“A City of Puentes, Not Paredes”: Latina/o Activism and the Struggle for Sanctuary

• In Event: 1165 - Latinx Politics: Rights, Resistance, and Race in the Trump Era

Abstract

On January 10, 2017, the predominately Latina/o working class community of La Puente, California was declared a sanctuary city that supports immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Within weeks of the November 2016 presidential election, long-time organizers and younger students coalesced under Puente Coalition and ensured the passage of this inclusively defined resolution. Two weeks later, the same community members followed a similar process and urged the school district to declare itself a sanctuary – making it one of the 11% of California school districts to achieve a safe haven designation (California Department of Education 2017). While key components of our resolutions were changed – including actionable items, we rejoiced in our collective power in creating space for community voices, pushing elected officials, and being part of a larger sanctuary movement. Yet, in our struggle for sanctuary, we encountered roadblocks that reduced the potential for a larger movement. This paper draws on city council and school board meetings, in-depth interviews and my own involvement in this sanctuary struggle to understand the processes restricting possibilities for change, including the roles of established structures for community participation, neoliberal discourses, the discipline regime, and the current threats by the federal government. Informed by the work of Omi and Winant (1994) on how the state responds to social movements and critical discourse analysis of liberalism by Frankenberg (1993) and Bonilla-Silva (2006), this study details the ways organizational practices, prevailing discourses, and local officials engaged in what I consider containment, minimization, and integration. This example adds to the limited scholarship on the current sanctuary struggles. It also illustrates how the state marginalizes movement language, ideas, and people, providing a cautionary tale about the forces that work to restrict a movement – including in a city with a legacy of organizing.

Author

• Gilda Laura Ochoa, Pomona College