UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

Unity and the Struggle of Opposites: The Evolving New York City Filipino Left

A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts in Feminist Studies

by

Karen Buenavista Hanna

Committee in charge:

Professor Grace Chang

Professor Eileen Boris

Professor Diane C. Fujino

September 2013
 UMI Number: 1548245

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 The thesis of Karen Buenavista Hanna is approved.

_________________________________________________

Eileen Boris

__________________________________________________

Diane C. Fujino

___________________________________________________

Grace Chang, Committee Chair

June 2013
Unity and the Struggle of Opposites: The Evolving New York City Filipino Left

Copyright © 2013

by

Karen Buenavista Hanna

iii
 ABSTRACT

Unity and the Struggle of Opposites: The Evolving New York City Filipino Left

by

Karen Buenavista Hanna

My main research questions explore how contradictions of unity, organizing

structures, gender, sexuality, citizenship, class, and ability are addressed within

Filipino leftist organizations whose key leaders utilize dialectical materialist theory. I

also ask: How have US-based women of color feminist and queer of color theory

impacted Filipino nationalist frameworks in the US? How do they also remain at odds

with one another? I interviewed 22 NYC-based activists and organizers involved in

anti-imperialist Filipino organizations the summer of 2012. I also used participant

observation as an active member of study groups, educational workshops, and a town

forum.

My central framework explores conflict as contradiction using Mao Tse-

tung’s “On Contradiction” and the Haitian concepts of balans and konesans. In doing

so, I examine how hard-lined leadership has impeded dialogue. I also interrogate how

sexism, transphobia, masculinist organizing structures, and neoliberalism impact

women, trans, queer, disabled, working class, and undocumented organizers—

particularly those with overlapping identities of marginalization. “The Movement’s”

familial dynamic, combined with the value of utang na loob, creates hierarchies that

cause some members to feel both silenced and guilty. I name these feelings as

indicators of invisible emotional labor “for the sake of the movement” that lead many

iv
members to eventually leave their organizations. Their departures raise questions of

sustainability. Lastly, I ask how the Fil-Am Left can draw strength from its familial

dynamic but still address hierarchical issues that mirror societal hierarchies of

oppression.

Applying work by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Audre Lorde,

and other women of color, along with feminist grounded theory and sociological

movement theory, I highlight three strategies that New York City based Filipino

organizations have taken within the past ten years. I argue that organizations have

recognized problems with sustainability and are creating their own interventions as

theory-producers. Organizers’ relationships to the National Democratic movement in

the Philippines shape both the creation of interventions and how they respond to new

ideas. Drawing on Arlie Hoschchild’s concept of “stalled revolution,” individual

behaviors lag behind organizations’ formal ideological shifts. Thus, they are works in

progress.

v
 Last summer, I helped to co-facilitate a workshop series on Philippine history

with a Filipino organization in New York City. One of the activities was to create

group skits related to Filipino migration. One group was tasked with a scenario based

on a real story about a woman who was told she’d be brought to America to be the

next musical star. Instead, she was sex trafficked into the US and raped by her

trafficker. With only about 10-15 minutes to prepare their skit, the group’s only male

and straight-identified American-born member was chosen to act as the trafficking

survivor, while a female-identified American-born member acted as the male

trafficker. Improvising, the male member wore a flowery hat, speaking and singing in

a dramatically high-pitched voice. In the final part of the skit, the two members

played out an exaggerated comedic scene behind a screen, indicating an assault.

While most of the participants laughed, a couple of us, including a trans person, felt

very uncomfortable. Not only did I feel the skit took the violence of rape lightly, but I

thought it also assumed everyone would think a man dressed in feminine clothing

would be funny. Some of us felt the skit was also offensive to trans women and male-

bodied people who bend gender norms. For those who were uncomfortable, it was yet

another example of cisgender1 privilege gone unchecked. But none of us said

anything.

A couple of days later, I shared my frustration about the skit with two of the

organization’s board members. One of the board members spoke with the “actors”

about their skit in private, and afterward they decided to open up the dialogue at the

next workshop. There they explained that they thought the male member would be

1
most appropriate to play the trafficking victim given that the rest of the members of

the group were women, some domestic workers (and possible survivors of

trafficking). The female participant shared that they made the skit funny because “if

we didn’t laugh, we would have to cry.” Later, she explained to me further,

“Embarrassment, humiliation, and shame are so closely connected with trafficking.

There’s also a lot of stigma around people crying in public. So we thought, ‘Let’s get

people laughing- any chance for people to have some emotion- to give people a

chance to have this conversation.’”

In the end, the discussion led us to include trafficking of trans and gender non-

conforming people and the invisibility of male rape into the dialogue. Further we

began to think differently about the utility of asking people to quickly improvise skits

for role-playing violent scenarios. The male “actor” later shared with me, “There was

no time to debrief about how we felt about taking part in the skit. I definitely would

not do something like that in the future.” Not everybody had positive comments about

the discussion. A participant later told me she was uncomfortable and shocked

because she felt like “they [the “actors”] were apologizing.” Not knowing that they

had discussed the issue privately ahead of time, another workshop-goer felt it seemed

too heavy-handed, like we were telling people what they can and can’t do. He didn’t

like it.

Regardless of whether this situation was handled “correctly,” I begin with it to

illustrate how one organization and its members “struggled out” a difficult situation

with no simple answers. In the end, there was an understanding of “meeting people

2
where they’re at,” assessing conflict, and growing together. “Struggle” in this case is

a reference to the process of development through the unity and struggle of opposites.

In Mao Tse-tung’s “On Contradiction” (1937), Tse-tung argues that if we think

dialectically, an analysis through which some of the organizations in my study

engage, “the contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with

each other and are in opposition to each other.”2 That is, contradictions, or pairs of

opposing ideas or practices, inevitably exist and conflict. In truth, because one

aspect’s very existence depends on its opposite, struggle drives their mutual existence

forward toward eventual resolution or revolution. Dialectical materialism (DM) is an

ongoing process in which new contradictions emerge from old unities. Not only is

dialectical materialism a useful concept for thinking generally about movement work,

but it is also important because it is a theoretical approach that many key leaders of

the organizations in my study use.

Haitian studies scholar Claudine Michel’s discussion of the Haitian concepts

“konesans” and “balans” is also useful here. Michel describes konesans as the

understanding that knowledge is a blending of empirical facts and wisdom gained

from understanding the impacts of the past on the present. Konesans recognizes that

honoring past wisdom warrants our indebtedness to the suffering, sacrifice, and

struggle of those who came before us. Balans, on the other hand, invites us to

reconcile opposites through moral judgment; to know and honor history, but not be

bound to its limitations.3 Together, these concepts are productive for thinking about

the Filipino Left. While there is much to learn from its histories of resistance against

3
colonization and imperialism, organizers thoughtfully move forward, sharpening their

analyses along the way. They know they must shift their analyses according to the

changing conditions of society. Shifting does not occur without struggle.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the dialectical process is asking people to

face and challenge their own internalized forms of oppression. It is a method of

criticism and self-criticism, which Tse-tung writes is crucial for both eradicating

dogmatist thinking and resolving contradictions. He warns, “We must shun

subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality.”4 In the case of the group skit, one

might argue that it reflected ignorance, rooted in cisgender privilege and/or

transphobia. Others however contend that it was much more complicated; to devise

creative points of entry for understanding trauma in our communities is no easy feat.

Either way, after the skit, the organizers showed skill in being patient, yet held one

another and themselves accountable.

It is hard to deny that many social justice organizations often mirror

hierarchies of oppression- including class, race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and

ability- that they ostensibly aim to combat. Members leave their political

organizations for what they call “personal” reasons, but these reasons often tie back to

those very forms of oppression. Many times they experience isolation while the

political implications of the factors that led to their departure go unrecognized.

Filipino organizations are not unique. For decades, activists and scholars across third

world social movements have documented the gender and sexual contradictions that

pervade their organizations.5

4
 With an eye toward such contradictions, my thesis considers the challenges

for community organizing, specifically focusing on New York City-based organizers

and activists in the Filipino American Left.6 Like historian Robin D. G. Kelley’s Race

Rebels (1994), this article aims “to make sense of people where they are rather than

where we would like them to be…reject[ing] formulaic interpretations in favor of the

complexity of lived experience.”7 In doing so, I ask, “Why do people join, stay, and

leave Filipino leftist organizations?” and “What does organizing transnationally in the

United States look like for our most marginalized members?” I care about the

answers to these questions because I hope they can help us figure out how to better

care for one another and build increasingly sustainable movements for the future.

I define “marginalized” utilizing critical race and law scholar Kimberlé

Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence

against Women of Color” (1991).8 Crenshaw employs a map metaphor to explain

how systems of race, class, and gender domination push working-class women of

color to the social margins, resulting in inadequate care during instances of domestic

violence. As Crenshaw suggests, I extend my analysis to include sexuality, as well as

citizenship and ability, to widen my discussion of marginality. In short, I define

“marginalized” people as those whose material lives lie within the margins of

dominant power structures in society. Such structures operate invisibly, with

individual marginalized people lacking political power and economic resources to

change their immediate circumstances. Like educator Paolo Freire’s (1970) use of

“oppressed” and philosopher Frantz Fanon’s (1963) “third world,” my application of

5
“marginalized” recognizes the possibilities of harnessing collective power from the

margins of society, where those on the margins have developed what Chicana

feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) calls “mestiza consciousness.”9 That is, they

have the potential to change “the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves,

and the ways we behave.”10 Such collectively organized power happens alongside the

important “hidden transcripts” and “infrapolitics”, daily individual acts of resistance

and survival practiced by historically marginalized people about which political

scientist James C. Scott (1990), feminist scholar Cathy Cohen (1997), and Kelley

(1994) write.11 For many activists, living in the US is fraught with contradictions. A

central contradiction is how one living in the US and benefiting from the system can

fully resist it.

My research builds on the stories and interventions about intimate violence

shared by the groups in INCITE’s The Revolution Starts at Home (2011). It also

continues down the path that ethnic and women’s studies scholar Monisha Das Gupta

paved through her research on transnational South Asian activist organizations in the

US Northeast (2006).12 Das Gupta’s work is generative for several reasons. For one,

Das Gupta, like other scholars who engage in queer of color theory,13 pushes scholars

to move citizenship into our intersectional radar.14 She writes,

I ask that we start to think about citizenship and its correlate- national borders-
as similar structures of power. Like race, gender, and sexuality, citizenship
structures the daily realities of both those who formally have it and those who
don’t. Yet, those who have it rarely question the legitimacy of borders and the
hierarchies that national belonging sets up through its disciplinary
mechanisms. 15

6
Furthermore, Das Gupta recognizes the South Asian queer and immigrant women

activists in her study as counter-hegemonic theory-creators.16 Like Das Gupta, my

research also seeks to honor alternative forms of knowledge production. I apply Black

feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins’ politic of reclaiming the theoretical

contributions of everyday women as well as political theorist Antonio Gramsci’s

concept of “organic intellectuals.”17 In doing so, I foreground my narrators’

interventions for addressing organizational conflict and “The Movement,” as it means

to them. Further, I incorporate women of color feminist, sociological social

movement, and feminist grounded theory to better understand the Filipino Left in

New York City.18

The Origins of the Filipino Left in the US

To understand the Fil-Am Left in New York City, one must know its

historical context. At its roots is the political exile of anti-Marcos activists from the

Philippines to the US in the 1970s and 1980s during martial law. The first exiles

converged with Filipino American activists to lay groundwork for a legacy of two-

pronged transnational Filipino organizing that continues today in the United States.

Together, they formed the Kalayaan (Freedom) Collective (1971) and the

revolutionary mass organization, KDP (1973) (Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong

Pilipino, or the Union of Democratic Filipinos). KDP, at its peak, claimed 200-300

members in major cities across the United States.19 Though relatively small, its

impacts were far-reaching.20 For example, it helped to establish multi-racial solidarity

7
organizations, some comprised upwards of 700 members, aimed at achieving similar

goals through broad coalition.21 The KDP’s goals were two-fold. One goal was to

support the national democratic (ND) revolution in the Philippines, which was

catalyzed by a powerful surge of militant youth and student protests during the First

Quarter Storm of 1970.22 The other was to build socialism in the US, focusing on

local issues, such as the San Francisco KDP chapter’s International Hotel anti-

eviction campaign.23 KDP was greatly inspired by anti-war, Black Power, and Third

World solidarity movements, as well as the history of Filipino radicalism in the US.24

At the same time, KDP maintained its internationalist core, the Philippine and

Filipino American lefts tightly intertwined in determining its agenda.25

Even though KDP officially disbanded in 1986, its two-pronged style of

supporting both Philippine sovereignty and local issues of racism, sexism, and

workers’ rights continues.26 Today, ND and ND-supporting youth, women’s, and

worker’s orgs cover the spread of what I, and others I interviewed, refer to as the

Filipino Left in the US. According to their website, the Philippines-based National

Democratic Front (NDF) is “committed to the Filipino people’s revolutionary

struggle for the completion of the national democratic revolution through people’s

war.”27 It is a working class led struggle with a socialist perspective. The NDF’s 12-

point program includes genuine agrarian reform, democratic rights, people’s army

and defense system, revolutionary emancipation of women, and an active,

independent, and peaceful foreign policy. While some of the organizations in my

8
study are formal ND orgs, others are ND solidarity orgs. ND solidarity organizations

support the ND movement, but they do not consider themselves ND organizations.

The studied organizations are mainly Filipino-led and anti-imperialist,

opposing US occupation and militarization abroad. Concurrently, they openly critique

neoliberal economic policy and the expansion of transnational corporations that

displace third world people, primarily women, from their homes, funneling them into

low-waged work in first-world countries.28 The Fil-Am Left, like the KDP and its

Philippines-based ND predecessors, has been shaped by Marxist-Maoist-Leninist

ideologies. Other perspectives, such as Freire’s ideas about popular education and

feminist philosophies, also impact the ideologies of Filipino leftist organizations.

Because the social conditions in the US are different from those in the Philippines,

some groups in the Fil-Am Left have chosen to adapt ideologically over time.

That many Filipino activists don’t know each other, yet refer to their efforts as

part of “The Movement,” gestures to it as something other than a set of unified

organizations. Borrowing from activist Assata Shakur’s definition of the Black

Liberation Army in the 1970s, I argue that “The Movement” is “a concept, a people’s

movement, or idea.”29 In her 1987 autobiography, Shakur reflected, “It was clear that

the Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common

leadership and chain of command. Instead, there were various organizations and

collectives working out of different cities, and in some of the larger cities there were

often several groups working independently of each other.”30 Likewise, “The

Movement” is also a “people’s movement,” spreading across the Filipino diaspora.

9
While some collectives work together, others work independently but toward

common goals. Broadly speaking, most of the narrators in my study and I describe

our involvement in “The Movement” as committing to the liberation of all people

from imperialism, economic exploitation, political repression, and gender violence,

while simultaneously supporting Philippine national sovereignty.31

New York City’s Filipino Left

Given that there are almost 90,000 Filipinos living in New York City, it is

unsurprising that it is the home of dozens of community-based Filipino

organizations.32 The majority of these organizations range from professional networks

(e.g. Collaborative Opportunities for Raising Empowerment, Inc. (CORE)) to service-

providers (e.g. Filipino American Human Rights, Inc. (FAHSI)) to groups dedicated

to history and culture (e.g. Filipino American National History Society (FANHS)).

While some organizers and activists in this study are involved in these groups as well,

I focus primarily on their involvement in organizations that use an anti-imperialist

framework. These groups view themselves as radical in the sense that they organize

for systemic social change. Formally and informally, they also consider themselves

part of a larger movement.

My interest in studying anti-imperialist organizations lies in my involvement

as a volunteer organizer with three such groups between 2006 and 2012. I was an

executive board member of one organization for four of those years and ultimately

left because I moved to California for graduate school in 2011. From 2009 onward,

10
my collective explored questions about how hetero-patriarchy, or the inextricably

linked naturalized systems of heterosexism and male dominance, shapes who takes on

different forms of labor and leadership positions in our organization. A member

recommended that we read an excerpt of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American

Indian Genocide by Native American studies scholar Andrea Smith. In it, Smith

applies an intersectional analysis to thinking about the domination and extermination

of Native people.33 Reading and discussing this article urged us to more consciously

incorporate an intersectional approach to our organizing. For example, we now

supplement our male-centered readings about what our organization considers the

three root problems in the Philippines- imperialism (foreign domination), rule of the

elite few, and land monopoly- with articles that highlight these problems’ impacts on

women and LGBT people.34 When I commenced my MA/PhD program, I wondered

whether other self-proclaimed radical Filipino organizations were making the same

efforts. This question led me to return to New York City in the summer of 2012 to

complete my Master thesis fieldwork. There, I explored whether people’s decisions to

stay and leave organizations are linked to their group’s intersectional (or lack thereof)

analysis.

My position as “insider” and “outsider” proved to be both strength and

liability. Sociologist Maxine Baca-Zinn (1979) describes ethnic minority researchers

who study ethnic minority communities as “insiders.” 35 I extend her definition to

include anyone who is studying a community from which s/he is a member. Because

of their experiences in the community, “insiders” have the ability to employ a social

11
perspective that allows them to make nuanced observations and ask questions they

otherwise would not know to explore. “Outsiders,” on the other hand are not members

of the studied community. While some argue that “outsiders” are more “objective”

than “insiders,” feminist scholars recognize that there is no such thing as objectivity.

In other words, we understand that every researcher writes from his or her vantage

point. His or her point of view is socially constructed, shaped by the researcher’s

prior experiences and positionality, and the research will always relate to current

systems of power. That being said, a history of exploitation by white academic

researchers leads many communities of color to view outsiders with suspicion.

Most of my narrators considered me an “insider.” As someone who organized

in the Filipino community for many years, many activists were willing to speak with

me about highly politicized topics. Furthermore, my personal relationship with many

of my narrators enabled them to trust my ability to write respectfully yet critically

about issues they had not voiced outside of their immediate circles previously. Others

still felt that my “outsider” status, as someone who is no longer “on the ground”

organizing, allowed me distance to consider issues in ways that might be difficult if I

were more deeply entrenched. Nonetheless, I sensed distrust and sometimes hostility

from activists with whom I did not have a personal relationship. Those from outside

of my organizing circle viewed me as an “outsider,” despite my experience in the

Filipino Left. In the air were accusations of organizations stealing other orgs’ work

and riding on the tails of other orgs’ successes, co-opting them as their own. Not only

12
was I viewed suspiciously as an academic researcher, but I was also doing a research

study across organizations; organizations involved in those tensions.

Members who chose to participate were clear that they did not speak on behalf

of their organizations. Wishing to remain anonymous, they emphasized that they

would speak candidly as individuals instead. Still, their enthusiasm for wishing to

share their experiences with me speaks to the pervasiveness of the issues they

discussed. Respecting their wishes for anonymity, I do not identify any of my

narrators. For the same reasons, I do not name or give acronyms to the organizations.

While I describe the organizations in separate detail at times, I intentionally collapse

their characteristics at other times because allowing readers to “track” them may

compromise narrator anonymity. Such an approach offers a broad lens for

understanding “The Movement” as a whole. In fact, we can understand this project as

a collective memory piece generated from multiple perspectives within the NYC-

based Filipino Left Movement rather than a comparative study of organizations.

In the end, I conducted 24 interviews with 22 Filipino and Filipino American

activists and community organizers.36 Most interviews lasted between two and three

hours. The people with whom I spoke ranged in age from their mid 20s to late 50s.

Almost three-fourths of my narrators identify as women, while the rest identify as

males, gender non-conforming, or transgender. About half of my narrators describe

themselves as queer, pansexual, or questioning. About half are immigrants or

immigrated to the US before the age of ten (often referred to as “1.5-ers”), and about

a quarter of my narrators are undocumented. About half of my narrators are low-wage

13
workers and/or identify as working class. Almost a third have at least a four-year

college degree, and about one-fifth attended some college but had not yet graduated

as of our interview. Two of my narrators are mothers. Politically, they are currently or

were formerly members of over nine different anti-imperialist grassroots Filipino

organizations and alliances across the country but live in the New York City region.

Fourteen narrators out of 22 are current members of organizations in this study, eight

left their former orgs and are no longer formal members of any Filipino leftist groups,

while four helped to start new organizations or joined another org after leaving. One

out of the 22 chose to never join. Three narrators formed new organizations

(including two in this study) after leaving their former groups. Seven are founding

members of organizations in this study. Along with the interviews, I participated in

meetings, workshops, study groups, and a town forum.

The Organizations

The Filipino Left is not monolithic. Each organization operates differently,

based on its own guiding ideologies and leadership. What one member may view as

an organization’s strength may be another’s weakness. In line with feminist

philosophy, the perspective of one member, even if not felt by the majority, is

valuable in understanding how power operates within an organization.

I focus on my narrators’ experiences in seven organizations. Two

organizations no longer exist, but I include them because they are helpful for my

discussion of why people leave. The oldest organization was founded in the late

14
1980s. One org was founded in the 1990s and five were created in the past decade

with the most recent one established in 2010. Organizations range in size, their mass

memberships ranging from 40 to over 1,000 people.

On an organizational level, some members described their groups as

democratically elected and structured to support democratic decision-making. In three

different organizations, mass members (consisting of 30-40 people, 50 people, and

500-1000 people respectively) nominate and then democratically elect an executive

board of about ten people annually. Members are able to use the secret ballot option if

they wish. Each board member is responsible for a different organizing committee

(e.g. publicity and media, education, outreach, membership, fundraising), which

meets once per week. A secretary takes notes at meetings and a financial officer

keeps funds in order; both are also democratically elected. For one organization, in

order to be eligible to run for a board position, one must have attended at least three

of the organization’s major events that year. The board meets every other month to

approve the organization’s annual work plan and is accountable to the general

assembly that elected its members.

For two organizations, a secretariat of about 3-4 board members who rotate

periodically throughout the year makes smaller decisions. In the words of one

member, it is there to “move things forward more quickly.” Further explaining its

importance, she assured me, “If you have interested leaders, the secretariat is a way

for them to exercise that leadership to a level beyond organizing. They are the face of

the organization- key decision makers in deciding day-to-day sensitive issues.”

15
Building strong leaders from mass membership is important for this particular

organization. Evident in its leadership, three of its current board members are

survivors of labor trafficking.

Organizations operate differently. In two organizations, there is emphasis on

collective organizing. According to a member, a solid infrastructure is intended to

ensure democracy. With a clear chain of decision-making, organizational processes

are transparent. Its members voiced attention to ensuring that mass and board

members equitably share visible (e.g. making speeches and writing press releases)

and invisible (e.g. food preparation, set-up, clean-up, phone calls, outreach) tasks.

Beyond the Fil-Am Left, “behind-the-scenes” labor has historically been

relegated to women, rendering it invisible even in organizations committed to social

justice.37 Organizations cannot survive without feminized labor, yet it is such labor

that often goes undervalued. African American literary scholar Erica Edwards’ work

is helpful for rethinking models that privilege heterosexual male charismatic

leadership. Edwards argues that such centering silences masses of historical agents

and contributes to undemocratic social structures while reinscribing gender and

sexual normativities.38 Aware of such trappings, organizations that think critically

about the gendered dimensions of labor do the revolutionary work of challenging

patriarchy in both theory and practice.

Two organizations explained that they also operate collectively but with a

hand-selected board that decides on programs and projects. They use targeted

recruitment to build their core leadership that then collectively makes decisions.

16
These organizations mirror two different types of organizations in the Philippines:

mass organizations led by leaders elected by mass membership and institutional

organizations whose leaders are appointed.

Some of the organizations in my study are part of regional chapters, national,

and international alliances. Representatives from these organizations attend meetings

in their region headed by a regional chair, and these chairs come together as part of a

national congress: the highest policy-making body. Regional, national, and

international delegations have their own elected boards. National boards meet twice a

year or whenever necessary. A secretary-general heads the national secretariat,

working on day-to-day operations.

Comprised of worker’s, youth, and women’s groups, all of the organizations

aim to develop political consciousness, building movements that demand rights,

welfare, dignity, and justice for all members of the Filipino community. One worker’s

organization (in true Gramscian form) believes that its worker-members should be

involved in the thinking and decision making processes. Similarly, another group

dedicates itself primarily toward theory-production.

To support their goals, the organizations use a combination of education,

advocacy, leadership development, and cultural arts. First, through workshops,

forums, discussion sessions, film screenings, and cultural events, they educate the

public and each other about the Filipino people’s histories of migration and

resistance. Widely speaking, they aim to address LGBTQ concerns, violence against

women, militarization, reproductive justice, and systemic racism, among other issues.

17
 Next, through mass campaigns, these organizations fight for justice for

women, immigrant, and workers’ rights. They mobilize for immigration reform and

advocate for undocumented people who have been unjustly detained or deported.

They assist workers in retrieving stolen wages. One organization recovered over

$20,000 in unpaid wages for one of its members, while another helped 40 workers

retrieve over $500,000 in stolen wages through its labor program. These

organizations have also supported families whose loved ones have died from

exploitative labor conditions. In these ways, they openly oppose human trafficking

and human rights violations here and abroad. Their campaigns allow them to build

alliance with other groups to protest US wars and military intervention in the

Philippines and elsewhere.

Third, these organizations engage in building strength and leadership within

their mass membership. They conduct leadership retreats, develop skill-sharing

meetings, and offer educational discussions. Some send their members on summer

exposure programs to learn about the conditions of Filipino peasants and women.

Furthermore, some organizations use peer trainings to enable workers to provide

information and assistance to fellow workers with health and gender problems.

Additionally, members train each other to conduct their own research projects

evaluating the conditions of their communities. In the spirit of peer leadership, one

organizer quoted civil rights leader Ella Baker, “I have always thought what is

needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much

as in developing the leadership of others.”39

18
 Lastly, some of these organizations engage in service. At least one

organization refers members to receive health services and provides case management

to their members. At least two conduct “know your rights” trainings, while at least

one hosts open schools on how to address domestic violence for survivors. At least

two groups organize legal clinics where labor and immigration lawyers provide free

consultation for workers. One group helped two of its members obtain visas under the

Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and brought their abusive husbands and

boyfriends to justice. Finally, three of the groups stated on their websites that they

raised money for 2009’s Typhoon Ondoy and 2011’s Typhoon Sendong, and at least

one org assisted affected families during Hurricane Sandy.

In these ways, the Filipino Left in New York City today engages in an

impressive combination of local education and campaign work, leadership and

alliance building, and service provision. In addition, much like their KDP

predecessors, the groups in my study maintain a general two-pronged awareness of

organizing, continuing to support Philippine sovereignty efforts while doing local

work in New York City.

In It To Win It

When asked why they organize, at least three of my narrators spoke about

being inspired by the passion and commitment of others. When one Fil-Am narrator

traveled to the Philippines, she met organizers who “changed my life…I saw

19
firsthand the power, potential of movement in the Philippines, dynamism, a

commitment to organizing, and connection to community.”

At least five narrators were drawn to organizing because it gave them, as

women, the opportunity to build with other Filipinas. For example, one narrator’s

experience with domestic violence led her to a women’s space; before that, she

admits to being in a co-dependent relationship without any friends. Another member

was glad to have the opportunity to apply the feminism she was learning in college to

organizing outside of campus. For these narrators, joining their organizations was not

just about friendship; rather they were also about developing their politics as women.

Similarly, a queer narrator chose her organization because it has a “more

intersectional framework. The leadership is all queer. I feel like we’re more whole

and know about these issues and don’t keep it to the side.” With a majority of women

and queer people in their organizations, these narrators appreciate the analysis that

comes with their membership and leadership.

For at least four narrators, organizing is about justice. One narrator attested,

“My mother is a domestic worker, I’m not just fighting for myself, but fighting for

my mother.” At least two narrators discussed feeling empowered by their

organization. “I’m very quiet, here I am involving myself to this degree. I feel like I

can do anything. I’m unstoppable. I can finally speak out and knowing that in my

own little way can get someone justice. That is very liberating.”

In addition, similar to how the Vietnam War catalyzed activism in the 1960s,

one narrator explained that learning about militarization, human rights, US war in

20
Iraq, and war on terror politicized her. It was bothersome that non-Filipinos knew

more about the war in the Philippines than she did. She and other Fil-Am women

channeled their frustrations to co-found one of the organizations in this study.

Another organizer told the story of how an exposure trip to Mindanao in the

Philippines impacted her. There, she listened to a woman present her testimony about

the impact of US troops on her family. The woman explained that her husband,

without any ties to terrorism, was shot and abducted by a tall US soldier. When this

organizer learned that money from her university was being used to fund the US

military, she decided, “I can’t do this,” and left school to organize full-time.

For others, it is about family. One narrator said, “I want to give my heart…it’s

not just about learning history…fighting and reaching for justice…it’s about

friendship, family.” In other words, her organization offers the intimate bonds of

friendship and family, inspiring her to continue organizing as a way to nurture these

relationships. Furthermore, she is accountable to others in her collective because she

cares about them as members of her family. In fact, for some Filipino immigrant

organizers, organizing has been a way to be with other Filipinos- essentially creating

family in the US- as they are separated from their families in the Philippines.

Some narrators describe organizing as their duty and/or lifeline. According to

one person, “I’d die if I had to live the other type of life.” Another person expressed,

“Being in the movement is what makes me whole….I wouldn’t be able to turn my

back on it. In the Philippines, there’s no other choice but to join the struggle.”

21
Contradictions at Work: Unity

While each organization’s accomplishments and membership commitments

are impressive in their own right, together they boast great strength as a movement.

My fieldwork experience however reflects an issue rarely discussed openly across

organizations in the Filipino Left. That is, much like other groups in the Left, the

Filipino Left, suffers from sectarianism and infighting.40 Some of my narrators name

the primary reason for the splits as being disagreement about whether to prioritize the

struggle for national democracy in the Philippines over local issues here in the US.

This disagreement has pervaded the Filipino Left for decades.41

The “here vs. there” debate alone leaves an incomplete picture. Even though

organizers agree on organizational goals, individuals interpret movement goals

differently from one another. These differences understandably create tension. I asked

my narrators what they believe are the goals of “The Movement.” Some answers were

specifically Filipino and globally-minded, such as “genuine liberation for the Filipino

people,” “so that Filipino people can stay in their country so we don’t have to migrate

and fall prey to becoming low wage workers with abusive employers,” and so that

Filipinos, young and old, can return back to the Philippines for jobs and retirement.

Referring to the Filipino Left’s sectarianism, another organizer said the goal of “The

Movement” is to “unify the big community which is so divided.” Other narrators, on

the other hand, took a broader, multi-ethnic, rights-based approach, naming goals

such as “betterment for everybody…so other people have the same opportunity and

privilege.” Some emphasized transforming society and ourselves, with one organizer

22
stating that she “want[s] people to live humanely- for people to live up to their full

potential and creativity; [to have] authentic relationships not ruled by profit and the

destruction of others.” Similarly, another narrator spoke of “treat[ing others] with

kindness, care, honest conversations- not being so all or nothing militant and

[developing a] threshold for gray.” At first glance, such goals appear to overlap with

organizational aims. However, on the ground they can translate into disagreement

about strategy.

Thus, with different goals for “The Movement,” organizers have had

conflicting ideas about how to meet them. While such debate is arguably inevitable

and important, the problem appears to lie in the hard-lined stance of leaders who do

not always allow open dialogue and collective processes to happen. In fact, many

young people are frustrated by what they see as an older, masculinist leadership’s

refusal to shift ideologically from what once worked in the Philippines over forty

years ago to what is happening now. According to one former organizational leader:

In a lot of Filipino organizations, the leadership stays too long at whatever

position they’re in, so the people coming up that could’ve gained that
experience don’t gain that experience…I feel like it’s a very limited view right
now. What’s upsetting to me is that I think it’s very strict and it’s not fluid. If
your oppressors are fluid, I think those organizing objectives should be just as
fluid if not more. I think the strict ideology of the movement has led to this
divide.

This narrator also shared the top-down approach to leadership in his former

organization, explaining, “There’s not a lot of transparency in the [leadership]

process. They rule with an iron fist over there. They don’t call it that but…That’s

what’s annoying, cuz they run the organization the same way as the government they

23
criticize sometimes. And it’s like hypocritical, I’m done, I don’t wanna be part of it.”

So even though some of the mass organizations in my study say they operate

collectively, some of my narrators complained that democratic decision-making is not

always practiced. Problems with non-democratic decision-making were especially

apparent for members of institutional-type organizations. In fact, this was a main

point of contention for people who ended up leaving their organizations.

A queer narrator conveyed a personal experience illustrating how hard-lined

leadership manifested itself in their42 mass organization:

[An elder leader in my organization] used to make these terrible comments

about me and [my partner, saying,] ‘You’re monkeying around with people in
other chapters,’ some wack ass shit- you can’t talk about my partner that
way… you can’t talk about us that way… When older folks don’t wanna
listen to you...it doesn’t fair well…it doesn’t…there were calls where she’d be
like, ‘LGBT whatever, XYZ whatever’…[I would say,] ‘Stay out of this
call… do you identify as that? No, so then you should hang up’…it got to that.
And then she’d [talk] about how this isn’t the real work and how this isn’t of
relevance right now and there’s a war happening in the Philippines. There’s
always gonna be a war in the Philippines, people! That’s why we’re here…at
least [people in other Filipino orgs] seem to be caring about the basic identity
politics of their members, now whether that’s deeply embedded in the
analysis, who cares? At least you’re affirmed…so fuck the analysis…

According to this narrator, an elder leader dismissed their effort to prioritize LGBT

issues, citing the urgency of war in the Philippines as her primary concern. While

addressing LGBT issues was not a stated specifically as a goal of this organization, it

was still a priority to this member; one in line with their movement goal of creating a

culture of kindness and care for others. For the elder leader, LGBT issues were

neither relevant nor important. In this way, we see that when movement and

organizational goals among leaders do not align, it can cause great tension among

24
members. Coincidentally, this organization, for unrelated reasons, no longer exists.

However, it is interesting to observe that since this person’s experience in this

organization in the mid 2000s, other more recently established organizations are now

integrating sexuality into their work. I will expand on this later.

Contradictions at Work: Gender

For some of my narrators, non-democratic decision-making has also tied to

gender. For example, at least three organizers discussed the pervasive sexism

institutionalized in their former organizations. Sexism in the US Filipino Left has

been documented since the 1970s.43 For example, while the ratio of men to women in

the Filipino American national community in the late 1980s was 60-70% female as a

result of a feminized pattern of labor migration. While Filipino Left organizations had

70% female membership, the leadership was still 99% male. Filipina writer and

transnational feminist activist Ninotchka Rosca recalls that during that time, “The

faces that confronted the larger society on behalf of these organizations remained

male. And certainly there was little work on women’s issues.”44

Since this period, according to some of my narrators, sexism and patriarchy

continue to manifest themselves in some mass and institutional organizations. One

narrator spoke of “theoretically advanced” males who “participated in discussions in

a sincere way but when it came down to organizing, they weren’t doing the hard, on

the ground day-to-day work, like organizing an event, outreach, contacting artists,

publicity, reproducing flyers, putting flyers up.” When one member first “got

25
organized” around 2006, she described her interactions with a mostly male Filipino

youth organization. When she showed interest in their organization, they made her

feel she was too “kiddie” and not intellectual enough to join. Later, after she started

organizing with another group, the men from the first org approached her to join their

organization. At this point, she feels they finally decided she might be useful to them,

but it was too late, as she had joined the other group.

There are also sexist jokes. When confronted, men say, “’Oh, oh…talaga

[really?]…I didn’t know,’ but then go and do it again.” Other narrators spoke about

the general existence of the “mactivist,” or the man who uses his so-called activism to

sexually prey on politically conscious female-bodied activists. Mactivism45

undermines women activists as legitimate leaders, reinforcing patriarchy and

women’s positions in the struggle as nothing more than sexual objects. Finally,

another narrator shared a story about a male-identified leader who sexually harassed a

woman in his collective. Because of the leader’s organizational status and familial

ties to people higher than him in the decision-making chain, he was never held

accountable.

These examples point to what one narrator explained to me as an “all-boys

country club” culture in some parts of the Filipino Left. According to one narrator,

such a culture of silence aims to protect higher ranked men who have made political

mistakes in the name of not “hurting The Movement.” These stories make it no

wonder that scholar-activist Angela Davis once wrote, “According to a time-honored

principle advanced by Marx, Lenin, Fanon, and numerous other theorists, the status of

26
women in any given society is a barometer measuring the overall level of social

development.”46 In other words, we can use the status of women in the Fil-Am Left as

a barometer of its development.

Challenging patriarchy within “The Movement” also requires adapting to the

needs of activist parents, especially mothers- needs rendered invisible by capitalism

and patriarchy. Illustrating this point, one narrator shared disillusionment about an

organization she co-founded before she had her first child:

There was this whole emphasis on…it’s the village that raises the child…and I
thought it was a bunch of BS… We’ll help you raise your child…We’ll be
there for you! And I guess part of it is not understanding what motherhood is
like…[I think to them, they felt that] once you have the kid you’re just not
available… which is…to an extent, the truth. But...it was really difficult… I
actually didn’t want to have much to do with [the organization] for awhile.
And maybe that’s just personal reasons or what have you.

When this narrator co-founded the organization, she envisioned building a long-

lasting community where people care for one another. The reality was that

motherhood became a liability for her, as members stopped included her in planning

events. At the same time, when she did attend events, she observed her child

diminished into being simply the “cute kid with the sign” at rallies. The emotional

pain and disappointment of being ignored as a mother in an organization she co-

founded consequently pushed her to stop being involved for years.

Responding to patriarchy in “The Movement,” some women have created all

women’s spaces, but they too are far from perfect. A masculine-presenting trans-

identified narrator spoke to me about transphobia in an all-women mass organization.

27
They47 explain that it is hardest to talk about trans issues with cis-straight48 men and

elder women who confuse their gender non-conformity for being patriarchy:

…I had straight elders not really wanting to hear me…not wanting to feel
me… I think that with women of color movements, that happens with
masculine folks and the division in queerness…with trans men. Like all of a
sudden, all the stuff you couldn’t point out to your cis-male brothers cuz you
can’t check them…And when you check them, then you’ve been ostracized.
You can give it all to me. Why? Because I’m female assigned at birth and I’ve
learned, like you, how to hold it. That’s what women of color do, you hold
it…and then you hold it…you can scream at me because I give off some
levels, depending on the conversation, masculine privilege, depending on
where I am and where I pass…

This narrator explains that in some all-women’s spaces, women-identified members

tend to take their frustrations out on them because they present masculinity, thereby

scapegoating them for patriarchy experienced in mixed-gender spaces. This blame

ignores the difficulties that trans people (particularly those who do not pass49 as cis-

men) experience in a transphobic society that is rooted in patriarchal, normative

expectations impacting female and trans bodies alike. Further, because this narrator

was assigned at birth as female, they have learned to hold in anger like other women

of color who have been historically devalued. Having to “hold it” is an example of the

emotional labor that some organizers are pressured to undergo for the sake of “The

Movement.” Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1979; 1983) refers to emotional labor as

the avoidance of distressing sensations in order to help other people remain at ease.50

After awhile, emotional labor can take its toll on an organizer’s mind, body, and

spirit. After many years of being an organizational leader, this narrator left with this

issue being one of many “personal” reasons for their departure. Since then, they have

pursued self-care practices to honor themselves and prioritize their physical and

28
emotional health, such as art as a form of healing and by surrounding themselves with

people who they feel practice mutual-respect.

Contradictions at Work: Organizational Structures

Other narrators explained frustrations not with men per se, but with

masculinist, hierarchical organizational structures maintained by both male leaders

and “women [often with class privilege] who act like men.” One former member

admitted feeling “guilted” into organizing longer than she wished. The culture made

her feel like a “cry baby;” that she had to “man up, and get on board” when she felt

maxed out. Resistant to this culture, she felt inadequate, like she wasn’t militant

enough. Regarding militancy, one former organizer queried, “Are we being

conditioned to take on hypermasculine roles?” Someone else expressed her

disappointment that her former organization became impersonal and void of

relationship building. She said, “A lot of the personal stuff was usually swept under

the rug. And a lot of the emphasis was on mobilizing the people…getting the word

out. Everything BUT building within the organization.” Another narrator expressed

frustration at the top-down model of her former organization, asking “Why should

you have to explain yourself to people you don’t even know?” Furthermore,

sectarianism has led organizations with the same goals to undercut each other; a

strikingly neoliberal and masculinist method of forcing other orgs to join them if they

cannot survive.

29
 Such dynamics are nothing new in the Left but neither are the collective and

democratic organizing structures that should remedy them if practiced. To women

like Ella Baker who applied a collective organizing ethic to her work in the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement,

transformation comes about through “a democratic, cooperative, and localized

movement that value[s] the participation of each of its individual members.”51

Organizing Under Precarity

Compared to the 1970s, the consolidation of neoliberalism52 over time has

constrained the ability to organize. With 1.5 million deportations since 2009, the most

in the last four years under the Obama administration, the risk for undocumented

organizers who display public forms of resistance is high.53 Many undocumented

youth make difficult choices between school, work, and their organizations, which

have become their families away from the Philippines. In New York, undocumented

immigrants do not qualify for federal financial aid, which makes school an even more

precarious choice.54 One working class, undocumented leader made the tough

decision to cut back on organizing, borrowing money from his relative to attend

school and work. He explained:

Going to school is survival mode as someone who is undocumented. There is

a one-percent chance that it can help me- for growth, career. To me, I did it
out of survival and not to become privileged, blah blah blah. I wanted to be
a social worker to improve myself because I feel like the school can offer
more to the organization…I’m worried- if I’m 45 I will not accept that I
didn’t try. I wouldn’t accept. There’s nothing wrong with being working
class…nothing wrong with being not privileged. I just wanted a little bit of
security that could also foster growth as a person- I don’t have health

30
 insurance, knowledge, I don’t want to be this at 45: ‘I don’t have work, I’m
still searching…I just don’t wanna be like this.

This narrator explains his concern that his organization alone cannot provide him with

financial security to survive as a non-US citizen. He denies looking to use school as a

way to join the petit bourgeoisie. Instead, he views school as an opportunity to better

the organization and himself. Despite his adamant feelings, this narrator eventually

felt pressured by his organization to quit school mid-semester because he felt there

was too much organizing to do. Weighed with the guilt of “wasting [his relative’s]

money,” he struggled over whether the sacrifice would be worthwhile in the long-

term. Months after our initial interview, he reflected that he simply wanted the

sustainability to organize and that he does not blame the organization for not being

able to provide that for him.

Another immigrant youth told a similar story with a different ending:

I ended up going to school cuz I felt like I’m brown and I’m a woman, and if I
don’t have that diploma, I won’t get any shit…even NGOs, they wouldn’t
even hire me, that’s how the system works, so I need to go through that
system and finish my school…[but then later I found that] you would get less
work [in the organization], EDs [educational discussions] you couldn’t go.
There would be a compromise in involvement in the organization…You’re
[unintentionally] being cut off, you have lesser leadership. I was having
contradictions too- with myself- like do I really need to go to school? And so I
dropped all my classes.

Despite this organizer’s commitment to “The Movement,” she was forced to choose

between school and the organization. Because of her gender, class, and immigrant

status, she felt education was the better option for improving her life situation. Yet,

the demand of labor required by the organization did not allow her to be both a

student and the organizational leader she was. She explains that an organizational

31
leader instructed her, “I don’t think you going to school would help the organization.”

Yet, she chose school nonetheless. But as a student with less time to commit, she was

given fewer responsibilities. She ultimately found the lesser role unfulfilling so she

left school to organize full-time. For two years she shouldered the emotional labor of

doubting her decision while the organization benefited from her labor. Over time, she

accumulated resentment toward organizational leaders. Later she left the organization

for “personal reasons” to explore her life options. Today she is a student finishing her

bachelor’s degree, and upon reflection is uncertain about ever returning to “The

Movement.”

In precarious times, economic and physical disabilities compound race and

class. Disability rights attorney Silvia Yee refers to this experience as a “double

burden” for disabled people of color.55 She writes, “aside from the public health

issues that most racial/ethnic minorities face, minorities with disabilities experience

additional disparities in health, prejudice, discrimination, economic barriers, and

difficulties accessing care as a result of their disability.’”56 For activists who are

disabled and working-class, organizations that consider ability through an

intersectional analysis are rare. One disabled and working class narrator explained

that organizations do not often consider disability or differently-abled bodies in their

frameworks. He explains, “I’ve lost support networks, partnerships, friends because

there’s not an analysis around chronic illness and disability in POC [people of color]

communities…and that devastates us because we don’t know how to care.” Ableist

rhetoric, like “mobilizing” and “marching,” is central to organizing culture. This

32
narrator’s reflection encourages collectives to ask how all members can be leaders

even when some members literally cannot stand on the front lines or travel to and

from meetings in the ways that their able-bodied kasama57 do. Further, it reminds us

that the reason to integrate an anti-ableist framework is not simply for inclusion’s

sake, but more importantly to practice an ethic of care for one other.

One worker-organizer relayed the time and energy constraints of organizing,

working, and finding time to do personal things. While this problem is not new for

activists, it arguably has intensified over the past forty years. Because many domestic

workers only receive one day off from work, worker-organizers are constantly

challenged to find time to organize events and complete personal errands on this one

day. Even though New York City boasts one of the most extensive public

transportation systems in the world, the geographical spread of the city can exhaust

someone on a tight schedule before they even get on the subway. Many cannot afford

to live in “New York City-proper” and must commute from New Jersey or the city’s

outer boroughs to get to mid-town Manhattan (a central location for most) for

meetings and events. To the credit of most of the organizations in my study, events

are also held in Queens, where one can find the largest population of Filipinos in the

city. Still, it all depends on where one lives. For instance, when I lived in Brooklyn, it

took me an hour and a half to travel to some parts of Queens. Some meeting days, I

opted to stay home because the location was too far, and I was too tired.

For middle-class Fil-Ams, adopting a 24/7 life devoted to “The Movement”

can be foreign. Relatedly, many Fil-Am and “Fil-Fil” (another term for Filipinos from

33
the Philippines) narrators spoke of the challenge of working through “internalized

bourgeois” tendencies. While most New Yorkers cannot afford the high-end luxuries

that New York City has to offer, like the “$198 chef’s menu at Jean-Georges,”

smaller indulgences like “oatmeal-raisin cookies at Levain Bakery [that] cost $4

each,” can be tempting.58 They offer rewards for long days of “work, work,

work[ing]” (in the words of one narrator) to survive in one of the most expensive

cities in the country; it is the common American cycle of work, consumption, and

consumerism.

In The Problem with Work (2011), Marxist feminist theorist Kathi Weeks

complicates the drive to work observing, “What is perplexing is less the acceptance of

the present reality that one must work to live than the willingness to live for work.”59

Such willingness often translates into a neoliberal identification with work60 that

propels many middle-class Fil-Ams to work longer hours than they are paid by

“choice” at their day jobs. These very organizers also struggle to pay off student loans

and credit card debt. According to sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, the average

American owes $9,000 on credit cards alone.61 With rising debt and costs of living in

New York City, one narrator rightly concluded, “You cannot be an organizer and

unemployed.”

And so organizations must be flexible with their members’ work schedules.

Many immigrant and working-class organizers work more than one job to support

families here in the US and back in the Philippines. In fact, 7 out of 10 Filipinos in

34
New York City came to the U.S. in the last 20 years, and many are low-wage women

workers.62 According to women of color studies scholar Grace Chang:

In the United States, domestic forms of structural adjustment, including

cutbacks in health care and the continued lack of subsidized child care,
contribute to an expanded demand among dual-career, middle-class
households for workers in child care, elderly care, and housekeeping. The
slashing of benefits and social services under “welfare reform” helps to
guarantee that this demand is met by eager migrant women workers. 63

In other words, the dismantling of government supports works together with

structural adjustment abroad and the denial of benefits to immigrants in general to

ensure that low-income immigrant women continue to migrate to first world nations

like the US and work low-wage jobs.

Neoliberalism would have fooled us if we blamed all of organizational

problems on our leaders or ourselves. Living in the United States at a time of

economic crisis puts massive strains on individuals’ capacities to organize and

organizations’ capacities to function. Everyone is just struggling to survive.

Organizers who volunteer and sometimes work full-time for part-time pay are a true

testament to the dedication that helps the “The Movement” thrive.

Sharpening Contradictions: Emotional Labor, Familial Hierarchies, Utang na Loob

“If you’re in a collective you’ve been recruited to, it’s very personal,” shared

one narrator. Given the personal nature to organizing, the experiences that my

narrators describe are not simply stories of emotions but of their emotional labor. I

found that emotional labor is extremely pronounced for organizers whose identities,

circumstances, and migration histories intersect in ways that exacerbate marginality.

35
These members, much like the trans organizer explained earlier in this article, learn to

“hold it.” That is, they often hold in their emotions to avoid conflict. Like any other

labor, emotional labor fuels the survival and growth of a system; in this case, “The

Movement.”

Illustrating this point, several of my working-class immigrant narrators told

me that they often feel they exist in the shadows of their middle-class American-born

kasama. One undocumented immigrant shared a private saying used amongst other

immigrant youth to describe their American-born or “2nd gen” kasama. The immigrant

youth have sayings like “ba importante.” In other words, “they’re more important.”

She explained:

We feel like they’re more educated than us…and I think that the language
barrier… It was funny because one time, I remember when I answered this
question from one of the workshops. I asked…does my accent is fine? I feel
like I’m…I’m talking with different language. [Laughs] You know, you’re
very conscious about how you speak, about how you talk and I think that’s
one of the reason why not everyone [speaks at meetings]- even if they
know the answer, even if they have an idea…because of language. And plus
the factor that not everyone studied here. Not everyone has an educational
degree. Not everyone is professional. Yeah, those factors come up,especially
in decision-making…

She also shared frustrations with American-born Filipinos’ schedules and tendency

toward lateness. Because they often work professional 9-5 jobs, they arrive late to

meetings scheduled in the evenings. She explains:

1st gens [immigrants] are more understandable…more flexible for anything,

we understand each other because we came from the same place, even though
we grew up in different places…That’s why it’s funny, the one who grew up
here, they are the ones with the “Filipino time” [a common phrase for
Filipinos being late]…We understood that they are professional, but our time
is important too…the one who’s always setting up is the 1st gen. Did you ever
see 2nd gens setting up?

36
These experiences point to the emotional labor of resentment, frustration, and feeling

undervalued as first-generation undocumented immigrants in this particular

organization. As undocumented immigrants, they do not have access to the same

types of jobs as their second-generation kasama. When 1st gens “hold it,” “2nd gens”

are not required to rearrange their schedules or leave work early. In these ways, much

like the oldest son in the traditional nuclear family, I argue that American-born

organizers reap the benefits of their citizenship by birth; in line with the familial

metaphor, these kasama were literally “born” here first.

Thus, there are two specific concepts within the Filipino Left that I contend

renders emotional labor invisible. One is that Filipinos recruit and retain members

through relationships that mimic the family unit. New members are attracted to

organizing because it feels like family. They cook and break bread together, and call

activist elders “tita” and “tito,” or aunt and uncle. I draw on Black feminist

sociologist Patricia Hill Collins’ “It’s All in the Family” (1998), in which she

explains that the nation-state organizes itself through mutually constructing age,

gender, nation, and class hierarchies. Such hierarchies obscure and keep hidden gay,

lesbian, and bisexual identities, under assumptions of heterosexism.64 In a similar

fashion, I argue that hierarchies of the family translate to hierarchies of “The

Movement.” Political titas defer to titos, young male kasama defer to their titas unless

they are promoted up the ranks, conservative elders chastise or disown their queer

“children,” documented kasama are like favored first-born children, and able bodies

are like strong moms and dads who lead their less able children onward. Those on the

37
bottom of these overlapping hierarchies grapple with emotional labor in deeply

scarring ways, while those toward the top lead the movement. In some ways, it is

survival of the fittest at play.

In “The Movement,” elder privilege also manifests for organizers who were

active in the Philippines prior to migrating to the US. Not necessarily older in age

than their US-based kasama, these organizers range from their 20s and up. Some of

my narrators suggest that those with organizing experience in the Philippines reap the

benefits of being “born” into “The Movement” first as well. While one may argue

that such “elders” have earned their higher position in the hierarchy from experience,

some immigrant and 2nd generation organizers who “got organized” in the US

consider their assumed authority problematic. When movement elders resist new

ideas from their “younger” kasama (even those coming in with years of non-Filipino

organizing experience), they foreclose opportunities for productive change within

“The Movement,” while making newer organizers feel less important.

Also generating emotional labor is the Filipino value of utang na loob, or the

debt that can never be repaid.65 Implicitly gendered and classed, it first emerged

during Spanish colonization of the Philippines, reflected in feudal peasant gratitude to

landowners. Forced migration66 and exploitative immigration policies cultivate a

sense of utang na loob in many migrant Filipinos. There is gratitude to people who

helped them along the way, such as those who sponsored them to immigrate to the

US. For Filipino domestic workers who experience exploitative working conditions in

the homes of their employers, utang na loob can complicate how they respond to such

38
conditions. Forced to negotiate shame, outrage, and sadness about their exploitation,

many are simultaneously worried about appearing ungrateful to people who

facilitated their arrival to the U.S. Clearly, utang na loob is not merely a cultural

value; rather it holds political, religious, and economic weight. While some interpret

it as a sign of trauma and unhealthy co-dependence, others view it as a survival tactic.

It is evident that the organizers in this study also negotiate utang na loob in

movement work. While many are grateful to their organizations for providing them

support, political education, and kinship, indebtedness and fear of betrayal complicate

their responses when conflict arises. In such times, utang na loob and familial

hierarchies intersect in troubling ways. I argue that Filipino anti-imperialist

organizations maintain social hierarchies because of the interaction between utang na

loob and familial hierarchies within them. For example, when organizers hesitate to

question those above them, they often become passive-aggressive. One narrator

reasoned, “Part of it is cultural in that…[when] there’s an elder speaking…you have

to respect them and do what they say even though you might not agree with them...I

feel like that’s unhealthy…because then people feel resentful and then they don’t

really agree with what’s going on so they don’t put their best work into a project.”

Situations like this one, generate a combination of respect and resentment that brews

emotional labor over time.

Higher education studies scholar Annemarie Vaccaro and psychologist

Jasmine A. Mena (2011) illustrate how multiple marginal identities can exacerbate

feelings of burnout.67 Similarly, at least eight of the organizers I interviewed

39
expressed burnout; not only from the fatigue of “held” emotional labor, competing

demands, lack of support, and their desire to help others, but also from the daily

assaults of living multiple marginal identities inside and outside of “The Movement.”

Those no longer organizing feel jaded about their experiences, and some also

feel selfish for prioritizing self-care over “The Movement.” Citing stress and a lack of

health and wellness, some of the people I interviewed now pursue their own personal

forms of healing: photography, yoga, poetry, reiki, painting, swimming, and music;

interesting that most named creative outlets.

In essence, “debts that can never be repaid” help “The Movement” thrive. It is

clear that intentionally or not, familial dynamics and guilt have allowed for the

extraction of increased labor from our kasama, to the detriment of many organizers’

mental health and well-being. Perhaps the greatest irony within this observation is

that feudal-capitalism similarly relies on the family unit and “guilting” to extract

labor from society’s most marginalized people. In other words, some organizations in

“The Movement” are unknowingly using what Black feminist lesbian poet Audre

Lorde defines as the “masters’ tools” to serve its agenda.68 When Lorde writes, “The

master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” she suggests that true social

change cannot happen unless people creatively find ways to work without

reproducing or supporting oppressive systems.

In “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves”

(1971), Angela Davis recovers the role of the Black woman slave by describing the

historical “magnitude of her role as caretaker of a household of resistance.”69 In doing

40
so, Davis reclaims the slave family and women as centers of critical counter-insurgent

slave revolt. Reconceptualizing the family as a site of resistance rather than

oppression should urge us to take advantage of the Fil-Am Left’s familial dynamics

while consciously shifting away from patriarchal hierarchical tendencies.

“Reconciling Opposites”: Moving Toward a Movement of Care

Applying the Haitian concepts of balans and konesans, American studies

scholar George Lipsitz and rhetoric scholar Barbara Tomlinson write, “Moral

excellence comes from reconciling opposites rather than choosing between them. It is

something that emerges from appreciating differences and embracing

contradictions.”70 Moving toward the concept of balans, they suggest engaging with

contradictions instead of avoiding them. My narrators’ stories reveal that avoiding

conflict has cost many organizations to lose strong leaders. They also raise urgent

questions about how to strategize at a time when our organizations are increasingly

vulnerable to neoliberalism. Each organization continues to assess and shift strategy,

approaching issues of organizational sustainability in its own ways. As theoreticians,

they apply Freire’s concepts of praxis, which he describes as "reflection and action

upon the world in order to transform it." Through praxis, oppressed people can

acquire a critical awareness of their own condition, and, with their allies, struggle for

liberation.71

For some of my narrators, this means having respect for others by “meeting

people where they’re at.” It means understanding people’s overstretched schedules

41
and thin wallets when people can’t carry the labor. Some organizations include a

sliding scale for programs, meet closer to their disabled kasama, and schedule

meetings during the day to accommodate mothers.

My narrators also insist on the importance of being patient with those who are

new to anti-imperialist information and anti-heteropatriarchal language and thinking.

A former organizer shared his reasons for leaving his organization:

I felt I needed to know about the issues before I could commit- I felt I was
getting ahead of myself. I was at rallies and didn’t know my stance enough
about different issues to align myself to one side and be so involved. I was
encouraged, but felt more pressured to take on an active role. We should be
more careful about not pressuring people to step up; be aware of people’s
comfort levels because if people aren’t comfortable where they are, they’ll get
scared off.

Thus, “meeting people where they’re at” means respecting ambivalence. One former

member said about one organization,

I found it to be too militant for me…Well I think particularly because the anti-
imperialism part and the anti-American part was hard for me because my
family that I was raised in, not by birthright, is white American. So I didn’t
like the idea of feeling that I need to turn my back on the country that saved
me. I felt like for me that I couldn’t fight against anti-imperialism and the
anti-American sentiments when I’m living a more positive life here.

This narrator, a Filipina adoptee, shows her struggle with being a part of anti-

imperialist organizing as someone who was adopted and raised by white American

parents. She echoes the importance of “meeting people where they’re at” by

considering the histories of adopted and mixed race/ethnicity members, figuring out

ways to broaden so that everyone can enter movement work.

In one organization, a turning point came when organizers asked prospective

members to think about how they could shape the organization using their own

42
personal talents and interests. This question challenged its pre-existing model, which

unintentionally required prospective members to fit into the organization’s narrow

definition of activist/organizer. One prospective member, a filmmaker and "not a

rallying type" (using his words), realized that he could offer his filmmaking and

editing skills to the organization. He would not have continued to organize if he had

not had the chance to integrate his filmmaker identity into the organization. The

organization did not require him to disavow his other identities, nor did he need to

become a "militant activist" (according to his definition) to organize for what he

believes in. Instead, his organization allowed him to merge his creative capacity with

his social justice commitment in a way that made sense for him.

In essence, “meeting people where they’re at” requires patience with the pace

of people’s processes. In this way, one organizer sees mass members as being

“unarmed.” Metaphorically speaking, she explains that when someone speaks from a

place of ignorance or miseducation, “I’m not going to pull out a knife [when I

respond to them].” Instead she meets members where they are in their political

processes and works from there. Patience also means believing in people’s inherent

capabilities. Another organizer insisted, “Not everyone has the language but everyone

has the potential for critical thought.”

Putting such an ethic of compassion into practice is especially challenging

given the everyday assaults of hetero-patriarchy in our lives. But building anti-sexist

and anti-homophobic spaces requires holding each other accountable in loving ways,

and many of my narrators spoke of this practice. By “meeting people where they’re

43
at,” my narrators unknowingly practice what English and feminist studies scholar

Sharon Doetsch-Kidder calls “loving criticism.” In her research on the role of

spirituality in social justice activism, Doetsch-Kidder describes loving criticism as “a

combination of opening to life, acceptance of things as they are, and letting go of

concepts.72 We see an example of loving criticism when a woman-identified organizer

recounted how women “check” men with tough love. They say, “Remember when

[narrator’s name] said that you were wack? You’re doing it again…” This organizer

emphasized the importance of understanding the root causes that Filipino and Fil-Am

men can be sexist: “Sexism will happen because of the [Catholic] church and

internalized bullshit…maybe you learned it from a problematic lola [grandmother in

Filipino]. There’s an understanding that folks are in a different place.” In the

Philippines, there is no translation for “trans,” which makes trans issues challenging

for cisgender Fil-Fil activists, gay or not, to understand. Knowing this, some queer

Fil-Am organizers vocalized what they view as a responsibility for educating cis-

straight members. They are not pressured to “hold it;” rather there is an understanding

for them to speak up.

One of the five existing organizations now offers specific homophobia,

heterosexism and sexism workshops to the greater community. Three out of five

organizations mention sexuality on their websites, while four out of five fold gender

and sexuality into their educational curricula. Yet, the shift toward a more LGBTQ-

friendly culture depends on the organization. As one organizer spoke about her group,

“It took us awhile to develop a queer analysis. [Straight] male kasama didn’t know

44
how to be allies. [But now] many queer members all over the country came from

other organizations because they were not able to be queer. [Now] there is a

recognition that LGBTQ folks have a stake in The Movement.” Given various

organizations’ struggles with allyship, two of my narrators remind me it is important

for allies, especially “cis-straight men,” to “step up.”

“Meeting people where they’re at” also means that many organizations refuse

single-issue organizing. Such an approach recognizes that members have different

lived experiences reflecting their overlapping identities. As women of color studies

scholar Sandibel Borges argues, “When queer theorists attack ‘identity politics,’ they

are really attacking single-issue politics.” Such confusion, according to Borges, erases

the legacy of “identity politics” as a revolutionary tool of intersectionality that

addresses the lived experiences of queer, working class women of color. Indeed,

when the women of the Combahee River Collective used the term ‘identity politics’,

they emphasized their experiences living under multiple oppressions as Black lesbian

feminists. In their 1977 statement, they wrote,

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity
politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical
politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end
somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly
repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept
because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have
preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves.73

The Combahee River Collective therefore stresses struggle rooted in our own

identities and waged directly by us.

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 Some organizations within the Filipino Left in New York City have begun to

incorporate an intersectional analysis that integrates class, race, citizenship, and

gender and sexuality, but only within the past five to ten years. Such an explicit

integration of gender and sexuality into the US-based Fil-Am Left is phenomenal to

those who actively studied and organized using Marxist-Leninist theory in the 1970s.

Scholar-activist and former KDP member Trinity Ordona writes that the KDP was

one of few spaces for LGBT Asian American activists during the 1970s. Still, while

there were a dozen gay and lesbian leaders in the KDP, their sexual identities were a

“well-guarded known secret” within the organization. They did not organize around

LGBT issues. Being “out” would have compromised their political reputation.74

What was the catalyst for a shift from a mainly class-based analysis to one

that is more intersectional, taking seriously sexuality and gender within the Fil-Am

Left? According to one narrator, this shift is the result of a decades-long struggle in

which LGBT kasama in the Philippines contested the formalized analysis that LGBT

identities were a construct of the petit bourgeois. The result was that ND

organizations in the Philippines began to formally incorporate LGBT issues into their

analyses by 2000-2005. The Communist Party of the Philippines has recently begun

to recognize gay marriage of its members, and in turn, the Fil-Am Left has followed

suit.

Sociologist Rebecca Klatch’s (2001) research may prove helpful for

understanding how this shift occurred. Klatch argues that feminist consciousness

development for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Young Americans for

46
Freedom (YAF) in the 1960s required a larger context within which women could

place their individual experiences.75 Such a context includes an available language to

collectively express and understand grievances. She refers to the process as

“framing.”76 Knowing this history, intergenerational conflict between the cis-straight

elder and the queer activist narrator makes sense. The elder and younger activists

each formed and framed a political consciousness in different historical moments of

LGBT acceptance within the Filipino and Fil-Am Left.

A shift toward intersectionality is evident on the ground. According to one of

my narrators who has been organizing in the New York City Filipino Left since 2001,

“A mostly women, immigrant, undocumented working class org hadn’t existed [back

then]. Including undocumented members changes things.” She refers to her current

organization as engaging in “feminist organizing,” which she describes as

“collectively planned by women- food, transportation, program, childcare,

interpretation, and translation.” During programs, non-Tagalog speakers listen to

Tagalog-English interpretation on headsets while native Tagalog-speakers make

presentations, and vice versa. Many immigrant Filipinos feel anxious about speaking

English in front of large English-speaking groups because they are concerned about

their accent and/or lack confidence. Thus, this strategy shifts the power from a

traditional interpretation model (in which non-English speakers need translation) to

one based on empowerment. In this same organization, trafficking survivors are part

of the planning and cultural work—“writing speeches, cooking, poetry, teaching 2nd

gens to be part of the process. Children are welcome and encouraged.” This is a clear

47
example of how the organizing process changes when the most marginalized- queer,

trans, working-class, women, undocumented, disabled, mother members- lead an

organization. In other words, when the most marginalized people lead movements for

social change, they see and cement the fissures in analysis that have in the past led to

their invisibility.77

In addition to “meeting people where they’re at,” organizations are also

beginning to systematically develop mechanisms for self care. The self-care debate

has irritated some old-school Filipino activists who remember that there was no time

for “wellness” during Martial Law, and the movement itself was your medicine.78

However, organizational leaders have recently begun to re-evaluate their stances,

recognizing the physical health benefits to self-care practices.

Black feminists have emphasized the necessity of spiritual self-care as being

part and parcel of community transformation.79 Audre Lorde and woman of color

feminist scholar bell hooks both write about the psychic and spiritual wounds

resulting from oppression that can undermine collective work if untreated.80 Through

her metaphor of woman of color as welder, feminist scholar M. Jacqui Alexander

explains how residual rage is both a catalyst for action, but also dangerous if

uncontrolled. She writes, “Fire can kill, but without it we will die.”81 Doestch-Kidder

(2012) summarizes that in her research on DC activists, “therapy, spiritual beliefs and

practices, and other forms of self-care help keep activists from being overwhelmed by

perpetual struggle and help them develop and sustain values and beliefs that influence

their work.”82

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 Some organizations are integrating similar ideas in their own ways. For

example, two organizations train members to use somatic centering to position

themselves when something triggers them and offer free yoga classes to members.

One org has assessed that they be “smarter about planning so we’re not in constant

stress mode.” Such assessment shows a care for not only the quality of its

organizational work but also for the mental health of members on an individual level.

It also acknowledges the invisible emotional labor that its most marginalized

members often undergo for movement unity.

Filipino and non-Filipino activist communities are currently engaged in how

to link self-care practices to community-care. That is, they are brainstorming

solutions for how to encourage self-care without reifying individualistic, capitalistic

values. A collective ethic directly challenges internalized neoliberalism that typically

centers the individual rather than community well-being. Instead they seek to create

systems for self-care that also encourage collective care. One member discussed how

her group is “creating spaces of healing, like spaces to get to know one another and

focus on the challenges that members are facing. We share babysitting, make sure

someone isn’t feeling lonely on their birthday, check in.” One might warn that

sharing babysitting could trick us into letting the US government off the hook for its

lack of subsidized childcare. In other words, when we pick up the government’s

slack, we must acknowledge that our labor enables neoliberalism to thrive without

government accountability. With this understanding, most of the organizers don’t

49
view shared childcare as resistance per se. Rather, it as a way of building

infrastructural strength within their organizations and helping one another survive.

These same groups cite supporting members’ families in need, treating them

as their own extended families. When a member’s father died, her organization

helped plan the memorial service and raised money to send her back to the

Philippines. It also created its own protocol for holding members accountable to one

another without intervention from the police or state. Finally, two organizations have

created platforms to air out deep feelings during times of conflict. Such interventions

shift the burden from the individual in need of self-care to the rest of the collective.

Third, some organizations are cultivating a culture of kindness and

compassion. The Combahee River Collective wrote in their statement:

In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies
the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name
of achieving "correct" political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess
over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a
nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision
of a revolutionary society.

Many people who have left organizing for self-care and healing share the Collective’s

approach to politics and believe that “The Movement” could benefit greatly from this

ethic of care. It would require shedding ego and building infrastructure that supports

collective, non-hierarchical decision-making. Referring to organizational splits, one

organizer said, “Wouldn’t it be sad if it’s ego shit?”

Doetsch-Kidder’s oral histories from Washington DC activists confirm what I

have also found: that some of the most painful betrayals experienced by activists are

committed by other activists.83 While Doetsch-Kidder concludes that this hurt

50
emerges as a reflection of activists’ profound care for others, I argue that it is also the

familial hierarchical dynamic and organizers’ lack of accountability to other groups’

members that engender painful betrayal within the Filipino Left.84 Some organizers

only hold themselves accountable to others in their collectives. Others instead view

the groups as part of the same movement, and thus expect respect from Filipinos in

other organizations. With this conflict in mind, I cite the words of spiritual activist

Marianne Williamson who writes, “We don’t need deeper analysis of our sicknesses

so much as we desperately need a more passionate embrace of the only thing that

heals them all [:love].”85

Those who left “The Movement” tell me they wish both their organizations

and the larger movement could be a community of sincere kindness and compassion;

one predicated on genuine friendship, trust, and care—within and across

organizations. They hope for a movement that nourishes and empowers its people in a

country that fuels hopelessness and helplessness; not one without conflict, but one

with respect. One narrator shared, “It makes me sad that I can’t trust my own people.”

Another person said, “How can you be a leader in your community when you’re

oppressing your neighbor?” Some feel used by their organizations, others abandoned,

while others feel burnt out.

For the good and the bad, “The Movement” organizes like a family. Any

Filipino person can tell you that family for them often centers on food. As one

narrator put it, “Like any good slow-cooked Filipino food, you know what your good

ingredients are. You let it sit, you let it ruminate, and it tastes better. You don’t gotta

51
hurry it up. I know that we have an urgency, but it’s different here…. If you want to

build in mass for a sustainable amount of time.” This person refers to the importance

of slow-building, sincere, long-lasting relationships. The message echoes Toni Cade

Bambara’s declaration that radical women of color must “mutually care and cure each

other into wholesomeness.”86 This is what strengthens a movement.

Making it Your All or Nothing

One of my narrators wondered whether familial, “all or nothing,” expectations

from one’s org is at the root of infighting and sectarianism. She purposely limits her

expectations of her kasama, stating, “They’re not my ‘besties’…they help my

political foundation. Those people who make the organization their all- like a

relationship- those people leave. They look for everything in the organization.” Her

analysis connects to another narrator’s suggestion that, “Maybe boundaries are

important for us as organizers. Social workers are taught to set boundaries with their

clients to ensure that trauma doesn’t spread.” Truth be told, many organizers enter

social justice work to heal from past trauma. Some elder Fil-Fil activists experienced

torture firsthand and witnessed the political disappearances and killings of family

members during martial law. Their activism also caused many of them to become

separated from their children. Younger organizers also admit to a need for healing:

If we’re not right here, I don’t know how effective I am to help folks in the
homeland…isn’t that in itself colonial then? That I who was not born
there…who have not been in armed revolution…who have not been under the
same level of dictatorship can steer that politic? I don’t even have my own self
right…we’re having trouble with tenant. We have issues here as Pinoy/Pinay-

52
 Ams… We’re doing two different revolutions…our heart is there and our
bodies are right here…

Coping with family separation on an immediate and ancestral level is also traumatic.

For some, activism has been a source of healing, but others believe that organizing

alone cannot be enough to recover from trauma. Referring to the ND Movement’s

“women’s desk” in the Philippines, one former organizer punched, “Where is the

desk for learning coping mechanisms in “The Movement” to deal with stress and

grief?”

In this neoliberal era, funding for non-profit and grassroots organizations is

becoming more and more scarce. It is clear that members cannot depend on “The

Movement” for everything, as organizations and members are unequipped to handle

needs, such as recovery from trauma. Furthermore, my research shows that “The

Movement” has inadvertently played a role in re-traumatizing many of its organizers

and activists.

Dialectical Materialism and Intersectionality

Transphobia and ableism continue to present themselves in “The Movement.”

A trans disabled former organizer agreed that organizations are not actively

challenging ableism. The truth is that there are very few Filipina/o trans and disabled

organizers within the Fil-Am Left. We must take this observation seriously. Not only

does it represent cisgender and able-bodied privilege in the leadership, but it also

reflects ignorance about how systems of oppression overlap and exacerbate the

marginality of our working class, disabled, trans kasama. Understanding that trans

53
discrimination supports heternormativity, which capitalism and imperialism thrive

upon, allows cisgender activists to more clearly see its importance. But these

connections aren’t often made organizationally, and the issues that impact our trans

and disabled kasama are rendered invisible. As a result, many don’t see a place for

themselves in “The Movement.” When asked about contradictions, only two of my

narrators mentioned ability. Unsurprisingly, both of these narrators eventually left

their formal organizations for self-care and healing. This gap between practice and

stated trans and disability awareness within the Fil-Am Left supports Hochschild’s

concept of “stalled revolution.” Hochschild argues that individual behavioral changes

lag behind ideological changes formally instituted by organizations.87

Further explanation of this gap also requires returning to dialectical

materialism. Key leaders of all of the organizations in my study apply DM in their

work. Under dialectical materialism, organizers decide in a given moment which

contradiction is primary within a series of surrounding contradictions that shape its

particularities at a given time within a given location. Some of my narrators and I

surmise that it is the misapplication of dialectical materialism, or not allowing for an

embrace of contradiction, struggle, and shifting among primary and secondary

contradictions, that has been a central problem for the Filipino Left. According to one

organizational leader, some leaders have not been open to taking seriously how

various systems of oppression (e.g. gender, sexuality, ability) interconnect with class.

She observes,

Rather than seeing more diversity [in confronting different systems of power]
as a higher level of unity, they see it as divisive and leading to disunity. I think

54
 we need to have a deeper understanding of DM and should think about how
various systems of oppressions intersect and are integral to fortifying class
oppression, especially in the context of a neoliberal-imperialist society; we
should think about it as a basis for thinking and organizing on a higher, deeper
level of unity and struggle.

Given that leaders of the Fil-Am Left have historically been cisgender and able-

bodied (and male in some organizations), it is not difficult to comprehend why

contradictions of transphobia and ableism (and gender, as some of my narrators

argue) have not been meaningfully addressed. To conduct a thorough analysis of

transphobia’s relationship to other contradictions like class, one must understand its

particularities. Thus, I believe sustaining trans and disabled leaders, whose authority

based on lived experience is necessary to flesh out such particularities, is crucial for

the development of the Fil-Am Left.

If we are correct, then misunderstandings in the application of DM in fact

impede intersectional strategizing. Intersectionality encourages us to view the

multiply constituted faces of heteropatriarchy, capitalism, racism, ableism, and

imperialism at once. Both Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins argue that

these systems have simultaneous impacts that cannot be separated from one other. 88

For this reason, those with overlapping marginalized identities are drawn to

intersectionality and other women of color theory because they are tools for

understanding their existence in the world. Those leaders who misapply DM and

privilege some contradictions over others ignore the reality of how contradictions

multiply manifest, shift, and impact one another. Thus, it is no wonder that many

Filipinos cannot see a place for themselves in “The Movement.”

55
 Human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama once said, “Political philosophy is not

something you obtain. It is something that grows over time throughout your life.”

Comparing the ways that the KDP organized in the 1970s compared to the New York

City Filipino Left over the past ten years, one can apply Kochiyama’s quote to not

just people but also social movements. The story at the beginning of this thesis

highlights the efforts of Filipino leftist organizations to “reconcile opposites” and

engage in complex situations. Many of the organizations have shifted to a place

where they know they “must meet people where they’re at,” refuse single or double-

issue organizing, create systematic mechanisms for self-care, and cultivate a culture

of kindness and compassion for others.

Whether they actively practice it- across and within organizations with the

same goals is a different story. That said, one organizational leader reminds me that

centering women and queer people in programming and on websites may not actually

reflect the organization’s deeper analysis:

It’s not enough to say that women or queer people are included in the
organization or that we have a program that addresses those issues. Our
movement must have a clearer theoretical framework, a political program of
action and an organizational culture that tackles gender, race, class, sexuality,
and other forms of oppression. For our movement to be sincerely
revolutionary, we must put in the painstaking labor of becoming a conscious,
cohesive and successive force that is capable of combating multiple forms of
oppression, at the roots and in various fronts, from the leadership to the
membership and back.

In making this statement, this leader is skeptical about how truly evolved the Fil-Am

Left is today, but believes that its potential lies in its ability to be intersectional.

Echoing her sentiments about “The Movement’s” potential, another leader who left

56
his former organization from emotional burnout can’t help but think about the

possibilities for a cohesive movement. He insists:

They could be a really big force, internationally if they were together. If they
were together I’d drop everything right now and go over there, but they’re not.
They don’t have the correct leaders and the correct position. They’re trying to
get followers for leadership positions…it’s really hard to push a really
dynamic and forward thinking community in the progressive movement.

On the other hand, another organizational leader believes, “The work will

stand for itself. The less we engage in this destructive work, the more we engage in

the [more important] work. We’re not forced to work with each other- if the time

comes, we’ll do our work, people can rise and come to their own decision.” We have

come to a point in time when there is an even greater concentration of wealth in the

hands of a few and enough people to create sub-categories distinguishing the

exploited from the super-exploited. Such massive oppression and widespread

resistance on a global scale has led many to predict that capitalism is taking its last

gasps. According to one seasoned activist, “The biggest challenge is the system that

lives in all of us.” Her observation leads me to ask, “Will the system- including

hetero-patriarchy- continue to live on at the next ‘turn’?” United or divided, it is clear

that many organizations are doing the important work of “cleaning house” as

contradictions sharpen.

Notes
1
Cisgender is commonly referred to as anyone not trans. It is a term often used to describe those
whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. At A. Finn Enke’s talk at UC Santa
Barbara on January 13, 2013, entitled “Whose Cis-Story is This?” Finn Enke contests the term
“cisgender,” arguing that it reinforces a socially constructed binary between those identified as cis and
those trans. In this paper, I use the term “cis” and “cisgender” because my narrators use them.
Sociologist Kristin Schilt reminds us, “Distinctions among gender identity categories are academic.”

57
That is, “someone who ‘technically’ fits the definition of transgender may identify as genderqueer,
transsexual, all of these identities together, or some other identity entirely” [Just One of the Guys?
Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2010), 14]. The reality is that sex and gender categories are constantly changing. From the 1960s
to the 1980s, “transsexual” was common, while during the rise of gender activism in the 1990s,
“transgender” developed as an umbrella term for a wide variety of “differently gendered” identities. In
the early 2000s, the term “genderqueer” emerged to contest the male/female binary.
2
Mao Tse-tung, “On Contradiction,” From The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1967), 337.
3
In George Lipsitz and Barbara Tomlinson, “American Studies as Accompaniment, “ American
Quarterly 65:1 (March 2013), 14.
4
Tse-tung, “On Contradiction,” 322.
5
See examples: Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano
Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011); Trinity Ordona, “Coming Out Together: An
Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgendered People’s Movement
of San Francisco” (PhD diss. University of California, Santa Cruz, 2000); Ninotchka Rosca, “Living in
Two-Time Zones,” in Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific
America, ed. Fred Ho, with Caroline Antonio, Diane Fujino, Steve Yip (San Francisco: AK Press,
2000), 84-85; Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Random House,
1992); Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Zed Books Ltd., 1987); Combahee River
Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement by Combahee River Collective,” in This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (New York:
Kitchen Table Press, 1983), 210-218.
6
In this paper, I use “Filipino Left in the US,” “Filipino American (Fil-Am) Left,” “Filipino
Progressive Movement,” and “The Movement” interchangeably. Many of the activists and organizers
in this study also use them interchangeably.
7
Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The
Free Press 1994), 13.
8
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against
Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43:6 (July 1991), 1241-1299.
9
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1970);
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution That is Changing
the Shape of the World (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1963); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La
Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).
10
Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 102.
11
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990); Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical
Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3:4 (1997), 437-465; Kelley,
Race Rebels, 1-13.
12
Monisha Das Gupta, Unruly Immigrants: Rights, Activism, and Transnational South Asian Politics
in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
13
Amy Villarejo (2005) describes queer of color theory as “extend[ing] women of color feminism by
investigating how intersecting racial, gender, and sexual practices antagonize and/or conspire with
normative investments of nation-states and capital” [“What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now?”
Social Text 23:3-4 (Fall-Winter 2005), 72]. Queer of color critique has emerged as a response to queer
theory’s inattention to the materiality of racism in the lives of queer people of color.
14
See Chandan Reddy, Martin Manalansan, Nayan Shah in Social Text’s “What’s Queer About Queer
Studies Now?” (2005) for their work on queer diasporas and queering discourses of citizenship.
15
Das Gupta, Unruly Immigrants, 257.
16
It is not surprising that some organizations in my study are allies to those in Das Gupta’s study, as
many parallels can be drawn between both their approaches to organizing and the struggles their

58
members face as women and queer immigrants in New York City. Coalitional possibilities for this type
of analysis emerge.
17
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of
Empowerment, 2nd ed (New York: Routledge, 2000); In The Prison Notebooks [Antonio Gramsci, The
Prison Notebooks (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971)], Gramsci used the term “organic
intellectuals” to describe the intellectual capacity that everyone, regardless of class, possesses. He
called for a kind of education that could develop working-class intellectuals and build upon the already
existing intellectual activity among the masses.
18
The women of color feminist theory I utilize includes work by The Combahee River Collective and
women of color scholars/activists Grace Chang, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, M.
Jacqui Alexander, Claudine Michel, Assata Shakur, Sandibel Borges, and the women/trans narrators in
this study. Sociological social movement theory and grounded feminist theory includes work by Arlie
Hochschild, Rebecca Klatch, Kathi Weeks, and Sharon Doetsch-Kidder.
19
Helen Toribio, “We are Revolution: A Reflective History of the Union of Democratic Filipinos
(KDP),” Amerasia Journal 24: 2 (Summer 1998), 158.
20
At this time, there were close to one million Filipinos living in the U.S., and political exiles
comprised of only a small percentage of the population. See Jose V. Fuentecilla, Fighting From a
Distance: How Filipino Exiles Helped Topple a Dictator (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013),
ix.
21
The KDP organized a broad collation of U.S. anti-martial law opposition, helping to establish groups
like the Friends of the Filipino People (FFP), which consisted of local chapters nation-wide. According
to historian Mark Sanchez [Mark Sanchez, “Resistance From Afar: Opposition to the Marcos Regime
From the United States, 1981-1983,” (MA thesis. California State University, Fullerton, 2012)], the
Spring 1980 FFP Bulletin reported that the national chapter boasted a membership rise of 75 percent
that year from 400 to 700. He writes, "However, this quantification of membership may not be
accurate as chapters of the organization were loosely organized. According to former members,
chapters often had a handful of active members and many more members that attended meetings and
events irregularly." It is worth mentioning that the KDP and FFP split in 1978. Membership of the FFP
prior to the split remains unclear.
22
Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos
Years (Manila: Anvil Publishing Inc., 2012).
23
Toribio, “We are Revolution;” Estella Habal, San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the
Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2007).
24
This history includes that of Filipino-led locals of the International Longshoremen and
Warehousemen and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) in Hawai’i and Seattle as cannery and
agricultural workers. It also includes Filipino farm worker strikes organized by the Trade Union Unity
League (TUUL) during the Great Depression and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee,
which instigated the famous Delano grape strikes of 1965 (See Daryl Maeda’s Rethinking the Asian
American Movement [2012] and the film, Delano Manongs by Marissa Aroy).
25
Rosca, “Living in Two Time-Zones,” 84-85.
26
Toribio, “We are Revolution,” 175-176.
27
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines Website, Accessed May 29, 2013,
http://www.ndfp.net/joom15/index.php/about-the-ndfp-mainmenu-27/12-point-program-mainmenu-
29/twelve-points-of-the-ndf-program-mainmenu-60.html.
28
Elizabeth Uy Eviota, The Political Economy of Gender: Women and the Sexual Division of Labour
in the Philippines (New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd., 1992); Ligaya Lindio-McGovern, Filipino Peasant
Women: Exploitation and Resistance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 23-40.
29
Shakur, Assata, 241.
30
Ibid.

59
31
I believe that all work that consciously resists oppression is movement work. This paper focuses on
one type of movement work: organizational resistance.
32
New York City. American Community Survey (ACS). New York, NYC Department of City
Planning, 2010.
33
Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Cambridge: South End
Press, 2005).
34
I continue to ask whether there are actually four root problems- the fourth being patriarchy, but this
is an ongoing discussion.
35
Maxine Baca-Zinn, “Field Research in Minority Communities: Ethical Methodological & Political
Observations By an Insider,” Social Problems 27:2 (December 1979), 209-219.
36
Narrators identified as either activists or community organizers. Their definitions varied. For
example, some organizers dissociated themselves from the term “activist” because they felt they had
not earned the title. To them, “activist” connotes historical importance, status, and militancy. In
contrast, another narrator calls herself an activist because she recognizes that she does not commit to
the 24/7 labor of organizing work. For the purpose of this study, I collapse organizers and activists
because of their shared commitment to “The Movement.” I also use “members” interchangeably. With
the exception of one organization, most members are also organizers, unlike groups that use different
community organizing models. The organizations in my study follow an organizing framework in
which youth organize other youth, workers organize other workers, etc. Finally for simplicity’s sake, I
use the term “former organizer” to describe those who left their organizations. It should be recognized,
however, that their work outside of formal organizations (through arts for example) brings people
together as well. Some “former organizers,” also continue “movement work” as allies to formal
organizations.
37
See Blackwell (2011) for examples of gendered labor in the Chicano Movement. See Shakur (1987)
and Brown (1992) for examples in the Black Panther Party. See Barbara Ransby, “The Preacher and
the Organizer: The Politics of Leadership in the Early Civil Rights Movement,” in Ella Baker and the
Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 2005) about Ella Baker’s work in the Southern Christian Leadership Committee.
38
Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2012). See Karen Brodkin Sacks, “Gender and Grassroots Leadership,” in Women
and the Politics of Empowerment, ed. Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgan (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1988) and Dolores Delgado Bernal, “Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized:
Chicana Oral Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts,” Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies, 19:2 (1998), 113-142 for their work on rethinking leadership by centering women’s
organizing.
39
Ella Baker, “Developing Community Leadership- An Interview,” in Black Women in White
America, ed. Gerda Lerner (New York : Random House, 1970).
40
See Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill,
The University of North Carolina Press, 1983).
41
Rosca, “Living in Two Time-Zones.”
42
This narrator’s preferred gender pronoun is “they.”
43
See Estella Habal’s San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American
Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2007).
44
Rosca, 85-86.
45
According to activists to whom I spoke, the term “mactivism” emerged mainly within cis-straight
people of color activist communities in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Since its original colloquial use,
discussions about “mactivism” have moved online, with images circulated on the web, such as
“Anatomy of the MacKtivist,” which shows a hand-drawn picture of a man with cultural tattoos,
wearing a political t-shirt, and holding “deep thoughts in a so-called poem to inspire sympathy in his
next conquest” (Oakland Sister Circle Website, Accessed May 30, 2013,
http://oaklandsistercircle.org/2011/03/anatomy-of-the-macktivist/). Many activists argue that

60
mactivism is a behavior that has historically debilitated socio-political movements, such as in the New
Left and Black Panther organizing in the 1960s and 1970s.
46
Angela Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves” in Words of
Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: New
Press, 1995), 215.
47
This narrator’s preferred gender pronoun is “they.”
48
Cis-straight refers to those who identify as heterosexual and whose sex assigned at birth matches
their gender identity.
49
“Passing” in this context refers to a trans person being read by others as a non-trans person in their
identified gender, on the basis of appearance, mannerism and voice.
50
Arlie Hochschild, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure,” American Journal of
Sociology 85.3 (1979): 551-575; Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1983).
51
Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 194.
52
Neoliberalism refers to the set of policies and philosophies that advocate economic liberalization,
free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and the decreasing size of the public sector.
53
Elise Foley, “Deportations Continue As Congress Seeks Immigration Reform,” Huffington Post,
April 24, 2013, accessed May 28, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/deportations-
immigration-reform_n_3079851.html.
54
Kirk Semple, “Bill on College Financial Aid for Undocumented Students Seems Stalled in Albany,”
New York Times, May 24, 2013, accessed May 29, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/nyregion/outcome-of-immigration-bill-in-albany-
uncertain.html?_r=0
55
Silvia Yee, “Health and Health Care Disparities Among People with Disabilities,” Disability Rights
& Education Fund, August 2011, 1.
56
Yee, “Health and Health Care Disparities Among People with Disabilities,” 1.
57
The literal translation for kasama is “to be together.” It is used in “The Movement” to mean
comrade, while also infusing sentiments of family, friendship, and love. The revolutionaries who
fought the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1960s to 1980s commonly referred to one
another as kasama.
58
Catherine Rampell, “Who Says New York is Not Affordable?” New York Times, April 23, 2013,
accessed May 29, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/who-says-new-york-is-not-
affordable.html?pagewanted=all.
59
Kathi Weeks, The Problem With Work (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 2.
60
In this paragraph, work is defined as productive labor, outside of organizing. However, it raises an
interesting question about paid organizers, who like the industries and communities they organize, are
also overworked and underpaid.
61
Sudhir Venkatesh, “Feeling Too Down to Rise Up,” The New York Times, March 28, 2009, accessed
May 29, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/opinion/29venkatesh.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
62
New York City. American Community Survey (ACS).
63
Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy
(Cambridge: South End Press, 2000), 125.
64
Patricia Hill Collins, “It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation” in Hypatia
13:3 (Summer, 1998), 65.
65
Virgilio G. Enriquez, From Colonial to Liberation Psychology: The Philippine Experience (Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press, 1992).
66
Forced migration refers to the concept that third to first world migration is compelled by neoliberal
political and economic policy in both the exporting and importing countries. It challenges the idea that
all migration is completely voluntary, without the influence of socio-political-economic factors. In

61
fact, many immigrants consider themselves to be economic refugees who migrate for economic
survival that is impossible for them in their home countries (see Chang 2000).
67
Annemarie Vaccaro and Jasmine A. Mena, “It's Not Burnout, It's More: Queer College Activists of
Color and Mental Health,” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 15:4 (Oct-Dec 2011), 339-367.
68
Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” ed. Cherrie Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (New York:
Kitchen Table Press, 1983), 98-101.
69
Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” 90.
70
Lipsitz and Tomlinson, p. 14.
71
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 33, 11.
72
Sharon Doetsch-Kidder, Social Change and Intersectional Activism: The Spirit of Social Movement
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), 25-26.
73
The Combahee River Collective, “Combahee River Collective Statement: A Black Feminist
Statement” in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, ed. Zillah R. Eisenstein (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).
74
Trinity A. Ordona, “Asian Lesbians in San Francisco: Struggles to Create a Safe Space, 1970s-
1980s, ed. Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura, Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical
Anthology (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 322-323.
75
Rebecca E. Klatch, “The Formation of Feminist Consciousness Among Left- and Right-Wing
Activists,” Gender and Society 15:6 (December 2011), 791-815.
76
Klatch, “The Formation of Feminist Consciousness Among Left- and Right-Wing Activists,” 795-
797.
77
Prerna Lal’s article about undocuqueer activists supports this claim. Lal writes, “Queer
undocumented youth have been at the forefront of fighting for immigrant rights for more than a
decade. We learned to fight for our own spaces based on our experiences of exclusion from the country
where we grew up, from our communities, and from both the mainstream LGBT and immigration
reform movements.” [Prerna Lai, “How Queer Undocumented Youth Built the Immigrant Rights
Movement,” The Huffington Post, March 28, 2013, Accessed September 9, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/prerna-lal/how-queer-undocumented_b_2973670.html.]
78
Filipinos aren’t the only activists having this debate. See blog post, B. Loewe, “An End to Self
Care,” Organizing Upgrade: Engaging Left Organizers in Strategic Dialogue, October 15, 2012,
http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/blogs/b-loewe/item/729-end-to-self-care. A longtime
part of movements for police accountability, food justice, peace, and migrant work rights, Loewe
prompted a heated debate among many members of my organization via Facebook. One Fil-Am
female-identified queer kasama challenged the essay, citing Loewe’s ignorance of the needs of
disabled organizers and dismissive and sexist remarks that “we cannot knit our way to revolution.” A
Fil-Fil gender-non-conforming queer kasama who had organized in the Philippines sided with Loewe’s
overall assessment that “the movement is my self-care not my reason for needing it,” but wanted to
discuss ways to better link self- and community-care.
79
Sociological social movement scholars (e.g. Sandra Morgen, “Towards a Politics of ‘Feelings’:
Beyond the Dialectic of Thought and Action,” Women’s Studies 10 (1983): 203-231; Verta Taylor,
“Watching for Vibes: Bringing Emotions into the Study of Feminist Organizations,” Feminist
Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, ed. Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey
Martin (Philsadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 223-233; James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of
Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13
(1998): 397-424; Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, Francesca Polletta, eds. Passionate Politics:
Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Vaccaro and Mena,
“It’s Not Burnout, It’s More” also discuss emotions as a driving force for social movements. They
found that queer college activists of color think of self-care as allowing one “the same time, space, and
attention as [one gives] to activism and supporting others” and “carefully choosing verbal and
nonverbal communications” in potentially hostile interactions.

62
80
See Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984) and bell hooks, Sisters of the
Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery (Boston: South End, 1993), 5.
81
M. Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory,
and the Sacred (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 266.
82
Doetsch-Kidder, Social Change and Intersectional Activism, 92.
83
Doetsch-Kidder, Social Change and Intersectional Activism, 80-81.
84
Doetsch-Kidder, Social Change and Intersectional Activism, 81.
85
Marianne Williamson, Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual Citizens
(New York: Touchstone, 2000), 43.
86
Toni Cade Bambara, “Foreword,” of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of
Color, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga (New York: Kitchen Table, 1983), vi, viii.
87
Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift (New York: Penguin Group, 1989).
88
See Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins” and Collins, Black Feminist Thought.

63