Hóla Casa San Jose Amigos,
Your help is still needed:
Casa San Jose will be holding a Listening Session with our immigrant community to take questions about their rights, welfare of children, and best practices. This will be on Sunday, June 18, St. Catherine's Church, 1810 Belasco Avenue, Beechview, around 2 pm (after Mass.) We are in need of volunteers who would be able to help serve refreshments and play games with the children. If you are able to help, please email Sister Valerie at srvalerie@casasanjose.org.
Volunteers and attendees are needed for a teach-in on June 17 sponsored by a number of organizations including Casa San Jose: Building Unity Against Hate: How the prison industrial complex impacts our communities; what we can do to change it - Saturday June 17 10:00AM-1:00PM, United Steelworkers, 60 Blvd. of the Allies, downtown.
Call for Volunteers:
Your help is still needed:
Casa San Jose will be holding a Listening Session with our immigrant community to take questions about their rights, welfare of children, and best practices. This will be on Sunday, June 18, St. Catherine's Church, 1810 Belasco Avenue, Beechview, around 2 pm (after Mass.) We are in need of volunteers who would be able to help serve refreshments and play games with the children. If you are able to help, please email Sister Valerie at srvalerie@casasanjose.org.
Volunteers and attendees are needed for a teach-in on June 17 sponsored by a number of organizations including Casa San Jose: Building Unity Against Hate: How the prison industrial complex impacts our communities; what we can do to change it - Saturday June 17 10:00AM-1:00PM, United Steelworkers, 60 Blvd. of the Allies, downtown.
Call for Volunteers:
- Set-up/Clean-up
- Refreshments committee
- Note taking
- Outreach-help us spread the word about this event-help design or distribute fliers, share links with your networks, etc.
- Interpretation/ translation (Spanish-English
Resources and more teach-in details at the Website and Facebook event page . Please email your availability and interests to pghrights@riseup.net
Political action:
We are looking for people to attend this public meeting: Public Transportation is Not a Checkpoint - Don't Criminalize Transit Riders! June 15, Liberty Room, Human Services Bldg., 1 Smithfield St, downtown.
This summer, Port Authority plans to have armed police officers checking fare payment on the T. We believe that this will intimidate and racially profile immigrants who are already being harassed by ICE, as well as all people of color. We demand that the Port Authority delay implementation of this policy until we have a public process, a commitment not to work with ICE, and no arrests or criminal charges for "fare evasion." Coordinated by Casa San Jose, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, Thomas Merton Center, and the Alliance for Police Accountability.
World Refugee Day and Immigrant Heritage Month are here! Two items:
Political action:
We are looking for people to attend this public meeting: Public Transportation is Not a Checkpoint - Don't Criminalize Transit Riders! June 15, Liberty Room, Human Services Bldg., 1 Smithfield St, downtown.
This summer, Port Authority plans to have armed police officers checking fare payment on the T. We believe that this will intimidate and racially profile immigrants who are already being harassed by ICE, as well as all people of color. We demand that the Port Authority delay implementation of this policy until we have a public process, a commitment not to work with ICE, and no arrests or criminal charges for "fare evasion." Coordinated by Casa San Jose, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, Thomas Merton Center, and the Alliance for Police Accountability.
World Refugee Day and Immigrant Heritage Month are here! Two items:
- Action alert: “Justice for Immigrants” gives us a quick way here to show Congress NOW that we stand with refugees (scroll down for the online form.)
- Please put on your calendar: Free event celebrating World Refugee Day and Immigrant Heritage Month - Market Square, Downtown, June 21, 2017 from 11 – 2.
Our story, episode 11: “Jeimy’s travels”
Jeimy Sanchez Ruíz, Casa San José’s Youth Coordinator, just returned from a research trip to El Salvador and Guatemala. She was accompanied by her fellow researcher at Carlow University, Renee Driscoll, and also Father Bernard Survil, after having raised the funds for the trip through GoFundMe. (Thank you to those who contributed!) The purpose was to gather the stories of men who had come to the United States without documents, and had then returned to their villages or towns. Jeimy, Renee and Father Bernard traveled deep into rural areas, and in some cases gang-infested zones, and interviewed 12 immigrants as well as people in the nonprofit and religious organizations that work to help them. Last week Jeimy gave an hour-long talk about their trip. The brief summary is that it was filled with painful and moving stories of desperate peopletrying to find a way out of poverty and violence for their families.
There were agonizing journeys crossing deserts, with no sleep, water, food, clothing, or even air. They experienced extortion, exploitation, and human trafficking along the way; and rejection, hostility and loneliness on arrival. They arrived owing many thousands in debt to the "coyotes" who got them here, taking about a year of work to repay. They are heartsick about missing their families, and often return just to see them again. Other stories like this have been documented in print and video, but Jeimy told us how hearing the stories in person was eye-opening and revealed much about the immigrants that live, work and go to school all around us, especially the youth.
It was only a week after Jeimy got back that she was asked to go on another journey: to accompany 5-year-old Alex to visit his father Martín Esquivel Hernandez in Mexico. Martín, who friends of Casa San José know from the intense but ultimately unsuccessful community efforts to stop his deportation, is now far away from his family in Pittsburgh, which also includes his wife Alma and two daughters. He hasn’t seen any of them in months. Alex is the only one with a US passport, having been born here, so he was able to travel to spend the summer with his father, but at his young age, only if someone was able to escort him. The photo shows their emotional reunion in the airport. Jeimy came back the next day, and on the way she was held back, searched,and questioned twice about the reason for her trip, and why it was so short. She told the authorities: it was because she was escorting a young child whose Dad had been deported.
Suggested if you’d like to read or see more:
- Powerpoint presentation of Jeimy's trip
- Immigrants are propping up the Pittsburgh metro area population, from the Pittsburgh City Paper, June 7, 2017
- Immigration agents came for our student – “Claudia is the face of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Under current executive guidelines, any immigrant suspected of a crime, even if never arrested, charged, or convicted, has become a priority for deportation. Basic due process, such as the right to know the charges and evidence against you, is absent in the immigration system. This policy has led to a 32% increase in immigrant detentions in the first three months of Trump’s presidency compared with the same time last year, and a 100% increase in the detention of people with no criminal record or with only minor traffic infractions.” From the LA Times, June 8, 2017
- Movie Romero (1989) starring Raul Julia, that recounts the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was murdered as he took a stand against social injustice and oppression – and gives background and insight into the violence happening there today.
