthurPark, ” master ’ s thesis, University of Southern California, 2008.4. Interview, CZ.5. Gerardo Sandoval, Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Developmentand Change in MacArthur Park (New York: Cambria Press, 2010).6. Erwin Chemerinsky, “ An Independent analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department’ s Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandal, ” Loyola of Los AngelesLaw Review 34 (2001): 545 – 656. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol34/iss2/4(Retrieved April 6, 2014).7. Sandoval, Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles.8. William H. Sousa and George L Kelling, “ Police and the reclamation of publicplaces: A study of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, ” International Journal of PoliceScience & Management 12, no. 1 (2010): 41 – 54.9. Including Dr. Larry Gross, director of the Annenberg School for Communication& Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.10. A video of Fosforo performing at this event, intercut later with footage of thepolice attack, is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkoULiI8N0 . Thetrack “ Guerra, ” from the EP Macondo , can be found at https://myspace.com/fosforo .11. Los Angeles Police Department, “ An examination of May Day 2007, ”Los Angeles Police Department Report to the Board of Police Commissioners,2007, http://www.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/Final_Report.pdf (retrieved October 10,2007).12. Amy Goodman, “ L.A. immigration protest: The police ‘ were relentless.They were merciless, ’” Alternet, May 4, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/story/51454/l.a._immigration_protest%3A_the_police_%22were_relentless._they_were_merciless.%22 (retrieved August 25, 2007).13. William Bratton, “ May 2, 2007 media brief on MacArthur Park disturbance, ”Los Angeles Police Department, May 2, 2007, http://lapdblog.typepad.com/lapd_blog/2007/05/chief_bratton_b.html (retrieved July 10, 2008).14. Los Angeles Police Department, “ An examination of May Day 2007. ”15. Ibid.16. Interviews, ND, WO.17. Sandoval, Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles.

Notes to Chapter 3 23718. Otto Santa Ana, with Layza L ó pez and Edgar Mungu í a, “ Framing peace asviolence: U.S. television news depictions of the 2007 Los Angeles police attack onimmigrant rights marchers, ” Aztl á n 35, no. 1 (2010): 69 – 101.19. Ibid.20. Interview, KB.21. Ibid.22. Ibid.23. Interview, RF.24. Ibid.25. Excerpted from a public, televised statement by the Executive Director of theimmigrant rights nonprofit. The transcript from this statement was widely postedand debated in movement forums and online Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).26. See http://www.miwon.org/mayday2007page.html .27. Ibid.28. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “ Se ve, se siente: Transmedia mobilization in the LosAngeles immigrant rights movement, ” PhD diss., University of Southern California,2011. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/pqdtopen/doc/751220571.html?FMT=ABS .29. From a televised statement by the communications director for the immigrantrights nonprofit.30. Maeve Reston and Joel Rubin, “ Los Angeles to pay $13 million to settle MayDay melee lawsuits, ” Los Angeles Times , February 5, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/05/local/me-lapd-settlement5 (retrieved November 5, 2013).31. Interview, NB.32. Interview, CX.33. Interview, KB.34. Interview, OE.35. Ibid.36. Judy Richardson, “ The mission of media makers, ” speech, MIT Center for CivicMedia, Cambridge, MA, March 15, 2012. A summary of the presentation and discussionis available at http://civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/judy-richardson . (RetrievedApril 6, 2014).37. Interview, XD.38. Interview, EQ.

238 Notes to Chapter 439. Ibid.40. Nicole Gaouette, “ Senate gets tougher on the border, ” Los Angeles Times , May24, 2007, A16.41. S. A. Miller and Stephen Dinan, “ Senate OKs $3 billion to guard border, ”Washington Times , July 27, 2007, http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070727/NATION/107270098/1001 (retrieved September 1, 2007).42. Detention Watch Network, “ Year one report card: Human rights & the Obamaadministration ’ s immigration detention reforms, October 6, 2010, ” in Citing ICEDetention Reform Accomplishments , Detention Watch Network. See also Presente.org ’ sDeportation Clock project at http://presente.org/deportations .43. Te ó phyllo Reyes, “ New path to citizenship looks more like an obstaclecourse, ” Labor Notes, May 17, 2013, http://www.labornotes.org/2013/05/new-path-citizenship-looks-more-obstacle-course (retrieved November 2, 2013).Chapter 41. For example, Jes ú s Mart í n-Barbero, Elizabeth Fox, and Robert A. White, Communication,Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations (London: Sage, 1993).2. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the UnitedStates (San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies, UCSD / Center for ComparativeImmigration Studies, 2004).3. Personal communication, Berta Rodr í guez Santos, 2009.4. Fox and Rivera-Salgado, Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, 22.5. Ibid., 22.6. Ibid., 27.7. Alvaro Lima, “ Transnationalism: What it means to local communities, ”Boston Redevelopment Authority, Boston, Winter 2010. http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/40c9373f-d170-4ed7-91bf-300f2b7daeb9(Retrieved April 6, 2014).8. Peggy Levitt, The Transnational Villagers (Berkeley: University of California Press,2001).9. Rafael Alarc ó n, “ The development of home town associations in the United Statesand the use of social remittances in Mexico, ” in Sending Money Home: HispanicRemittances and Community Development, ed. Rodolfo O. de la Garza and BriantLindsay Lowell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).10. Interview, PS.

Notes to Chapter 4 23911. Interview, LC.12. Fox and Rivera-Salgado, Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States; Lima,“ Transnationalism. ”13. Fox and Rivera-Salgado, Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, 29.14. Interviews, PS, CS.15. Interview, PS.16. Lynn Stephen, “ Indigenous transborder ethnic identity construction in life andon the Net: The Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB),” paperpresented at the Rockefeller Conference, “ Poverty and Community in Latin America, ”Evanston, IL, May 24 – 25, 2007, http://csws.uoregon.edu/wp-content/docs/InitiativeArticles/ImmigrationPDFs/NWFIOBInternetPaper.pdf .17. Interview, PS.18. Ibid.19. Interviews, PS, DS, and CS; Rodr í guez Santos, personal communication, 2009.20. Rodr í guez Santos, personal communication, 2009.21. Interview, PS.22. Ibid.23. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).24. Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina(London: Zed Books, 2012).25. Interview, PS.26. Ibid.27. Ibid.28. Kristin Norget, “ Convergences and complicities: Local-National Interactions inthe 2006 Movement of the APPO, ” Center for International Policy, AmericasProgram, Mexico City, July 14, 2008, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1447(Retrieved April 11, 2014).29. Ibid.30. Tami Gold and Gerardo Renique, “ A rainbow in the midst of a hurricane:Alternative media and the popular struggle in Oaxaca, Mexico, ” Radical Teacher 81,no. 8 (2008), http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/radical_teacher/v081/81.1gold.pdf .

240 Notes to Chapter 531. Joel Simon, “ CPJ calls for federal probe into killing of U.S. journalist in Mexico, ”Committee to Protect Journalists, October 30, 2006, http://cpj.org/2006/10/cpj-calls-for-federal-probe-into-killing-of-us-jou.php .32. Physicians for Human Rights, “ Canadians ’ report leaves more questions thananswers in death of US reporter in Mexico, ” Physicians for Human Rights InternationalForensic Program, August 5, 2009, http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2009-08-05.html ; and see Diana Denham, ed. Teaching Rebellion: Storiesfrom the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2008).33. This film is freely available for download from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/miamimodel .34. Interview, PS.35. Monica Wooters, “ Mexican Supreme Court finds Oaxaca governor responsiblefor human rights violations, ” Center for International Policy, Americas Program,Mexico City, November 17, 2009, http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1910(retrieved November 3, 2013).36. Interviews, CS, PS, DM, BH.Chapter 51. See VozMob.net, and more about IDEPSCA and VozMob later in this chapter.2. See alliedmedia.org.3. See several posts about VozMob at http://www.hastac.org/tag/vozmob .4. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “ Se ve, se siente: Transmedia mobilization in the LosAngeles immigrant rights movement, ” PhD diss., University of Southern California,2011.5. Ra ú l A ñ orve and IDEPSCA Staff, “ Queremos vivir sin miedo [We want to livewithout fear], ” in Globalisation, Knowledge and Labor , ed. Mario Novelli and AnibelFerus-Comelo (London: Routledge, 2009), 206.6. Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1970), 36.7. Liam Kane, Popular Education and Social Change in Latin America (London: LatinAmerican Bureau, 2001).8. Interviews, NR, SB.9. John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School (Knoxville: University of TennesseePress, 1996); and see Highlander Center, Highlander: An Approach to Education Presentedthrough a Collection of Writings (New Market, TN: Highlander Center, 1989).10. See projectsouth.org.

Notes to Chapter 5 24111. Interview, NQ.12. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (New York: Oxford University Press,2009).13. Raymond Williams marshals yearly book sales figures, newspaper and magazinecirculation data, information about the technological evolution of the printingpress, changes in publishing law, taxation, and licensing, quotations from contemporaryauthors, and other sources to trace the evolution of print literacy. He followsthe long trajectory from the Roman system of slave dictation to the creation ofthe printing press, the rise of penny dreadfuls and radical texts in the 1800s, theemergence of public education, the creation of circulating library systems, and theavailability of mass market paperbacks. See Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution(New York: Columbia University Press; London: Chatto & Windus, 1961).14. Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-technologyCapitalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).15. For more on the concept of the 1/3 World, see Chandra Mohanty, FeminismWithout Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke UniversityPress, 2003).16. Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal(London: Sage, 1996).17. Manuel Castells, “ Communication, power and counter-power in the networksociety, ” International Journal of Communication 1, no. 1 (2007): 238 – 266.18. Tiziana Terranova, “ Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy, ”Social Text 18, no. 2 (2000): 33 – 58.19. Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2012); Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World(New York: Penguin, 2011).20. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents fromthe FBI ’ s Secret Wars against Dissent in the United States (Cambridge, MA: South EndPress, 2002).21. Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, “ NSA PRISM program taps in to userdata of Apple, Google and others, ” Guardian, June 6, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data.22. For example, VozMob workshops often start with the example of daylaborers.org, a hate site maintained by an anti-immigrant group that travels to day laborcorners, yells racist insults at those waiting for work, then snaps pictures of workers ’angry responses and posts them to the web, along with captions like “ Some ofthe most violent murderers and rapists are illegal immigrants who work as daylaborers. ”

242 Notes to Chapter 523. Henry Jenkins, Katherine Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robinson, andMargaret Weigel, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Educationfor the 21st Century (Chicago: MacArthur Foundation, 2006).24. Mizuko Ito, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around,and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,2010).25. Samuel Craig Watkins, The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to SocialNetwork Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future (Boston:Beacon Press, 2009).26. Although see the Youth and Participatory Politics series. See also Sasha Costanza-Chock, “ Youth and social movements: Key lessons for allies, ” Berkman CenterResearch Publication 2013-13, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, HarvardUniversity, Cambridge, MA, 2012, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/8096 .27. Ra ú l Zibechi, Autonom í as y emancipaciones: Am é rica Latina en movimiento . (Lima:Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Fondo Editorial de la Facultad deCiencias Sociales, 2007).28. Vanessa Tait, Poor Workers ’ Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below (Cambridge, MA:South End Press, 2005); Janice Ruth Fine, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities atthe Edge of the Dream (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).29. Victor Narro, “ Impacting next wave organizing: Creative campaign strategies ofthe Los Angeles worker centers, ” New York Law School Law Review 50 (2005): 465.30. Ruth Milkman and Kent Wong, Voices from the Front Lines: Organizing ImmigrantWorkers in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education,2000).31. KIWA, “ Toward a community agenda: A survey of workers and residentsin Koreatown, ” Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance & Data Center, LosAngeles, 2007, http://www.datacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/towardscommunity.pdf (retrieved March 4, 2010); idem, “ Reclaiming Koreatown, ” Koreatown ImmigrantWorkers Alliance & Data Center, Los Angeles, 2009, http://www.datacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/KIWA_Report.pdf (retrieved March 4, 2010).32. Interview, NQ.33. See Neidi ’ s Story (IDEPSCA), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNPd9o2Cazc .34. Interview, NQ.35. VozMob project, “ Mobile Voices: Projecting the voices of immigrant workersby appropriating mobile phones for popular communication, ” in Communications

Notes to Chapter 5 243Research in Action: Scholar-Activist Collaborations for a Democratic Public Sphere , ed.P. M. Napoli and M. Aslama (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).36. See VozMob.net for more information.37. Interview with VozMob project coordinator, conducted by Cara Wallis.38. Garment Worker Center, Crisis or Opportunity? The Future of Los Angeles ’ GarmentWorkers, the Apparel Industry, and the Local Economy (Los Angeles: Garment WorkerCenter and Sweatshop Watch, 2004).39. Richard Sullivan and Kimi Lee. “ Organizing immigrant women in America ’ ssweatshops: Lessons from the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center, ” Signs 33,no. 3 (2008): 527 – 532. See also garmentworkercenter.org.40. Interview, TH.41. Interview, TH; personal communication, GWC member.42. A play on words. The term means “ flying saucers ” in Spanish, but it also means“ CD flyers. ”43. Interview, TH; personal communications, GWC members.44. Maegan Ortiz, “ Fast for our future: Stand up for immigrant rights!, ” VivirLatino,Los Angeles, October 14, 2008, http://vivirlatino.com/2008/10/14/fast-for-ourfuture-stand-up-for-immigrant-rights.php(retrieved August 14, 2013).45. Nuestra Voz, “ Garment workers take the radio in their own hands: Radio Tijerain the studio, ” Nuestra Voz, KPFK, April 9, 2009, http://www.kpfk.org/index.php/programs/132-nuestra-voz/1899-499nuestravozdream-act-puede-ser-cultura-gransilencio-documental-eljardin-garifunas (retrieved April 11, 2014).46. Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out.47. Interview, OE.48. Interview, OE.49. Interview, BH.50. Interview, NM.51. Shelley Goldman, Angela Booker, and Meghan McDermott, “ Mixing the digital,social, and cultural: Learning, identity, and agency in youth participation, ” in Youth,Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham, 185 – 206 (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 2008).52. Interview, OE.53. Ibid.

244 Notes to Chapter 554. Interview, TH.55. Interview, BH.56. Interview, TH; Virginia Eubanks, personal communication, August 2013.57. For more on media work by the Frente Ind í gena de Organizaciones Binacionales,see chapter 4.58. Interview, PS.59. Interview, EQ.60. Interview, KZ.61. Interview, TX.62. Virginia Eubanks, Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the InformationAge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).63. Interview, EQ.64. Marc Prensky, “ Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1, ” On the horizon 9,no. 5 (2001): 1 – 6.65. Interview, EQ.66. Interview, OE.67. Wade Roush, “ The moral panic over social-networking sites, ” MIT TechnologyReview , August 7, 2006, http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17266 & ch=infotech .68. Interview, TH.69. danah boyd. It ’ s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2014).70. D. T. Scott, Killer Apps and Sick Users: Pathological Technoculture in Old and NewMedia (New York: New York University Press, in press).71. Eubanks, personal communication, 2013.72. Ito et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out.73. Interview, OE.74. Ibid.75. Interview, DH.76. Interview, NB.77. Interviews, NB, BH, LN.

Notes to Chapter 6 245Chapter 61. See http://thedreamwalk.org/denver-videos .2. Julianne Hing, “ DREAMers stage sit-in at Obama office to force deportationstandoff, ” Colorlines, June 13, 2012, http://archive.is/u6S3R (retrieved October 12,2013).3. Arely M. Zimmerman, “ Documenting DREAMs: New media, undocumentedyouth and the immigrant rights movement, ” University of Southern CaliforniaAnnenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Civic Paths ’ Media, Activism,and Participatory Politics Project, Los Angeles, June 6, 2012, http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/sites/default/files/publications/Documenting_DREAMs.pdf (retrieved April 11,2014).4. White House Press Office, Remarks by the President on Immigration , press release,White House, June 15, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/15/remarks-president-immigration .5. Interview, LN.6. Prerna Lal, “ How queer undocumented youth built the immigrant rights movement,” Huffington Post, March 28, 2013, http://archive.is/5ULwu (retrieved October12, 2013).7. Jeffrey Passel and Mark Hugo Lopez, “ Up to 1.7 million unauthorized immigrantyouth may benefit from new deportation rules, ” Pew Hispanic Center, Washington,D.C., August 14, 2012, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/08/14/up-to-1 – 7-million-unauthorizedimmigrant-youth-may-benefit-from-new-deportation-rules.8. Lisette Amaya, Wendy Escobar, Monique Gonzales, Heather Henderson, AngeloMathay, Marla Ramirez, Michael Viola, and Negin Yamini, “ Undocumentedstudents, unfulfilled dreams, ” UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education,Los Angeles, CA, March 26, 2008, http://labor.ucla.edu/publications/reports/Undocumented-Students.pdf (retrieved April 12, 2014).9. Michael A. Olivas, “ Political economy of the Dream Act and the legislativeprocess: A case study of comprehensive immigration reform, ” Wayne Law Review 55(2009): 1757.10. Interview, BH.11. Margaret D. Stock, “ The DREAM Act: Tapping an overlooked pool of homegrowntalent to meet military enlistment needs, ” Bender ’ s Immigration Bulletin,January 15, 2006, 63.12. Interviews, BH, XD, OE; Elvira J. Rodriguez, “ Yo Soy El Army: UnitedStates military recruitment of low-income Latino youth, strategies and implications,” Graduate College at Illinois, 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/

246 Notes to Chapter 620100617124553/http://www.grad.illinois.edu/content/yo-soy-el-army-united-states-military-recruitment-low-income-latino-youth-strategies-and-imp (retrievedNovember 3, 2013).13. Michelle Chen, “ Is the DREAM Act a military recruiter ’ s dream, too?, ”Huffington Post, May 27, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-chen/is-the-dream-act-a-milita_b_585875.html. Interview, BH.14. Big Noise Films and Producciones Cimmaron, 2010. See http://bignoisefilms.org/videowire/38-latest/111-ysea .15. Presentation by Pedro Paredes, UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education,Los Angles, April 19, 2013.16. See DREAMers Adrift, for example, at http://dreamersadrift.com/newest-vid/01-military-recruitment-the-dream-act .17. By August 2013, more than 400,000 people had been granted DACA status. SeeRoberto G. Gonzales and Veronica Terriquez, “ How DACA is impacting the lives ofthose who are now DACAmented: Preliminary findings from the National UnDACAmentedResearch Project, ” Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, Universityof Southern California, Los Angeles, April 15, 2013, http://csii.usc.edu/DACA.html(retrieved August 15, 2013).18. Laura Sullivan, “ Prison economics help drive Ariz. immigration law, ” NationalPublic Radio, October 28, 2010, http://www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-help-drive-ariz-immigration-law.19. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ ICE total removals, through August25th, 2012, ” ICE, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2012, http://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/pdf/ero-removals1.pdf (retrieved October 12, 2013).20. Politifact, “ Has Barack Obama deported more people than any other president?, ”Politifact, August 10, 2012. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/10/american-principles-action/has-barack-obama-deported-more-people-any-other-pr (retrieved October 12, 2013).21. See http://notonemoredeportation.com .22. See “ Gang of Eight (immigration),” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Eight_(immigration) (retrieved November 3, 2013).23. Prerna Lal, “ How queer undocumented youth built the immigrant rights movement,” Huffington Post, March 28, 2013, http://archive.is/5ULwu (retrieved October12, 2013).24. Rogelio Alejandro L ó pez, “ From huelga! to undocumented and unafraid! Acomparative study of media strategies in the farm worker movement of the 1960s

Notes to Chapter 6 247and the immigrant youth movement of the 2000s, ” master ’ s thesis, MIT, 2013,http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81056 .25. Lal, “ How queer undocumented youth built the immigrant rightsmovement. ”26. Interview, LM.27. Interview, KT.28. Interview with Salgado, conducted by Rogelio Alejandro L ó pez.29. Interview, OE.30. Jonathan Alexander, with Elizabeth Losh, “ A YouTube of one ’ s own: Comingout as rhetorical action, ” in LGBT Identity and Online New Media , ed. ChristopherPullen and Margaret Cooper, 37 – 50 (New York: Routledge, 2010).31. Laura E. Enriquez, “ Researching and learning from undocumented youngadults, ” CSW Update Newsletter, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Los Angeles,November 1, 2012, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/44q809d7 (retrieved October13, 2013).32. See http://juliosalgado83.tumblr.com .33. See http://DREAMersadrift.com .34. See http://papersthemovie.com .35. For scholarly accounts, see L ó pez, “ From huelga! to undocumented andunafraid!, ” and Jacob Eric Prendez, “ The art of rebellion: Social justice and Chicanovisual arts, ” master ’ s thesis, California State University, 2012.36. Underground Undergrads, Underground Undergrads: UCLA Undocumented ImmigrantStudents Speak Out, ed. Gabriela Madera (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for LaborResearch and Education, 2012); and see http://undergroundundergrads.com .37. UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, Undocumented and Unafraid:Tam Tran, Cinthya Felix, and the Immigrant Youth Movement (Los Angeles: UCLACenter for Labor Research and Education, Dream Resource Center, 2012).38. L ó pez, “ From huelga! to undocumented and unafraid! ”39. Ibid.40. John Gorham Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generationof Digital Natives (New York: Basic Books, 2008).41. Interview, DH.42. Ibid.

248 Notes to Chapter 643. Interview, TH.44. Interview, KZ.45. Interview with Julio Salgado, conducted by Rogelio Alejandro L ó pez.46. Doug McAdam, “ The biographical impact of activism, ” in How Social MovementsMatter , ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, 119 – 146 (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1999).47. Donatella Della Porta, Life Histories in the Analysis of Social Movement Activists(London: Sage, 1992).48. Silke Roth, “ Developing working class feminism: A biographical approach tosocial movement participation in the Coalition of Labor Union Women, ” in Self,Identity, and Social Movements , ed. Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and RobertW. White, 300 – 323 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).49. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 2: ThePower of Identity (Blackwell, 1997).50. Verta Taylor and Nancy E Whittier. “ Collective identity in social movementcommunities: Lesbian feminist mobilization, ” in Waves of Protest: Social Movementssince the Sixties, ed. Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson (New York: Rowman & Littlefield,1999), 169.51. James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in SocialMovements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).52. Interview, ON.53. Interview, LC.54. Interview, LC.55. Interviews, LC, QK.56. Interview, TH.57. Interview, SIM.58. Interview, SIM.59. John Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).60. Zimmerman, “ Documenting DREAMs. ”61. Interview, TH62. Interview, XD.63. Interview, SM.

Notes to Chapter 7 24964. Claudia Alejandra Anguiano, Undocumented, Unapologetic, and Unafraid: DiscursiveStrategies of the Immigrant Youth DREAM Social Movement PhD diss., Universityof New Mexico, 2011 (ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2011).65. Ibid.66. Marshall Ganz, “ Leading change: leadership, organization, and socialmovements, ” in Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, ed. Nitin Nohriaand Rakesh Khurana, 509 – 550 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press,2010).67. Julia Preston, “ Young immigrants want ‘ Dream Warrior ’ army, ” New York Times ,December 6, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/us/young-immigrants-want-dream-warrior-army.html (retrieved May 22, 2013).68. Interview, ON.69. Ibid.70. Ibid.71. Ibid.72. Interview, DH.73. Interview, SS.74. Mawish Khan, “ CNN polls: Voters strongly support pro-immigrant policies;Obama leading Romney among Latinos 70%-24%, ” AmericasVoice.org, October2, 2012, http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/cnn-polls-voters-strongly-support-pro-immigrant-policies-obama-leading-romney-among-latinos-70-24 (retrieved October12, 2013).75. Interview, LC.Chapter 71. Mike Bostock, Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, Tom Giratikanon, Alicia Parlapiano,Kevin Quealy, Amy Schoenfeld, and Lisa Waananen, “ How Obama won re-election, ”New York Times Interactive Feature, November 7, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/07/us/politics/obamas-diverse-base-of-support.html?_r=0(retrieved November 3, 2013).2. Paul Taylor, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Jeffrey S. Passel, and Mark Hugo Lopez,“ An awakened giant: The Hispanic electorate is likely to double by 2030, ”Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C.,November 14, 2012, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/14/an-awakened-giant-the-hispanic-electorate-is-likely-to-double-by-2030 (retrieved November 3, 2103).

250 Notes to Chapter 73. Jose Antonio Vargas, “ My life as an undocumented immigrant, ” New YorkTimes, June 22, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html (retrieved April 12, 2014).4. Carolina Valdivia Ordorica, “ DREAM ACTivism: College students’ offline andonline activism for undocumented immigrant youth rights, ” master ’ s thesis, SanDiego State University, 2013; and see http://trail2010.org .5. Ibid.6. Jose Antonio Vargas, “ Not legal, not leaving, ” Time, June 25, 2012, 34 – 44.7. Henry Jenkins, “‘ Cultural acupuncture ’: Fan activism and the Harry PotterAlliance, ” in “ Transformative Works and Fan Activism, ” ed. Henry Jenkins andSangita Shresthova, Transformative Works and Cultures 10 (2011), doi:10.3983/twc.2012.0305 .8. Personal communication, anonymous media activist, May 10, 2013.9. Interview, SIM.10. Personal communication, anonymous community organizer.11. Julia Preston, “ Young immigrants want ‘ Dream Warrior ’ army, ” New York Times,December 6, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/us/young-immigrants-want-dream-warrior-army.html?hp&_r=0 (retrieved June 5, 2013).12. See http://FWD.us .13. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “ Westat evaluation of the E-Verifyprogram, ” USCIS, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C.,January 28, 2010, http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Native%20Docs/Westat%20Evaluation%20of%20the%20E-Verify%20Program.pdf (retrieved November4, 2013).14. Somini Sengupta and Eric Lipton, “ Fwd.Us raises uproar with advocacy tactics, ”New York Times , May 8, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/technology/fwdus-raises-uproar-with-advocacy-tactics.html (retrieved November 4, 2013).15. John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, The Trend of Social Movements in America:Professionalization and Resource Mobilization (Morristown, NJ: General LearningPress, 1973); Suzanne Staggenborg, “ The consequences of professionalization andformalization in the pro-choice movement, ” American Sociological Review 53 (1988):585 – 605.16. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded:Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007).17. Ibid.; Staggenborg, “ The consequences of professionalization and formalizationin the pro-choice movement. ”

Notes to Chapter 7 25118. Daniel Faber and Deborah McCarthy, Foundations for Social Change: CriticalPerspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements (Lanham, MD: Rowman &Littlefield, 2005).19. INCITE!, Women of Color Against Violence, The Revolution Will Not be Funded.20. Data Center and the National Organizers Alliance, “ Sustaining organizing: Asurvey of organizations during the economic downturn, ” DataCenter.org, June2010, http://www.datacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SOS-report.pdf (retrievedNovember 4, 2013).21. Interview, PS.22. Interviews, BH, LN, TH, DM, OE, TX, NB.23. Interviews, NB, BH, TH, DH, KB.24. Interview, NB.25. Ibid.26. Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).27. Interviews, DH, KZ, EQ, BH.28. Interviews, LN, XD.29. Interviews, LN, XD, OE, BH.30. Interviews, LN, XD, OE.31. Interviews, XD, LN.32. Interview, XD.33. Interview, NB.34. Jeffrey Juris, Networking Futures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).35. Interview, NB.36. Francesca Polletta, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American SocialMovements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Tim Bartley, “ How foundationsshape social movements: The construction of an organizational field and therise of forest certification, ” Social Problems 54 (2007): 229 – 255.37. Interviews, OE, LN, NB, TH, XD.38. Interview, XD.39. Ibid.40. Ibid.

252 Notes to Conclusions41. Interview, OE.42. Interviews, OE, XD, TH, KZ.43. Interview, OE.44. Interview, DH.45. Ibid.46. Interview, XD.47. Interviews, NB, LN.48. Interview, NB.49. Interviews XD, LN.50. Personal communication, anonymous scholar/activist, August 5, 2013.Conclusions1. Maria Camila Bernal, “ Immigrants around the country unite for National Dayfor Dignity and Respect, ” NBC Latino, October 4, 2013, http://nbclatino.com/2013/10/04/immigrants-around-the-country-unite-for-national-day-for-dignity-and-respect (retrieved October 5, 2013).2. Yunuen Rodriguez, “ Challenging our ideas of home and belonging: The importanceof the Dream 9 and Dream 30 actions, ” Huffington Post , October 1, 2013,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yunuen-rodriguez/dream-30_b_4023478.html(retrieved October 6, 2013).3. Roberto G. Gonzales and Veronica Terriquez, “ Preliminary findings from theNational UnDACAmented Research Project, ” Immigration Policy Center, Washington,DC, 2013, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/how-daca-impacting-lives-those-who-are-now-dacamented (retrieved October 28, 2013).4. See https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/newsrel/newsrel13/2013_29.htm .5. Anil Kalhan, “ Immigration policing and federalism through the lens of technology,surveillance, and privacy, ” Ohio State Law Journal 74, no. 6 (2013), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2316327 (retrieved April 13, 2014).6. Juan Gonzalez, “ President Obama heads toward deportation milestone as immigrationreform flounders, ” New York Daily News, October 4, 2013, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-heads-deportation-milestone-article-1.1476073 (retrieved October 5, 2013).7. Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein, “ Immigration reform 2013: Millions of peoplecould get cut out of the pathway to citizenship, ” PolicyMic.com, http://www

Notes to Conclusions 253.policymic.com/articles/27002/immigration-reform-2013-millions-of-people-could-get-cut-out-of-the-pathway-to-citizenship (retrieved October 6, 2013).8. See Julio Salgado and Favianna Rodriguez. “ 5 Easy art projects for your October5th event: A how-to guide, ” CultureStrike.net, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmxr1mGeSpk (retrieved October 5, 2013).9. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Cambridge: Oxford University Press,2013).10. Subbiah Arunachalam, “ Public access to the Internet, ” in Alain Ambrosi, Val é riePeugot, and Daniel Pimienta, eds., Word Matters: Multicultural Perspectives on InformationSocieties (Paris: C & F É ditions, 2005). http://vecam.org/article.php3?id_article=557 (retrieved April 13, 2014).11. Esmeralda Bermudez, “ Giving immigrant laborers an online voice: A newprogram teaches workers to use cellphones to tell their own stories and to documenttheir lives and work, ” Los Angeles Times , September 19, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/19/local/la-me-laborer-blogs-20100919 (retrieved October27, 2013).12. Jeffrey Passel and Mark Hugo Lopez, “ Up to 1.7 million unauthorized immigrantyouth may benefit from new deportation rules, ” Pew Hispanic Center, Washington,D.C., August 14, 2012, http://www. pewhispanic.org/2012/08/14/up-to-1 – 7-million-unauthorizedimmigrant-youth-may-benefit-from-new-deportation-rules (retrievedSeptember 10, 2013).13. See Chris Peterson, “ User-generated censorship, ” master ’ s thesis, MIT, 2013.http://cmsw.mit.edu/user-generated-censorship (retrieved April 13, 2014).14. Tiziana Terranova, “ Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy, ”Social Text 18, no. 2 (2000): 33 – 58.15. William A. Gamson and Gadi Wolfsfeld, “ Movements and media as interactingsystems, ” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528 (July1993): 114 – 125.16. Ernest L. Boyer, “ The scholarship of engagement, ” Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 49, no. 7 (1996): 18 – 33.17. See chapter 1 for more on the history of radio as a key platform for socialmovements; and see the Detroit Digital Stewards and commotionwireless.net formore on community mesh networks.

254 Notes to Appendix AAppendix A1. William Foote Whyte, ed., Participatory Action Research (Newbury Park, CA:Sage, 1991).2. See my Civic Media: Collaborative Design Studio course at http://codesign.mit.edu.3. See “ Participatory action research ” resource page by INCITE! Women ofColor Against Violence (2014), at http://www.incite-national.org/page/participatory-action-research.4. Andrea Hricko, “ Global trade comes home: Community impacts of goods movement,” Environmental Health Perspectives 116, no. 2 (2008): A78.5. Gary Blasi and Jacqueline Leavitt, “ Driving poor: Taxi drivers and the regulationof the taxi industry in Los Angeles, ” report prepared for the UCLA Institute of Laborand Employment, 2006.6. Victor Narro, “ Impacting next wave organizing: Creative campaign strategies ofthe Los Angeles worker centers, ” New York Law School Law Review 50 (2005): 465.7. Alfonso Gumucio Dagron and Thomas Tufte, Communication for Social ChangeAnthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (South Orange, NJ: CFSC Consortium,2006).8. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2000).9. Ibid.10. Gumucio Dagron and Tufte, Communication for Social Change.11. John Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).12. Cees J. Hamelink, The Politics of World Communication (London: Sage, 1995).13. Clemencia Rodriguez, Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of Citizens ’Media (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001).14. Maria Elena Figueroa, D. Lawrence Kincaid, Namju Rani, and Gary Lewis, “ Communicationfor social change: An integrated model for measuring the process andits outcomes, ” Communication for Social Change Paper 1 (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Center for Communication Programs, for the Rockefeller Foundation,2002), 50 pp.15. Ibid.16. See http://garmentworkercenter.org/media/radiotijera .17. See http://vozmob.net .

Notes to Appendix A 25518. The complete transcriptions follow the oral history guidelines, available athttp://www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/174574/SLQ_-_Transcript_std_1.01.pdf. Quotations in the main body of the book also follow these guidelines.In some cases, bridge words (“ um, ” “ uh ”) and crutch words (“ like, ” “ you know ”)have been removed to improve sentence clarity.19. Sharan B. Merriam, Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).20. Kimberl é Crenshaw, “ Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics,and violence against women of color, ” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991):1241 – 1299.21. Judith Butler, “ Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenologyand feminist theory, ” Theater Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519 – 531; CraigCalhoun, ed., Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (New York: Wiley-Blackwell,1994).22. Sandra Harding, The “ Racial ” Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).23. Patricia Hill Collins, “ Toward a new vision: Race, class, and gender as categoriesof analysis and connection, ” Race, Sex & Class 1, no. 1 (1993): 25 – 45.

IndexNote: Page numbers in italics indicate figures.Abdollahi, Mohammad, 130Accountability, to social movements,131, 138, 148, 156, 158, 161 – 169,174 – 178, 199 – 200Action for Children ’ s Television, 48Aguilera, Brenda, 208AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), 54Allied Media Conference (AMC),103 – 104AMARC (World Association ofCommunity Radio Broadcasters), 34Amplification of voicesblogs and, 77, 80digital videos and, 74 – 77, 79, 80 – 81,83 – 84documentary films and, 75 – 77immigrant rights movement and, 37MacArthur Park May Day and, 74 – 79,84 – 85participatory media-making practicesand, 81professional spokespeople ’ s shift to,69 – 70, 79 – 84, 186 – 187social media and, 43social movement identity and,83 – 84social movement media-making and,80 – 81transmedia organizing and, 70, 80violent conflict narrative inEnglish-language media and, 81visual media and, 83Anarchism, 6, 12, 40, 75 – 78, 84,146Anguiano, Claudia, 148A ñ orve, Raul, 208Anti-authoritarian activists, 6, 75Anti-immigrant actions. See also specificpoliciescommunity media and, 22DREAMers and, 16, 132English-language media and, 1 – 2,29 – 30, 44, 69, 194MacArthur Park May Day and, 72,72 – 73, 78mass media and, 29 – 30Minutemen and, 112VozMob and, 114APPO (Asociaci ó n Popular de losPueblos de Oaxaca), 86, 96 – 97APPO-LA (Asociaci ó n Popular de losPueblos de Oaxaca, Los Angeles),98 – 100“ Arab Spring, ” 7 – 8, 43Arau, Sergio, 23, 58Arizona SB 1070, 44, 134Arpaio, Joe, 170, 180Autonomy, 167, 194, 200

258 IndexBaker-Cristales, Beth, 33BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), 58Bar, Fran ç ois, 113Basta Dobbs campaign, 59 – 61, 126Bennett, W. Lance, 8Bern á l, Gael Garcia, 49Bilingual Radio (Radio Bilingue), 35Biographical or life-course approach,and social movement analysis,141 – 142Blasi, Gary, 206Blogsamplification of voices and, 77, 80digital media literacy and, 103DREAMers and, 61 – 62, 64, 137,139 – 140English-language, 26, 43immigrant rights movement and, 3,26 – 27, 43student walkouts and, 26Blowouts, 14, 55Border Social Forum in 2006, 3Boston area, and immigrant rightsmovement, 35, 38Bottom-up processes, 49 – 50, 87boyd, danah, 40Bratton, William, 14 – 15, 70, 72,78 – 79Bush, George W., 85, 134Butler, Judith, 211By Any Means Necessary (BAMN),58California legislationProposition 8, 140Proposition 187, 55 – 56Senate Bill 65 (S.B. 65), 132State Assembly Bill 540 (A.B. 540,California Dream Act), 132, 150Carrillo, Yahaira, 130Castells, Manuel, ix-xii, 7, 108, 141Catholic Church, 11. See also LiberationtheologyCBOs (community-based organizations).See Community-based organizations(CBOs)Censorship, 193 – 194, 253CFSC (communication for socialchange), 206 – 208Change to Win Federation, 10Chican@ movement, 14, 55, 66. See alsoLatin@ votersChinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 22CHIRLA (Coalition for HumaneImmigrant Rights of Los Angeles),11, 71Civil rights movement, 6, 15, 34, 74,82, 106, 166Class, and intersectionality, 12 – 13,135 – 136, 138, 175, 179, 211 – 212Clear Channel (radio conglomerate), 34Clinton, Bill, 134CNN (television network), 59 – 61Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rightsof Los Angeles (CHIRLA), 11, 71Codesign, 4, 205Collective identity, 141 – 142, 147, 183.See also Social movement identityCommercial live-streaming sites, 42, 62,89, 130Communication for social change(CFSC), 206 – 208Communication practices, 5, 206 – 209Communication technologies, 21Community-based organizations (CBOs)community radio and, 26cross-platform strategy and, 60digital media literacy and, 105, 113,118, 126 – 127DREAMers and, 131immigrant rights movement and,11 – 12L.A. immigrant rights movement and,11new media and, 39participatory research and, 4 – 5

Index 259praxis of critical digital media literacyand, 118Community media, 22, 26, 34 – 39, 91“ Community work for the benefit ofall ” ( tequio ), 94 – 95Comprehensive immigration reform.See Immigration reform and policiesConnectivity, for movementparticipants, 63 – 64, 105, 120, 126Cop Watch L.A., 74 – 77Corporations, 8, 21, 30, 164Crenshaw, Kimberl é , 211Critical digital media literacy. See alsoDigital media literacybarriers to praxis of, 122 – 126CFSC and, 207overview of, 106 – 109, 241n13praxis of, 109 – 110, 114, 118, 188 – 189,197 – 198, 201Cross-platform strategy, 5, 8 – 9, 26 – 28,59 – 62, 130, 137, 201, 225n35digital media literacy and, 91 – 94, 99,111 – 113Cruz, Yolanda, 92Cultural citizenship, 89 – 90Cultural industries, 12 – 13, 87, 108,174Cultural workers, 82, 103, 110, 128,130, 136 – 138, 140 – 141Cyberutopianism, 8 – 9DACA (Deferred Action for ChildhoodArrivals) program, 18, 130, 133 – 134,151, 161, 180, 182, 246n17Dagron, Alfonso Gumucio, 207D á vila, Arlene, 2, 33Day Labor Centers, 103, 111 – 113, 119,121Day Without a Mexican, A (dir. Arau), 23,57 – 58“ Day Without an Immigrant ” in L.A. onMay Day, 2006, 1 – 3, 20, 22 – 27, 31,142 – 143Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals(DACA) program, 18, 130, 133 – 134,151, 161, 180, 182, 246n17Define American (video), 137Define American campaign, 17, 49,157 – 159, 162 – 163, 165, 191Dehumanizing rhetoric, “ illegal alien ”as, 28 – 29, 73, 148Delgado, Hector, 11Della Porta, Donatella, 141Development, Relief and Educationfor Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. SeeDREAM (Development, Relief andEducation for Alien Minors) ActDigital inequalityDay Labor Centers and, 121digital media literacy and, 3, 105, 108 – 109Internet access and, 3L.A. immigrant rights movement and,115media ecology and, 40old-school organizers and, 170 – 171overview of, 3, 5, 21social media and, 43youth and, 123 – 124Digital media, 8, 62, 80, 93, 95 – 96, 123Digital media literacy. See also Populareducation workshopsbarriers to praxis of critical, 122 – 126blogs and, 103CBOs and, 105, 113connectivity for movementparticipants and, 105, 120, 126critical digital media literacy and,106 – 109, 207, 241n13cultural workers and, 103, 110Day Labor Centers and, 103, 111 – 113,119digital inequality and, 3, 105, 108 – 109digital stories in context of, 113 – 114,121, 125formal learning and, 104, 109,118 – 123, 120

260 IndexDigital media literacy (cont.)gender roles and, 110, 121, 123 – 125ICTs and, 91informal learning and, 104, 108 – 109,118 – 121labor movement and, 110 – 111MacArthur Foundation and, 108 – 109,113multiple media platforms and, 91 – 94,99, 111 – 113overview of, 103 – 105, 126 – 127participatory research and, 113pedagogy and, 106 – 107, 109, 123peer-to-peer learning and, 104, 109,118 – 120popular communication and,111 – 113, 114popular education workshops and,16, 103 – 104, 113 – 114, 119 – 121,188 – 189praxis defined and, 105 – 106praxis of critical digital media literacyand, 109 – 110, 114, 118, 122 – 126,188 – 189, 197 – 198, 201social movement identity and, 109strategies for, 197 – 198technophobia and, 123tequio or “ community work for thebenefit of all ” and, 94 – 95transmedia organizing and, 92 – 93worker centers and, 110 – 111, 118,121 – 122Digital photography, 80, 83. See alsoPhotographsDigital stories, 113 – 114, 121, 125. Seealso StorytellingDigital videos. See Videos and digitalvideosDobbs, Lou, 59 – 61, 69Documentary films, 75 – 77, 96 – 97. Seealso specific filmsDocumented (dir. Vargas), 165Dominguez, Neidi, 112, 130Downing, John, 207DREAM (Development, Relief andEducation for Alien Minors) Actanti-immigrant groups and, 132community service and, 132, 161DACA in context of, 18, 130, 133 – 134,151, 161, 180, 182, 246n17debates within immigrant rightsmovement and, 132 – 133Define America campaign and, 158The Dream is Now campaign and,159 – 161military service and, 132 – 133, 155,161mobilization for, 82, 129 – 130overview of, 132pathways to citizenship and, 132 – 133,155, 161public narrative by professionalspokespeople and, 149 – 150DreamActivist.org, 130, 135, 137, 148,159DREAMers. See also DREAM(Development, Relief and Educationfor Alien Minors) Actanti-immigrant groups and, 16, 132blogs and, 61 – 62, 64, 137, 139 – 140commercial live-streaming sites and,42, 130cross-platform strategy and, 61 – 62,130, 137cultural workers and, 128, 130,136 – 138, 140 – 141DACA in context of, 18, 130, 133 – 134,151, 161, 180, 182, 246n17debates within immigrant rightsmovement and, 132 – 133Define America campaign and, 158digital videos and, 62The Dream is Now campaign and,159 – 161Dream Team L.A. and, 64 – 65, 149historical context for, 131 – 132, 134

Index 261internal tensions and, 140mass media and, 65media-making in context of pathwaysto participation and, 145, 147message framing by spokespeople and,64 – 65military service and, 132 – 133, 155,161mobilization for, 82, 129 – 130nonprofit organizations and, 16, 82,150overview of, 129, 151 – 153participatory storytelling and,148 – 149pathways to citizenship and, 132 – 133,155, 161pathways to participation and, 131,141 – 143, 145, 147, 151, 189 – 191peer-to-peer learning and, 150personal relationships betweenreporters and organizers and, 41,64 – 65public narrative by, 64 – 65, 131,147 – 151, 152 – 153public narrative by professionalspokespeople and, 149 – 150sit-ins and, 42, 129 – 130, 135, 151social media and, 41, 147social movement identity and, 137,139 – 142, 145, 147 – 149, 151, 160Spanish-language media and, 65state laws and, 44, 132, 134, 150storytelling and, 148 – 149, 156,158 – 159transmedia organizing and, 61 – 62,131, 136 – 141, 152undocuqueer activists and, 128, 130,135 – 136, 140, 153DREAMers Adrift, 136, 141Dream is Now, The (prod. Guggenheim),17, 49, 137Dream is Now campaign, The, 17,159 – 163, 165, 191Dream Team L.A., 64 – 65, 149Drop the I-Word campaign, 28, 229n29Dyer-Witherford, Nick, 107English-language mediaanti-immigrant groups and, 1 – 2,29 – 30, 44, 69, 194“ Day Without an Immigrant ” and,1 – 2, 22 – 27, 31Drop the I-Word campaign and, 28,229n29immigrant rights movement and,28 – 31, 73 – 74L.A. immigrant rights movement and,1 – 2, 24, 27personal relationships betweenreporters and organizers and,30 – 31public discourse and, 28 – 29right-wing mass media and, 1 – 2, 44,69social movements and, 21 – 22violent conflict narrative in, 69 – 70,73 – 74, 77 – 78, 81Espinosa, Pedro Joel (P. J.), 208Eubanks, Virginia, 5, 121, 175E-Verify system, 85, 134, 155, 164,180Eyes on the Prize (prod. Hampton, assoc.prod. Richardson), 82Facebook, 8, 40, 147. See also FWD.us;Zuckerberg, MarkFace-to-face interactions, 6, 25, 26 – 27,40, 41, 45, 63 – 65Faith-based organizing, 11 – 12Farm workers movement, 138, 210.See also United Farm Workers ofAmericaFCC (Federal CommunicationsCommission), 36, 48Films, and student walkouts, 56 – 58, 57 .See also specific films

262 IndexFIOB (Frente Ind í gena deOrganizaciones Binacionales)autonomy and, 167funding and, 122, 167ICTs and, 91multiple media platforms and, 91 – 94,99, 122Oaxaca City mass mobilization and,98 – 99organizers ’ relationships with, 35overview and history of, 88tequio or “ community work for thebenefit of all ” and, 94 – 95transmedia organizing and, 92 – 93Fliers, and student walkouts, 25, 26 – 27,50, 51, 52Forever 21 clothing campaign, 63 – 64,110, 114 – 115Formal learning, 104, 109, 118 – 123Fox, Jonathan, 88 – 90Fox News channel, 1 – 2, 14, 44, 69, 71,72Freire, Paolo, 105 – 106, 110, 207Frente Ind í gena de OrganizacionesBinacionales (FIOB). See FIOB(Frente Ind í gena de OrganizacionesBinacionales)FWD.us, 49, 154, 163 – 165gandi, simmi, 208Ganz, Marshall, 143Garc é s, Amanda, 113, 116, 208Garment Worker Center (GWC) L.A.digital inequality and, 115, 126Forever 21 clothing campaign and,63 – 64, 110, 114 – 115intersectionality and, 121 – 122MacArthur Park May Day and, 71multiple media platforms and,115 – 116overview and history of, 114 – 115radio project and, 115 – 118, 117,208Radio Tijera or Radio Scissors and, 16,116 – 118, 117, 208Gates, Bill, 163Genderdigital media literacy and, 110, 121,123 – 125intersectionality and, 12 – 13, 135 – 136,138, 175, 179, 211 – 212LGBTQ rights and, 4, 110 – 111, 130,136 – 137undocuqueer activists and, 128, 130,135 – 136, 140, 153Gerbaudo, Paolo, 7Gigante Despierta (Giant Awake[documentary video collection]), 58Gladwell, Malcolm, 6 – 8Globalization, 12 – 13, 96 – 99, 108,180 – 181Global justice movement, 4, 7 – 8, 98 – 99Gomez, Veronica, 129Gonzalez, Carmen, 24 – 25Gonzalez, Christina, 71Gonzalez, Juan, 31Grassroots movementsamplification of voices and, 77, 79immigrant rights movement and,23 – 24, 60media production practices and, 40,48, 77, 79, 176 – 178nonprofit organizations and, 176 – 177participatory media-making practicesand, 81popular education workshops and,103, 106, 110transmedia organizing and, 131, 138,156, 161 – 165, 175, 201Greenwald, Glenn, 108Guggenheim, Davis, 49, 159GWC (Garment Worker Center) L.A. SeeGarment Worker Center (GWC) L.A.Hamelink, Cees, 207Hernandez, Javier, 129

Index 263Hip hop, 12, 58Hoffman, Reid, 163Holling, Michelle, 56Hometown associations (HTAs), 88, 91,93Hora Mixteca, La (radio program), 91Horizontalism (horizontalidad), 6 – 7, 77,79, 94, 207. See also Vertical/top-down structureHricko, Andrea, 206ICE (Immigration and CustomsEnforcement), 1, 22, 69, 130, 134ICTs (information and communicationtechnologies), 6, 8, 89, 91, 107 – 108,145Identity, collective, 141 – 142, 147, 183.See also Social movement identityIDEPSCA (Instituto de Educaci ó nPopular del Sur de California). Seealso VozMob (Mobile Voices or V ó cesMoviles)Day Labor Centers and, 111 – 113, 119digital media literacy and, 103, 112,126digital stories and, 113 – 114, 121informal learning and, 119intersectionality and, 121 – 122labor movement and, 110 – 111MacArthur Park May Day and, 71multiple media platforms and,111 – 113overview of, 11, 111participatory research and, 113popular communication and, 111 – 113popular education workshops and,103, 114, 120 – 121, 126, 188 – 189“ Illegal alien, ” as dehumanizingrhetoric, 28 – 29, 73, 148Immigrant communities, 29, 32, 35 – 36,38 – 39, 41, 88 – 89, 111 – 112Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE), 1, 22, 69, 130, 134Immigration reform and policies. Seealso California legislation; DREAM(Development, Relief and Educationfor Alien Minors) Act; DREAMers;Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437)Bush and, 85, 134Clinton and, 134Congress and, 17 – 18, 85, 155 – 156,180historical context for, 22immigrant rights movement and, 1Obama and, 18, 85, 129, 134, 155,180U.S. Congress and, 17 – 18, 85,155 – 156INCITE! Women of Color AgainstViolence, 166, 175Indymedia network, 7, 35, 63, 68, 71,75 – 77, 97, 97Inequality, structural, 43, 69, 108,174 – 176, 241n22. See also DigitalinequalityInformal learning, 104, 108 – 109,118 – 121Information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs), 6, 8, 89, 91,107 – 108, 145Inner City Struggle, 119 – 120Instituto de Educaci ó n Popular delSur de California (IDEPSCA). SeeIDEPSCA (Instituto de Educaci ó nPopular del Sur de California)International Workers Day (May Day).See MacArthur Park May Day in2007; May Day (InternationalWorkers Day)Internet, 3, 8, 91 – 94Intersectionality, 12 – 13, 135 – 136, 138,175, 179, 211 – 212. See also Researchsites and methodologyInterviews, 4, 13, 209 – 210. See alsoResearch sites and methodologyIto, Mizuko, 109

264 IndexJasper, James, 141Javier, Francisco, 130Jenkins, Henry, 14, 48, 63, 108 – 109Jesmer, Rob, 163Jobs, Laurene Powell, 17, 49, 159Kinder, Marsha, 47 – 48Korean-Americans United for Equality(KUE), 140Korean immigrants, 32, 35, 71, 83,98 – 99, 110 – 111, 122, 140Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance(KIWA), 32, 35, 71, 83, 98 – 99,110 – 111, 122Laborers and labor movement in L.A.Day Labor Centers and, 103, 111 – 113,119, 121media-making in context ofpathways to participation and, 115,145 – 146overview and history of, 10 – 12Labor movement, 10 – 12, 103, 110 – 113,119 – 121L.A. immigrant rights movement, andhistorical context, 9 – 13L.A. Indymedia (Los AngelesIndependent Media Center), 7, 35,63, 68, 71, 75 – 77Lal, Prerna, 130, 135Latin@ voters, 129 – 130, 156, 180. Seealso Chican@ movementLeavitt, Jacqueline, 206LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual,transgender, and queer) rights, 4,110 – 111, 130, 136 – 137. See alsoUndocuqueerLiberation movements, 106 – 107Liberation theology, 11 – 12Lievrouw, Leah, 225n35Little Bit of So Much Truth, A (Poquitode Tanta Verdad, Un [documentaryfilm]), 96Live-streamingcommercial sites for, 42, 62, 89, 130DREAM activists and, 62HTAs and, 89Kill Radio and, 35, 36Occupy movement and, 62pirate radio stations and, 36, 146radio and, 35 – 37, 42, 62, 89, 99, 104,130, 146real-time audio streaming and, 89, 99Lockhart, Joe, 163L ó pez, Layza, 73L ó pez, Rogelio Alejandro, 138Los Angeles Independent Media Center(L.A. Indymedia), 7, 35, 63, 68, 71,75 – 77MacArthur Foundation Digital Mediaand Learning initiative, 108 – 109, 113MacArthur Park May Day in 2007amplification of voices and, 74 – 79,84 – 85anti-immigrant actions and, 72,72 – 73, 78digital videos and, 74 – 77, 79documentary films and, 75 – 77grassroots media production practicesand, 77, 79horizontalism in context of mediaecology and, 77, 79IDEPSCA and, 71L.A. Indymedia and, 68, 71, 75 – 77local community described and, 70overview of, 68, 71 – 72, 72, 79, 84 – 85police department and, 14 – 15, 70,71 – 73, 72, 78 – 79professional spokespeople ’ s reports inmass media and, 77 – 79Spanish-language media and, 71violent conflict narrative inEnglish-language media and, 69 – 70,73 – 74, 77 – 78YouTube and, 71, 72

Index 265Made in L.A. (documentary film), 115,145 – 146Madelou (Mar í a de Lourdes Gonz á lezReyes), 104, 208Manc í a, Manuel, 104, 208Man of Steel (film), 158Mart í n-Barbero, Jes ú s, 87Mass mediaanti-immigrant groups and, 29 – 30blog content and, 39consolidation of, 2, 34, 48, 87digital videos and, 80 – 81DREAMers and, 65horizontalism and, 48immigrant rights movement and, 85media ownership and, 2, 21migrant-run, 88 – 89, 111 – 112personal relationships betweenreporters and organizers and,64 – 65professional spokespeople and, 27 – 28,69 – 70, 74, 77 – 79racism and, 1 – 2, 33, 43 – 44, 69social movement mobilization and, 2,5, 69 – 70transmedia organizing and, 64 – 65,157 – 158transmedia storytelling and, 14,47 – 50transnationalization of, 2, 48, 87video technology and, 42, 90May Day (International Workers Day).See also MacArthur Park May Day in2007“ Day Without an Immigrant ” in 2006on, 1 – 3, 20, 22 – 27, 31, 142 – 143immigrant rights marches in 2006 on,21, 23, 25, 69McAdam, Doug, 55, 141McCain, John, 130, 155McCarthy, John, 165McChesney, Robert W., 21Media bridging work, 62 – 64Media ecology. See also Communitymedia; English-language media;Social media; Spanish-languagemediaanalysis of, 196bottom-up processes and, 87communication technologies and, 21community media and, 22, 34 – 36cross-platform strategy and, 27 – 28“ Day Without an Immigrant ” and,1 – 3, 20, 22 – 27, 31face-to-face interactions and, 45nonprofit organizations and, 55overview and description of, 5, 13,44 – 45, 183 – 184, 227n2popular education workshops and,106right-wing mass media and, 44social movement identity and, 55streaming radio/Internet-enableddistribution and, 35 – 37, 99, 104, 112student walkouts and, 26 – 27transformation of, 3, 12, 21, 28, 47 – 50transmedia production and, 12Media justice, 4, 200Media-making. See Social movementmedia-makingMethodology and research sites. SeeResearch sites and methodologyMeza, Nancy, 130Migrant-run mass media, 88 – 89,111 – 112Military service, and DREAMers,132 – 133, 155, 161Minutemen, 112MIWON (Multi-ethnic ImmigrantWorker Organizing Network), 71,78, 85Mobile phonesimmigrant communities and, 41popular communication and, 112 – 114real-time communication and, 27,41 – 42

266 IndexMobile phones (cont.)SMS and, 26 – 27, 40 – 41social media and, 41 – 42student walkouts and, 54 – 55Mobile Voices (V ó ces Moviles orVozMob). See VozMob (MobileVoices or V ó ces Moviles)Morozov, Evgeny, 8Movement media archive, 211Multi-ethnic Immigrant WorkerOrganizing Network (MIWON), 71,78, 85Multiple media platforms, 91 – 94, 99,111 – 113, 115 – 116. See also CrossplatformstrategyMungu í a, Edgar, 73Mu ñ oz, Cecilia, 62Music and musicians, 12, 40, 58, 71, 93,116, 172, 179MySpaceimmigrant communities and, 32immigrant rights movement and, 40,50, 51, 52 – 54, 53social movement organizations and,58student walkouts and, 25, 26 – 27,40 – 41, 51, 52 – 54, 53, 56 – 58, 234n12Narro, Victor, 206. See also UCLA LaborCenterNational Association of Broadcasters,48National Day for Dignity and Respect,179National Immigrant Youth Alliance,129, 135, 159National Lawyers Guild, 72Neidi ’ s Story (video documentary), 112Networked social movements, 195. Seealso Social movement networksNew York City, and community media,39New York City Indymedia, 97, 97Nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC),166 – 167, 174 – 175Nonprofit organizationsaccountability to social movementsand, 166 – 168DREAMers and, 16, 82, 150funding and, 166 – 167grassroots movements and, 176 – 177immigrant rights movement and,23 – 24, 35, 58media ecology and, 55NPIC and, 166 – 167, 174 – 175participatory media-making practicesand, 170public narrative in context ofprofessional, 149 – 150social media and, 58 – 59, 81 – 83,171 – 172the state and, 77structural inequality and, 175 – 176vertical/top-down structure and, 77 –79, 171 – 172Nuestro Foro (Our Forum [radioprogram]), 35, 88 – 89, 91Oaxaca City, and mass mobilizationAPPO and, 86, 96 – 97overview of, 86, 96 – 97translocal media practices in contextof, 98 – 100, 100Oaxaque ñ o, El (newspaper), 32, 88Obama, BarackDACA program and, 18, 130, 133 – 134,151, 161, 180, 182, 246n17election campaigns and, 40, 42,129 – 130, 135, 156, 180immigration reform and policies of,18, 85, 129, 134, 155, 180Latin@ voters and, 129 – 130, 156, 180SCOMM program and, 62, 129, 180sit-ins by DREAMers and, 42, 129 – 130,135surveillance and, 62

Index 267Occupy movement, 8, 42, 177Old-school organizers, 50, 58 – 59Olmos, Edward James, 56 – 57Online resources for organizers, 221Orozco, Graciela, 35Ort í z, Ulises Ruiz, 15, 96, 99, 187Ortu ñ o, Tony, 130Our Forum (Nuestro Foro [radioprogram]), 35, 88 – 89, 91Pan-Latin@ identities, 2, 32 – 33Participatory media-making practicesamplification of voices and, 81cultural workers and, 82digital videos and, 17, 80immigrant rights movement and, 3nonprofit organizations and, 170transmedia organizing and, 47, 158,160, 164, 170, 172 – 173, 175 – 177vertical/top-down structure and, 40,81, 172 – 173Participatory research and design, 4 – 5,205 – 206. See also Research sites andmethodologyParticipatory storytelling, 148 – 149Partnerships, 4 – 5, 11 – 12, 60, 92, 112,135, 143, 165Pathways to citizenship, 132 – 133, 155,161Pathways to participationDREAMers and, 131, 141 – 143, 145,147, 151, 189 – 191media-making in context of, 144 – 145overview of, 131transmedia organizing and, 156 – 158Pedagogy of critical digital medialiteracy, 106 – 107, 109, 123Pedagogy of the oppressed, 106, 110,207 – 208Peer-to-peer learning, 76, 104, 109,118 – 120, 150, 189, 193People ’ s Network in Defense of HumanRights (PNDHR), 76, 84Personal relationships between reportersand organizers, 30 – 31, 41, 64 – 65Photographs, 80, 82 – 83, 99. See alsoDigital photographyPilipino Workers Center (PWC), 71, 76Pirate radio stations, 36, 146Police, and MacArthur Park May Dayevent, 14 – 15, 70, 71 – 73, 72, 78 – 79Political campaignsLatin@ voters and, 129 – 130, 156, 180Obama and, 40, 42, 129 – 130, 135,156, 180Popular communication, 111 – 113, 114Popular Communication Team (PCT),103, 189, 208. See also IDEPSCA(Instituto de Educaci ó n Popular delSur de California); VozMob (MobileVoices or V ó ces Moviles)Popular education workshops. See alsoDigital media literacydigital media literacy and, 16, 103 –104, 113 – 114, 119 – 121, 188 – 189formal learning and, 104historical context and, 105 – 106IDEPSCA and, 103, 111, 114, 120 – 121,188 – 189informal learning and, 104media ecology and, 106, 122overview of, 103 – 106VozMob and, 16, 103 – 104, 113 – 114,119, 188 – 189Poquito de Tanta Verdad, Un (A LittleBit of So Much Truth [documentaryfilm]), 96Portillo, Marlom, 208Power, and structural inequality, 43, 69,174 – 176, 241n22Praxiscritical digital media literacy and,109 – 110, 114, 118, 122 – 126,188 – 189, 197 – 198, 201definition of, 105 – 106Prefigurative politics, 7

268 IndexProfessionalizationspokespeople in context of, 27 – 28,64 – 65, 69 – 70, 74, 77 – 84, 186 – 187transmedia organizing and, 163,165 – 168, 174 – 178, 191 – 193Public narrative, 64 – 65, 131, 147 – 151,152 – 153, 158, 160 – 161, 200Public space, 7Pulido, Laura, 12Puya Mixteca (newspaper), 91PWC (Pilipino Workers Center), 71,76Queer Undocumented ImmigrantProject (QUIP), 135. See alsoUndocuqueerRAC (Revolutionary AutonomousCommunities), 21Race, and intersectionality, 12 – 13,135 – 136, 138, 175, 179, 211 – 212Racism“ illegal alien ” as dehumanizingrhetoric and, 28 – 29, 73, 148immigrant history and, 22MacArthur Park May Day and, 78mass media and, 1 – 2, 33, 43 – 44,69social media and, 55structural inequality and, 43, 69, 108,174 – 176, 241n22RadioGWC and, 16, 115 – 118, 117, 208live-streaming, 35 – 37, 42, 62, 99, 104,130, 146Radio Bilingue (Bilingual Radio), 35Radio Tijera (Radio Scissors), 16,116 – 118, 117, 208Real-time audio streaming, 89, 99Real-time communication, 26 – 27,41 – 42, 45, 54 – 55, 66, 89Remittances, 89, 210Repertoire of contention, 14, 55, 66Research sites and methodologyactions/events and, 18, 181Border Social Forum and, 3CFSC and, 207 – 208day-to-day media practices and, 9,181, 209intersectionality and, 12 – 13, 135 – 136,138, 175, 179, 211 – 212interviewees and, 215 – 216interview guide and, 217 – 220interviews and, 4, 13, 111, 209 – 210limitations of, 212 – 213movement media archive and, 211participatory research and design incontext of, 4 – 5, 205 – 206workshops and, 4, 13, 181, 209Resist Network, 49Revolutionary AutonomousCommunities (RAC), 21Richardson, Judy, 82Right-wing rhetoric, 1 – 2, 44, 69Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar, 88 – 90Rodriguez, Clemencia, 207Rodriguez, Favianna, 185Salgado, Julio, 128, 137, 140 – 141, 185SAN (South Asian Network), 71Sandoval, Gerardo, 70, 72 – 73Santa Ana, Otto, 28 – 29, 73Santos, Berta Rodr í guez, 88Secure Communities (SCOMM)program, 62, 180Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437). See alsoImmigration reform and policiesmass mobilization against, 1 – 3, 20,22 – 27, 142 – 143media ecology and, 27overview of, 1, 22 – 23, 27, 44real-time communication and,54 – 55Spanish-language media and, 24, 31streaming radio/Internet-enableddistribution and, 36

Index 269student walkouts and, 26, 50, 52,55 – 57, 66Service-sector unions in L.A., 10 – 11Shore, Elena, 31Short messaging service (SMS), 26 – 27,40 – 41Silicon Valley, 49. See also FWD.usSilver, Marc, 49Sit-ins, 42, 129 – 130, 135, 151Sitrin, Marina, 6SMS (short messaging service), 26 – 27,40 – 41Snowden, Edward, 108, 193SNS (social networking sites), 26, 32, 40,50, 54, 58 – 59. See also specific socialnetworking sitesSocial media. See also specific socialnetworking sitesamplification of voices and, 43corporations in context of, 8, 194critique of, 42digital inequality and, 43DREAMers and, 41, 147immigrant rights movement and, 3,40 – 43mobile phones and, 41 – 42nonprofit organizations and, 58 – 59,81 – 83, 171 – 172overview of, 65, 182 – 183personal relationships betweenreporters and organizers and, 41political campaigns and, 40racism and, 55SNS and, 26, 32, 40, 50, 54, 58 – 59social movements, relations with, 7 – 9student walkouts and, 26, 40 – 41translocal media practices and, 93transmedia organizing and, 171 – 172vertical/top-down structure tensionwith, 6Social movement identityamplification of voices and, 83 – 84digital media literacy and, 109DREAMers and, 137, 139 – 142, 145,147 – 149, 151, 160immigrant rights movement and, 151,181, 183, 185media ecology and, 55transmedia organizing and, 5, 17, 50,66, 105Social movement media-makingamplification of voices and, 80 – 81commercial live-streaming sites and,42, 62, 89, 130cross-platform strategy and, 5, 8 – 9,225n35movement media archive, 211overview of, 5, 13, 195 – 196participatory media-making practicesand, 47, 81pathways to participation in contextof, 145, 147real-time audio streaming and, 89transmedia organizing and, 14, 47Social movement networkscommunication in context of, 3, 34,63horizontalism in context of, 6 – 7translocal media practices and, 90 – 91,94, 143 – 144transnational activist networks and, 3,9, 12, 32 – 33vertical/top-down structure tensionsand, 81, 172 – 173Social movements. See also Socialmovement networksaccountability to, 131, 138, 148, 156,158, 161 – 169, 174 – 178corporate media and, 30English-language media and, 21 – 22,74ICTs and, 8mass media and, 2, 5scholarship on, 4 – 5, 8, 141 – 142, 148,165, 183, 195social media and, 7 – 9

270 IndexSocial movements (cont.)Spanish-language media and, 22transformative actions and, 3 – 4transmedia organizing and, 5, 14, 47 – 50vertical/top-down structure and, 6, 47,50, 58 – 59Social networking sites (SNS), 26, 32,40, 50, 54, 58 – 59South Asian Network (SAN), 71Spanish-language mediacritique of, 33“ Day Without an Immigrant ” and,1 – 3, 24 – 25, 27, 31DREAMers and, 65immigrant rights movement and, 1,2 – 3, 31 – 34, 74MacArthur Park May Day and, 71media ownership and, 2, 21overview of, 32 – 33translocal citizenship and, 33 – 34“ Special registration ” program, forimmigrants, 22Spokespeople, professional, 27 – 28,64 – 65, 69 – 70, 74, 77 – 84, 186 – 187Sreberny, Annabelle, 9Srivastava, Lina, 14, 49Staggenborg, Suzanne, 165State, thecorporate media and, 21nonprofit organizations and, 77surveillance by, 21 – 22, 62, 108, 193State laws, and DREAM activism, 44,132, 134, 150Stickers, and student walkouts, 46STLs (Studio to Transmitter Links), 36Storytelling, 148 – 149, 156, 158 – 161,163. See also Digital storiesStreamingcommercial sites for live-, 42, 62, 89,130Internet-enabled distribution of radio,35 – 37, 99, 104, 112real-time audio, 89, 99Structural inequality, 43, 69, 108,174 – 176, 241n22Student walkouts. See also TransmediaorganizingAIM and, 54blogs and, 26California Proposition 187 and,55 – 56cross-platform strategy and, 26 – 27digital videos and, 52, 54, 57, 58face-to-face interactions and, 26 – 27films and, 56 – 58, 57fliers and stickers for, 25, 26 – 27, 46,50, 51, 52immigrant rights movement and, 26,55, 56media ecology and, 26 – 27mobile phones and, 54 – 55MySpace and, 25, 26 – 27, 40 – 41, 51,52 – 54, 53, 56 – 58, 234n12overview of, 14real-time communication and, 54 – 55Sensenbrenner bill and, 26, 50, 52,55 – 57, 66SMS and, 26 – 27, 40 – 41SNS and, 26, 54YouTube and, 26Studio to Transmitter Links (STLs), 36Surveillance, 8, 21 – 22, 62, 108, 193Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, 10Taking of the Media in Oaxaca, The(documentary film), 96Tarrow, Sydney, 55Taylor, Verta, 141Technophobia, 123Telecommunications Act of 1996, 2Tequio (“ community work for thebenefit of all ”), 94 – 95Tequio, El (magazine), 89, 122Text messaging. See Short messagingservice (SMS)Tilly, Charles, 55

Index 271Top-down/vertical structure. SeeHorizontalism (horizontalidad);Vertical/top-down structureTorres, Joe, 31Translocal media practices. See alsoGlobalizationcultural citizenship and, 89 – 90digital media and, 95 – 96global justice movement, 96 – 99HTAs or hometown associations and,88, 91, 93ICTs and, 89, 91immigrant rights movement and, 37migrant-run mass media and, 88 – 89multiple media platforms and, 91 – 94,99Oaxaca City mass mobilization incontext of, 98 – 100, 100overview of, 87 – 88, 100 – 101, 187remittances and, 89tequio or “ community work for thebenefit of all ” and, 94 – 95transmedia organizing and, 92 – 93,95 – 96videos and, 90 – 91, 94Transmedia defined, 48 – 49Transmedia organizing. See also Studentwalkouts; specific campaignsaccountability to social movementsand, 131, 138, 148, 156, 158,161 – 169, 174 – 178amplification of voices in context of,70, 80autonomy in context of, 194, 200bottom-up processes and, 49 – 50, 186connectivity for movementparticipants and, 63 – 64corporate leadership and, 164critiques and, 158, 162cross-platform strategy and, 59 – 61digital media literacy and, 92 – 93DREAMers and, 61 – 62, 131, 136 – 141,152face-to-face interactions and, 63 – 65funding and, 165 – 166, 170 – 171, 200grassroots movement history and,131, 138, 156, 161 – 165, 175, 201intersectionality and, 135 – 136, 138,175, 179mass media and, 157 – 158media bridging work and, 62 – 64networked communication and, 81,172 – 173old-school organizers and, 50, 58 – 59overview of, 181 – 182, 184 – 186overview and definition of, 49 – 50, 59,66 – 67, 131, 176 – 178, 201participatory media-making practicesand, 47, 158, 160, 164, 170, 172 –173, 175 – 177pathways to participation and,156 – 158personal relationships betweenreporters and organizers and,64 – 65professionalization and, 163, 165 – 168,174 – 178, 191 – 193public narrative and, 158, 160 – 161social media and, 171 – 172social movement identity and, 5, 17,50, 66, 105, 158social movement media-making and,14, 47social movements and, 5, 14, 47 – 50storytelling and, 158 – 161, 163strategies for, 196 – 197structural inequality and, 174 – 176surveillance in context of, 8, 193translocal media practices and, 92 – 93,95 – 96vertical/top-down structure and,170 – 174Transmedia production, 12Transmedia storytelling, 14, 47 – 50Transnational activist networks, 3, 9,12, 32 – 33

272 IndexTwitter, 7, 8, 31, 40, 41, 652,501 Migrants (documentary film), 92,92UCLA Labor Center (UCLA Center forLabor Research and Education), 119,125, 137 – 139, 150Underground Undergrads, 137 – 139,148 – 149Undocumented (documentary film), 58Undocuqueer, 128, 130, 135 – 136, 140,153. See also LGBTQ (lesbian, gay,bisexual, transgender, and queer)rightsUndocuTech, 161Unionization, and L.A. immigrantrights movement, 10 – 11. See alsoLaborers and labor movement inL.A.; Labor movementUnited Farm Workers of America,10, 35, 143. See also Farm workersmovementUnited States federal immigrationreform and policies, 17 – 18, 85,155 – 156, 180. See also DREAM(Development, Relief and Educationfor Alien Minors) Act; Sensenbrennerbill (H.R. 4437)United States Social Forum (USSF),103 – 104United We Dream (UWD), 135, 139,142 – 143, 149, 159 – 161Unzueta, Tania, 130Vaidhyanathan, Siva, 8Vargas, Jose Antonio, 17, 49, 156 – 159,162 – 163, 165, 191Vertical/top-down structure. See alsoHorizontalism (horizontalidad)networked communication tensionwith, 81, 172 – 173nonprofit organizations and, 77 – 79,171 – 172old-school organizers and, 50, 58 – 59participatory media-making practicesand, 40, 81SNS and, 50social media and, 6, 171social movements and, 6, 47, 50,58 – 59spokespeople in nonprofitorganizations and, 77 – 79transmedia organizing and, 170 – 174VHS technology, 83, 90, 92 – 94Videos and digital videosamplification of voices and, 74 – 77, 79,80 – 81, 83 – 84digital media literacy and, 123DREAMers and, 62MacArthur Park May Day and, 74 – 77,79mass media and, 42, 90power in context of structuralinequality and, 43real-time communication, 41 – 42student walkouts and, 52, 54, 57, 58translocal media practices and, 90 – 91,94, 144Violent conflict narrative, 69 – 70, 73 – 74,77 – 78, 81Visual media, 83. See also specific visualmediaVozMob (Mobile Voices or V ó cesMoviles). See also IDEPSCA (Institutode Educaci ó n Popular del Sur deCalifornia)anti-immigrant groups and, 114CBOs and, 105, 113Day Labor Centers and, 103, 113digital stories and, 113funding for, xiii, 113overview and funding for, 102,113 – 114popular communication and, 114popular education workshops and, 16,103 – 104, 113 – 114, 119, 188 – 189

Index 273praxis of critical digital media literacyand, 114, 126Walkout (dir. Olmos), 56 – 57, 57 . See alsoBlowouts; Student walkoutsWallis, Cara, 208Watkins, Samuel Craig, 109Whittier, Nancy, 141Will, Bradley, Roland, 97, 97 – 98Williams, Raymond, 107, 241n13Women, and gender roles, 110, 121,123 – 125, 211 – 212Worker centers, 110 – 111, 118, 121 – 122Workshops, 4, 13, 209. See also Researchsites and methodologyWorld Association of Community RadioBroadcasters (AMARC), 34Yo Soy El Army (film), 133YouTube, 26, 43, 62, 71, 72, 93Zald, Meyer, 165Zimmerman, Arely, 145Zuckerberg, Mark, 49, 163, 165Zuckerman, Ethan, 62

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