Introduction to Special Issue of Journal of Community Practice

This special issue of the journal is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Felix G. Rivera, the co-author and co-editor (with Dr. John Erlich) of a groundbreaking book, Community Organizing in a Diverse Society (Rivera & Erlich 1997) published 2 decades ago. Written from a social change perspective, each chapter focused on the issues confronted by a specific community of identity (e.g., African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, Filipino Americans, women of color), and discussed how the application of relevant theories, critical historical and cultural consciousness, and innovative community practice methods could address these issues effectively. The content and title of the book’s provocative opening chapter (“A time of fear, a time of hope”) are both particularly timely today.

The issue’s articles analyzed how social policies (such as welfare reform), social service systems (such as child welfare), and social issues (such as the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic) affected communities of color, women, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) population differently. Its prescient assessment of the treatment of immigrants and refugees by US society is just as relevant today, as is its assessment of the ongoing effects of institutional racism on the moral, ethical, and practical dilemmas inherent in organizing with diverse populations. As the title of this special issue indicates (“Community Practice in an Increasingly Diverse Society”), the articles focus on the relevance of the themes Rivera and Erlich identified twenty years ago for contemporary community practice in our increasingly diverse and contentious environment.

Felix Rivera, who died in November 2014 at the age of 75, was a true renaissance individual. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Spanish Harlem in New York City, he became the first member of his family to attend college after a stint in the US Navy. He went on to receive his MSW and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley.

For 33 years, Felix was an outstanding professor in the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University (SFSU). He applied his creative and wide-ranging intellect, irreverent humor, and lifelong commitment to social justice to his teaching, scholarship, and community work. He was a founding member of the Institute for Multicultural Research and Social Work Practice at SFSU, served on the editorial boards of numerous major journals, and was active in the civil rights movement and labor organizing with the United Farm Workers.

Felix was also an award-winning photographer and an accomplished practitioner of bonsai and suiseki, the Japanese art of miniature stones. He published a book on the latter and gained an international reputation for his expertise in this field. In addition to these interests, Felix was also a highly skilled rock climber, diver, and archer, and a loving and devoted family man. The diversity of the issues he addressed in all aspects of his work is another reflection of the diversity, complexity, and richness of his life.

Although many of the issues and challenges Rivera and Erlich identified 2 decades ago remain salient, the articles in this special issue also reflect the changes that have occurred in US society and the field of community practice since their book’s publication. Diversity is now viewed as a more complicated phenomenon—a consequence of increased advocacy by marginalized and excluded populations, the impact of social media, recognition of the persistence of longstanding issues, and the influence of concepts such as intersectionality. Community-based participatory research (CBPAR) methods have become more developed and accepted as a form of research and practice. The articles we selected for this special issue reflect these and other contemporary trends.

One of these trends is increased awareness of how different perspectives of social justice shape the context of community practice among social service providers. One way to characterize these differences is through the contrast between the emic (internal) and etic (external) standpoints on community work. In the journal’s lead article, Weng and Clark analyze case studies to identify how community workers engage the emic and etic perspectives in their practice. Their findings regarding methods for fostering community understanding, developing culturally appropriate services, and addressing social injustice provide insights for contemporary community practice, particularly in relation to the development and provision of more culturally appropriate services.

Recent and emerging social movements, such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy, build upon the models that have existed since the 1960s, but also reflect new political and cultural realities. If community practice is to continue to develop as a field that is responsive to contemporary conditions, practitioners must find ways to incorporate an analysis of these conditions and new perspectives into their work. In their article, “Protesting Black inequality,” Jones-Eversly, Adedoyin, Robinson, and Moore apply relative deprivation theory to build links between the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements. Their commentary expands our theoretical and knowledge base, while addressing the potential emotional costs of ongoing justice work.

One response to our aging society has been the development of more aging in place programs and initiatives; these focus on supporting older people to remain active and integrated in their communities based on the premise that social integration is associated with improved outcomes for older people. The article by Davitt, Greenfield, Lehning, and Scharlach present their research on differences in the ability of people of color to benefit from different forms of aging in place programs. Their findings, which reflect how location and staff can have a role in reducing racial disparities, are important for programs promoting social integration and community building.

The public health field has taken a leading role in developing community-based health advocacy and education programs that engage peer helpers. The article “Advocates for community health and social justice” by Matthew, Williams, Voravudhi, Smithwick, Jennings, and Machado-Escudero reports on the impact of a program utilizing community health workers within emerging Latinx communities in the southern United States. It demonstrates the potential power of this peer model in broader social work settings and updates our understanding of a model that has a long history in these communities.

Several articles demonstrate how the emergence of CBPAR can be a tool to enhance practice efficacy in diverse communities. In the article, “We always said: And then came the water…,” authors Duntley-Matos, Arteaga, Garcia, Arellano, Garza, and Ortega share work from their community-based participatory action research with the Latinx community in Flint, MI affected by the lead-tainted water crisis. Their research, which used methods based on engaged ethnography, demonstrates how CBPAR can engage participants across different identities, communities, and geographic areas to address a community crisis. It is also an example of how community practice can contribute to empowerment on multiple levels.

During the past 2 decades, the concept of safe space has emerged as a significant aspect of multicultural and antiracist work in the 21st century. In “Feelings, safe space and LGBTQ of color community arts organizing,” Chin uses CBPAR method to interrogate how safe space can be a way to protect and buffer communities from oppression, but can also create limits on the community’s ability to achieve other goals. Recognizing this complex dynamic underscores the importance of deploying multiple strategies and tactics in community practice, particularly in work with culturally marginalized populations.

Estrella and Kelly also use CBPAR methods to investigate the meanings of place attachment among Puerto Rican youth living in an urban ethnic enclave. Their article, “Exploring the meanings of place attachment among civically engaged Puerto Rican youth,” contributes to our knowledge of youth civic engagement and how young people’s views of their communities can contribute to their work. Their findings and their discussion of the use of photo-voice methods assess the implications of these approaches for programs that engage youth in community work.

During the past 2 decades, the concept of intersectionality has become more widely accepted in the field of community practice. In response to this trend, the article by Mizrahi and Greenawalt, “Transcending gender: Feminism in intersectional organizing,” assesses the impact of this concept on the application of feminist principles to the organizing process. The authors collected data from several dozen male and female organizers in the New York City area. They found that although organizers incorporated feminist principles like the importance of relationship building into their work, they often did not identify these principles as feminist. They also discovered that women of color were more likely to incorporate an awareness of the racial dimensions of practice into their work. Their findings have implications for the resolution of the tensions between recognizing the unique circumstances of people with different identities, the risks involved in essentializing these populations, and the value of using an intersectional perspective in community practice.

Successful refugee resettlement can be influenced by the degree to which new residents are integrated into a new community. In the article, “Diversity among Myanmar women refugees in Dallas, Texas and its implications for the early stages of a community-based developmental research project,” Corbett and Moxley consider how ethnic diversity affected the development of support systems for female Myanmar refugees in Dallas. This CBPAR project engaged the refugee community in a research project in which they were involved in the design, development, and governance of the project. Their results provide significant insights for the use of CBPAR in designing and planning resettlement support programs.

The photo-voice method was also used by Owens, Yerby, Lucky and Higgenbotham to engage rural children in research to identify their interest in different types of physical activity. In their article, “Using photo-voice to identify the physical activity practices of children residing in Alabama’s Black Belt region”, the authors used the data collected to develop a community-based health education program to increase children’s physical activity. This article provides valuable perspectives on the use of photo-voice methods as a way to increase the voices of community members rarely involved directly in program development.

In “Integrating principles of positive minority development within peer to peer health promotion to empower the immigrant community,” Ferrera shares results from a mixed-methods CBPAR study that focused on exploring the experiences of immigrant youth who participated in a health promotion program. The use of narrative analysis identified how participants’ growing awareness of social inequality and their exploration of the possible paths to activism occurred in addition to their acquisition of increased knowledge regarding health. The findings demonstrate the potential power of community based education.

Finally, since the publication of Rivera and Erlich’s book, the meaning of diversity in community practice has expanded considerably to include the challenges created by homophobia and trans-phobia. The article by Young, Rapisarda, Stewart, and Pollio in the journal’s “Notes from the Field” section, highlights current work in these areas through a discussion of the impact of LGBTQ organizing on the formation of safe schools coalitions in culturally conservative communities in the urban South. Through semistructured interviews with nine coalition leaders, the authors identified five major issues that affect practice in this area. These included (a) how the coalition emerged and established its goals, (b) barriers and challenges to the formation of effective coalitions, (c) the need to respond to the Southern cultural context, (d) the role played by the coalition’s relationships with national organizations, and (e) the ability of the coalition to develop innovative strategies and tactics. The findings have implications for social change efforts in under-resourced and often hostile environments that are often bypassed in broader organizing campaigns.

We received 19 submissions to this special issue, and it was challenging to make our final selection of articles. We appreciate the efforts of the reviewers of this special issue for their contributions to this project. “It takes a village” and we believe that with this collective effort we have been able to produce a special issue that contributes new insights to our increasing complex field.

In closing, we thank the following reviewers, who contributed to the reviews for Volume 25, including the work of reading manuscript revisions. We so appreciate your contributions to JCP and community scholarship.

Gino Aisenberg​, Adriana Aldana, Ann Alvarez, Ben Anderson-Nathe, David Androff, Darlyne Bailey, Jon Binnie, Devon Brooks, Fred Brooks, Katherine Cahn, Ram Cnaan, Erin Comartin, Melvin Delgado, Roxanna Duntley-Matos, Urmitapa Dutta, Elizabeth Essex, Debra Fetherman, Robert Fischer, Sondra Fogel, Dina Garcia, Megan E. Gilster, Jeremy Goldbach, Karen Gray, Amy Hammock, Donna Hardina, Jacklyn Hawkins, Lynn Holley, Jan Ivery, Kim Jaffee, Michele A. Kelley, Isok Kim, Maureen C. McHugh, Anne Marie McLaughlin, Megan Meyer, David Moxley, Michael O’Brien, Mary L. Ohmer, Helo Oidjarv, Virginia Paloma, Ronald Pitner, Linda Plitt Donaldson, Irene Queiro-Tajalli, Salome Raheim, Ed Scanlon, Richard Smith, Tracy Soska, Michael Spencer, Veronica Terriquez, Alma Trinidad, Francisco Villarruel, Dawn Witherspoon, Michael Woodford, and Yunxia Zhu.

We also add a final thank you to everyone who makes our journal possible, including our wonderful managing editor, Ana Santiago-SanRoman, and the production team at Taylor and Francis.