This research is the result of four months of ethnographic field work with the Committee of Women Seeking Justice, a domestic worker advocacy group at CASA in Silver Spring, MD. My analysis forefronts the issues of the diversity of the Committee members both in terms of national origin and in terms of their experiences and motivations, and explores issues of race and class in community organizing for women. It also explores their common experiences of exploitation and victimization by the labor, legal and social services system in the U.S..
This research primarily contributes to the literature on organizing domestic workers as well as the literature on community organizations in immigrant receiving areas. Washington, D.C. is still a fairly new receiving area in contrast to places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, so in that way this is also part of a growing field of investigation of new gateways (see for example Gozdziak & Martin 2005). It also offers an important modification to theories of language acquisition and bilingualism. Latinas benefit greatly from services in the official languages of their countries, from growing up bilingual when there is a strong co-ethnic community, and from community organizations and activities run in their native languages. However, the efficacy of these language strategies depend on certain assumptions about public education and proficiency in one's official language that do not hold for places like Africa. More importantly, I have shown that organizing across national, ethnic and language barriers can be very effective. Even with limited resources for translation, CASA has been able to engage a group of African women in a very sustained way in an organization designed for and run by Latinas. The group has been successful in changing laws, rescuing domestic workers being abused, and more.