Sounds of Solidarity

Full Moon Meditation on Our Work for Immigrant Justice

The current nationwide attack on immigrants has been alarming. From our worship houses losing their protected status to our community members being detained and deported, it has been two months of horror and heartbreak. While grieving is natural and necessary, our grassroots partners on the front-lines remind us daily that now is not the time to panic but to organize. 

Neighbors for Better East Boston (NUBE), our grantee since 2014, has been even busier than usual with Know Your Rights training. They have reached out to over 90 local businesses and held community meetings with city and federal officials, including Congresswoman Ayanna Pressly and Mayor Michelle Wu. 

Massachusetts TPS Committee, also our grantee, has been tirelessly working to build with its bases despite the discouraging news of program termination for Venezuela and Haiti. The committee's volunteer leaders are supporting TPS holders in registering for the new extension programs to ensure their safety. They are the only organization in the state that focuses on Temporary Protected Status and the communities affected by it. 

Likewise, most of our grantees outside Boston have pivoted to spending their resources and time on direct service to accommodate the increasing needs of their immigrant communities. Though their theory of change remains structural-based organizing, i.e., building grassroots organizations and movements to challenge power institutions and systems, they have had to make this shift in their daily work to fill the gap left by their city officials. COSECHA NewBedford, Pioneer Valley Workers Center, and Lynn Workers Center are just a few who are also grantees of ECM.

We are also witnessing our grantees, whose primary issue is not immigration policies, stepping up as accomplices to support other BIPOC-led grassroots organizations centered on immigration justice. Muslim Justice League, Asian American Workshop, and New England Community Project, for example, have been collaborating with various other groups in coalitions to protect and build Massachusetts’s rich immigrant communities. Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts is funding hotline operators for Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, and Portuguese-speaking community members, primarily from Lynn and Worcester, to assist them with legal connections, mutual aid, and opportunities to be part of a larger organizing base. 

ECM’s philanthropy team has reached out to these grantees, extending priority for our Rapid Response Fund. In May, we will also host a wellness fair that will enable and encourage the staff of these organizations to utilize services centered on their mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Finding Our Way Home- Wisdom Council members will lead this event. Similarly, our Episcopal Organizing team has been partnering on various resources for churches and the Episcopal communities. 

In Sanatana Dharma, the full moon is auspicious, an intense but illuminating moment that could be a portal if we choose. The political climate, as brutal as it is, also genuinely depicts this country’s inherent racism and xenophobia. The events around us right now are shedding a bright light on this, making our work clearer than ever before. Now is the time for us to choose this calling.