CHAPTER 10

Sí Se Puede: Social Activism and Coalition Leadership*

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER, REINFORCING a strong sense of culture and community, and articulating a vision that inspires people are the preludes to the real work of Latino leaders—concerted and collective community action. As “minorities,” Latinos have experienced discrimination and exclusion. Pressing needs drive a form of leadership that challenges the status quo and aims to change the social and economic conditions that perpetuate inequality. This necessitates a coalition and activist leadership form that cultivates a critical mass of people with the capacity to take action.

Leaders become activists because of the economic discrepancies and inequities that exist in their own families and communities. When Arturo Vargas joined his parents in picketing his overcrowded barrio school, which had only half-day classes, this affected his life’s work. “Leadership, for me, is about clarity of purpose and courage. I think we need to be very clear that the purpose of leadership is for the progress and improvement of the collective and the community. Courage, because true leadership needs to be bold, to sometimes make unpopular decisions, and to battle infrastructure and institutions that keep our communities from progressing.”

Hilda Solis learned advocacy from her father, a union steward. “My father took a leadership role—he was a fighter. There were three hundred workers, most of whom were Mexican immigrants who really couldn’t speak a word of English. He helped to organize and mobilize them and won some great concessions. He did not get there by sitting in the back of the room quietly. He was outspoken. He knew he could make a change and a difference, and he did it.”

Raul Yzaguirre became determined to organize Latinos because he grew up in the poor areas of the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas. He remembers those signs that said No Mexicans, No Dogs in restaurant windows. His grandmother talked about the “race wars” in which the Texas Rangers systemically beat up and killed Mexican Americans. His grandfather was almost lynched for being on the streets after dark.

Janet Murguía recounts how her father showed his children how to be “strong, hard-working and to stand up for ourselves…. My dad was a very tough man, and he wouldn’t let people push him around. He worked very hard at a steel plant for thirty-seven years. In those days he was denied access to the bathroom where most of the workers went because he was Mexican. I remember my dad facing down some of those guys. They never stopped him from going to the bathroom again.”

Advocating for We

THE SHAPING OF LEADERSHIP as social activism was a natural evolution for collective cultures, in which protecting and sustaining the We is the heart of a leader’s responsibility. This emphasis is one of the sharp distinctions from mainstream American leadership, where there is a strong focus on developing the individual, managing organizations, and running businesses. Addressing the public welfare, social institutions, or community involvement is not integral to this approach. In fact, public service usually pertains only to government, public office, or the nonprofit sector.

In contrast, sí se puede is a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of leadership—good old-fashioned community organizing, coalition-building, and advocacy. Yzaguirre reflects on this challenge: “Oppressed people have been taught they can’t get things done. ‘It’s impossible and going to end in failure.’ They have to be convinced they will succeed and can do it! So the first step—the ultimate, all-important step—is to build their faith in themselves.”

Murguía, who was groomed by Yzaguirre to take the helm of the National Council of La Raza, is a master at motivating people and reinforcing the We identity, “For too long we have counted on others to be our champions. We need to be our own champions. We need to empower ourselves. We are a community of fifty million people…. We need to start acting like it. If we organize, if we engage, if we mobilize, if we vote, we won’t need to hope our issues get addressed. We will guarantee it.”

Antonia Pantoja, an early pioneer with Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City, reflected on this form of leadership in her autobiography, Memoir of a Visionary. “I had to find a way to become an agent of change working in partnership with the community,” she wrote. “I learned that we could work collectively to find solutions to our own problems.”¹ Leaders as advocates require determination, commitment, and utter reliability. This is contained in the Latino concept of consistencia—fierce determination. Consistencia is the promise that a leader will never give up or abandon the community or people. “I had to find a way to become an agent of change working in partnership with the community,” she wrote. “I learned that we could work collectively to find solutions to our own problems.”

Consistencia

WHILE PERSONALISMO AND CONCIENCIA are the inner preparation for leadership, the goal is external and action-oriented. Leaders must demonstrate through their behavior essential traits such as consistency, follow-through, and honesty. Consistencia is the public dimension of the character issue. Consistencia is perseverance and commitment—regardless of obstacles or personal sacrifices, the leader will do whatever it takes to deliver. A leader’s reputation as being reliable, dependable, and accountable is anchored in consistencia.

In their groundbreaking book, The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner surveyed thousands of business and government executives to determine the characteristics people looked for in a leader. The survey, which has been conducted since 1987, remains constant over time. It is not surprising that the most valued trait chosen by 89 percent of respondents is honesty—being truthful and reliable and aligning words with action. According to the survey, honesty engenders trust so that people believe in and, therefore, follow a leader.² Honesty and keeping one’s word fosters the coveted trait of credibility, establishes a track record, and reflects the leader’s consistencia.

Since leadership is not a position or a passing stage, consistencia reflects lifelong relationships. Trusted Latino leaders are regarded as part of the family. Relationships are permanent. This bond assures people that they can count on their leaders. Endurance is validated by the many elders who continue playing a prominent role. Bernie Valdez kept fighting for Hispanic progress until he passed on at eighty-five. His consistencia was reflected in over sixty years of activism. The absolute assurance that he would be there for the long haul encouraged people to follow him—from street demonstrations to the boardrooms of high-level organizations. Likewise, Dr. Pantoja continued leading into her eighties.

At its heart, consistencia is a commitment to keep the values you were raised with and to always remember where you came from. For leaders who work to keep the culture alive, consistencia means nourishing people’s identity, pride, and connections to the past. They weave an intergenerational force where leadership lessons are passed from one generation to the other.

Consistencia Is Collective Action

TENACITY USUALLY CONNOTES RESOLVE of an individual leader.³ Because they lead from a collective perspective, Latinos instill consistencia into the community and their organizations. Long-term commitment is sustained by having a strategy for sequential success and building a community of leaders, as discussed in the previous chapter. By practicing paso a paso, leaders divide the work into small pieces, strategically choosing issues where successful is probable. Then people will say, “Well, if I can do this, I can do twice as much and then be four times as good.”

Consistencia engenders loyalty to the leader, but by working side by side and experiencing success, people also develop confidence in each other. Consistencia has fostered long-term incremental progress, continuity, and stability in the community and in Latino organizations.

Luz Sarmina is barely five feet tall—but don’t let her size fool you: she is small but mighty. As president and CEO of Valle del Sol for over sixteen years, she grew the organization into one of the largest nonprofits in Arizona. Her ability to build partnerships across communities and sectors was essential, as was transforming the agency’s vision to serve individuals from diverse backgrounds. Today, Valle del Sol’s mission is helping people achieve a better life while emphasizing culturally sensitive services.

As a strategic leader, Luz understood that long-term security for the organization meant acquiring a large facility in which to provide its behavioral health and human services. But how would she secure those kinds of funds in an economically tight era? Working with community partners, she positioned the organization as a needed resource and built political alliances to support its work. Then when Phoenix passed its 2006 Citizen Bond to invest in our community, she was at the forefront—$4 million was allocated to help Valle del Sol acquire a three-story service center. Relentless consistencia, cultivating a community of supporters, and having the political clout from years of hard work paid off for her organization.

Consistencia follows the dicho wisdom Con gotas se llena el valde (the barrel fills up drop by drop). This illustrates that every small contribution, every little victory, every success, adds up. Then one day the barrel will be full. Con gotas refers to a collective process where people work patiently one day at a time. If they try to do too much or get spread too thin, they might fail. The barrel represents the container, the community reserve, where everyone’s contributions and collective endeavors add up. Through consistencia and a collaborative community process Latinos will continue to advance.

Leadership by the Many

JAMES MCGREGOR BURNS IN his 1978 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Leadership, believed we are living in a time of “postheroic leadership.”⁴ The “great man” theory of leadership was finally over! This resonates with Latinos who are striving to build a community of leaders. But more than that, Latinos have a different model—leadership by the many.

While some people might lament that there is not one leader—a Martin Luther King Jr. or a César Chávez—others believe that an individual, one-person leadership model is not effective for such a diverse and growing community. Activist leadership requires the fuerza, or strength, of many hands and many voices. As Arturo Vargas observes, “We’re not going to have this one charismatic leader who’s going to bring everybody together. It’s thousands of leaders. It’s thousands of movements in thousands of communities across the country, whether it’s the immigrants who are organizing at a local level or the head of a nonprofit organization that is mobilizing his community or the young politician that gets elected to office. It’s a different kind of leadership.”

Vargas continues, “The challenge for Latinos is not to find a single spokesperson to unite the many disparate communities and causes found among a people fifty million strong. The challenge is to coordinate these efforts, to build on successes, and to support communities that are most in need—and it can be done! Such was the case in 2006 when the national Latino community rose up to support immigrants, particularly in Arizona.” Estimates are that the first May 1, 2006, protests against immigration laws brought over two million people to the streets and occurred simultaneously in cities across the United States.⁵ These marches have continued every May 1 and have helped establish immigration as a key Latino political issue.⁶

Leadership scholar and activist John Gardner believed that our highly volatile times require “a whole army of leaders.” He predicted a very different model of leadership. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough that we are at a historical moment. The next America is going to be forged at the grass roots. It is going to emerge from the communities of our great nation.”⁷

Sylvia Puente, who heads up Chicago’s Latino Policy Forum, understands the power of “an army of leaders,” declaring, “Our strength lies in our numbers, in our collaborative work with hundreds and hundreds of community members. Every day we’re working to train community members—more than five hundred this year—in parent education, fair housing, and to understand the complexities of immigration reform. Then they become community leaders in these areas.”

Murguía predicts, “I think that we are going to see a rising tide of Latino leaders in the next generation that is not only going to serve our community, but serve our country as well.” Vargas concurs. “If people are waiting for the great Brown hope, give it up. It ain’t gonna happen!” he says. “Instead we have thousands and thousands of leaders working collectively everyday throughout our communities. That’s the new model of Latino of leadership.” Latino leadership is of, by, and for the many.

An Inclusive Latino Agenda

EVEN THE DOCUMENT’S TITLE, An American Agenda from a Latino Perspective, speaks to the inclusive vision of the Latino Policy Forum: “Parallel to a political agenda our society must articulate a moral agenda to fulfill its obligations to the public good and to transcend the racial and ethnic tensions that prevent us from taking responsibility for one another and our collective future.”

Likewise, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro connects Latino progress with American progress. “I believe if we recommit ourselves to doing the hard work that it takes to mobilize our communities, if we work at that harder than ever, then we can ensure that this twenty-first century is a time of prominence, global superiority, excellence, and economic prosperity for our entire nation.”

In the chapter on “De Colores,” we used the phrase leading with a bienvenido spirit to capture Latino inclusiveness. Vargas is adamant that this is the correct course: “I have heard people talk about how we are now the largest minority group, so let’s start pushing our weight around. I’m like, ‘No, no, no!’ We need to express and develop a new style of leadership that is much more inclusive. We need to be prepared to provide leadership not just for Latinos but for everybody—that is the new frontier.”

By crafting inclusive agendas that speak to the welfare of all Americans, leaders ensure that people from other groups understand how their interests and those of Latinos intersect. Vargas speaks to this: “We are the future workers of America, and we are not going to succeed if we’re not educating our children today. We need to convince people to begin investing in this generation, to understand that the Hispanic dropout rate is not a Hispanic problem; it’s an American crisis.”

Leadership with a bienvenido spirit is evident in the way Latinos reach out to other groups and build coalitions. This was a trademark of Solis’s terms as a congresswoman: “I learned to engage with people in other communities and include them in helping me address issues and develop policies. Leaders have to build networks, to always be inclusive, to show people that good things can come out of working together, that there is more strength in numbers.”

Solis established a track record in coalition building: “I was able to get legislation passed because I had previous experience working with many different people on issues. They knew me and trusted me. I brought people together that had never really talked to each other before—Latinos, women, African Americans, labor, environmentalists. As a leader I knew we had to break down barriers and find the common ground.”

Building Partnerships and Coalitions

LATINO LEADERS REACH OUT and cultivate the critical mass to propel social change by building coalitions internally with Latino subgroups and externally with other groups. Coalitions increase the power of collective action by bringing people and organizations together to impact specific issues or causes. Let’s look at how internal and external coalition building complement each other to build the Latino community’s capacity.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is the largest civil rights and advocacy organization in the country, representing a coalition of over three hundred community-based organizations from every Latino subgroup. These organizations have joined forces in order to have a national impact on issues such as education, jobs, employment, health, and homeownership. NCLR is a political watchdog and strong advocacy arm that speaks for Latinos on Capitol Hill and in the mainstream media. It has organized action alerts to mobilize people to push for humane immigration policies, educational equity, and equal opportunity for Hispanics. Murguía, who has led NCLR since 2005, aims to grow Latino political strength through advocacy and voter mobilization and use this to change public policy.

While NCLR mobilizes people at the grassroots level, working with community-based organizations, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) brings national organizations together with a very specific focus. Realizing that one organization trying to influence corporate America would be a voice crying in the wilderness, a group of leaders, including Yzaguirre, started HACR in 1986. HACR builds internal coalitions within the Hispanic community and external partnerships with corporate America. As a coalition of sixteen large and influential national Latino organizations, HACR represents such diverse constituencies as Hispanic businesses, youth-serving organizations, veterans, publishers, women’s leadership, and Hispanic-serving colleges and universities.

HACR’s mission is to advance Hispanics’ inclusion in corporate America at a level commensurate with their economic contributions in four areas: the board level, employment, philanthropic practices, and procurement. Over twenty-five years later, HACR has established partnerships with forty of the largest corporations and has made a strong business case for Hispanic inclusion.⁸

Building external coalitions requires leaders to assume the role of cultural brokers who can identify resources and organizational supporters. Brokers are able to maneuver in multiple cultures and articulate the benefits of forming partnerships and coalitions with Latinos. Partnerships indicate relationships with mutual benefits. Carlos Orta, who has served as HACR’S president since 2006, previously worked for three Fortune 500 companies. He is an adept cultural broker, helping businesses to understand the need to tap into the growing workforce, the lucrative market, and the talents of Latinos. At the same time, he assists corporations who want to strengthen their social responsibility efforts.

Over twenty-five years ago, when I was designing the National Hispana Leadership Institute (NHLI) curriculum, I knew Latinas needed to learn the best aspects of mainstream leadership. After surveying programs across the country, I forged partnerships with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and the John F. Kennedy School of Public Policy at Harvard University.

These partnerships continue today. Harvard has substantially expanded the number of Latinas obtaining master’s degrees in public administration. A more diverse student body adds richness and enhances learning. CCL has had almost six hundred Latinas attend programs; this has diversified their classes and connected the organization with a new and growing market. More than ten thousand corporate executives have interacted with these high-level Latinas during these classes, thus learning in a more inclusive and culturally dynamic environment. NHLI women expanded their knowledge of how to work and build partnerships with corporate leaders.

The Latino Agenda

WHILE LATINOS OWE A great debt to African Americans and the civil rights movement, there are indications that the Black community has not remained as united or focused on its own activist agenda. Eugene Robinson’s influential book, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, proposes that Black America has separated into four groups: the mainstream middle class; the large abandoned poor; a small, wealthy transcendent elite; and the emergent, who are mixed race and recent immigrants. “These four groups,” he writes, “are increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology.” Robinson laments that there is no longer a common Black agenda—these groups come together only when there is a threat or boldface discrimination. And yet he believes that “solidarity has been one of black Americans’ most powerful weapons in the struggle for freedom, justice, and opportunity” and urges a return to a united Black social and political agenda.⁹

The growing gap between the rich and the poor, the concentration of wealth in the 1 percent, the need for investment in education and health care, the housing and banking crises—all indicate that economic and social disparity is not being actively addressed by many established Anglo leaders, who are still the majority and the most influential. In the last century the women’s movement had an agenda to structure a society that supported equality, health, education, childcare, and family issues. This momentum has certainly dimmed as individual women assumed leadership roles and did not keep the activist agenda of the early feminists.¹⁰

The Latino social-change agenda, on the other hand, is gaining momentum. It has been fueled by immigration, growing numbers, and a stronger Latino identity. In the national exit poll in the 2012 presidential election, for instance, 77 percent of Hispanic voters said unauthorized immigrants working in the U.S should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.¹¹

Latino organizations are maturing (many were founded in the 1980s) and now have the capacity to promote a broader social agenda. Murguía notes that strong coalitions increase organizational clout: “Our numbers alone don’t equate strength or power unless we leverage them. Those numbers will just be numbers unless we take actions to empower our communities. That’s the strength in NCLR and other organizations that they take specific action and grow our voice as a community.”

The emerging leaders and the youthful promise of the Latino population are infusing the community with new energy and drive. But all of these dynamics would not converge into a social agenda if they did not rest on a foundation of activism—a dedication to change social and economic conditions that limit people’s potential.

Antonia Pantoja described this approach: “The role of the leader is the role of advocate. The purpose of leadership is to exercise one’s power, knowledge, and access to change the oppressive and destructive situations in society.” This commitment to advocacy is based on the humanistic Latino worldview, which has people’s welfare at its heart. Solis makes this connection: “There were a lot of kids who were brighter than me. I know they could have been great leaders, but they just didn’t have the right opportunity or didn’t meet the right person who could have helped them. But I believe there has to be justice. There has to be equal opportunity, fairness, and protection under our laws.”

Keeping Activism Alive—
Thoughts for Young Latinos

THOSE OF US WHO remember the Chicano movement, the Brown Berets, and La Raza Unida Party are becoming relics, like an old pair of Mexican huaraches (sandals) from the 1960s whose soles were made of tire treads. Today, young activists might be wearing a suit and have a law degree from Harvard, like Julián Castro, or may have worked as successful executives in corporate America, like Carlos Orta. They might be leading powerful national organizations like Janet Murguía and Arturo Vargas.

Young Latinos are heeding the call to the activist tradition—to work for an equal and just society. In 2006, 25 percent said that they had participated in a protest, more than twice the proportion of any other racial or ethnic group. Since 2000, Latino youth have showed a steady increase in voter turnout. Latino youths (aged eighteen to twenty-four) have increased their voter turnout by 13 percent.¹² And as noted in our section on intergenerational leadership, the Millennials—of which Latinos make up 20 percent—believe in social responsibility. Nine out of ten Millennials feel it is their responsibility to make a difference in the world.¹³

Young Latinos recognize today’s opportunities are due to the tireless efforts of the past. They also know that Latinos are still dealing with gross inequities. The Hispanic dropout rate hovers at 50 percent. Only 12 percent of Latinos complete college, while 30.5 percent of non-Latinos do. Homeownership lags 22 percent behind the general population. Unemployment looms at 12 percent.¹⁴

Young leaders of tomorrow, I hope this book helps you to understand the leadership practices that have advanced our community and to stay connected to your culture. Murguía urges you to hold the course: “I have every confidence that with hard work and perseverance, we will succeed. We are America. And it’s time. Our voice will be heard.”

¡Ándale!—Moving Forward

OUR NEXT CHAPTER ANSWERS the questions: How have Latinos stayed the course? Why are Latinos on the forefront of leading a social-change agenda? Why is it that despite the tribulations of being minorities and immigrants, and on the short end of economic equity, Latinos are still the most optimistic people in America?¹⁵