Читать книгу The Movement for Reproductive Justice - Patricia Zavella - Страница 13

I situate my work in the tradition of feminist activist research, in which we commit to the people with whom we work and engage with them on behalf of shared political goals.¹⁵³ Further, I do not presume that I am the sole bearer of knowledge generated through research. I agree with the sociologist Manisha Desai that “research is an ethical and epistemological stance where the scholar is one of many producers of social change oriented knowledge.”¹⁵⁴ Given my research questions and my interest in how multiple organizations collaborate and negotiate the tensions around difference and similarity, I conducted participant observation in multiple sites. Instead of seeing the reproductive justice movement as somehow connected through some global force as suggested by the term “multi-sited ethnography,”¹⁵⁵ I came to see how organizations advocate for reproductive justice in light of shifting politics at local, regional, national, and transnational levels and how activists build skills related to collaboration. Eveline Shen captured this evolution nicely: “When I first came in the movement, a lot of the work that reproductive justice groups were doing was very, very local. Over time, however, reproductive justice organizations constructed an infrastructure that strategically incorporated innovative ways to collaborate with one another across multiple scales.” While reproductive justice activists in different parts of the country share similar visions and practices and frequently collaborate on particular campaigns, they also craft local praxis. I do not want to leave the impression that there is a homogeneous reproductive justice worldview. These activists are working in states with very different policies, including those related to health-care access or immigrant rights, and with particular racial demographics and regional cultures. Mindful of the importance of these differences, at a reproductive justice conference, Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Khan-Cullors reminded us, “We have to ground down locally.”¹⁵⁶ Given the large number of reproductive justice organizations, it would not be possible to do justice to all of their processes of collaboration. Therefore, this book focuses on particular organizations’ campaigns that illustrate their grassroots organizing, policy advocacy, and culture shift work that are part of the reproductive justice movement yet express local work.

I have had ongoing negotiations with reproductive justice organizations that set the terms for my participation in their work. In most instances, executive directors were remarkably generous and allowed me to conduct participant observation, including with their youth projects, and welcomed me into the fold. I agree with the anthropologist Shannon Speed that the social dynamics of the research process should be open to an ongoing dialogue with many interlocutors.¹⁵⁷ Such transparency respects the multiple perspectives among the people with whom we work and leads to multilayered knowledge, which encourages ethnographers to maintain some humility and self-reflexivity.¹⁵⁸

Over time as reproductive justice advocates came to know and trust me, I became integrated into a dynamic system of knowledge production as new issues came up. The research for this project was processual—“a spiraling cumulative progression”¹⁵⁹—that covered multiple sites and incorporated several techniques: My research, conducted in 2013–18, spanned the second administration of President Obama and the beginning of the Trump administration. During this time, I did participant observation at sixty-seven workshops, conferences, training institutes, lobbying efforts, political events, and webinars organized by reproductive justice organizations. I also conducted sixty-eight interviews with staff working at thirteen reproductive justice organizations, all but two face-to-face, and several more than once, as well as with community members who participated in reproductive justice organizations. I sent transcripts of the interviews to most of the staff I interviewed and gave them the opportunity to elaborate or refine their thoughts or to delete sensitive material.¹⁶⁰ I also interviewed sixteen allies: activists or advocates in social justice organizations that support people working on reproductive justice, funders of reproductive justice organizations, or people working in programs that provide reproductive health education. I did these latter interviews early in the research process as a means of identifying what was unique about the reproductive justice approach and to gauge how other organizations work with youth. In addition, I conducted twelve focus groups with twenty-three staff members and forty-one participants in the reproductive justice movement. Virtually all of the reproductive justice organizations with which I conducted staff interviews are led by women of color, as are the participants in these organizations’ youth projects. In some instances, these categories overlap. For example, all the staff in YWU are under thirty-five years old and the organization recruits young women participants; several others have mostly young women on their staff. I also had numerous informal conversations with reproductive justice activists at events, over coffee or meals, or on the phone, where I received updates and clarifications about their ongoing activities, and several individuals shared internal documents with me. Throughout my research, I was open about my engaged participation rather than passive observation.

In line with the growing scholarship on the Internet as a key site for ethnographic research,¹⁶¹ I also examined reproductive justice organizations’ strategic use of websites and social media (mainly Facebook and Twitter) to advertise events or disseminate their framing of issues.¹⁶² I “liked” or “followed” as many reproductive justice organizations as I could, and I became a member of two organizations, Black Women for Wellness and SisterSong. Through these means I received information about their campaigns pretty much on a daily basis. I admit at times I felt overwhelmed by the frequent calls for political action, especially after Trump was elected president.

As I came to see, the executive directors and much of their staff in reproductive justice organizations are quite accomplished. Most have completed college, and many have advanced degrees—master’s degrees, law degrees, or doctorates—in such fields as ethnic studies, film, feminist studies, justice studies, Latin American studies, public health, and sociology.¹⁶³ Thus, they are knowledgeable about intersectionality theory and other analytic approaches to social justice. Many individual activists have received accolades for their work in the nonprofit world.¹⁶⁴ Philanthropedia has recognized three organizations—Forward Together, National Network of Abortion Funds, and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health—for their leadership in reproductive justice organizing and the Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice honored CLRJ for their activism related to repealing caps on social welfare.¹⁶⁵ Thus, the leadership of the movement for reproductive justice has a great deal of experience moving between the worlds of academia, activism, and policy making. I often found the interviews with staff to be analytically nuanced and revelatory. Simultaneously, these leaders had firsthand understanding of the skills needed to work with their communities and were particularly sensitive to language use and the importance of engaging community members in ways they felt comfortable.

My own positionality related to power and privilege brought up some challenges while I conducted the research. Some of these advocates were familiar with my scholarship and voiced their appreciation for my contributions. Others, however, either were apprehensive about having a researcher in close contact or were hesitant to allow my participation in private organizational projects. As we discussed my possible involvement in a new network of organizations focusing on reproductive justice, for example, one staff member voiced every ethnographer’s nightmare: “Just the gravitas of having you sitting in the room gives me pause,” she said and declined my request. Another organization insisted on vetting my focus-group guide and consent form before I was invited to work with its members. In a few other instances, with my ability to travel and talk with staff from multiple organizations, I observed tensions over collaboration. For example, one organization thought about moving into a state where there were already several reproductive justice organizations, and in another instance a RJ leader publicly questioned why there was no work being done along the US-Mexico border when a sister organization had been working there for years. Also, I was privy to gossip about activists or organizations that are challenging to work with and to leaders’ struggles with stress and burnout associated with activism as well as conflict with mainstream organizations or leaders. I always indicated that I would honor the need to keep organizational processes confidential if need be. Thus, in instances of delicate relationships between organizations over territory, acknowledgment of leadership in campaigns, political conflict, or personality differences, I remained neutral. I reminded interviewees that I would not write about confidential issues and would share my writing with them if they desired, and several did give me feedback on my work in progress.

I occasionally collaborated with reproductive justice organizations and bonded with the staff and, after attending multiple events by one organization, was regarded “like family.” My collaboration included codesigning and helping to administer an evaluation form for a daylong workshop by CLRJ. Also, I was asked to sign the “Open Letter to Planned Parenthood,” in which reproductive justice organizations critiqued the silencing of women of color activism, which I did. I organized a twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration and fundraiser at my house for Forward Together. I gave copies of my field notes and photographs to staff at ICAH, COLOR, and CLRJ about specific activities when the organizations indicated that these materials would be helpful. I made modest donations to several reproductive justice organizations during fundraising campaigns or moments of crisis. I organized a keynote plenary panel, “The Movement for Reproductive Justice in the Southwest,” that included representatives from four reproductive justice organizations for a conference sponsored by Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (Activists Women in Letters and Social Change) in 2015 and another panel in 2018. With the support of COLOR executive director Cristina Aguilar, I designed and administered two focus groups as part of the organization’s successful campaign against a constitutional amendment on personhood in Colorado. Aguilar and I later presented on a scholarly panel together about COLOR’s work.¹⁶⁶ After organization leaders had read my work about their organizations, I was invited to join the boards of directors of CLRJ and ICAH and to make a presentation on civic engagement at the Leadership Development Institute in South Texas by the Latina Advocacy Network (LAN), sponsored by NLIRH. Over the course of this work I have formed warm friendships with some of these activists, who were generous with their time and insights (and even organizational swag).

All of these collaborations were part of my feminist praxis, and I provided feedback after the organizations’ events and shared whatever critiques I had with them. Most of my feedback was about fine-tuning their work since for the most part I found myself with few substantive criticisms.