Who is an activist? What actions define a scholar-activist, an artist-activist, or community activist? How do community members, as non-academics, serve their community as advocates as well as intellectuals? And, finally, what is the impact that scholars and advocates make when they join with one another for social justice efforts within their respective communities? These are the questions that guided the work we present in this special issue of Reflections. This special issue will underscore how activism can work with academic life in the fight for social justice and change, so we invite you to take a closer look at activism and academia in community work.

As guest editors, we wanted to explore the role activism plays when community-engaged members, academic and non-academic, work in partnerships with one another to achieve a shared common interest, like social justice and change. Our issue will highlight the labors and exchanges that take place when academics and/or non-academics adopt an activist identity, especially in their community work. So, we selected contributors who not only adopt an activist identity but also whose contribution spoke to community building, civic engagement, social responsibility and the need for social change, especially under current oppressive political ideologies and rhetorics. Throughout these pages, we present community work by scholar-activists (academics) and community-activists (non-academics) identities. At times, this work will illustrate how those identities are permeable and interchangeable in their role with activism.

In whole, the work featured in this special issue will exhibit communities in action: working together, building relationships, and in their call for social justice, creating spaces of social change. Our respondent, Larissa M. Mercado-López, for this special issue, states these articles speak to “space, community-building, identity, story-telling, healing, in/visibility, and resistance”. It is our hope that this special issue extends conversations on what it means to be an activist or what it means to be engaged in activism.

Activism and Academia

To help us understand what it means to be an activist or what it means to engage in activism, we referred to three characterizations of an activist and/or activism in academia. First, we considered where activism might take place. Dana L. Cloud explains in her chapter “The Only Conceivable Thing to Do: Reflections on Academics and Activism,”

…to be active in social movements does not mean giving up scholarship and criticism…. We must fight the battle of ideas as well as the battles in our workplaces and the streets.  Understanding racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, and other ideological justifications for oppression is important work.  This kind of work can happen both in the university and in the public sphere. (16-17)

Thus, as Cloud asserts, acts of activism are both ideological as well as material. Our contributors and those whom they may have introduced in their work aimed to achieve exactly that: all sought to fight the battles of ideas and to bring that battle to workplaces and the streets. For instance, contributor James Chase Sanchez takes the battle facing racism straight back to his hometown. Las Imaginistas, an art collective from south Texas, held workshops in their community to help venders battle permit restrictions on the streets they occupied, according to contributors Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa and Candace de Leon-Zepeda. The storytelling, community-building, and/or resistance embedded within these articles (and books reviewed) demonstrate the ongoing effort of advocates, organizers, activists, and community-engaged scholars to fight social injustices and to create spaces of social change.

Also, as we considered selections for this special issue, we wanted to emphasize that scholarly activism is not advocacy, as Goldrick-Rab argues. Clearly, our readers will see representations of persons who serve as advocates, that is to say someone who “begins with a core and guiding goal–not a theory–and pushes for changes to achieve that goal” (Goldrick-Rab para 3). But, more importantly, we wanted to call attention to representations of persons who aligned more closely with Goldrick-Rab’s characterization of a scholar-activist, someone who “begins with a set of testable assumptions, subjects these to rigorous research, and once in possession of research findings seeks to translate those findings into action” (Goldrick-Rab para 3). Our contributors (and the persons whom they may have spoken of) have all found a way to translate what has been learned into some kind of call to or form of action. And, in that action, this special issue recognizes their community-engaged work in academia. We acknowledge our contributors as rhetoricians (writers, artist, filmmakers, etc.) who are agents of social change, as defined by Ellen Cushman:

Activism means accepting a civic duty to empower people with our positions, a type of leftist stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  To empower, as I use it, means: (a) to enable someone to achieve a goal by providing resources for them; (b) to facilitate actions–particularly those associated with language and literacy; (c) to lend our power or status to forward people’s achievement. (14)

The academics and non-academics featured in this special issue work in partnerships as their civic duty to empower and to facilitate social change within their communities.

In many ways, this special issue was initiated first by the many assaults on people of color we were witnessing under the Trump administration and second by the rise of activism that took place across the United States in direct response to the Trump administration. We saw how many communities across the nation were affected in different (sometimes immeasurable) degrees and in varied (sometimes unimaginable) ways as a result of the 2016 presidential election. In a direct and indirect response to such phenomenon, we set out to produce a special issue that represented a collective resistance, one where our contributors could advocate for and practice forms of activism to resist and overcome discrimination embedded in and sanctioned by the current political climate. But let us acknowledge that even though this special issue originated during the Trump Era and experienced delays as the result of the 2020 pandemic, we bring you this work in 2021—post the 2020 presidential election, with Joseph R. Biden Jr. now serving as the 46th President of the United States of America and Kamala D. Harris (the first woman and woman of color) serving as the 49th Vice-President of the United States of America.  Although Biden’s presidency brings a ray of light and hope to many in the US, we want to stipulate that a substantial amount of work still needs to be done. So, with that, may we continue to “do work that matters,” as Gloria E. Anzaldúa says, out in our communities (22).

Digital Communities

Some articles in this special issue engage discussions involving digital communities, so a quick word. When academics and non-academics join under a common goal for social justice, the possibilities are endless, especially in online spaces. In partnership with one another, they can aim to create and maintain alliances to nourish their partnerships and to move further their advocacy efforts within and outside the classroom. These partnerships can help to shape their own approaches, as each mobilizes for a cause and as each sets out to engage different communities. So, as this special issue will show, if we are to truly understand the relationship between community engagement and activism, we must also look at how coalitions and partnerships are created and sustained in online spaces.

Online content, as a result of the political climate, has shown time and time again that mainstream media does not portray the harsh realities of minoritized and disenfranchised groups. To curb the spread of false information, minoritized groups are often forced to do the brunt of the work to dispel information or acquire resources. Social media can be used to participate in or advocate for a cause, if individuals are not permitted or able to attend a protest in-person. From raising funds, to coordinating events, or bringing awareness to a cause, these types of advocacy efforts are a vital component for community engagement and activist networks. We cannot ignore the labor folks have made (and continue to make) on social media platforms because online activists show how activist work is multifaceted and not linear. Minoritized groups grow and adapt to the technological and sociopolitical landscape to ensure that their voices are heard and taken into consideration. Their labor, which cannot go unnoticed, is critical for our understanding of activism and community engagement. This understanding is crucial for all who seek to engage in community work as activist, especially within the sphere of digital environments.

In a country where white supremacy is seen as a symptom of political divisiveness instead of what it is, systemic oppression, it is often members of minoritized communities who use their own social media platforms to change the narrative, dismantle misinformation, and call out the injustices they and others face. These communities share lived-experiences, form support groups, etc. on social media all the time, but we, especially as scholar-activists, need to listen, respect, and give credit to the work that is being done. To REALLY listen and learn from those who have already put in the work. The work they have done may not actively be published by mainstream media or in academic journals, but the work has and will always be present in online spaces. Our partnerships and existence within community-engaged spaces is dependent on holding ourselves as educator-scholars (aka community-engaged academics) accountable for learning and paying attention to the anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and all the -isms that are embedded with how we describe and interact with communities outside the ivory tower. We can do this by paying attention and respect to those already doing the work, regardless of physical presence or not. The idea that “hashtag activism” is performative has some validity for those who do not hold themselves accountable and do not actively put in the work to check their privilege. However, the idea that activism only exists in physical spaces is an ableist construct. Scholar-activists may pride themselves on doing the work, but more still needs to be done in order to be the true advocates we believe and portray ourselves to be.

Special Issue Takeaways

Dr. Larissa M. Mercado-López, an Associate Professor of Women’s Studies from California State University, Fresno, serves as our respondent for the dynamic work featured in this special issue of Reflections. We chose Dr. Mercado-López because we felt, based on her background, that she could offer a unique perspective. As a community-engaged scholar and advocate, her work in activism extends beyond the walls of academia. Her research intersects women of color feminism, motherhood studies, fitness studies, and higher education studies to examine the negotiations and attempts student mothers experience in and out of academia.  As a scholar-activist, Dr. Mercado-Lopez brings together community work that engages mothers of color, parenting in academia, sense of belonging, and fitness to understand the institutional marginalization and empowerment of student mothers of color. We valued her insight on the work this special issue encompasses, and our key takeaway from her response essay is that “words matter.”

Now, our first selection for this special issue came from James Chase Sanchez, an activist, scholar-artist from Middlebury College in Vermont, and his producer Joel Fendelman. Together, they worked to create Man on Fire, an award-winning documentary about racism in Sanchez’s hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, where a white minister lit himself on fire to protest against the town’s racism. For a greater impact, Sanchez used this documentary to communicate and bring his scholarly research into a larger public audience outside of academia. For this special issue, Sanchez and Fendelman used clips, b-roll, and behind-the-scenes footage from their documentary Man on Fire to generate a digital short titled “On Being an Activist in Your Hometown.” In this digital short (transcript provided), Sanchez speaks to the difficulty he experienced being an activist in his hometown. Sanchez reveals how he navigated begin an anti-racist activist, highlighting the public critiques of his work, the problems of interviewing people that disagreed with his activism and project (Man on Fire), and responding to the claims that he was the “real racist” for engaging in such work. We have an opportunity to hear how Sanchez performed his activist-scholar-artist role with this project that forced him to revisit his community’s past as both a scholar in search of truth and a documentarian in front of a camera. This contribution offers us a key takeaway: Value truth, especially when you receive any pushback against scholarly work that may serve as a vehicle for social change.

Next, we present an article by one of our co-editors, Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, and his co-author, Candace de Leon-Zepeda from Our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio. As scholar-activists, who commit to enacting pedagogies of interconnectedness that invite the visibility of socio-cultural identifications (like race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or class), Hinojosa and de Leon Zepeda speak to the heightened discord in public rhetorics. Their contribution underscores how the current state of such rhetorics not only contributes to the experiences of oppression and divisiveness but also to the demarcation and dismemberment of bodies, both metaphorically and literally, especially toward bodies that are systematically degraded by their color. They adopt Anzaldúian theories and her Coyolxauhqui imperative, an “ongoing process of making and unmaking,” as a heuristic for aiding individuals with the greater public good of healing trauma inscribed onto what they recognize as bodies broken by systematic oppression.  They argue that Anzaldúa offers individuals a language for constructing, re-constructing, and re-imagining identities as a means “to heal and achieve integration” in civic discourse for active public work (19). Supporting local community activist-artists, like Sanchez, who use their form of expressions for social justice as part of their activism is our takeaway from their contribution. Because when activist-artists use their creativity to “jolt” us into the awareness of our spiritual/political problems, we can all then take a step forward toward healing, as the authors of this article suggest.

For this special issue, Christina V. Cedillo, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric from the University of Houston–Clear Lake, extends the interrelatedness of bodies and public rhetorics conversation further into the realm of digital environments with her contribution “#CripTheVote: Disability Activism, Social Media, and the Campaign for Communal Visibility.”  In 2016, #cripthevote appeared as part of the Disability Visibility Project. This online platform was established in 2014 by Alice Wong, meant to serve as a community providing a space for users to create, share, and amplify disability related media and culture. In her article, Cedillo analyzes tweets posted by disabled users during the 2018 midterm elections to show how disability activists engage and use digital media as a tool of constitutive rhetoric. Her analysis of #cripthevote tweets, within the context of the DVP, reveals how very differently disability activists frame their own bio-socio-political interests in comparison to government entities who pass laws governing their bodies. From Cedillo’s contribution, we can takeaway that online spaces can not only easily perpetuate prejudices but also be spaces that hold the potential and possibility for building community where activists, like those whom Cedillo has acknowledged, can be recognized.

To continue our exploration into digital environments, we include the article “Embedding La Cultura: Digital Engagement by a Latinx Nonprofit Organization” by Jasmine Villa, also a co-editor for this special issue, and Jennifer Falcon with contributions from Maria Arevalo. For this article, the authors showcase how community-building practices operate in online spaces as representations of collaboration and resistance of dominant narratives. They examine how a Latinx organization, Latinitas, adapted to fill the gap in representation and inclusivity.  Their work underscores how an online magazine disrupts the overwhelming whiteness of the non-profit sector.  Learning how non-profit organizations can improve content management strategies to better their inclusivity representation are two takeaways we can draw from this article.

Lastly, our special issue ends with a conversation that mirrors where we began, filmmaking. In the last article, we introduce Elvira Carrizal-Dukes, a Chicanx filmmaker and artist and Instructor from The University of Texas at El Paso, who shares with us her experiences working as a filmmaker. She takes this opportunity to express how the media views Chicanx. She discusses her rasquachismo process, that refers to making do with what resources one has readily available, which she adopted for her Mariposa and Ochoa film productions and her graphic novel A.W.O.L. For Carrizal-Dukes, these works not only represent an alternative process to filmmaking and but also serve as a message that challenge the oppressive ideologies perpetuated by Hollywood. As a community-educator, Carrizal-Dukes’ role lies in serving as an advocate for community-based filmmaking, calling on Chicanx filmmakers and other marginalized artists to create their own opportunities for media productions. We can takeaway a valuable lesson from her contribution: Carrizal-Dukes helps us to understand the artistic methods Chicanx filmmakers can employ to advance and defend their communities in the face of political violence, especially during times of increased hatred and discrimination toward people of color.

This special issue features book reviews also over works we felt complemented the focus on this special issue. We included a review by Victoria Ramirez Gentry, who reviewed From Thought to Action: Developing a Social Justice Orientation by Amy Aldridge Sanford, and a review by Jennifer Falcón, a major contributor featured in this issue, who reviewed Linguistic Justice, Black Language, and Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy by April Baker-Bell. And to close, we included three reviews of Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory by Aja Y. Martinez. The reviewers for Martinez’s work include Jessica Edwards and Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Danielle Pappo, and James Chase Sanchez. Sanchez is also one of our major contributors for this special issue.

As co-editors of this special issue, we thank Steve Parks for giving us this space to safely address the social injustices our contributors write about and their calls for social change.  We also want to thank all our contributors for dedicating their time and efforts to this issue. Together, as academics and non-academics or as educator-scholars and community-educators, we collaboratively and openly aim to create spaces of social change and to bring about social justice for all. We feel like this special issue is a steppingstone towards that goal. We believe that together we can achieve this, and that we must never give up this cause. Social justice must prevail.  Social change must take place.

With gratitude,

Jasmine, Yndalecio, and Isabel

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria E. 2015. “Let Us be the Healing of the Wound.” Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, edited by AnaLouise Keating, 9-22, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Cloud, Dana L. 2010. “The Only Conceivable Thing to Do: Reflections on Academics and Activism.” Activism and Rhetoric: Theories and Context for Political Engagement, edited by Jonghwa Lee and Seth Kahn, 11-24. Routledge.

Cushman, Ellen. 1996. “The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change.” College Composition and Communication vol. 47, no. 1 (Feb. 1996):. 7–28.

Goldrick-Rab, Sara. 2014. “On Scholarly Activism.” Context: Sociology for the Public, Last modified 4 Dec. 2014. contexts.org/blog/on-scholarly-activism/.