"Mi Lucha es Tu Lucha; Tu Lucha es Mi Lucha": Latinx Immigrant Youth Organizers Facilitating a New Common Sense Through Coalitional Multimodal Literacies

• In Event: Freedom Dreaming: Black and Latinx Youths' Multimodal Compositions of Future Selves and Literacies

Abstract

This practitioner inquiry examines the role that multimodal literacy plays in the organizing of Latinx immigrant youth during a time of increasing anti-immigrant legal violence. Co-written by two of the youth who participated in this research, alongside the fellow immigrant activist who designed and carried out the year-long study, this paper analyzes a subset of qualitative data from the research and argues that young Latinx immigrant organizers are organic intellectuals whose “coalitional multimodal literacies” challenge dominant exclusive discourses within the immigrant rights movement in the U.S. and transform the movement’s common sense into one that is inclusive (i.e., pro-LGBTQIA, pro-Black), intergenerational, and challenging of colonial logics that separate oppressed and racialized communities from one another. Specifically, we examine artifacts that showcase how Latinx immigrant youth activists engage and compose “coalitional multimodal literacy” texts as tools for inquiring into and co-creating an inclusive and equitable world. Implications include understanding Latinx immigrant youth’s literacies as inseparable from those of their communities, and viewing young Latinx immigrants as organic intellectuals prefiguring a decolonial world through literacy practice.

Authors

• Alicia Rusoja, University of California - Davis

• Yared Portillo, University of California - Berkeley

• Olivia Vazquez Ponce, Swarthmore College