Beatriz Ramirez and her two young children moved into Chicago’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in September. Rosa Robles Loreto has lived in Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church since August. In Philadelphia, the Indonesian Mennonite Philadelphia Praise Center and the Jewish Tikkun Olam Havurah stand ready to welcome immigrants seeking sanctuary. They are part of a new sanctuary movement, with religious groups from Maine to California committing to shelter immigrants in danger of deportation. Besides offering sanctuary to immigrants, they challenge the country’s leaders to change harsh and punitive immigration laws. Continue Reading
Kellita Whisnant, owner and operator of Mama Ti’s African Kitchen in Brooklyn Park, has been calling her father in the Ebola-battered Liberia several times a week for the past two months — all to no avail.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census the eight largest Asian American populations in Minnesota are the Hmong, Asian Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, Laotian, and Cambodian communities. Specifically, 27 percent of the total population identify themselves as Hmong, 15.5 percent are Asian Indian, 11.7 percent are Chinese, 11.1 percent are Vietnamese, 4.9 percent are Laotians, and 3.9 percent are Cambodians (See Figure 2). Continue Reading
St. Maron Maronite Church parishioners and their priest, Reverend Monsignor Sharbel Maroun, recently enjoyed a very hectic September at their church, 602 University Ave. NE. On Sept. 13 and 14, they hosted Beshara Peter Rahi, the much-loved Lebanese Patriarch who is one of the Maronite Catholic Church’s highest officials. Celebrations included a Saturday night banquet, Sunday liturgy and brunch in his honor; each event drew more than 400 people.
Pe Paul Goromou came close to getting booted out of the country.Goromou, a Guinea native, sought asylum in the United States shortly after he fled his home, where he said the government tortured him for nearly a week, accusing him of being involved in a coup d’état.But without a lawyer, Goromou was in danger of being deported, until a group — which included students and faculty members at the University of Minnesota’s Law School — stepped in to help him gain asylum.“[I came to the U.S. to] be protected and live as a free man,” Goromou said.Goromou sat in the front row of a packed auditorium at the University’s Law School on Tuesday to help celebrate the launch of the school’s new center that helps immigrants like him navigate the legal system.The Law School’s Center for New Americans opened all three of its law clinics this fall after receiving funding from the Robina Foundation in 2013 to bolster legal services for immigrant communities nationwide.The center collaborates with three local nonprofit organizations and three national law firms’ pro bono programs. The groups pool their resources to help influence federal immigration reform and serve clients free of charge, said the center’s director, Benjamin Casper.“The resources here give the Law School an opportunity to make an impact on the students and, in turn, the immigrants they serve,” he said.The center aims to aid immigrants facing legal issues like deportation, immigrants who frequently face difficulties like language barriers and little or no knowledge of the legal system, Casper said.And since immigration courts are civil, Casper said, they do not offer the right to a public defender. That can make it difficult for a non-citizen to receive legal services because they often can’t afford a private lawyer, he said.Minnesota’s large refugee population and the area’s history of pro bono work make it an ideal location for the center, Casper said, adding that it ensures the state remains “unparalleled” in its immigrant justice advocacy.“The impact of creating an ethic of public service … in a community this size will really reinforce the strong culture of pro bono service,” he said.So far, cases for the center have been plentiful, said Meghan Heesch, a teaching fellow in the center’s Detainee Rights Clinic.Before the center’s official launch, students and law professionals began working on cases. This summer, the center — with support from its partners and help from clinic students — successfully petitioned to have one of its cases involving the deportation of a non-citizen heard by the Supreme Court. The court will hear the case sometime this year during its upcoming term.Along with providing help for immigrants and refugees, members of the center say it offers valuable learning experiences for students.The center’s three law clinics — the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic, the Detainee Rights Clinic and the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic — help students sharpen their skills and get hands-on experience working with real clients and cases.Thirty students make up the center’s clinics, which essentially operate as a law firm of student lawyers, Casper said.Students “do all of the heavy lifting” by working on anything from writing briefs to arguing their cases in court themselves, Heesch said.But students say learning how to be an immigration lawyer won’t come without its challenges.Anna Finstrom, third-year law student and the Federal Immigration Litigation’s student director, said although they do everything they can for clients, obstacles can sometimes still appear.“Even if we do our jobs the best we possibly can, a lot of times there won’t be an outcome that seems just,” she said. “We run up against that on a daily basis.”Still, Finstrom said her involvement with the center offers the best opportunity available to hone her legal skills before graduating.“The clinic has been by far the most valuable aspect of my legal education,” she said. Continue Reading
A group of Cedar-Riverside youth marched through their neighborhood’s streets late Tuesday afternoon to demonstrate against terrorism, the stereotyping of Muslims and what they said was a lack of community resources.Wielding signs and chanting “power to the youth,” the protesters, led by the Cedar Riverside Youth Council, said the lack of opportunities and resources for local young people was due to foreign terrorist organizations’ recruitment of residents in the area.“Our real problems are community development,” said Mubashir Jeilani, who co-founded CRYC with general director Mohamed Jama. “We have so many different organizations claiming that they help our youth, but … they don’t help us.”In recent months, Cedar-Riverside has been the focus of investigations and efforts to stop extremist terrorist groups like the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and al-Shabaab from enlisting locals to join them overseas.While Tuesday’s protesters condemned terrorism, Jeilani said the larger issue the community faces is a lack of services, jobs and support.Aman Obsiye, a University of Minnesota alumnus, said he joined the protest because he believes recent “provocative headlines” have overemphasized terrorist recruitment from the local community.“Every subgroup has bad apples,” Obsiye told the crowd, adding that in other cases, that same lack of opportunities drives young people into gangs or narcotics use. “The real question that needs to be asked is ‘Why are they leaving?’”The demonstration outside of the Brian Coyle Center grew from a couple dozen to about 50 people when Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, joined her constituents and echoed their concern for the neighborhood’s young residents.“People who join a [terrorist] group like that are doing it because of discontent,” she said. “We want [them] to feel they have an opportunity here to do good.”Shortly after Kahn and other community leaders addressed the crowd, about 25 marchers left the gathering to walk along Washington Avenue and Cedar Avenue. Along the way, they criticized Pillsbury United Communities and its network of neighborhood centers, which includes the Brian Coyle Center.PUC President Chanda Baker said that despite the demonstrators’ calls for increased financial support for the neighborhood’s youth, the community organization itself does not allocate funds.“It just feels kind of weirdly placed for the protest to be on our grounds where we’re serving the community and have no funding to offer,” she said.But Baker said she acknowledges more should be done for Cedar-Riverside.“I’m not in disagreement that there needs to be more thought put into how we serve the community in a very dense area better,” she said. Continue Reading
This week, Councilman Jacob Frey, representing the Third Ward of the City of Minneapolis, will issue a proclamation recognizing October 5th as Ketmani Kouanchao Day in light of her accomplishments and service to the community over the years, including her recent appointment as Dean of Student Services at Mendocino College in Ukiah, California.
“Greenway yog ab tsi?”, or “What is a greenway?” in the Hmong language, is a question that has been asked more than 100 times of North Minneapolis community members in and near Hmong International Academy by middle school students of color in the YMCA Beacons Minneapolis program at Hmong International Academy (HIA) – a Minneapolis Public School in the Jordan Neighborhood of North Minneapolis.This is a Community Voices submission and is moderated but not edited. The opinions expressed by Community Voices contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the TC Daily Planet.From April to June of 2014, Hmong American Partnership, in collaboration with Hana Media & Development, provided an after-school media arts, service-learning project called In Focus: N. MPLS Greenway (or simply In Focus) for a group of mostly Hmong middle school students at the HIA, to assist the City of Minneapolis share information about the potential North Minneapolis Greenway and collect feedback from the community, especially from Asian Americans in the area who had not been a part of the city’s first round of engagement regarding the possible greenway.The participants in the In Focus project learned about video production skills, the City of Minneapolis’ greenway concepts, and community outreach techniques. Through the guidance of program facilitators, the youth helped to create Hmong and English Public Service Announcement (PSA) videos, and conducted surveys of HIA friends, families, and faculty, as well as other community members in the area. One Hmong student in the project remarked, “It’s great that we are make videos to help share this info with other Hmong in the community.”Through the PSAs and conversations about the project, community members learned that a greenway is a park-like trail that people can use for biking, walking, transportation, and recreation, and that the city is currently considering Humboldt Avenue North, from the Victory Neighborhood to the Near North or Harrison Neighborhood of North Minneapolis, as a possible route for the North Minneapolis Greenway. Continue Reading
Cheers and laughter filled Safari Restaurant and Event Center in Minneapolis Wednesday night as members of the Somali-American Police Association (SAPA) presented the organization’s mission and service to the community — with lots of jokes.
