Category: Proyecto Carrito Caravan

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. Being more united among Latinxs and Latin Americans.
2. Cultivating a desire to learn about Latin Americans’ culture, histories, and immigration contexts.
3. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Boston, MA to Toledo, OH — We’re off! After an informal and intimate send-off event at Emerson College yesterday, we packed our bags, stocked up on granola bars, and started driving early this morning.

We’ve driven alongside rivers glazed with a dawn mist and passed through nascent fall foliage, verdant leaves mixed with cornucopias of autumnal color. Accompanied by Journey, Juanes, and just a bit of NPR’s Alt.Latino, we’ve made it through Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and recently crossed the border into Ohio.

Now, as we skirt Lake Erie, surrounded by cornfields and apple orchards bathed in the golden streaks of the evening sun, we couldn’t be more excited to continue forging ahead. We feel so fortunate to be able to drive these stories of our shared humanity coast-to-coast, and we’re still seeking additional funds. Donating is quick and easy, and gives you an inside look into the Caravan, through daily video updates sent right to your inbox. Thank you to all our donors to date!

Six hundred miles in, with the freeway still boundless before us, we’re just getting started.

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.