In Roger Sanjek’s Color-full before Color Blind: The Emergence of Multiracial Neighborhood Politics in Queens, New York City, there are a number of changes in Elmhurst-Corona, Queens, that are documented over time. Sanjek emphasizes the importance of citizen involvement in “district level political power.” The “district” is typified as an administration that mediates between the “politically powerless street neighborhoods and inherently powerful city as a whole.” Groups that represent a wide variety of interests within Elmhurst-Corona, according to Sanjek, must organize under one umbrella in an effort to achieve a common goal: to serve the public good.
Sanjek calls attention to issues stemming the efficacy of the district in representing the views of the disparate peoples of Elmhurst-Corona. First, he examines the demonization of blacks and the immigrant population by whites. Issues of crime, overpopulation, and the scaling back of government funding for public programs (all decreasing the “quality of life”) were attributed to the influx of blacks and immigrants–consequently discouraging civic engagement when it was still dominated by whites. Second, he mentions the fragmentation of religious and cultural interests into pocketed groups. Often, the religious and cultural groups were reflective of Corona’s demographic, since these pockets directly served the interests of its largely homogenous members. However, these groups weren’t necessarily based in Elmhurst-Corona; direct, widespread civic engagement encompassing the diversity of the region, however, was nearly nonexistent in the period following white flight in the mid-1900’s.
These issues bring us to a vital question Sanjek posed: how much progress has Elmhurst-Corona made in forming a political body in which all perspectives are represented and the people work together in unison to consolidate policies that draw from a common ground/perspective? Much of the progress that Elmhurst-Corona has made can be accredited to women, who often served as pioneers of civic involvement. I noticed a distinction between the types of women who spearheaded change in Elmhurst-Corona: there was the case of the Italian woman (Lucy Shilero) who eased the minority community into political activity, and the case of women who are direct immigrants but act as wardens and quickly overcome barriers to become directly involved in improving the community (Haydee Zambrana).
Lucy Shilero, a woman of Italian descent, was at an advantage compared to immediate immigrants, simply because she was a part of one of the first waves of immigrants to come into NYC–therefore, the assimilation of her peoples had already precipitated by the time she became involved in the political sphere as a warden. At the same time, however, she had to be innovative to reach out to the minorities in the community–she largely utilized grassroots movement techniques by building contacts with the gatekeepers, or leaders of various cultural groups, who would then relate information back to their own groups. Haydee Zambrana, on the other hand, was an immigrant from Puerto Rico that arrived in the 1970’s that used her position as an insider in the hispanic community to her advantage. She started with a base of internal volunteers, and eventually used the power she gained with their help to tap into external government assistance for the funding of an organization she founded, Concerned Citizens of Queens (CCQ). I found this division between technique used to draw citizens into political participation unique to areas that have a large amount of diversity.
