Minerva Mendoza wraps up PVI's virtual rally on May 1, 2020. Eduardo Stanley / AFSC
Bringing front and center the economic contribution of immigrant workers while advocating for their protection amid the COVID-19 pandemic has been the main focus of PVI work for most of the month of April and into early May 2020. At the same time and not without challenges, we managed to launch the ArteVism Fellowship Program. After a rigorous selection process, four Latinx-indigenous young women were awarded the ArteVism Fellowship. See their bios here.
We started the ArteVism Fellowship program right when working at home and sheltering in place directives were put in place. We immediately confronted the difficulty of coming out with strategies for beginning a community-building and engagement program amid a social distancing. We are pleased that the program is up and running, and now going through the phase of group formation.
COVID-19 work
Generating media stories was our strategy for giving visibility to the economic value of immigrants’ work and advocating for their protection as they are in the frontlines, risking their health and that of their families, during the COVID-19 pandemic. After our op-ed was published in the Fresno Bee on April 3 at a time when little discussion about essential workers was taking place, we were contacted by journalists from ABC, LA Times, Reuters, Channel News Asia Singapore and National Geographic.
These stories helped us realize the importance and the power of publishing op-eds on a timely matter. With the assistance of AFSC Communications staff and the collaboration of partners, we produced this short video. Diego San Luis Ortega, a DACA recipient and PVI volunteer, shared his story in this op-ed advocating for the US Supreme Court to postpone its decision on DACA during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In collaboration with the Coalición Primero de Mayo por los Derechos de los Immigrants, we organized a virtual rally happening simultaneously with a caravan to celebrate immigrants who are essential workers! For the virtual rally, which lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes, we broadcasted presentations from 13 grassroots elder and young artists, cultural organizers and immigrants’ rights activists representing organizations such as CHIRLA, Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueño, SIREN, United Farmworkers, among others. This event took us to the highest point of the learning curve as we experienced moving community organizing and public engagement from physical spaces to online platforms.
In partnership with Dr. Dvera Saxton, the LEAP Institute and Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueño, we are coordinating a project to donate masks for farmworkers .A group of Syrian refugee seamstresses who have been collaborating with PVI are making the masks, with 500 masks distributed to date.
Leonel Flores, a longtime immigrant rights activist, takes part in the May 1, 2020 caravan. (Photo: Miguel Villegas)