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Angel
Fabian Queer
Raza Youth Conference profile by Angel Fabian's first community organizing occurred in high school, where he worked around issues of migrant education. Angel grew up in the migrant labor camps of central California. As a teenager, he founded Si Se Puede, an after school tutoring program which focused on dual academic and cultural themes. He also worked with Conscienca Immigranta, a theater group which performed drama related to the young migrant student mindset. By his senior year, this group had evolved into MAYA - Migrant Academic Youth Alliance. Angel's organizing was instrumental in involving him in his community as well as nourishing his own growth and learning of the larger migrant Chicano movement. Angel's early work influenced his choice on a university. He wasn't as comfortable at schools back East, because he was looking for a strong and active Chicano/Latino community. As well, he had extensive experience with Stanford through his participation in the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program, a summer program for motivated high school students. In the end, attending Stanford proved to be more of a common sense decision. Angel entered Stanford with the goal of manipulating the system to further his goals and those of his community. Through his first year, he focused primarily on academics and avoided organizing until controversy around the Rodney King incident developed on campus. His early Stanford career became a strong growing experience, as he was also getting in touch and coming to terms with his own sexuality. This proved to be problematic, as the same communities that he wished to advocate for were often the ones that would push him away the most forcefully. One must recognize the underlying homophobic and sexist tendencies of Mexican culture to realize the difficulties he faced in this arena. Many students at Stanford carried the baggage of cultural mindsets and prejudices from their families and home communities. Over the last few years, however, Angel has found ways to adapt to and overcome this dichotomy while still remaining very much a part of his community as well as an openly sexual being. Angel's work around the Rodney King controversy began his involvement with MEChA. Simultaneously, Stanford's Chicano/Latino community began to discover the need for someone who identified with both their sexuality and their ethnicity, and who was able to bring these together and attract similar students to Centro's resources. The silence around Stanford professor Arturo Islas' death of AIDS was a pivotal point for Angel. He began to work extensively to combat the trend of students being active in the Chicano/Latino community during their freshman and sophomore years, then suddenly leaving Centro and moving to the LGBCC as they came into touch with their sexuality. Angel sensed a need in this disjointed group of students, and took it upon himself to create a community among them, founding La Vida Collectiva. 25 students signed up for the group at its founding, and it grew to organize around issues of the Chicano/Latino community, including the hunger strike and grape boycott. More importantly, the group worked to make the community more responsible of the diversity within itself. Fortunately, Angel's own family has always been accepting of him. His mother became a maternal figure for many of his friends who have been outcast from their own families. Through the years, she has remained strongly supportive of who he is and has continued to acknowledge that he refuses to be solely defined by his sexual identity. As a historical context, Angel explains that the idea of gender and sexuality as integral dimensions of organizing is not a new concept. Mexico of the 1970's nourished strong networks of labor organizing which included room for sexuality and gender. These organized fronts created powerful forces and impacted positive legislation. When the energy crisis struck, though, attention was shifted elsewhere. However, even the current Movimiento Zapatista in southern Mexico includes in their constitution issues aimed at the gay/lesbian/bisexual community. Old organizing did not included room for deviation from a predefined norm, ignoring even the views of women in the process. Typically, women organizing in the Chicano/Latino community became "las otras" -- a feminist threat to the system. Through this marginalization, predominantly male organizers often reproduced the very systems they wished to combat. Angel insists passionately that modern day community organizing can no longer ignore this vibrant and vital voice. Angel took time off from Stanford after his first years at the university. He had always been a counselor, and this trait had proved instrumental in his organizing experiences, for he both grew up in and came out of the communities that he was asked to organize. He utilized this gift, or curse he notes, to run support groups out of his own apartment in South San Francisco for gay and bisexual men of color. Angel's efforts won him a $75,000 grant from the U.S. Council of Mayors. In assuming full administrative duties for the grant, he gained valuable experience in developing publicity and media campaigns. An instrumental episode in this period was his attendance at a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) training workshop, where he underwent an intensive two week training in multiple forms and aspects of community organizing. This proved to be a wonderful networking experience, and introduced Angel to the National Gay and Lesbian Association, whose board of directors he sat on and where he helped to develop programs for Latino queer youth nationwide. These county and national experiences opened Angel's eyes to the multiplicity of issues surrounding community organizing. It also introduced him to a wonderful support network around the country, enabling him to build connections with other young organizers of color. At the local level, Angel also worked with high risk, incarcerated, drug and alcohol abusive youth, doing presentations in county jails, juvenile halls, continuation schools, and teenage mother programs. Working with HIV positive individuals was a very powerful experience for Angel. He was deeply influenced by witnessing how strongly they hung on to and appreciated life. Angel saw many of his friends die from the virus, but also saw some of the strongest individuals take their HIV positivity as a wake up call. They had never listened to parents or mentors, but were able to turn their lives around and begin organizing their peers and communities. An early mentor in Angel's youth was his high school counselor who had grown up in the Mission of the 1960s yet was able to attend college and became a counselor at Madera High School. Unfortunately, he is currently at odds and not speaking with his mentor because of his sexuality. Angel believes he doesn't fit the conception of what his mentor wanted him to be. His biggest model, though, has continually been his mother. He is impressed by how much she goes out of her way to help people. He remembers her making a living selling food in the fields, often giving away more food than she sold, and allowing tabs to grow for recent immigrants. His mother never attended school and remains illiterate in both Spanish and English, yet she refuses to let this hold her back and works toward her dream of opening a restaurant. He admires how she has overcome challenges and maintained her strength without necessarily depending on a man. Angel finds further role models in young people organizing in their communities. He knows how much strength it takes to come out in high school, and he is impressed by the kids he sees who are so out and proud yet remain a strong part of their community and continue to work in that context. Angel Fabian considers himself to be a visionary. He doesn't feel that he follows any particular theories or schools of organizing -- the organizing he does is second nature because it simply makes sense to him. He sees something that needs to be done, so he does it. In doing that, however, he sometimes finds himself alone and overwhelmed, because he's fighting against too many forces and often lacks knowledge to build alliances and seek further resources. Yet he continues to find inspiration in his work, as he recently returned from a Latino queer conference at UCLA. In meeting and working with over 300 other student organizers, he was struck by how far he's come. He no longer feels like the only one, and his organizing around sexuality and race has suddenly developed validity and company. Angel realizes that it's often scary to organize around one's own identity and community because you have to face issues that you haven't really dealt with yet. With this in mind, it was beautiful to see that so many organizers could share that vision. Hundreds of queer raza refused to lay down and die, but instead were taking control of their own lives. Angel explains that the most empowering thing that can happen to you as an organizer is having a young person, dealing with their own issues, approach you and tell you that now they understand. Then you know that it's really worth putting up with all the hardships of community organizing. Angel has found a space among his peers, and his community has acknowledged his presence and particular role. He insists that were he to die tomorrow, he would leave happy because he knows that he's contributed a little bit to bettering someone's life. Angel doesn't consider his work to be necessarily community organizing, but more of basic survival skills -- there is a need, and someone has meet it. However, he emphasizes how important it remains to acknowledge as well that though someone needs to do it, it may not necessarily always have to be you. It is important to prioritize your responsibilities, as well as to stand back and let others take control and make important decisions, to delegate responsibilities within the group and then let it go. It may not emerge in the form you envisioned, but the work will get done and more importantly, it will empower individuals along the way. It is essential to be comfortable with that and to take care of yourself. For several years he was working 60 to 80 hours a week organizing, both paid and unpaid, and found it difficult to separate and differentiate between his professional and personal lives. As a result, his personal life was shot, and he lost many partners and relationships. Over time he has learned to let go of some of his responsibilities and he now devotes more time to school and to himself. Angel currently works on campus with Familia, and organizes cautiously with MEChA. The nature of the issue demands that he approaches his work with care. Queer white youths often have the option of running away, but queer youths of color simply get kicked out. When they are found out, they are disowned and abandoned. Organizing in communities of color thus presents totally different dynamics, and efforts need to be discreet and well thought out. His work can't necessarily be openly publicized without stigmatizing parts of his community. The biggest difficulty Angel has faced in organizing over the years is that movements are often too focused in their own issues, without taking context of the tools and resources of larger social movements. Angel feels a theme of the future should be exploring how a movement can incorporate everyone to create a stronger and more cohesive force, because he's concerned with the overlap and power dynamics of community organizing, especially within organizations themselves. He sees politics and personal issues leading organizers to leave groups and form their own around the same issue, often forming a replica of the original group. He feels it is very important to create a unified front and avoid reproducing a capitalist system in which groups compete for limited goods. Angel feels he's a revolutionary at heart, but has become moderate because that's the only way to get funding. He acknowledges that you have to know how to play and work within the system, since the applicant who can speak the language best, not necessarily the applicant who is the most skilled, gets the funding. The organizing field as a whole is very moderate and issue and task-oriented, working within the system rather than changing it. Many of the organizers he's spoken with about a unified revolutionary front are scared of bloodshed. He understands the benefits of peaceful change, especially within the context of King's and Chavez's ideals, but he feels that sometimes enough is enough. As a result, Angel finds that many community organizers are often naively saddened by their work. Angel faces a powerful barrier in his own sexuality. He is out, but can always play the heterosexual privilege. If he doesn't speak about his sexuality, he finds that no one questions it. It is easy to choose that route, but he doesn't necessarily want to. This internal conflict will become problematic in terms of what community he's organizing and around what issues he will organize. His dream remains to open a clinic in the migrant fields. He originally wanted to go to medical school, but in being very particular about choosing his battles, he chooses not to fight the medical system. He will most probably go into a master's program in public health and perhaps a Ph.D. in non-profit administration. |