Multilingual Protest and Scholarship

An essay from Mobilizing Ideas, a production of The Center for the Study of Social Movements at the University of Notre Dame, editorial home of the journal Mobilization.

The increasing development of transnational ties and coalitions among social movement activists and organizations through the decades reveals how multilingualism can act as a vital and empowering resource for promoting sociopolitical change. Yet, the global hegemony of English also reveals how underlying power dynamics present dilemmas for progressive movements founded upon inclusive principles of multiculturalism and participatory democracy. Social movement scholarship also reflects this linguistic power dynamic and scholars should take heed. By providing more opportunities and venues for non-English speakers to participate in shaping academic debates and discussions new insights and theoretical perspectives are more likely to develop.

Decades come and go

It is as much human nature to mark epochs as to make lists, often combining the two, hence the proliferation of best of year, decade, etc lists. I don't recall millennial lists, but there must have been some, even if only compiled by historian.

I can't pass on marking Mountainair in the decade that was: the oughties/ noughties mark my own tenure here. I arrived from Davis CA at the very end 1999 to take care of my mother, who died a year later at the end of 2000. That marks either way of measuring the decade. I stayed. So the decade just past (or starting it's last year depending on how you reckon) is my decade in Mountainair.

 

1. Mountainair Mural
2. Deer Canyon - exemplifying the exurb - and its denizens come to Mountainair
3. Green energy ~ hope, future prosperity or empty promises? cui bono?
4. Mountainair gets Wired: web pages and social media supplement traditional flyers and broadsides, challenge traditional print media
   
5. Shaffer Revenant
6. The White Elephant on US 60 (aka Assembly of God Campgrounds, Mountainair Campgrounds, presently Mountainair Activity Complex

Still standing, sometimes in spite of itself and against all odds

• Firecracker Jubilee (Mountainair's oldest continuing event, wobbled for a while but going strong again and picking up steam)
• Poets & Writers Picnic (much more recent but still 2nd oldest)
  
• Sunflower Festival (enduring a series of name and sponsor changes, but surviving, now thriving)
  
• Chamber of Commerce: declined, almost pronounced, presumed reborn (the midwife has not left the building)
• Local institutions: Meds & More, Ancient Cities, Just in Tyme Shoppe, Gustin's Hardware, Cibola Arts, Mike Padilla's gas station (under any name), the local grocery store on Broadway across from the Post Office - no matter who owns it or what we call it, Bank of Belen/ MyBank, Burn's Auto Supply, Hair Enchantment, The Laundrymat
  

 Bienvenidos (for better or for worse)

• Deer Canyon: Preserve, Homeowners Association, Folk, Gated Community, SoCal Exurb (as per Mike Davis' definition)
• B St Market,. Scott Remmich, but still featuring familiar faces from the Mountainair Grocery
• Alpine Alley
  

Adios:  Ranchers Day, Arts Tour, Mountainair New & Views (print journalism bit the dirt sooner here than nationally), Kowboy Kafe, The Firehouse, Chuckwagon (drive thru eatery changing hands many times throughout the decade), Granny's Sweets & its giant ice cream sundae drive through, Art Alley, Roy Kirby and Jude Mowris of StoneTree Gallery and Straw Mountain Studio, Mountainair Grocery (see Bienvenidos, above), uncounted Shaffer hotel and restaurant manager. Wells Fargo