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March 24, 2006
"Padres Unidos"
Welcome to Leadership Talks with Pam and Ricardo Martinez of Padres Unidos. Questions and answers will appear below starting at 1 pm EST on March 24, 2006. You may need to hit refresh periodically during the interview to see the latest responses. Read background Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you for joining us for today's Leadership Talks with Pam and Ricardo Martinez of Padres Unidos in Denver, CO.
What motivated each of you to get involved in social justice work?
Ricardo Martinez
Ricardo: I grew up on the Mexico/US border town of Mexicali. My family worked the fields in the Imperial Valley in southern California and I started helping when I was 10 or so. It was during these years that rumors started coming in from farmworkers who were returning home from Salinas and other areas about a movement to organize the fields. My family joined many others to form an organizing committee that merged with the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) when Cesar Chavez and a group of organizers came to Calexico to meet with the workers. I started leafleting for the Union when I was about 14 years old throughout the neighborhoods and fields, including El Centro, Calexico, Brawley and Indio. I was also sent to Mexicali to leaflet in the colonias (neighborhoods) to stop workers from coming across to work as scabs for the growers. Out of this experience and the tremendous pride that emerged from what we did as working families in the fields, came the belief that all things are possible through unity and fighting for what you know is just.
Pam: I became active in the late 1960’s and was influenced by the movements at home for liberation amongst peoples of color, the movement against an unjust war, and the women’s movement. This is what got me started. In particular, seeing people fight to open the doors of San Diego State, taking over Chicano Park, demanding a health clinic in the barrio and taking over the Ford Building in Balboa Park to start a Chicano cultural center – all had a tremendous impact on my becoming active. We are both influenced by seeing the wave of resistance which is growing in the United States, especially amongst immigrant communities, women and youth. I am inspired by our vision of a world free of all exploitation, injustice and oppression.
Mtn. Home, ID
Why did you feel it was importan to start the student arm of Padres Unidos?
Pam Martinez
Pam: We didn’t actually consciously make that decision. What happened was as soon as we began parents wanting to organize in middle schools and high schools and high schools, students end up taking a leading role in the work and feel ownership of the schools, so it demands that youth get organized and have their own organization.
Ricardo: The students wanted their own organization. They felt that they could speak more freely as students in their own group, and that’s how the group, Jovenes Unidos started – in the middle schools. They wanted a place where they could raise their own issues and be comfortable with that without their parents being right there. But when we got to actually talking about how we were actually going to reform the middle schools, then the youth and parents got together to devise common strategies and negotiations. And that has been the model that we kept working with. The middle and high school students meet, the parents meet, and when we start talking about school reforms, negotiations, and the issues that get discussed, both groups come together.
Chicago area
Parents are busy. We work with parents in Chicago and it is difficult. How do you work around parents schedules and include them?
Pam Martinez
Pam: It’s true. Poor parents, working-class parents, immigrant parents, parents of color in low-income communities—many of them are single parents, many work two and three jobs, and survival is a day-to-day struggle. So the question you’re raising is important: how do they become involved and stay involved. I think a couple of things. If you look nationally on who is on the rise in terms of the struggle for democracy and justice, whether it’s in the schools, in service industries, in the fields, around issues of police brutality, et cetera, you’ll see that the people who have the hardest working conditions and lives are who is on the rise. And I really believe that – not to be corny, but people have nothing to lose but their chains. When it comes to children, we found people will go to the mat and fight for their kids’ rights to a good education and justice in the schools. It becomes a question of family and community and opportunity for their people. So we have to, on the one hand as organizers, be really creative and in touch with the conditions of when people can meet, where is it possible for them to get active, and in creative ways, and at the same time, we have a tremendous respect for the leadership role that the hardest-working parents play in the struggle for educational justice and to end educational apartheid. In the real world, what that means, we have to have meetings based on people’s different shifts, on weekends when they’re free – some of them – have social gatherings on Sundays where we can catch up, meet in people’s living rooms, provide food, have activities for the kids so that it’s possible for the parents to help lead the work.
The other thing along that same line, we never let a school or school district tell us when we’re going to meet with them and where. For example, we rooted in where is it possible and when is it possible for the parents to meet, and you put the burden on the people who are getting paid for this job, to serve the parents who want to meet with them. We don’t inconvenience or make it so hard. The priority is not to please the district, but to set the conditions for the parents to meet. And we always demand quality translation be available.
New Mexico
Can tell us how you developed Padres Unidos?
Ricardo Martinez
Ricardo: Padres Unidos was a volunteer parent organization for the first 8 years of its existence. After winning some specific reforms in Denver Public Schools, the National Council of La Raza called to offer support and fund us. At that point we were able to hire staff, get an office, hold regular parent leadership classes (on issues and how to organize) and develop campaigns that took several years to win. We were able to build a Dual Language Montessori School with bond money in Denver which was designed and fought for by Mexican parents; fight zero tolerance policies and call for reform at the lowest performing middle school in the state; assist in defeating Ron Unz in Colorado; and organizing for the reform of North High School in NW Denver. Through this work, parents and students analyzed issues, researched solutions and developed strategies and tactics to create institutional change and reform. It was also during this time that our youth component emerged, Jovenes Unidos
akron, OH
You work on immigrant issues and education. How did you decide on those two issues?
Ricardo Martinez
Ricardo: The issues in education and immigration were chosen by people’s concerns. We started in the schools, but the issue that helped form Padres Unidos was immigrants rights. It was a principal punishing Spanish-speaking Mexican students by making them eat off the floor, and they were the only students punished that way. One of our biggest cases was a high school student being arrested in the high school, handcuffed and then driven around town until they found an INS raid happening and handed the student to the INS agents. So for us, the right to an education and immigrant rights are interlinked. You can’t separate one aspect of people’s lives from another. So our issue of education is linked with immigrants’ rights issues. And sometimes the issue of immigrant rights gets out of the education arena, whether it’s driver’s license, a state law being proposed to allow state troopers to stop and detain possible undocumented folks who happen to be brown – those issues are always at the forefront, but it is always affected by conditions here, and this is what affects people’s lives the most.
Pam: The same system that’s causing the crisis in immigration is the same system that’s benefiting from the crisis in education. Immigrants in this country do the dirtiest, hardest, lowest-paying work, and there’s sort of a feudal situation where they work and don’t get paid because they owe the company store. To keep immigrant students uneducated, illiterate is to ensure that they will continue to be as their parents are, a source of dirt-cheap labor in this country to be exploited. So the interconnection is rooted in exploitation and injustice, and the very fight of immigrant students to quality education rattled the cage big time because they will no longer be picking the beans or cleaning the toilets.
Memphis area
I've been to your website and saw that you have forums and blogs. How has technology such as this changed your work?
Pam Martinez
Pam: The Web site was getting 4,000 hits a month and growing, which really shocked me. Then we also put out action alerts, updates in the work to go out to thousands of people as the work evolved. Locally, we do what we do without the technology, but it makes it popular and people can better see what we’re doing. Nationally, I think it helps contribute to a growing movement for equality and justice because it gives other people in other places examples of how you can organize and fight and make gains. And these gains are being led by immigrants, Chicanos, African-Americans, the poor, youth and parent communities. I think given the times, the more people can share that and get it out there, then we can better feel our collective strength.
St. Louis, MO
What has been useful to you in order to navigate and engage in local politics?
Pam Martinez
Pam: It’s not easy navigating local politics. The way we navigate is we go from the premise of we unite all who can be united on a given issue. We know that in many instances that unity can change tomorrow; many times, it’s temporary. Both the unity and the change are temporary when you’re working with others; it’s in motion. Many of these alliances are usually temporary. So, with the membership of the organizations that are in these struggles and campaigns for change, it means constantly assessing when things are being moved forward and progressing, or when things are being compromised and moving backwards.
Ricardo: What makes us able to navigate local politics and our coalitions is to keep in mind the interests of the community, what we’re fighting for, what was agreed upon in our membership and in the community. That focus allows us to meet with officials at whatever capacity and not lose our direction. And we bring any changes or agreements back to the membership. We always have to be cautious that we don’t separate from our base and not act as individuals; for major decisions, it always comes back to the community.
San Antonio
What do you hope to accomplish through your work in Denver and with Padres Unidos?
Pam Martinez
Pam: We hope to help build the base of an intergenerational movement that is working for equality and justice for all – politically, culturally, and economically. Our vision is to create the conditions for no one to be exploited or oppressed - in any way, shape or form
Franklin
How would you each describe your leadership styles and have they changed over the years depending on the work?
Ricardo Martinez
Ricardo: Well, my leadership style is to be inclusive and work from people’s strengths and build on that because everybody has something to contribute, and we have to be able to find that. When people see that they can be part of a struggle, that develops the conversation, and they become more open to change. That hasn’t changed much through the years. That’s how I was taught, that’s how I was trained, and that has been for me the most effective way to organize and contribute to build leadership.
Pam: I love for people to do popular education and the discussion that falls out from that, for people to be able to grow in their understanding of the relationship between whatever specific issues they’re struggling around and trying to make change around and to see the link between that and what’s going on everywhere. That’s the strength of my leadership style because I make sure I do that. It doesn’t mean lecturing or talking all the time, it’s raising questions, such as ‘What do you think, did you know this was going on in East Timor – what are the connections?’ ‘They’re outsourcing factory jobs to China; is there any connection between that and us trying to make public schools great places of learning.’ I love questions like that because then it goes all over the map and people start analyzing everything. And ultimately, people start to see the world through a different lens and make sense of their own lives through a different lens, as women, as people of color, as poor people, as immigrants. People start to feel a part of the whole and less isolated in their own struggles for justice, and it gives them greater vision and hope. That’s why I love the popular education piece of the work and think it’s one of the more important things, that people can envision and learn it.
My leadership style has improved with time. My leadership style is to build new leaders with a vision for a world where we’re able to end all oppression and injustice, which is a good place to be. So people learn those skills and that vision to taking up the day-to-day things that are slapping them down. It’s really inspiring. That’s my favorite part in terms of a leadership role.
NY, NY
It must be both challenging and rewarding being married and working together. How do you do it?
Ricardo Martinez
Ricardo: One of the benefits is to have constant communication and reflection on what is going on. Another benefit is we are able to play off of one another’s strengths, which compliment one another and makes us a very effective team. We have learned to respect one another’s instincts and intuitions. But these benefits are also challenges – such as knowing when to stop talking shop and giving it a rest.
Berkley, CA
Pam,
Earlier you spoke about why you started in social justice work-liberation for people of color, women's issues and an unjust war. Some would say that 40 years later we have those same issues on the table. Would you agree and if so, what advice can you give to the next wave of social justice leaders?
Pam Martinez
Pam: This is true. We are faced with the same issues. I believe the reason we have the same issues is we were unable to fundamentally shift the power out of the struggles and movements that the questioner is talking about. Once we made some gains – and people did make great gains – as soon as the powers that be could slap it back, they did. And we’re still feeling it today. So I would say that it’s very important in the process of fighting an unjust war, of improving our schools -- to liberate your mind as centers of learning -- for making the work where people can work in just workplaces, where women and people of color are not objectified and oppressed. It’s very important, as the movement builds, to create a vision of what we want to see to replace the existing system that perpetuates this list of oppression and injustice. It’s not fighting each one of those things individually, but dealing with the infrastructure that gives birth to it over and over again and sustains it. And the current administration makes it even worse. To me, creating that vision and making sure that happens is the challenge to rebuilding the movement so we can go further and changing the very nature of the power structure that thrives off war and exploitation of people of color and immigrants and women. That’s the level it has to go to. And we need to learn to work with our brothers and sisters around the world in this effort.
DC
Hi Pam and Ricardo,
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started your work?
Pam Martinez
Pam: We didn’t know that you could actually be paid to do community organizing. We always have done this as volunteers, and I must say that while we have the luxury – and it is a luxury – to be able to staff it, you can really get a lot done. It’s great. I wish I knew that when I was 24. We’ve only been working for six or seven years. When we formed the organization in 1991, we met in living rooms in the evenings and on weekends because we all had other jobs. It wasn’t yet a nonprofit. The National Council of La Raza called us and said, ‘Make it bigger’ and they funded us. And we thought, ‘People do that?’
Ricardo: For me, it’s having a lot more clarity on building a sustainable movement and having an understanding that it is going to take years. What’s critical is the sustained organizing drive to maintain and expand what we won back in the days of the movement. And if we would have known back then that we needed to build organizations and organizing campaigns to be able to defend our gains – that’s just experience we did not have. For us, that’s a lesson now that all progressive folks now that are organizing is that we have to look at developing new leadership, training new organizers, and building a movement that will be sustained for a long time.
Leadership for a Changing World
Thanks again for a great discussion. We have time for one more question that we like to ask all of our guests.
How do you sustain yourself and your staff to prevent burnout?
Pam Martinez
Pam and Ricardo: First off, we have a very good benefits package, which includes 12 sick days and three weeks vacation – plus 10 paid holidays a year. Organizers need time to reflect, rest and chill out. We also try to make sure people are encouraged to take time off with families and children or just for themselves. In addition, we are flexible in our work schedules which makes life less stressful for people who are organizing.
Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you for joining us for today's Leadership Talks with Pam and Ricardo Martinez. For more information on Padres Unidos:
Ricardo Martinez
Padres Unidos
3025 W. 37th Ave.
Suite 209
Denver, CO 80211
Phone: 303-458-6545
Fax: 303-458-5635
Email: padres_unidos@hotmail.com
Web: www.padresunidos.org
Pam Martinez
Padres Unidos
3025 W. 37th Ave.
Suite 209
Denver, CO 80211
Phone: 303-458-6545
Fax: 303-458-5635
Email: padres_unidos@hotmail.com
Web: www.padresunidos.org
Pam Martinez
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