Proyecto Carrito

Proyecto Carrito at the Conference on Community Writing

Boulder, Colorado — We’re excited to present at the Conference on Community Writing, “a 3-day conference that welcomes scholars, teachers, students, artists, and activists to delve into how communities write themselves and how writing can be used as a tool for social change.”

What is Community Writing?
Popularized by genres such as service-learning, community-based research, community literacy, ethnography, community publishing, and advocacy and activist writing, as well as creative writing, graffiti art, protest songwriting, and social media, community writing locates its work within the broad, historical traditions of rhetoric and composition, literacy studies, race and gender studies, education, communication, and related disciplines.

Our discussion, “Proyecto Carrito: Our Translingual Pro-immigrant Writing Collective Moves Nationwide,” will center on our work that brings together members of of campus community — immigrant janitors, students, professors, staff, administrators — who aren’t often at the same table. We circulate this work by wrapping it on a van and driving it across the country.

Visit our website and read our book to learn more about Proyecto Carrito.

Bilingual poetry book proceeds donated to Proyecto Carrito

Julio Villegas, author of Memories of an Old World, a collection of poems about Latin American history and identity, donated the proceeds of his book sales to Mobility Movilidad to benefit Proyecto Carrito, our internationally-recognized writing project with immigrant janitors, students, and professors.

Villegas, an Emerson College student who regularly attends weekly Proyecto Carrito workshops, said the group reminds him of his own family. “One of the only few places in the whole of Emerson that I sensed [a] wholehearted appreciation and gratitude for just being able to exist,” he said, “was with everyone at Proyecto Carrito.”

Memories of an Old World was published by Emerson College’s Undergraduate Students for Publishing, the group’s first bilingual title. “Each poem,” he said, “could serve as a snapshot, chronicle, episode in the narrative of the world that would become Latin America, before, during, and after the Spanish encounters.”

Like much of our work in Proyecto Carrito, Villegas’ book is translingual; he switches between English and Spanish as needed to express his ideas. “As I was writing the manuscript I started getting aggravated at myself for writing lines dedicated to figures of Latin America in English, when this entire work is for Latin America and everyone tied to its experience in English,” he said. “So I started sporadically writing lines in Spanish, without any translations provided for those lines.”

Villegas has made Memories of an Old World free to distribute. Click here to download a PDF.

His full responses to our questions are below.

What is Memories of an Old World about?

Memories of an Old World was this sort of personal project that I wanted to write for a good while, since last April, shortly after my birthday. I did not know what it would be about particularly, but I wanted it to be this collection of poetry that all dealt with the identity of Latin America, the history of the Latin American experience. I had stalled for months in writing any poem because of the weight that I put on myself in trying to capture enormous amounts of Latin America and trying to do it in a way that it reflected truthfully the sentiments of the people across the history of five centuries — so that stalled me for many months until the deadline for the manuscript submissions for the Undergraduate Students for Publishing drove the stimulus within me to lock myself in my room and just write out what I’ve been lingering on for months now. So Memories of an Old World the way I see it is this sort of chronicle of the Latin American identity, and I feel each poem could serve as a snapshot, chronicle, episode in the narrative of the world that would become Latin America, before, during, and after the Spanish encounters. I wanted to give Latin America a new literary work, and as I was writing the manuscript I started getting aggravated at myself for writing lines dedicated to figures of Latin America in English, when this entire work is for Latin America and everyone tied to its experience in English, so I started sporadically writing lines in Spanish, without any translations provided for those lines. That’s how it eventually, without my intent or knowing, became the first bilingual/multilingual student manuscript published at Emerson College. I thought that was very cool, because it only took 136 years for a student to publish a collection of multilingual writings.

Why did you choose to donate the proceeds to Proyecto Carrito?

All of the proceeds from the sales of an author’s book upon the launch night do not go to the authors, they are donated to a nonprofit of the author’s choosing. So, being the case that I wrote this book as a reflection and reminiscence on Latin America, and the memories of its pasts that flow into its present day, and since it is a reflection of the Latin American identity, the closest sense of a Latin American identity and presence, at least one that felt very familiar to me, was with being surrounded by the maintenance workers whenever I was present for a Proyecto Carrito class. Mind you, I live right on the edge of Newark, NJ, which has the second-highest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the entire country, second to New York. Not only that, it does not possess simply a large amount of Puerto Ricans, but of Hispanics and Afro-Caribbean peoples as well, I come from this community. So, as one might be aware, Emerson is beyond white, and about 61% of the student community as a whole come from a six-figure or higher family income background. I do not, and I have seen a lot of these students, both white and POC, just be so detached from the definition of genuine work, genuine connection to strife of all forms, from genuine appreciation of the littlest things in every day life, and one of the only few places in the whole of Emerson that I sensed that wholehearted appreciation and gratitude for just being able to exist was with everyone at Proyecto Carrito. They remind me of my own family and the overall community, both within my part of Essex County and Latin America as a whole. Everything I create I always want to cast a better light on the Hispanic community and low-income communities of color, because they both get consistently neglected and dismissed as incapable of being able to fully thrive, and there’s some part of me internally that wanted to create Memories of an Old World as a legitimate fuck you to every individual that came into this school from a well-off background and with far more resources than I ever had and yet I still accomplished something that had never been done at this institution by any student prior. It was only fitting that my proceeds would go Proyecto Carrito because it’s founded on narratives that need to be pushed into the student and administrative community, because the workers are just viewed as workers in the eyes of some students and I sincerely wish to shift that consciousness and that ignorance because they do work that a majority would possess too much pride and too little stamina to do. So yeah, it’s cyclical, I create to give back, in order Proyecto Carrito can continue to create, and so the cycle persists, and it must continue to persist, because the community has a long way to go for strides to be made in the consciousness of its being.

Proyecto Carrito at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication

What’s the connection between immigrant rights struggles and 3D scholarship? Come to the SWR Workshop at C’s to learn about Proyecto Carrito Caravan—a group of Emerson College immigrant janitors, students, faculty, and administration, who drove a car literally wrapped in the stories of immigration and dreams for a more inclusive educational system from Boston to San Diego-Tijuana border.

Wednesday, March 15

W.05 Rhetorics and Realities: Exploring New Potentials for Scholarly Production to Transform the Meaning of Scholarship (and the Meaning of Meaning within Our Field)

Sponsored by NCTE’s Studies in Writing and Rhetoric book series, this workshop offers both presentations and hands-on training in new publishing platforms. It is designed to create a space for participants to discuss the issues/concerns that need to be addressed into our scholarly publications as well as provide them with the opportunity to learn about as well as to experiment with building alternative forms of scholarly production.

B113

Chair: Stephen Parks, Syracuse University, Philadelphia, PA

Presenters/Speakers:

Kristin Arola, Washington State University, Pullman, WA
Elizabeth Brewer, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain
Romeo Garcia, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Crystal Hendricks, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Brett Keegan, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Jason Markins, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Tamera Marko, Emerson College, Boston, MA
Jacqueline Rhodes, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Jody Shipka, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Melanie Yergeau, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Description: Steve Parks, editor of the SWR series, will provide a workshop overview, using the instance of Berlin’s Rhetoric and Reality to talk about the need to continually pose the relationship between emergent disciplinary insights and innovative publishing platforms. There will be 2 panel discussions, a breakout session during which participants will be able to engage one of the plenary panel speakers in discussion of specific capabilities of platforms mentioned, a discussion of a new platform that will allow for crowd-sourced history via engaging with the SWR series, and an interactive workshop during which participants consider the impact of doing something beyond, or in addition to, “thinking with (or writing about) objects”—or, as is often the case, when objects are even considered and given their due, writing about objects. Instead, participants will be exploring more fully what it might mean (and, indeed, how it feels) to actually compose with objects

Together, we will discuss how the different scholarly approaches featured throughout the day (print, digital, object-based) might intersect, support, and/or transform the field’s ability to tackle the exigent arguments and pressing concerns. Put otherwise, we explore the questions: What are the Rhetorics and Realities that need to be produced as we look to the future?

Participant Preparation: The afternoon workshop requires participants do some preparatory work in advance of the workshop. First, please bring to the workshop at least five physical objects—things you might imagine using to create an object-based, multimodal composition. These objects might range from found objects to yard-sale or thrift-store finds to everyday ephemera found around the house, workplace, or campus. Please DO NOT choose objects that you would not be willing to exchange with others or see modified or destroyed as part of the workshop’s activities. Once you’ve selected your objects, the second thing you’ll need to do is to spend time thinking about the rhetorical and material dimensions of the objects you’ve selected. Consider, for instance, how these objects function and what they mean individually. Consider, as well, how the materials might be juxtaposed, combined, and/or modified to do certain kinds of rhetorical work—for instance, to tell a story, to move someone to action, to make an argument, to warn, to amuse, etc. In addition to considering the objects’ potentials for meaning, use, and/or modification, consider as well the affective dimensions of the objects you have selected. Does the object convey or otherwise suggest a kind of sadness—is it playful, frightening, boring, provocative, etc.? Please take time to write up (or jot down, list, audio or videotape, etc.) your thoughts about and impressions of your objects.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan: Thomas R. Watson Conference

San Diego, CA to Louisville, KY — Our Proyecto Carrito Caravan culminated with a presentation at the biennial Thomas R. Watson Conference, which focuses on rhetoric and composition. We had presented Proyecto Carrito at the previous Watson Conference, in 2014, and this year’s theme, “Mobility Work in Composition: Translation, Migration, Transformation,” dovetailed perfectly with the Caravan experience.

Attendees to our presentation at the Watson Conference.

“Proyecto Carrito helped me consider the importance of the idea of mobility and immobility in the act of convivencia (living together despite our differences).” — talk attendee

In our talk, “Student-Worker Immigrant Collective: Driving Our Own Translingual Narratives in a National Caravan from Boston to the San Diego-Tijuana Border,” we discussed the different and inequitable risks that professors, students, and workers take on when doing this kind of work; Caravan co-director Mario Ernesto Osorio’s work on convivencia and compañerismo, or learning to live together despite our differences; and Caravan co-director Tamera Marko, Ph.D.’s theory of double displacement, or displaced people being displaced from their stories of displacement.

We also discussed our 2015 paper, “When the Student Receives an ‘A’ and the Worker Gets Fired: Disrupting the Unequal Political Economy of Translingual Rhetorical Mobility,” co-written by Tamera; Mario; Caravan co-director Ryan Catalani; and Eric Sepenoski, who was part of the original Proyecto Carrito drive in 2014. This multimedia paper was published in a special issue of Literacy in Composition Studies titled “The New Activism: Composition, Literacy Studies, and Politics.”

Tam and Mario discuss compañerismo and convivencia.

In the conference’s closing session, responding to the question “What have you heard and read that changes/expands/moves/challenges your thinking about mobility work?”, one attendee wrote, “El Proyecto Carrito me ayudó a considerar la importancia de la idea de la movilidad e inmovilidad en el acto de convivencia. A la vez me recordó que la implementación de la movilidad es un acto colectivo del que todos somos responsables.” In English: “Proyecto Carrito helped me consider the importance of the idea of mobility and immobility in the act of convivencia (living together despite our differences). At the same time it reminded me that the implementation of mobility is a collective act, for which we are all responsible.”

Several attendees to our talk also tweeted their thoughts and observations in real time—we’ve gathered those responses here:

Proyecto Carrito Caravan at #WatsCon16

A final, heartfelt thanks to our donors and sponsors who made it possible for us to travel across the country—and back—including the Elma Lewis Center for Civic Engagement, Learning, and Research at Emerson College, and individuals including:

Iris Ikeda & Aleix Catalani, Melanie Feldman, Kendall Nelson, Sarah, William Ouellette, Cathy Kawano-Ching, David Griffin, Samiris Sostre, Madeline Weinstein-Avery, Josephine Cooper, Chrislyn Choo, Karla Morales, Al, Ashley Wells, Linda Morrison, and Lance Langdon, UC Irvine.

The Proyecto Carrito Caravan is a group of janitors driving their stories of immigration from Boston to San Diego. For more information about the Caravan, please contact Ryan Catalani at ryan@mobilitymovilidad.org. A press kit, including a fact sheet and full-resolution images, is available to download.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Days 8-9

San Diego, CA — Our final, impromptu presentation on the West Coast was at a lowrider car show in Barrio Logan organized by People Over Profits SD. It serendipitously aligned with Proyecto Carrito: a presentation in a parking lot that sought to benefit and include the entire community, showcasing cars whose designs reflect the heritages of their owners—and often their desires for social change.

The Proyecto Carrito Caravan at the "Still Doing Our Thing" car show. — The Proyecto Carrito Caravan at the “Still Doing Our Thing” car show.

Titled “Still Doing Our Thing,” the car show featured lowriders—“cars built to be slow and low to the ground,” as described in Everything Comes From the Streets, a documentary about lowriding. “San Diego, California, and the surrounding borderlands, has its own rich history around the lowriding tradition,” the documentary says, a “movement defined by self-expression and cultural ingenuity.”

Lowriding fostered “Chicano identity, self-determination and cultural preservation,” wrote the documentary’s director, Alberto López Pulido. He continues:

Lowriders often included symbols, designs and statements that spoke to ethnic nationalism and pride, and transformed stock cars into true works of art. … lowrider car clubs [forged] a collective vision for the community, fostered by the Chicano Rights Movement and the establishment of historic Chicano Park.

People over Profits-SD organized this car show "to benefit the community of Barrio Logan." — People over Profits-SD organized this car show “to benefit the community of Barrio Logan.”

At the event, which was part of Archtoberfest San Diego, we were invited to park our Proyecto Carrito car right in the middle of the lot. Surrounded by dozens of meticulously detailed lowriders, we set up a laptop in our driver’s seat to play videos about our work. Numerous attendees stopped by to view those videos and talk with us afterward.

viewing-video — Attendees view Proyecto Carrito videos among the car show’s lowriders.

We were able to make it to this deeply meaningful car show thanks to our generous donors from around the country. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Day 7

Los Angeles to San Diego, CA — One week, and some 3,300 miles later, we reached our final city, presenting half a mile from historic Chicano Park at Woodbury University’s campus in Barrio Logan to a group of several dozen architecture and urban planning students and professors.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-directors Tamera Marko, Ph.D. and Mario Ernesto Osorio present at Woodbury University.

We were invited by Goyo Ortiz, an architect, urban planner, and faculty member at Woodbury, and discussed our weekly translingual writing class at Emerson College—one of the only college courses in the US that integrates janitors, students, professors, and staff around the same table. We talked about why it’s important for future architects and urban planners to consider creating spaces where all members of a community—including immigrant workers—can be visible and feel welcome.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your project @MobilityMov! #studyarchitecture #WUarchitecture https://t.co/w2j7E7swRa

— Woodbury University (@WoodburyU) October 18, 2016

After our presentation, several students stayed to talk with us, sharing how they were moved by Mario’s story of sacrifice and resilience—and his perspectives on how schools can contribute to inaccurate perceptions of immigrants and immigration—and how those resonated with their own families’ stories.

A Woodbury University student talks with Mario after the presentation.

Thanks to our generous donors from around the country who made it possible for us to reach San Diego and present at Woodbury University. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

At Woodbury University, Mario discussed his vision for a more inclusive education system.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Day 6

Richfield, UT to Los Angeles, CA — After driving 3,000 miles, our project came full circle when we reached Emerson College’s outpost in Hollywood and—as with our very first Proyecto Carrito presentation in 2014—we presented in the parking lot.

Presenting the Proyecto Carrito Caravan at Emerson Los Angeles.

As we surrounded the Proyecto Carrito Caravan car—the physical embodiment of our work—we spoke about creating change by building relationships with all members of a college community, including students, alumni, professors, staff, and administrators. So it was powerful to see all of those groups represented in the audience, listening the stories of Mario and other immigrant janitors in our group, and hearing how we have sought to make our campus more inclusive.

Thanks to Rob Eckard, the assistant director of special events & student programming at Emerson Los Angeles, for coordinating this event, including ordering pizza for the audience and arranging for us to prepare in the ELA dressing rooms.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-director Mario Ernesto Osorio prepares in the Emerson Los Angeles dressing room.

Audience members from Emerson and other local institutions stayed for hours afterward to continue talking with us, a moving testament to our Caravan’s goals: to help people from diverse backgrounds recognize how much they have in common, and recognize how much power they already have to change their workplaces, neighborhoods, and other communities.

Audience members stayed for hours after our presentation.

Thanks to our generous donors from around the country who made it possible for us to create this important moment at Emerson Los Angeles. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

Passing Las Vegas, en route to LA, provided for a striking juxtaposition.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Day 5

Boulder, CO to Denver, CO to Richfield, UT — At the University of Denver, we joined a panel discussion about supporting immigrant students, adding our perspectives about how our group seeks to create a more inclusive environment for immigrant workers and students at Emerson College.

Mario Osorio, Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-director and Emerson maintenance worker, speaks at the University of Denver.

We were invited to join this discussion by Lisa M. Martinez, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Denver and chair of the Department of Sociology & Criminology. The panel, titled “Postsecondary Support Programs for Undocumented and DACA students,” sought to explore “working with and for undocumented and DACA students as they encounter barriers and opportunities in postsecondary education.”

DACA refers to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive action signed by President Obama that allows undocumented immigrants who arrived as children to work in the U.S. and to be exempt from deportation. Over 740,000 people have been approved for DACA to date, and an estimated 1.9 million people nationwide are eligible.

A panel discussion at the University of Denver, which focused on supporting immigrant students.

This University of Denver discussion intersected meaningfully with our work, allowing us to see similar initiatives at other institutions, and present our own approach. We shared an open letter to the Emerson campus—which is published in part on Proyecto Carrito—that the immigrant janitors in our group wrote. They identified three things that they would change at the college, which resonated powerfully with the theme of the discussion:

Being more united among Latinxs and Latin Americans.
Cultivating a desire to learn about Latin Americans’ culture, histories, and immigration contexts.
Recognizing their presence and humanity by saying “good morning.”

The discussion was moderated by Adrienne Martinez, MSW, assistant director for student success at the University of Denver’s Center for Multicultural Excellence. The other panelists, who provided research- and practice-based perspectives on supporting immigrant students, were:

Ryan Evely Gildersleeve, Ph.D. — University of Denver, Morgridge College of Education
Lynda Duran, MA, NCC — University of Colorado, Denver, Office of Student Life
Evelynn Guzman — Metro State University of Denver, New Student Orientation Coordinator
David Aragon, MA — University of Colorado, Boulder, Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement

We were able to attend this panel thanks to our generous donors from around the country. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

Just before the panel discussion, we spoke with Emerson’s student newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon, about the Caravan. The article, “Immigration advocacy hits the pavement,” by Bret Hauff, was published the next day.

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Day 4

Boulder, CO — After an early-morning arrival, we presented at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Program in Environmental Design to a seminar of around 100 urban planning students.

Left to right, Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-directors Tamera Marko and Mario Osorio, and CU Boulder professor Jota Samper. — Left to right, Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-directors Tamera Marko and Mario Osorio, and University of Colorado, Boulder professor Jota Samper.

At the invitation of Jota Samper, Ph.D., a Mobility Movilidad founding director and assistant professor at the Environmental Design program, we explored how the Proyecto Carrito Caravan uses physical space, including its role in facilitating interactions between all members of a college community—including immigrant janitors, students, and professors.

“I was very struck by the fact that you presented in a parking lot,” said one student. Another added: “I thought the use of spaces reflected the grassroots nature of the project.”

That topic is critical to our work at Emerson College, where we have an internationally-recognized weekly writing class—from which the stories in our Proyecto Carrito Caravan emerged. For the last six years, it has been one of the only college courses in the US that integrates janitors, students, professors, and staff around the same table.

Our lively discussion resonated with the Environmental Design program’s objective to “train our students to design sustainable buildings, neighborhoods, cities and regions,” in part through “a spirit of service to diverse communities,” as program director Kevin J. Krizek, Ph.D. wrote.

Mario Osorio and a University of Colorado, Boulder student.

Students reflected on places where they interact with workers on campus, and brainstormed ways to create new spaces that encourage those encounters. The challenge, as Tamera Marko, Ph.D.—Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-director and senior lecturer at Emerson College—said, is that at educational institutions, “the labor is divided: some people clean the classrooms, others learn in them.”

Mario Ernesto Osorio, Proyecto Carrito Caravan co-director and Emerson maintenance worker, said another issue is a perception of immigrants as ignorant and uneducated.

“In the United States, immigrants or maintenance workers are invisible,” he said.

Mario Osorio speaks about his perspectives on immigration and education.

Part of our goal with the Proyecto Carrito Caravan is to show audiences that we all already have everything we need to bridge that divide—it’s just a matter of perspective. We believe it begins with bringing people to the table who don’t normally come to the table, like immigrant janitors, and building meaningful relationships. And we’re able to share these ideas with audiences around the country thanks to our generous donors. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

“We’ve found we can create friendships and new relationships between workers, students, and professors,” Mario said. “Everybody’s working in the same institution, and we are a family.”

Proyecto Carrito Caravan, Days 2-3

Toledo, OH to Chicago, IL to Boulder, CO — An impromptu presentation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago capped this two-day, thousand-mile stretch. Hours before we were scheduled to depart Chicago, we were invited to present to Drea Howenstein‘s class, titled “Art as Social Force,” in SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries.

Mario Ernesto Osorio and Tamera Marko in SAIC's Sullivan Galleries. — Mario Ernesto Osorio and Tamera Marko in SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries.

We were honored to join this multidisciplinary group on their first day in the Sullivan Galleries, as they were just getting a feel for the space and preparing to install their exhibits.

Mario Ernesto Osorio discussed his perspectives on how education influences perceptions of immigration, calling for children, beginning from kindergarten, to be taught more accurate information about why people immigrate to the United States—in many cases, he said, because social or economic conditions in their home countries left them with no other choice.

Mario Ernesto Osorio discusses connections between education and immigration.

“There’s always some nervousness,” Mario said afterward, “because you don’t know what kind of audience you’re going to find.”

But in the end, Mario said that he felt the class did connect with our project, and understand what we’re trying to achieve.

“They were very attentive to the videos we showed and to what we were saying,” he said, “asking us questions and showing their interest.”

Drea Howenstein's class at SAIC watches a Proyecto Carrito video. — Drea Howenstein’s class at SAIC watches a Proyecto Carrito video.

After wrapping up at SAIC, we set off for our next presentation in Boulder, Colorado, driving over 1,000 miles through the night. Thank you to all of our donors who have made this Caravan possible! Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox.

With two-thirds of our drive done, and several more presentations to go, we’re thrilled with our progress and excited for what’s next.