Police Power And The Production Of Racial Boundaries By Ana Munniz

Another popularly stigmatized issue within the Chicanx community is the issue of gang injunctions. In Ana Muniz’s book, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries, she highlights the injustices against the Chicano community done by their fellow neighbors and the community police because their culture is often a nuisance to other residents. Muniz uses the city Cadillac-Corning as her prime example to look at the gang injunction model. She states that, “the gang injunction model is being used to police political behavior as well as “criminal deviance” done by the Chicanos of the community” (Muniz 34). The problem within the community, to the other residents, is the violent behavior and threat to themselves, so they want to implement

The Chicanos and Blacks of the communities feel the stigmatized resentment toward them and that does not help any relationships between the racial groups. They are trying to establish a home and life for themselves but there are constant legal forces that are trying to push them out because of their racial background. The gang injunction is just an excuse, a scheme, to discriminate against these group of people. The police forces were more concerned about the “what the alleged gang members might do rather than the acts they already committed,” and with that in mind the group most targeted were young Chicano men (Muniz 48). The more emphasize was placed into the injunctions, the more minute details were implemented to make sure they covered all the loopholes that their targeted members could be criminalized. For example, “the injunctions prohibitions eventually invaded private space” so that whenever the law enforcement chased individuals and they went to a friend’s home, those individuals could not be in their friend’s home without written permission (Muniz 52). This then allowed the police to go into resident’s homes to forcibly remove and book targeted individuals. The human right of private space and property was forcibly taken, young Chicano men couldn’t even feel safe in their own homes

To demonstrate an act of resistance against one of the many injustices imposed on the Chicano community, I’ve chosen the activist Lauren Jimenez whom came to discuss the film No Mas Bebes and the work she focuses on as Executive Director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. The film No Mas Bebes shows the systemic issue related to reproductive justice that is women of color reproductive rights. There is a resiliency in all these women, the fact that they didn’t back down from the powerful medical enterprises and officials, but fought back against the injustice they went through shows strength. Even though they did not win the case, that did not stop them from continuing the fight for other women to not endure the same pain inflicted upon them. Women, especially, of color, always struggle with their sexually and position in society which makes it hard for them to fight back. Whether it be like Gloria Anzaldua’s case where she is trying to demonstrate she is a “woman who love women,” or these courageous women who just wanted to have more children, the fight will always be a most difficult but not impossible one (Anzaldua