Abstract
The Eighth Annual LatCrit Conference met in Cleveland in May, 2003 to engage a timely and topical theme - City and Citizen: Operations of Power, Strategies of Resistance. Importantly, the theme explicitly drew critical attention not only to operations of power but also to strategies of resistance, and thereby implicitly invited LatCritical analysis of how the two converge in the messy and multifaceted processes of building communities on any human scale. To open and introduce this symposium, this Foreword similarly proceeds in two parts: the first Part, reviewing the four "clusters" of essays comprising the symposium, focuses mostly on "operations of power" and the critiques proffered by the symposium authors that follow this Foreword; the second Part, focusing mostly on "strategies of resistance," examines the human acts and legal regimes giving rise to a marginal Latina/o community within the existing minority "enclaves" of one major city of the United States. In both instances, however, this Foreword seeks to elucidate how this year's theme and conference - and the following symposium based on them - embrace and advance the longstanding commitment to community building that has become a key hallmark of LatCrit theory and praxis during the past eight years. This Foreword, in short, aims to remind us all that community-making, at its best, is a key - perhaps indispensable - form of collective praxis in the service of social struggle for social justice. This Foreword endeavors to help ensure that LatCrit theory, community and praxis remain as intertwined in the future as this symposium shows they are today.
Recommended Citation
Francisco Valdes,
City and Citizen: Community-Making as Legal Theory and Social Struggle,
52 Clev. St. L. Rev.
1
(2005)
available at https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevstlrev/vol52/iss1/3
Comments
Symposium: Eighth Annual LatCrit Conference City & The Citizen: Operations of Power, Strategies of Resistance: Foreword