Forum will focus on Santa Fe's immigrant experience.
It started as a friendly gathering where the newest of New Mexicans could congregate, eat dinner and discuss the tribulations of living in a community that was largely indifferent, if not indignant, to their presence.
Now the weekly Juntos los Jueves ("Together on Thursdays") event organized for the city's immigrant community by the Adelante program of the Santa Fe Public Schools' Office of Student Wellness has become the impetus for the latest public discussion of discrimination in Santa Fe.
"This is an entire section of the community that isn't being treated appropriately," Gaile Herling, co-ordinator of the Adelante program, says. ***image1***"When you talk with immigrants, there is a real common theme when they discuss the prejudice and discrimination they face every day in this town."
At 5:30 pm, July 21, a panel representing the city's Latino immigrant community will testify to those biases at "A Night of Community Unity," the second in a series of forums. The event takes place at Cesar Chavez Elementary School gymnasium.
"There will always be people who disagree with immigrants being a part of Santa Fe," Herling says. "But I think if those people actually sat down and listened to what they have to say then a lot of that prejudice would disappear."
It won't be quite that easy. Illegal immigration and the strains it puts on community resources has become a flashpoint issue in Santa Fe.
But Herling says the forum intends to use discussion and reflection as a means to improve the dialogue between the city at large and its burgeoning immigrant population. It's a relationship that Terrie Rodriguez-a supervisor in the city's Community Services Department and co-organizer of the forum-acknowledges has faltered.
"A lot of it has to do with a reluctance to reach out because that begins the process of having to do something about it," Rodriguez says. "But this needs to be addressed. This is a big issue that affects a lot of different aspects of life in Santa Fe."
Furthermore, Rodriguez says that prejudice-typically in the form of institutional discrimination like trouble with gaining employment, securing health care, confrontations with law-enforcement and lack of access to community resources-against the immigrant community is no illusion.
"To say these people have not experienced discrimination is burying your head in the sand," Rodriguez says. "Immigrants have been a part of this community for generations but it's with the recent influx that people have really started to take notice of the issue."
Herling says the idea to transform Juntos los Jueves into a community forum was sparked from her interactions with immigrants through Adelante, a program for transient youth that serves approximately 510 students and their families, roughly half of whom are Latino immigrants. During her time supervising the program, Herling says she has listened to a myriad of concerns from immigrants who have been treated unjustly.
"It definitely runs the gamut," Herling says. "We hear so many stories. People not getting paid for work, being called names in schools and nothing being done about it, people being physically assaulted, problems with law enforcement, the hospitals…it goes on and on. But I don't want to tell anyone else's story. That's what this event is for. It gives them an opportunity to have their voices heard."
