Counter-Public Enclaves and Understanding the Function of Rhetoric in Social Movement Coalition-Building

Abstract

Social movement scholarship has focused primarily on public rhetoric and single-issue movements. This focus has led to limited understanding of the function of “protected enclaves” within movement-building, at the same time that we know little about coalition-building. This article fills this gap in the literature by examining how activists in coalition interpret external rhetoric within protected enclaves. Using data collected during a field research project, this essay shows how rhetoric functions to facilitate coalition-building between a queer rights and a migrant rights organization by demonstrating how activists interpret rhetoric from 3 primary sources: media, legislation and policy, and law enforcement.

Keywords:

• Coalitional Subjectivities
• Enclaves
• Immigration
• Queer
• Rhetoric of Social Movement

New social movement and counter-public rhetoric scholars demonstrate a commitment to understanding how everyday people enact public resistance on issues such as globalization, environmental degradation, and oppressive laws (e.g., Asen & Brouwer, 2001; Blitefield, 2006; Brouwer, 1998; Foust, 2006; Mitchell, 2004; Palczewski, 2001; Pezzullo, 2001, 2003). Historically, social movement and protest scholars have explored a host of movements ranging from Black nationalism, gay liberation, feminism, and Chicano rights to abortion and conservative movements (e.g., Campbell, 1973; Darsey, 1991; Hammerback & Jensen, 1980; Jensen & Hammerback, 1980; Rosenwasser, 1972; Scott, 1968; Slagle, 1995; C. A. Smith, 1984; Stewart, 1997, 1999). Social movement and counter-public scholarship continues to center on public rhetorical actions, whether oratorical, material, visual, or performative and embodied. The emphasis on public action has been central to social movement scholarship since its inception (Griffin, 1952). As Cathcart (1972) suggested, what is essentially rhetorical in social movements are the moments of “dialectical enjoinment” or “reciprocity” between the movement and the establishment being challenged (p. 87). This emphasis on dialectical enjoinment solidifies that only what occurs in a public and confrontational fashion is rhetorical, and it also limits exploring additional rhetoric that one might find within social movement activity. Stewart (1991) noted this deficiency in social movement studies when he quipped, “we know a great deal about the rhetoric of the streets when movements are at the heights of their power and visibility and are publicly challenging and confronting established institutions … ” (p. 68). Stewart (1991) went on to point out that this focus provides only a partial picture of social movement activity, which is why he further argues that looking at “internal rhetoric” in addition to public rhetoric provides fruitful information about understanding the interworkings of movement. ¹

Despite some calls to the contrary (e.g., Gray, 2009), social movement and counter-public scholarship also concentrates on specific kinds of public action, especially those of single-issue movements (Conrad, 1981; Darsey, 1991; Griffin, 1952, 1964; C. A. Smith, 1984; Windt, 1972). If, however, as McGee (1975) argued, “ … the analysis of rhetorical documents should not turn inward to an appreciation of persuasive, manipulative techniques, but outward to functions of rhetoric” (p. 248), moving beyond single issues toward coalitional politics seems especially prudent. As anyone who has spent time working in or analyzing movements can attest, a significant function of rhetoric within contexts of movement activity is to generate coalitions. Yet, social movement scholars have been essentially silent on coalition-building (exceptions include Bennett, 2006; Jackson & Miller, 2009).

One explanation for the neglect of coalition-building in social movement studies is that much coalition-building occurs “behind the scenes” in places that, in referring to counter-public practice, Mansbridge (1996) called “protected enclaves,” where groups can explore ideas and arguments in encouraging environments. In describing the “dual character” of counter-publics, Fraser (1992) noted they are both “spaces of withdrawal and regroupment” and “bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics” (p. 124). Rhetorical scholarship has been relatively limited in examining these “spaces of withdrawal,” or enclaves. Although in counter-public theory, enclaves and spaces of withdrawal typically refer to groups who withdraw because they are suffering from especially harsh treatment in public (Mansbridge, 1996; Squires, 2002), I maintain that such spaces are always a necessary part of movement activity regardless of the level of oppression or crisis that groups face.

Coalition-building often involves more “behind the scenes” work than public rhetorical displays (see Albrecht & Brewer, 1990; Anzaldúa, 1990; Johnson Reagon, 1983). When working to understand coalition-building, centering enclaves as a site of rhetorical investigation proves crucial. For activists who engage in coalition-building on behalf of multiple or broad social justice and human rights causes, rhetoric functions in two primary ways within enclaves. First, activists interpret external rhetorical messages that are created about them, the constituencies they represent, or both. In the case of coalition-building, these meaning-making processes serve as the rationale to build bridges with allies. Second, activists use enclaves as the sites to invent rhetorical strategies to publicly challenge oppressive rhetoric or to create new imaginaries for the groups and issues they represent and desire to bring into coalition. It is the former function I discuss here.

In this article, I show how rhetoric functions to facilitate coalition-building between a queer rights and a migrant rights organization by demonstrating how activists interpret rhetoric that emerges from three primary sources: media, legislation and policy, and law enforcement. I define rhetoric both as the written and spoken messages of media reports or policy, and I also understand rhetoric to refer to the messages embedded in seemingly non-rhetorical actions of, for example, law enforcement. Although such messages may not have a persuasive intent, as I show, activists often interpret negative persuasive effects for queer and migrant communities. Using data collected during a field research project, I show how activists take up such rhetoric to create complex rationales for this coalition.

Coalition-building is also a rich site to unpack another founding assumption of rhetorical scholarship on social movements pertaining to the “ego function” in both self- and other-directed movements (Gregg, 1971; Stewart, 1999). Whereas both Gregg and Stewart examined how rhetoric in movements creates and sustains identity, the study of coalitions pushes past a preoccupation with either singular issues or identities toward what rhetoric scholar, Carrillo Rowe (2008), labeled “coalitional subjectivity” (p. 10). The adoption of a coalitional subjectivity moves away from seeing one's self in singular terms or from seeing politics in terms of single issues toward a complicated intersectional political approach that refuses to view politics and identity as anything other than always and already coalitional.

The study of coalitions, then, has much to offer toward answering perennial questions for social movement scholars, such as what is rhetorical in social movements (Cathcart, 1978; Scott, 1973; R. R. Smith & Windes, 1975; Stewart, 1980; Zarefsky, 1980) and what counts as social movement (Cathcart, 1972, 1980; Hahn & Gonchar, 1971; Lucas, 1980; McGee, 1975, 1980; Sillars, 1980)—questions I take up in the conclusion.

Research Methods and Queer and Migrant Politics in Southern Arizona

Following a robust body of performance studies scholarship that bridges textual and field approaches, Pezzullo (2001, 2003) utilized participant observation to examine the rhetorical dimensions of activists' cultural performances. Locating herself in the theoretical tradition of public and counter-public sphere theory, Pezzullo (2003) maintained the following: “Thus far, most public sphere studies have involved textual analysis of secondary sources such as newspapers, magazines, congressional transcripts, and websites to capture the arguments and implications of various public spheres” (p. 350). Because activists' cultural performances are not yet recorded, they cannot be analyzed through textual rhetorical methods, and yet, they offer a rich site for understanding the functions and uses of rhetoric. As Conquergood (1998) argued, scholars too regularly center textuality when very often cultural meanings are created orally and not via text. The same can be said for analyzing the functions of rhetoric within protected enclaves because textual methods are of little use in garnering understanding when most of the rhetorical work is oral and instantaneous. Thus, I follow Pezzullo's (2001, 2003) lead in utilizing field methods to learn about rhetoric.

For one year (June 2006–June 2007), I conducted field research with Wingspan—the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community center in Tucson, Arizona—and Coalición de Derechos Humanos (CDH)—a Tucson-based, grassroots, migrant rights, and anti-border militarization organization. For years, Wingspan and CDH have joined in coalition to confront what they have grown to understand as the related ways in which queers and migrants ² get similarly demonized and scapegoated in the purportedly “objective” rhetoric emerging from sources such as media, legislation, and law enforcement. Throughout the past several years, at different times, migrants and queers have appeared in the public sphere as the favored subjects of scapegoating, dehumanization, and criminalization. Sometimes this targeting takes shape in legislation or ballot measures, sometimes via sensational media reports, and other times through the actions of law enforcement officials. Because both queers and migrants (always figured as separate) are favorite targets, Wingspan and CDH work together to confront these issues and offer each other helping hands when needed. Because the coalition only engages in direct acts of protest when provoked, they have produced very little public rhetoric. Yet, their complicated justifications for the necessity of engaging in coalition work provide important insight into how external rhetoric created about the two groups functions to create and sustain collective action. I sought data that centered activists' thoughts and ideas about what compels them to engage in social protest as a coalition.

CDH and Wingspan's informal coalition intensified in the early 2000s because of an increase in anti-migrant sentiment and legislation in Arizona. This anti-migrant sentiment also led to a strong recognition of some of the related ways that media reports, legislation and law enforcement represent and treat queers and migrants. Between 2004 and 2006, the rights of both queers and migrants were singled out (although not equally) through various kinds of legislation and ballot measures. Such situations prompted Wingspan and CDH to confront oppression more directly by refusing a divided approach to political activism. Through spending time listening to activists' justifications and thought processes about this coalition work, and by being involved in their enclaves, I began to understand how activists have interpreted and made use of external rhetoric about them. In the next section I explain how, in the context of their enclaves, CDH and Wingspan activists confront, and perhaps create, connections between their two communities in ways that eventually compel social movement. I accessed such data through 180 hr of extensive participant observation as an activist and liaison between the two groups, where I took detailed fieldnotes on what I participated in and observed. After seven months of fieldwork, I conducted fourteen structured interviews with key activists to ask about the themes that I saw emerging from my data. Specifically, I entered the field with questions about why a queer rights and a migrant rights organization would engage in coalition-building, and I began to witness that much of activists' rationale pertained to the meaning they made from external messages received. I continued to engage in fieldwork to focus on these themes by paying specific attention to conversations that activists had when confronted with exclusionary rhetorical messages from external sources that elicited response in the Tucson public, as these seemed to be most salient to activists.

Interpreting Rhetoric and Building Connections

I encountered Wingspan and CDH in 2006 at a one-day conference—“Sexuality and Homeland (In)Securities”—at the University of Arizona. During a brief talk, two leaders of the organizations, Kat, CDH's Coordinating Organizer, and Cathy, Wingspan's Director of Programs until Fall 2007, ³ unpacked some of the relations they see in the treatment of queers and the treatment of migrants. Specifically, they offered a brief analysis of the similarities between the representations of migrants and queers in the campaigns surrounding two Arizona ballot referenda. First, they discussed the 2004 voter-approved ballot initiative, Proposition 200, the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, also known as “Protect Arizona Now” (PAN). PAN requires all Arizonans to provide proof that they are U.S. citizens to receive certain public benefits or to vote (Busha & Rodriguez, 2005). Premised on California's 1994 Proposition 187, PAN's Web site explains that proponents designed this initiative to protect Arizonans from “illegal aliens” who “invade” Arizona and allegedly take taxpayer benefits such as health care, welfare, and education without contributing into the system (PAN, 2004).

Next, Kat and Cathy explored the (then proposed) 2006 voter-defeated initiative (eventually labeled Proposition 107), “Protect Marriage Arizona” (PMA), which was designed to create a constitutional amendment that would ban not only same-sex marriage, but civil unions and virtually all domestic partner benefits at all levels in the state of Arizona (Busha & Rodriguez, 2005). ⁴ In their brief analysis, they illustrated the similarities between the two measures. For example, both PAN and PMA were designed to make access to health care more difficult for many people. PAN requires people to prove their U.S. citizenship to receive public health care. Latino/a advocacy groups suggest that only those who are racially or linguistically suspect—primarily those who are or appear to be Latino/a—are asked to prove that they are U.S. citizens (Benson & Sherwood, 2006, p. B1). PMA would have ensured that only married, heterosexual couples were allowed to have partner benefits if they were state employees, and it would have prevented unmarried partners from having hospital visitation rights. In addition, Wingspan and CDH argued that making PAN law, and putting PMA up for a vote, “send[s] tacit state-sanctioned signals that it is acceptable to harass undocumented immigrants, people of color and/or LGBT people” (Busha, 2006).

This talk, which introduced me to these two organizations, illustrated the rhetorical constructions of migrants and queers as scapegoats for societal ills, deviants who do not deserve protections, and lawbreakers who endanger the public. The talk revealed how these images constitute some of the main ways that activists understand migrants and queers to be constructed as subjects in the state of Arizona. For many activists, making these connections from the plethora of rhetoric from sources such as media reports, legislation and policy, and law enforcement that targets the two communities provides the rationale and justification for CDH and Wingspan's coalition. Wingspan and CDH have published a small number of public texts that outline their positions, but the connections activists make between the representations of migrants and queers in Southern Arizona are more apparent through accessing their enclaves by spending time with activists in a variety of contexts such as meetings, rallies, social gatherings, and also in interviews. I now provide a discussion of the three primary sources of rhetoric about queers and migrants that activists responded to: media, legislation and policy, and law enforcement.

Media

As with many social movements (Gray, 2009), the importance of the media for both CDH and Wingspan cannot be overstated. Throughout my research, issues pertaining to media arose more than almost any other issue. Both Wingspan and CDH approach media similarly: they aggressively monitor local media outlets' reporting and slant on migrant and queer issues; and they each utilize media, both local and national outlets, as well as their own organizational outlets to promote their messages. I focus on the former function here to suggest connections between the ways that mediated rhetoric can construct migrants and queers.

Some disagreement persists within both Wingspan and CDH about the quality of the media's rhetoric relating to queer and migrant issues. For instance, one long-time CDH activist, Amelia (a pseudonym), noted that sometimes the media is adequate in coverage of migrant issues (Amelia, interview, April 7, 2007). This perspective contrasts others' thoughts. Kat, for example, explained that one of the problems with the media is that they always assume issues are black and white, and they operate under the façade of fair and balanced reporting. Kat offered the following:

One of my biggest complaints of them like you know, say April 10th last year [2006], 18,000 people at a march [for immigrant rights in Tucson] and there were about 10 or 12 maybe, I don't even think there were that—maybe 6–10 protestors maybe in the middle of that, and we were given equal time in the media. And you know, they said, “well, we have to be fair and unbiased,” and I challenged them and said do you really think 18,000 to 10 is fair, is fairly balancing it? (Interview, May 10, 2007)

Here, Kat demonstrated how the media's coverage of the march reinforces two troubling ideas. One is that their reporting suggests that the protestors at the march (many of whom are not supported by other more moderate anti-immigration groups because of their radical stances) are an appropriate counter-point to those who marched and organized the march. This positions immigrants and their supporters as fringe groups on the left and the protestors as fringe groups on the right, thereby reducing the political significance of the marches. The other is that this kind of reporting bolsters existing anti-immigrant sentiment by suggesting that as many who support migrants also oppose them.

Many participants, such as Lupe, one of the co-presidents of CDH, suggested that the media work this way because they simply reinforce state and mainstream positions (Lupe, interview, March 27, 2007). Lupe maintained that media do not question or offer analysis, they simply report, and that reporting perpetuates troubling perceptions of migrants and migrant issues. Alexis, a CDH activist who also worked for the Pima County public defender's office, noted that the Border Patrol, for example, has an aggressive media department; and, over the last ten years, they shifted from issuing weekly press releases to releasing press statements almost daily “on the number of people they've arrested, the number of drugs they've seized, the number of smugglers they've charged” (interview, March 24, 2007). Local media regularly utilize the Border Patrol statistics and analyses and report on them as if they are unbiased truth. Thus, CDH spends a lot of time challenging the way that media report on migrant issues and migrant lives.

Wingspan also invests much energy into monitoring the media. Kent, Wingspan's Executive Director until Spring 2007, explained that having Wingspan in Tucson has greatly impacted the kind of reporting the media do in relation to queer issues because when they want a quotation, they immediately call someone at Wingspan (interview, March 27, 2007). This has led to what Kent perceived as a shift in media coverage for the better. Others generally shared Kent's assessment. Nevertheless, one of the biggest scandals in Spring 2007 pertained to media coverage. Cathy explained:

So there's the recent Channel 9 sex in the park, sex-posé, and they do it every year when it's rating time. And you know, suddenly it was painting this picture of men, you know gay men go to parks and have sex behind bushes where little kids are playing, and it's hard to believe that that's still even acceptable as a news story. And so I think both groups [queers and migrants] very easily and quickly can be exploited during sweeps week by the media. You know I remember a different TV station, but same time of year, doing you know, terrorists coming across the border, and showing people sneaking over in darkness at night, and its almost similar imagery you now, like what do they do at night when your children are sleeping, just really playing on fear. (Interview, April 26, 2007)

KGUN-9, an ABC-affiliated Tucson television station, featured the “sex-posé” Cathy mentioned. Although the reporter, Jennifer Waddell, assured Wingspan that the discussion of sex in the parks would not focus on gay men or reinforce stereotypes about gay men as deviants or predators, Wingspan condemned the report as both “sensationalistic” and “inflammatory” (Wingspan, 2007). Although the report also mentioned that married men (who are presumably heterosexual) use parks for sexual purposes, the story primarily featured gay men, including an interview with a gay man with his face shadowed to protect his identity, which Wingspan suggested “reinforced the stereotype of gay men as hiding in dark places … ” (Wingspan, 2007, para. 5). In response to this report, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation ⁵ joined Wingspan in calling on the queer and allied community to watch the segment and express outrage at this report.

While Cathy illuminated the troubling imagery for the queer community, she also made a parallel with similar imagery used for migrants seen crossing the border at night. In highlighting the similar ways that queers and migrants can be fashioned in media reporting, Cathy supplied justification for coalition-building with migrant rights. Oscar, a Wingspan activist and bilingual educator, echoed this sentiment: “ … [T]his is my own personal pet peeve, when they show, they constantly show people running under borders” (interview, March 27, 2007). Although activists generally think queers receive fair media representation, the possibility of problematic representation always exists. As shown here, activists also note the connections between the ways sensationalistic reporting represents migrants and queers. No one would claim that queer representation is as bad as migrant representation, but the lurking threat always exists for queers. Moreover, the overt prejudice demonstrated in the KGUN-9 report, as well as the persistent troubling representations of migrants portrayed in all kinds of media, creates a profound rationale for the two groups' coalition. As several activists mentioned to me, when media rhetoric scapegoats one group, using these instances as opportunities to build connections in community members' minds about the similarities between problematic representations of both groups helps to foster understanding between groups. As Kat explained in an interview, queer sexual relationships disgust some in the migrant community, and part of her job is to demonstrate to them how what they find deviant about queers are the same things people find deviant about them. If community members understand that they are not the only ones who are featured as shadowy lawbreakers engaging in bad behavior in the dark, then they may be more likely to challenge those representations and ideas when they see them. Coalitional partners do not always choose to publicly respond, but activists create these connections in their protected enclaves, which helps them to further justify being in coalition.

Legislation and Policy

Because a large portion of my fieldwork occurred during an election year, legislation and policy were a central concern. From the rhetorical position of migrants and queers in legislation, policy, and proposals, activists forge some of the strongest connections in building coalitions. Although there is not an equal impact on queer and migrant communities from legislation and policy, resonances exist between the ways that legislation and policy seek to impact both communities. Within these resonances and the commitment to seeing issues as interconnected, CDH and Wingspan use external rhetoric to justify a need for their coalition. Wingspan has only one staff member who officially devotes part of his time to policy and advocacy, although others also do so in more unofficial capacities (Fieldnote K, October 24, 2006). Volunteers do the additional policy work. ⁶ CDH considers at least 50% of its work to pertain to policy (Lupe, interview, March 27, 2007). Despite differences in commitment to policy, activists in both groups are centrally interested in policy matters. In this section, I discuss the ways that Wingspan and CDH activists understand policy and legislation to impact their communities in related ways.

Policies and legislation that target both queers and migrants in the same document do not exist. In these arenas, the two groups are considered completely separate to each other, and often opposed. Nonetheless, Wingspan and CDH refuse to allow these issues to remain disconnected. They make present what is absent by suggesting that what is against migrants is also against queers, and vice versa.

Having PAN on the ballot for the November 2004 election reinvigorated the coalition between Wingspan and CDH around policy and legislation, as Wingspan activists saw an important need to challenge the scapegoating of another marginalized group. Alexis explained:

And definitely during the Prop 200 fight, they [Wingspan] were one of the first groups to sign on to the Coalition to Defeat Prop 200, ⁷ and they did send representatives every time we asked them to come to a press conference, an event or forum. They were there, and you know, and that was great. It was very uplifting for all of us. You know, and it pushes, we need to push the progressive community in Tucson to broaden their analysis … . (Interview, March 24, 2007)

Alexis implied that Wingspan's support of the anti-200 campaign in Tucson prompted other progressives to think more broadly about how policies impact multiple communities in complicated ways. Thinking broadly about the intersections of issues and impacts, as well as arguing that some queers are also migrants are central to Wingspan's rationale for supporting migrant rights; in addition, the attack on any marginalized group may signal further attacks on others. Cathy reiterated this point:

You know the work we did with Proposition 200, it was great … we were called upon by the Prop 200 people to speak at every press conference. And I remember thinking that's really cool on both ends, because they could easily not want Wingspan's support, it's like as if “why do we want the queers, they're just going to drag us down,” but instead it was “no, this shows the diversity of groups against this ridiculous amendment … .” (Interview, April 26, 2007)

Wingspan not only supported the campaign to defeat Proposition 200 (PAN), but they also issued their own statement. ⁸ When it came to PAN, then, by refusing an isolated analysis of oppression, both groups were able to strengthen their own issues.

Activists in both organizations also understood PAN as a catalyst for the exacerbated anti-migrant sentiment in 2006 in Arizona. Kent described an “avalanche” of anti-migrant belief after the approval of PAN. Whereas PAN was approved by roughly 56% of Arizonans voting “yes,” voters approved four 2006 anti-migrant measures with nearly 75% voting “yes.” Isabel, a co-president of CDH and political personality in Southern Arizona, used the fervor over immigration, as evidenced in legislation and policy, to connect anti-migrant sentiment with anti-queer. Isabel contended:

… [O]ur connections with the LGBT community now are so clear because there's open, open effort to ban us, to discriminate, to abuse, to inflict violence, to permit violence, all of that. Who have been the targets in the last 10 years? The LGBT community and migrants. Where you can openly, it's no longer, you know subtle discrimination, which we're masters at, but open, open discrimination. Look at the ballot measures. You can see it openly, it's you know, attacking who we are. (Interview, March 20, 2007)

Isabel's meaning making was strategic. She was not implying that queer and migrant struggles are literally the same, but putting the two issues in relation to each other complicates seemingly single-direction discrimination. Because activists maintain that both groups are subject to similar kinds of openly discriminatory rhetoric from legislators and voters who enact policy, strong reason exists to be in coalition. Wingspan and CDH wrote joint statements against the proposed 2006 anti-queer and anti-migrant ballot measures, publicly creating and solidifying a connection between two seemingly disparate issues. ⁹

These statements in response to a particular election, however, represent years of meaning making in which activists have engaged within protected enclaves to make it hard for either group to leave the other as the political scapegoat or for activists to be able to see the issues as unrelated. CDH activists contend that the intersections of queer issues with migration within policy and proposed policy such as the former HIV ban on immigration to the United States and proposed laws to allow U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents to sponsor their permanent partners for immigration to the United States, provided the foundation to build coalition with Wingspan when CDH started in the early 1990s. (Lupe, interview; Isabel, interview; Amelia, interview). More recently, as Oscar explained in an interview, the rash of proposed legislation and ballot measures against the rights of queers and migrants makes the two issues, in his words, “parallel”—not the same, but similar and in perpetually close proximity.

Law Enforcement

Both Wingspan and CDH have a tense relationship with law enforcement, including the Tucson Police Department (TPD); and for CDH, the Border Patrol. Largely due to discourses of deviance and criminality that loom over migrants and queers, law enforcement is often a source of fear and intimidation for both groups. At the same time, both rely heavily on law enforcement to uphold laws when someone threatens the safety or rights of either group. As suggested earlier, migrants and queers have a contentious relationship to the state, and as arbiters of state policy, law enforcement officials often represent that relationship. Sometimes both Wingspan and CDH work together with law enforcement to achieve shared objectives, but CDH and Wingspan both also share a healthy suspicion toward law enforcement officers and institutions. Largely, this suspicion emerges from a perception among activists that law enforcement entities re-inscribe and create the connection between migrants and queers and criminality and deviance.

The first day I spent volunteering with CDH, Alexis told me stories about the TPD's failure to protect migrants and migrant supporters, which activists understand as a rhetorical message that the TPD does not support migrant rights. She explained that one of the reasons why CDH required such a large security committee for the Community Forum at Armory Park I was attending that day was because the TPD was going to allow Roy Warden, a local vigilante, to be outside of the building (Fieldnote C, August 24, 2006). Not long before this event, Warden threatened Isabel with “blowing her head off,” but the police did not consider his threat a real one. Although CDH eventually negotiated with the TPD so that Warden could not be near Armory Park, during the forum, another vigilante, Russ Dove, walked directly into the forum and began yelling at the audience. CDH security folks removed Dove long before the police arrived to help (Fieldnote C). One of the most notorious cases of more direct police abuse to migrants and supporters came during the April 10, 2006 marches. The TPD failed to separate vigilantes from the marchers, and allowed vigilantes into the center of the street during the march. When Roy Warden decided to burn the Mexican flag amidst the marchers, a high school-aged woman threw a bottle of water at the flag to put out the flames. Police tackled her and she along with several other youth was beaten (Fieldnote C). This incident not only resulted in physical abuse, but for many activists, it again communicated TPD's lack of support and perhaps even disdain for migrants and their advocates. Following the incident, members of CDH and the April 10th Coalition hosted several events calling attention to police brutality, including a play written by several high school students involved in the incident (Fieldnote G, September 23, 2006). Police abuse and harassment against migrant communities occurs in everyday situations as well, which is one of the main kinds of abuse that CDH volunteers document at regular abuse documentation sessions held at the office (Fieldnote O, November 30, 2006). Such incidents have increased as section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows trained local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration law (Archibold, 2009). Harassment and abuse of migrant and Latino/a communities has been well-documented (Border Action Network, 2008; K. R. Johnson, 1995, 2000; Mirande, 2003; Romero, 2006; Romero & Serag, 2005). Abuse and harassment by law enforcement, and the messages that it sends to migrant communities about the role of law enforcement, has been a central concern for CDH since its creation (Lupe, interview, March 27, 2007).

Wingspan has also experienced abuse and harassment by the TPD, particularly in relation to public parks. At one point, the harassment was so bad that plain clothes police officers were attempting to entrap gay men at the parks and local residents hid in the bushes while wearing camouflage to catch men who they presumed were there for sex and then call the police (Fieldnote H, October 4, 2006). Police eventually stopped some of these practices under pressure from Wingspan, and they now only come to a park if a complaint is lodged. Still, Wingspan receives several calls every week, alleging police harassment. This is not surprising considering that gays (and Jews) top the list of hate crime victims in Tucson, and many report outrage at the way the police handle these incidents (“Gay and Jews,” 2004). Much like with migrant communities, the harassment itself is not the only concern, but the message that such harassment sends about the worth of queers is also problematic. Of course, such association of queers with criminality is also historical, as the modern-day LGBT liberation movement in the United States was eventually spurred by responding back to police officers in New York raiding the Stonewall Inn and treating queers as criminals.

Migrants and queers often find themselves in situations where they are not protected, but criminalized. Many times the way law enforcement interacts with Wingspan and CDH constituencies is not public or a part of their official rhetoric pertaining to either group. Accessing how law enforcement officially regards migrant or queer people is, thus, not an easy task. However, by utilizing field methods to access the enclaves of these activist groups, it becomes clear how activists interpret the rhetorical messages they perceive law enforcement to send about them and their communities. Such interpretations led to recent coalition-building after the aforementioned problem with the TPD harassing gay men in public parks. Cathy explained:

And we were sort of shocked, and then we realized it's profiling, it's the same thing. So we held a community forum on profiling. And we were able to build an alliance with the NAACP, with Derechos [CDH], with Wingspan and with a student group. And we talked about how these different groups get profiled, and what does that mean for civil rights, and how do we together address that. (Interview, April 26, 2007)

Cathy noted that in bringing these groups together, several things happened. For one, although gay men having sex in public parks is controversial within and outside of the queer community, by broadening the analysis to show that the issue was not whether gay men are having sex in parks or whether they should be, it became, “this is about police who have probably better ways to spend their time, harassing people in parks … ” (Cathy, interview, April 26, 2007). In a broader sense, it allowed all of these different groups to understand a long shared history of being thought of and positioned as criminal, which has material impacts for how people are able to exist.

If one considers the historical treatment of migrants, queers, and queer migrants in this country at the hands of law enforcement agencies, it should be no surprise that both Wingspan and CDH are suspicious of law enforcement practices and the messages those practices signal. In both instances, migrants and queers often find themselves in situations where they are not protected, but are rather further constructed as criminals, and it is in this juncture that activists justify the need for building coalition with each other.

Conclusion

Activists understand queers and migrants as constituted through mutually resonant and interconnected discourses, and they utilize these connections to foster coalition-building. Although the task of this article was not to detail how the coalition between CDH and Wingspan works or the type of activism they engage in together publicly, this article has demonstrated part of what it is that brings two seemingly disparate social justice organizations into a relationship with one another. By examining how activists understand mediated, political and legal rhetoric about queer and migrant subjects, I have illustrated how we might gain a more productive understanding of the justifications that arose to build a coalition between migrant and queer rights movements. Accessing activists' interpretations of such rhetoric affords significant insight into how rhetoric functions to build coalition and eventually compel social movement. In this way, field methods supplied an important methodological resource for understanding rhetorical negotiations within counter-public enclaves.

Much like Stewart's (1991) discussion of internal rhetoric, this article has further shown the need for considering more than “rhetoric of the streets” and, one might add, the Web, to obtain a more complete picture of social movement. The notion of the “enclave” within counter-public sphere theory has largely been viewed as a protected space born of necessity, designed to safeguard a group and prevent unwanted publicity (Squires, 2002). Although there is no doubt that enclaves serve this protective function, enclaves are often a consistent component of activists' movement activity, emphasizing what Fraser (1992) called the back and forth of counter-publics. With coalition-building, in particular, enclaves function as a site of meaning production, and in the case of the particular coalitional enclaves that informed this research, those meanings were not readily accessible outside of the enclave. It is not that activists intended to construct a hidden transcript, but simply that when it comes to coalitional politics, a significant portion of the movement-building and mobilization is internally focused. With CDH and Wingspan, large segments of each group's constituency views the other group as a threat, and does not acknowledge the overlap of the two groups (as in queer migrants), or the similarity between the demonization they experience. This means that the internal rhetorical work is especially significant to the sustenance of the coalition, as well as any public action they may take. Thus, it is necessary to expand our understanding of how enclaves function within the context of counter-publics and social movement, not only to broaden what we consider in the purview of social movements, but also so that we have a richer understanding of the many facets of rhetorical activity in these contexts.

In addition, because of the dearth of research on coalition-building within social movement studies, our theories about people's rationale for involvement in movements is limited. Gregg (1971) and Stewart (1999) explored the “ego function” within both self- and other-directed movements to suggest that the need to build one's sense of identity and self is important for activists, whether one advocates for her or his own rights or the rights of someone or something else. Examining movements where the direction is self- and other-oriented at the same time, however, challenges the “either/or” dichotomy that necessarily emerges from both Gregg and Stewart's discussions. Implicitly, coalitional politics built between mostly disparate groups are “both/and” activities. As mentioned earlier, Carrillo Rowe (2008) used the term coalitional subjectivities to describe the sense of self that emerges when one chooses to be in alliance with others who differ from one's self. What this study of coalitional politics has evidenced is the both/and of the self and other generated between seemingly different groups in coalition. In this study, those who are different connect issues and minimize divisions where divisions might otherwise be expected. When activists refuse to be divided, they not only evidence the development and functioning of coalitional subjectivities, but they also challenge the notion of the singular “ego” that many social movement scholars rely on to discuss motivation for involvement. Although Gregg and Stewart derived different “ego functions” depending on whether one is involved in a self- or other-directed movement, in both instances a unified and singular sense of self and orientation of the self guides the discussion. When one does not possess such an ego, as shown in activists' choices in this analysis, reasons for involvement cannot be so easily conceptualized.

More important, as argued here, it is rhetoric that has generated these complicated, coalitional subjectivities. The study of coalitions then not only adds richness to our understanding of movement activity, but it also points us in different directions pertaining to ongoing questions about what is rhetorical and how rhetoric functions in movements. The study of coalitions also calls us to question what motivates people toward social movement. An understanding of coalitional politics, how people come to develop coalitional subjectivities and how such development disputes singular understandings of subjectivity, seem prudent directions to pursue to access the vastly changing functions of rhetoric within these precarious times.

This essay emerges from the author's doctoral dissertation. For help on various stages of preparing this manuscript, many thanks go to activists with Coalición de Derechos Humanos and Wingspan, Sarah Amira De la Garza, Dan Brouwer, H. L. T. Quan, Sara McKinnon, and the CQ editor and blind reviewers. Arizona State University's Graduate and Professional Student Association provided financial support for this research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karma R. Chávez

Karma R. Chávez (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2007) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin.

Notes

As McGee (1980) argued, approaching social movements as a phenomenon is problematic when it is the meanings of words and actions that produce social movement that should be of interest. In this way, when social movements is used as a noun, it suggests that a movement is a phenomenon. Using social movement in its verb form, as in a process of people coming together to create meanings and potentially make progress toward a particular social change, reduces the possibility of limiting social movement studies to the investigation of things. To keep the dynamism of movement alive, I typically use social movement as a verb and not a noun.

I follow Luibhéid (2005) in primarily utilizing migrant and queer when referring to people, as opposed to other terms like immigrant, gay, or lesbian. Luibhéid argued that queer “rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration … ,” and it suggests that “transformation needs to occur across a wide range of regimes and institutions, not just the sexual … ” (p. x). Sedgwick (1990) also emphasized the importance of universal logics as opposed to minoritizing logics. Queer also indicates that other categories “were historically formed through specific epistemologies and social relations that upheld colonialist, xenophobic, racist, and sexist regimes” (Luibhéid, 2005, p. xi). Queer is not without its problems (e.g., see Cohen, 1997; E. P. Johnson, 2001; Rudy, 2000), but it marks some of these difficulties and histories. Moreover, I follow Luibhéid's lead in using the term migrant. She explained that migrant refers to “anyone who has crossed an international border … ” (p. xi). This term challenges distinctions between documented, undocumented, refugee, and asylum-seeker because such distinctions often can be relatively arbitrary as people traverse between them. For example, one might be a legal asylum-seeker one day, and then have the asylum claim denied, compelling deportation proceedings. She or he may decide it is better to risk staying in a country illegally than returning to her or his country of origin. Moreover, a vast number of undocumented immigrants in the United States simply overstayed their visitor's visas, again moving them from “legal” to “illegal” status from one day to the next. Refusing these terms draws attention “to the ways that these distinctions function as technologies of normalization, discipline, and sanctioned dispossession” (Luibhéid, 2005, p. xi). I use migrant strategically and politically, as I have seen firsthand how one's possession of legal documents does not necessarily lead to better treatment by others or improved material realities. Certainly, “being legal” affords opportunities otherwise unavailable, and yet often oppression that appears to target the undocumented has significant implications for those with documents. For all these reasons, I hope to minimize emphasis on legality with the use of migrant.

All participants were offered an opportunity to select a pseudonym. Several elected not to; therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the names used are participants' actual first names.

As a point of recent information, Arizonians approved a 2008 ballot referendum, Proposition 102, which created a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. It did not impact civil unions or domestic partner benefits. However, in 2009, the Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed legislation that revoked domestic partner benefits for non-married state employees, which had only been instituted 1 year earlier (see Pallack, 2009).

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's (GLAAD) statement was located at http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id=3964. This URL is no longer active. GLAAD's involvement in this event is mentioned in its 2007 summary of media advocacy, Media Advocacy: Fighting Defamation. Changing Hearts and Minds, available at www.glaad.org/Document.Doc?id=30 (as a pdf).

Wingspan has suffered from major cuts in funding throughout the budget crisis; the link to their public policy and advocacy Web page does not, as of this writing, indicate any staff member who is connected with policy at this time.

The Coalition to Defeat Prop 200 was a Tucson-based collection of activists, started by members of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos and other local activists. As a temporal coalition, it disbanded after the 2004 election. Their Web site, www.defeat200.org, no longer exists.

Wingspan's full statement against Proposition 200 reads as follows:.

• Wingspan, Southern Arizona's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender [LGBT] Community Center's mission is to promote the freedom, equality, safety, and well-being of LGBT people in Southern Arizona. Because the intent of Proposition 200 is contrary to Wingspan's mission, Wingspan opposes Proposition 200. Wingspan opposes Proposition 200 because it needlessly makes voter registration more difficult, at a time when voter participation, particularly of marginalized people, is critical. Wingspan opposes Proposition 200 because we believe it will compromise our ability to provide vital social services to the community. Wingspan opposes Proposition 200 because the radical, racist, right-wing, anti-immigrant backers of Proposition 200 are many of the same individuals from fringe groups who actively work against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. Wingspan opposes Proposition 200 because we believe Proposition 200 wrongly scapegoats immigrants for social problems in the United States, including high rates of unemployment and underemployment, inadequate health care systems, and a failing economy. LGBT people are also often wrongly scape-goated [sic] for social problems. For these reasons, Wingspan stands together with other progressive organizations and fair-minded Arizonans against Proposition 200.

Links to these statements can be found at Coalición de Derechos Humanos and Wingspan Joint Statement: Stand Against Racism and Homophobia (2006, October 24; http://wingspan.org/content/news_wingspan_details.php?story_id=353) and Coalición de Derechos Humanos and Wingspan—Joint Statement: Continued Stand Against Racism and Homophobia (2006, November 28; http://wingspan.org/content/news_wingspan_details.php?story_id=359). Elsewhere, I have conducted an analysis of these public statements in relation to queer and migrant rhetoric produced by national organizations. Chávez, K. R. (2010). Border (in)securities: Normative and differential belonging in LGBTQ and immigrant rights discourse. Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(2), 136–155.