Voces Ciudadanas

The Voces Ciudadanas Oral History Project seeks to unearth the voices and memories of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park residents who have been involved in creating community spaces for the benefit of all. It seeks to foster community learning from past strategies, methods, and motivations to inform future imaginaries and concrete possibilities leading to the creation of new community spaces as a way to address structural inequalities.

The Voces Ciudadanas Oral History Project brings together the diverse immigrant communities that have fought to create community spaces, either tangible or intangible, for the benefit of all in Brooklyn's Sunset Park. The narrators of this oral history project include residents and community leaders involved in past and current local initiatives, campaigns, and coalitions, including Make Space for Schools, Defensores, El Grito de Sunset Park, and the Coalition for Community Space.

This collective oral history project was conceived as an organizing tool to learn about past community organizing endeavors in the face of the demolition and new construction of the Sunset Park Public Library. Under the leadership of the community-based organization Voces Ciudadanas, local residents, civic groups, and community organizations got together and started organizing to preserve the temporal space the public library used while the new construction took place.

This oral history project is rooted in some of the values the local immigrant communities have exercised in Sunset Park for decades. First, celebrating the different ways of organizing practiced by the different communities which have been shaped by their cultural backgrounds. Second, valuing and nurturing from the experiential knowledge that residents, organizers, and community leaders are sharing with the new generations. Third, honoring and learning from the memories of all of those who have fought against inequalities, discrimination, and alienation recognizing the time, commitment, and courage implied in those efforts. Fourth, recognizing the power of collective awareness, organizing, and imagining to together shape the future we want to live in. Lastly, challenging foreign and constructed narratives by creating community-control narratives that speak about local realities and creative ways to overcome challenges.

This ongoing oral history project is a collaborative effort led by Gabriela Rendón in conjunction with members of Voces Ciudadanas, including Victoria Quiroz Becerra, Javier Salamanca, and Antelma Valdéz. Most of the interviews were conducted at Voces Ciudadanas, and we extend our sincere gratitude to Antelma Valdéz and Manuel Martínez for generously providing the space for these meaningful conversations.

Since its inception in 2015, Voces Ciudadanas has been dedicated to empowering migrants and other marginalized communities by fostering community leadership, organizing, and offering popular education-based programs. The organization also creates platforms for community dialogue with the ultimate aim of realizing social justice.

Central to this oral history project are the narrators, who not only shared their treasured memories, experiences, dreams, and visions but also dedicated time to review their recordings, edit their transcripts, and prepare the materials for this platform. We express our heartfelt appreciation to all the narrators for their invaluable contributions to the collective history of Sunset Park.

Last but certainly not least, the commencement of this project would not have been possible without the invaluable efforts of students from the MS Design and Urban Ecologies program, Class of 2024: Melissa Bosley, Beka Fadila, Daniela Fernandez Lopez, Mae Francke Rojo, Gracia Goh, Sofia Kavlin, Lukas Kernke, and Alex Purcelli. They conducted, transcribed, edited, and translated interviews in the Spring of 2023. Xavier Alvarez Moysén, PhD candidate of Sociology at The New School and senior researcher at the Housing Justice Oral History Project, followed this work in the Fall of 2023.