Читать книгу The Movement for Reproductive Justice - Patricia Zavella - Страница 16

NLIRH has conceptualized culture shift work as including four efforts aimed at transforming dominant cultural narratives (see figure 1.1).²² Their representation resonates with the work of many reproductive justice advocates who work with other racial groups. Culture shift work includes cultivating women leaders and spokespersons who can articulate the reproductive justice approach to issues. Like NLIRH, other organizations, such as CLRJ, COLOR, Forward Together, ICAH, TWU, and YWU, have projects that train young women to become leaders and spokespersons for reproductive justice in relation to their respective communities. These young advocates become quite adept at articulating the specificities of a reproductive justice approach as well as local needs. Trainings that frame young women’s experiences may be offered over a school term or during summers. Daylong workshops with other organizations, such as Advocates for Youth, enhance youths’ skills in lobbying and storytelling and cultivate their identities as community leaders.

A second feature of culture shift work by reproductive justice organizations is that they conduct research, either reviews of scholarship or policies on key issues or primary research conducted through polls, surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Initially some activists in the movement resisted conducting research since they found that their own knowledge of women’s lived experience was invaluable. However, over time, activists acknowledged that their communities are diverse and that research helps identify, recruit, and retain participants in the movement as well as identify new issues, as former Ford Foundation program officer Lourdes Rivera says: “You have to find the sweet spot so we don’t lose people and we actually bring people along.”²³ Since many of the executive directors have advanced degrees, they are trained in the use of research methods and use their findings to refine their advocacy work. YWU, for example, conducted focus groups with mothers recovering from substance use. During the focus groups, women talked about their recovery, some for the first time, and their insights inform YWU’s efforts to improve access to prenatal care and treatment for pregnant women in recovery.²⁴ According to former YWU executive director Tannia Esparza, “That is what started this campaign of ours: to really look at substance use and cycles of addiction, which here in New Mexico, it is very likely you will run into a family who has a family member or they themselves have been living through cycles of addiction. Instead of looking at the root causes of why our communities are coping with cycles of generational trauma in this way, what people do is they criminalize people.”²⁵ The staff found that culture shift work was critical, according to Esparza: “In 2011 we passed a bill, Treatment Instead of Incarceration Bill. But with our very conservative governor it got vetoed. We decided, maybe policy isn’t what we need to do, but what we need to do is change the hearts and minds of our community to really understand that cycles of addiction are really rooted in the cycles of criminalization that our families have been living through for years, for generations.”²⁶ YWU’s reframing was based on focus groups with mothers in recovery who acknowledged that their shame sometimes hindered their access to health care. By contesting societal stigma against families in which mothers are in recovery, YWU contributes to their social recognition and eventually their access to health care.

Figure 1.1. Culture shift: influencing culture, by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (Used with permission by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health)

The third line of culture shift work is collaborating with artists and storytellers to create what NLIRH calls “culturally relevant and dynamic vehicles” for organizations’ core reproductive justice messages.²⁷ Reproductive justice organizations commission artwork—by painters, graphic artists, poets, playwrights, photographers, or musicians—to be featured in their campaigns, or they invite artists to represent community histories or learn how to become working artists themselves.²⁸ SisterFire, a network of organizations led by women of color, formed a tour by artists who worked to highlight the importance of artistic expression and met with several RJ organizations. Increasingly reproductive justice organizations are making sure to include artists in their budgets instead of relying on artists’ donated labor, and they are cultivating relationships with artists to help formulate their long-term strategies to shift dominant narratives.²⁹ Indeed, SisterSong initiated a program called Artists United for Reproductive Justice that aims to “raise new questions and conversations, inspire compassion, spark activism, and rally multitudes around a cause.”³⁰

As part of YWU’s work to promote birth and parenting justice, for example, the organization held a public education campaign and five-week art and education workshop, “We Are More than Our Addiction,” that included several posters, launched on Mother’s Day 2014.³¹ Esparza described the goals:

To really talk about the ways that women and families are struggling with cycles of addiction and incarceration but also to talk about the strengths and resiliency that our communities bring: the way we provide our own healing when the state denies it to us. And so we worked alongside three New Mexico–based digital artists.… We were really proud to bring in the artists into the organizing to translate the messages that women and families were talking about through art on the sides of buses with the desert and a pregnant person holding her baby and struggling to keep herself and her family alive.

Esparza made a point of highlighting YWU’s work with artists: “We really believe in resourcing our artists because the work that they do is not just to make us look pretty, but it is actually organizing work that needs to be valued. And so we were really proud to bring in the artists into the organizing to translate the messages that women and families were talking about.”³² In a presentation about YWU’s work, Micaela Cadena, former YWU policy director, proudly pointed out, “We do research for ourselves, by ourselves.”³³ Primary research is critical for tailoring campaigns by other reproductive justice organizations.

One of the reproductive justice movement’s most important collaborations has been with Favianna Rodríguez, whose well-known artwork was birthed in immigrant activism. Her classic pieces “Migration Is Beautiful” and “Undocumented Unafraid” circulate widely. On her blog she depicts the butterfly as a metaphor for migrants, and a film clip characterizes her as an activist. She asserts through her artwork that “being undocumented is not a crime” and that “immigration is central to women’s equality.” More pointedly, Rodríguez argues, “the artist must fight for justice and peace,” with an image that represents a woman of color.³⁴ Rodríguez’s images are used by reproductive justice organizations across the country, particularly her “Yo Te Apoyo” (I support you), used by NLIRH’s “soy poderosa and my voice matters” campaign (see plates 2 and 3). Indeed, Rodríguez’s “Yo Te Apoyo” image echoes NLIRH’s emphasis on racial diversity among Latinas in its prior logo, and she adds a woman (on the right) with gray hair that could be considered depicting an elderly woman.

Yo Te Apoyo is a campaign supporting women’s right to regulate their fertility, including the right to have an abortion. The campaign includes a short video that represents the findings from NLIRH’s survey on abortion. Then the video represents diverse people—women and men, whites and Latinas of different racial backgrounds—who state, “Yo te apoyo / I support you.”³⁵ In 2017, NLIRH amplified its Yo Te Apoyo campaign by using Rodríguez’s image in support of women’s reproductive decision-making related to abortion.

Like some other activist artists, Rodríguez allows reproductive justice activists to use her images with their own political messages, a remarkable donation of artistic license. She has advised reproductive justice organizations about how to incorporate art into their advocacy work using strategic long-term planning. And she has conducted workshops with reproductive justice participants about how to become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses related to art. She has taken on the restrictions on women’s access to reproductive health care directly with a poster titled “Stop the War on Women” that uses a reproductive justice framing of women’s rights.³⁶

Rodríguez also took part in a video that was part of the campaign, “1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime. These are Our Stories,” sponsored by Advocates for Youth. Rodríguez is one of eleven prominent women featured in the “2016 1 in 3 Abortion Speakout.” In the accompanying poster, she asserts, “There is No Shame in Having an Abortion. Come Out. Share Your Story. Break the Silence”; the poster circulates widely. On her website, Rodríguez explains that her abortion enabled her to accept her first prestigious art fellowship and that women should be open about enjoying sexuality and pursuing careers. Her “Sex Positivity” image, which she references during her abortion story, celebrates women’s bodies and encourages viewers to “liberate” their sexuality.³⁷

It is in Rodríguez’s “Slut Series” (which she sometimes calls her “pussy powers” posters), where she boldly confronts the patriarchal politics of control over women’s bodies, that we see her intersectional politics at work (see plate 4). Using depictions of women of color, she uses humor to critique the war on women with its derogatory language and threatens politicians that they will be voted out of office.

In an interview I conducted with Rodríguez about her “Slut Series” images, she pointed out, “When people look at it [Slut Series], they think, ‘Oh, that’s the missing link,’ and they laugh and feel so good. It doesn’t feel like a war [on women]. And that’s exactly what I am trying to do. I am trying to frame our power and give people a stake that they can attach themselves to, in order for them to continue their work.” The political messages in her art, including her Pussy Power Coloring Guides, critique the intrusiveness of politicians regulating women’s intimate reproductive health decisions and contest the implicit racial demonization of women of color by assumptions that they are promiscuous. Thus, art can help framing by touching the heart or by making fun of the powerful. Rodríguez tweeted an image of the “I’m a Slut …” poster when the Trump administration announced its new policy allowing employers to opt out of paying for birth control if they have a religious or moral objection. (The Center for Reproductive Rights immediately filed a lawsuit challenging this policy, and it was blocked by the federal district court.)³⁸

Finally, culture shift work by reproductive justice organizations includes cultivating relationships with traditional media and having a presence in social media in English and in other languages so as to reach broad and diverse audiences and to influence opinion leaders.³⁹ For example, in the midst of YWU’s successful campaign against a proposed municipal ban on abortion, the organization formed a coalition that included faith-based activists and a range of others.⁴⁰ The group used photographs and memes on social media as well as radio ads from key leaders such as Dolores Huerta in its outreach efforts to the large numbers of Latinx voters. YWU’s former executive director Tannia Esparza helped produce ads in Spanish for broadcast media, placing them on radio stations whose styles ranged from rock to country to norteño music, and she made presentations in Spanish on Univisión television news.⁴¹ Another organization, SisterSong, started an RJ in the Media program that is working to bring the term “reproductive justice” “into its rightful place as a household term.”⁴² As we shall see in the cases to follow, multidimensional culture shift work entails creativity as well as long-term strategic planning.