Field of Dreams

The increase in
cases, says Mike Meuter, CRLA’s director of
litigation, advocacy, and training, was the result of
comprehensive pro-gay workplace legislation passed and
signed into law in California earlier this decade.
Once awareness of these state-protected rights started to be
raised in places like Salinas, more and more gay,
lesbian, and transgender clients, including Sandra,
were walking into CRLA offices. By 2006, Meuter says,
the nonprofit realized “we didn’t have the
expertise in-house, and we needed to do
something.”

In the meantime,
Cisneros was finishing up her law degree at Berkeley. As
a student, she was one of the senior editors of the
California Law Review, worked as a judicial
extern in federal court, and received the prestigious
Francine Diaz Memorial Award for her public service and
contributions to the university. As she was preparing to
graduate, she received an e-mail about Proyecto
Poderoso.

When she got it,
Cisneros says, “I knew I couldn’t ignore it. I
grew up in Salinas, and I’m bilingual, gay, and
Latina. There aren’t a lot of people who can
bridge these different communities.”

So instead of
heading off to a big law firm in San Francisco, Cisneros
headed home. While in high school, she had actually spent a
week in the fields picking strawberries. “The
job is very tough physically,” she says. During
their youth her grandparents had earned extra money by
picking fruit.

During her time
at Berkeley, Cisneros was also a law clerk at the
National Center for Lesbian Rights, so she contacted the
organization to see if it wanted to team up with CRLA.
A deal was soon made, yielding not only a committed
legal activist in Cisneros but a key partnership with an
LGBT group that had the kind of legal expertise CRLA was
seeking for Proyecto Poderoso. NCLR, says Meuter,
“has years of experience in this field that we
don’t have.”

In her job
Cisneros consults with CRLA lawyers about possible
violations of sexual orientation antidiscrimination
law, raises awareness of LGBT workplace rights among
Latinos in Salinas and other towns, and handles her
own cases. Her experience is a strong rebuke to the notion
that “everyone who’s gay lives in San
Francisco and Los Angeles,” she says.
“There’s a definite LGBT population in the
rural areas.”