Building on Previous Struggles
The activism discussed in the symposium in the previous section is part of a continuum of activism from the Chicana/o movement to the present. AJAAS and other organizations have been possible due to the work of previous organizations such as Latino Lesbian and Gay Organiåtion (LLEGO), Gay Latino Alliance (GALA), Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), La Jotería de UCLA, and other queer and trans Chicanx and Latinx organizations from the 1960s to the present, including those that engaged in AIDS activism. These are all part of the legacy of jotería activism and this section provides historical and contemporary examples.
First, jotería are in every movement from reproductive rights, to housing, to sex worker rights, to immigrant rights and transgender rights, to recent mobilizations for Black Lives Matter––jotería are doing organizing work across racial lines and within diverse movements. Art, activism, and scholarship have always been interconnected. While people are writing and creating art and theorizing from the flesh, on-the-ground activism has also utilized a jotería approach: unapologetic, reclaiming language, and disinvesting in respectability politics.36 One organization that has done important work is Familia Trans Queer Liberation founded by Jennicet Gutierrez, Jorge Gutierrez, Zoraida Reyes, and others in Santa Ana, California. This organization merged immigrant rights with queer rights. Some of their programs have included Jotas vs ICE, an initiative to strategize, mobilize, and do campaign work in 2020 and LGBTQ Border Project a 2019 collaboration with the Transgender Law Center, LA LGBT Center, San Diego LGBT Center, Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project, National Immigrant Justice Center, Arcoiris, Jardin and others, to support LGBTQ asylum seekers with humanitarian, legal, and medical support and build long-term advocacy and grassroots organizing infrastructure along the US-Mexico border.37
The immigrant rights marches in 2006 were in response to HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner Bill which criminalized undocumented immigrants. Immigrants and their allies took to the streets en masse in cities across the United States. In Los Angeles, the marches which took place on March 25th and May 1st were among the largest mass demonstrations ever in the city. Workers, students, families, activists, and members of immigrant rights and worker rights organizations marched in downtown Los Angeles to make their voices heard. Among the protestors in the Los Angeles march on May 1st, was a group of students and professors from CSUN. Some of these students were members of La Familia de CSUN. The group, carrying posters they had made the night before, took the Red Line Metro train from North Hollywood to downtown. One of the protestors carried a sign that read “La Jotería Unida Jamas Sera Vencida.”
Footnotes
36 The idea of respectability politics, first coined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham as “politics of respectability,” has been used to police Black women and Black people generally, who according to Jalina Joseph and Roades remain hypervisible and under surveillance. Through this lens Black folk have had to perform respectability at the expense of radical or transgressive practices. For example, Rosa Parks has been considered a respectable Black woman. Other ethnic and racial and sexual communities like Joteria also navigate this concept. https://www.aaihs.org/black-women-an...-introduction/
37 Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement
