A Community-Building Story
In 2008 I got a call from a well-known leader in Live Oak—a community in Santa Cruz, California, USA. She requested an intensive Spanish-language class for professionals who needed to understand their students and clients. I began teaching them Spanish, with music and a sprinkling of RC mixed in.
Then she asked me to teach a parenting class in Spanish at Live Oak Community Resources (LOCR), which I did. The class has continued and is called El Patio de Mi Casa. (The families involved don’t have a front or back yard. They live in crowded mobile home parks.)
Two years ago I started teaching the mothers in the class the basics of Co-Counseling. They learned to listen to each other for five minutes. And I began dividing the group in two: half of the mothers would play with the children, while the other half had mini-sessions.
I know these mothers don’t have papers [are not legal immigrants], and I know their economic and housing situations, but they trust me. And they trust each other. They have created strong connections. Every Wednesday they come to a two-hour class, and sometimes they stay afterward—to have a potluck lunch and be together and with the children. Some have moved to Watsonville, fourteen miles to the south, where the rent is lower; one lives in Castroville, over thirty miles away—yet they come every Wednesday to the class.
Three of the mothers joined an RC fundamentals class, which included three Latina and two Latino experienced Co-Counselors. I taught the class for more than a year. Then Alma Marque taught it. When Alma’s schedule wouldn’t let her continue, Laura Naranjo began teaching it. B—, one of the mothers in the class, became Alma’s assistant and now is Laura’s. She, her four-year-old son, and I sometimes go play with J— and her three children. B— or I play with the children, while J— has a session.
The mothers in the fundamentals class are building strong relationships with each other and with Alma, Laura, and me. B—’s son calls Alma or me when he wants to have a mini-session. The fourteen-year-old son of L—, another mother, loves to talk with me on the phone.
L— was in my first Patio de Mi Casa class ten years ago when her fourteen-year-old was four. She is courageous and bold. She survived the war in El Salvador. (A guerrilla sister of hers was killed.) She and I come from countries in which there is torture and other violence. This has deepened our relationship and our commitment to liberation.
L— is a leader at LOCR, and she and I are gardeners at the Grange. She is a good counselor for both her sons. Her fourteen-year-old is a good counselor for her and his younger brother. When I visit the family, the father speaks a lot about El Salvador, but he’s never said that his parents were killed in the war when he was four. L— has told me that he was raised by his godparents and calls them Mom and Dad.
I am planning to teach a new fundamentals class in English and invite three mothers who speak English. I look forward to when many of the mothers are in an RC class. Meanwhile, the El Patio class is a place where they can at least have mini-sessions. And sometimes they share longer times when they visit each other.
Building the RC Community with People of the Global Majority is possible. I will continue to share RC with more mothers and invite them, little by little, to a fundamentals class.
As Dolores Huerta [the U.S. labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers] said, “Sí se puede” [“Yes, it can be done”].
Santa Cruz, California, USA