Have you or a relative, friend and/or colleague ever had an encounter with U.S.
Border Patrol officers? Have you faced detention? Do you ever wonder what rights
immigrants have and whether some of the U.S.'s current detention policies are a
violation of these rights?
These and other issues relevant to the national and local immigration debate will be
the focus of the "Immigrant: An Evening of Discussion and Celebration" event held
Thursday, May 14, from 5-8 p.m. in the cafeteria of the Blodgett School, 312 Oswego
St. in Syracuse's Near Westside neighborhood.
The event is hosted by Syracuse University's La Casita Cultural Center Project in
conjunction with the Detention Task Force and May 1st Coalition/International
Migrants Alliance. It is free and open to the public.
The forum will kick off with tapas (assorted appetizers) and storytelling, then feature
a series of roundtable discussions on immigration-related issues, concluding with
dinner and music provided by Colleen Kattau and the Eudi Fernandez Latin Jazz
Band.
The evening gathering aims to bring together Syracuse residents and the SU campus
to share diverse experiences of migration and create space for dialogue between the
Latina/Latino immigrant community, immigrant rights activists and scholars.
Organizers also hope to raise awareness about civil and human rights violations in
the Central New York area and nationwide and provide opportunities for action and
engagement through existing initiatives marshaled by existing individuals and
groups such as the Detention Task Force, Witness for Peace and International
Migrant Alliance. The event is planned as a forum for discussion, but it will also
feature elements celebrating the culture emerging from the immigrant experience.
Among the speakers and experts leading the dialogues on migration, immigrant
rights and rights violations are several professors and students from SU, including
Brenda Lopez from the College of Law, Alejandro Garcia from the
College of Human
Ecology and Silvio Torres-Saillant, director of the Latino-Latin American Studies
Program and a professor of English in
The College of Arts and Sciences. Community
leaders and residents speaking include Caroline Kim and Ursula Rozum of the
Detention Task Force; Luz Encarnacion, chair of the Spanish Action League Board of
Directors; and Juan Cruz, an artist from Syracuse's Near Westside neighborhood.
"These are very well-informed speakers and sources of information from the
community and the SU campus who are committed to bringing to light the issues
that affect the immigrant community in Syracuse and across the nation," says
Torres-Saillant.
The event is part of a series launched this spring by the La Casita Cultural Center to
bring visibility to the Latino immigrant experience within SU and the City of
Syracuse. Other events in the series include the Cinco de Mayo celebration in the
city's Westcott neighborhood and the ongoing "Vicktory Dogs Paintings" exhibition
that runs through June 30 at The Link Gallery in the Community Art Wing on
the ground floor of The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St. The exhibition, free and open
to the public, features prints of 22 dogs rescued from the dog-fighting ring of former
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick by the Best Friends Animal Society.
For "Vicktory Dogs" gallery hours, call SU's College of Visual and Performing Arts
at (315) 442-2230.
About La Casita Cultural Center
SU's La Casita Cultural Center is one of 19 new Chancellor's Leadership Projects that
exemplify the University vision of Scholarship in Action. La Casita seeks to establish a
physical gathering place on Syracuse's Near Westside to foster multimodal,
multigenerational campus-community conversations and to serve as an intellectual
and artistic bridge linking various communities, including Latino populations across
and beyond Syracuse. The project, whose board of advisors includes faculty, students
and administrators from schools and colleges across the University, will work in
partnership with a variety of community organizations and with institutional support
from the Near Westside Initiative.
For more information on La Casita Cultural Center, contact Casita Project
Coordinator Inmaculada Lara Bonilla, assistant professor of Spanish in The College of
Arts and Sciences, at ibonilla@syr.edu.
About the Detention Task Force
The Detention Task Force is a project of the Workers' Rights Center, an initiative of
the Central New York Labor-Religion Coalition. This not-for-profit volunteer
organization opposes the expansion and use of immigrant detention centers and aims
to end the use of detention and deportation as keystones to the U.S. migration policy.
The Detention Task Force stands in solidarity with immigrants in detention centers,
fighting for their release and drawing attention to the inhumane conditions of
detention. The task force also advocates for a just migration policy that includes
measures to reunite families, clear the visa backlog, provide a pathway to citizenship,
and strengthen worker and civil rights, as opposed to increasing enforcement
practices.
