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Introduction, Barbara Lewis Ph.D.

Trotter Review

Introduction to Trotter Review Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter/Spring 2010) by Barbara Lewis, Ph.D., Director, Trotter Review.

Service Versus Advocacy? A Comparison Of Two Latino Community-Based Organizations In Chelsea, Massachusetts, Glenn Jacobs

Trotter Review

Anyone walking down Chelsea’s main drag, Broadway, would be struck by its raucous cacophony of sights and sounds, a panoply of foreign languages spoken by women (many mothers with young children and infants), children, teenagers, and men of a variety of physiognomies and skin tones; a collage of small specialty shops selling jewelry, clothing, religious statues, CDs, and mobile phones; and restaurants and eateries serving El Salvadoran, Vietnamese, Mexican, and Chinese food; pawnshops, check-cashing places, bakeries, and coffee shops, with occasional rectangles of negative visual space occupied by the post office and chain drug and convenience stores. It is a …

Working Across Difference To Build Urban Community, Democracy, And Immigrant Integration, Timothy Sieber, Maria Centeio

Trotter Review

What factors make it possible for new immigrants to integrate well into established communities of long-term citizen residents, and to establish effective collaborations that unify the community around struggles for neighborhood defense and improvement? In the 25-year history of Boston’s Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, the place-based nature of the organizing initiative and its commitment to the democratic participation of all residents in neighborhood planning were key to institutionalization of multiethnic, multiracial collaboration that knit immigrants to old-timers in struggles to improve quality of life for all. DSNI’s successful organizing of an inclusive, unified city neighborhood offers a compelling model of …

Diasporic Cultural Citizenship: Negotiate And Create Places And Identities In Their Refugee Migration And Deportation Experiences, Shirley S. Tang

Trotter Review

In 2002, the oldest Khmer (Cambodian) American community organization in Massachusetts, the Cambodian Community of Massachusetts (CCM), closed its doors to constituents in the state’s North Shore metro region, where the adjacent gateway cities of Lynn and Revere were home to the country’s fifth-largest concentration of Cambodian Americans, according to the 2000 Census. Founded by Cambodian refugees and their supporters in 1981 as one of the first-generation mutual assistance associations encouraged by the federal Office for Refugee Resettlement, CCM had operate as an ethnic-based, multiservice agency that helped survivors of war and trauma in Cambodia to adjust to U.S. society …

Immigration, Ethnicity, And Marginalization: The Maya K’Iche Of New Bedford, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce, Gissell Abreu-Rodriguez

Trotter Review

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007, more than 300 armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 361 presumed undocumented immigrant workers at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. More than half of the workers detained were from Guatemala, the majority belonging to the Maya K’iche (we will use K’iche) community, an ethnic group originally from the mountains of western Guatemala whose members began arriving in the New Bedford area from Providence, Rhode Island, where there is an older K’iche community, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of a violent confrontation in Guatemala between …

Front Matter: Trotter Review, Vol. 19, Issue 1

Trotter Review

Publication information and contents for Trotter Review Volume 19, Issue Number 1--Winter/Spring 2010.

Issue theme: Where Is Home? Immigrants of Color in Massachusetts

Incorporation Or Symbiosis: Haitians And African Americans In Mattapan, Alix Cantave

Trotter Review

As Haitians continue to move to the United States in large numbers seeking economic opportunities and refuge from political repression and environmental degradation, their relationship with African Americans has also become more obvious. Haitians are settling in larger numbers in predominantly African American neighborhoods, and their U.S.-born children identify with African Americans and face many of the same issues as black youth in urban America. As Zéphir observed, Haitians remain an isolated group. This group centripetality greatly influences the relationship between Haitians and African Americans as well as how African Americans perceive Haitians as a group. This article examines the …

Forgotten Migrations From The United States To Hispaniola, Ryan Mann-Hamilton

Trotter Review

At the first Hamilton family reunion, held in Samaná, Dominican Republic, in 2002, I took the opportunity to question my aunts and uncles about our family’s history and to share the story of our migration to the town with the mass of youngsters gathered for the event. Most of my cousins were amazed by the intricate details of movement, displacement, and transformation because they had never heard these stories before. The reaction that stood out came from a younger cousin brought up in Brooklyn. With a disconcerted look, he asked innocently, “So we’re black?” It had never dawned upon him, …