Bridging the gap

For 16 months, Norman A. Ospina Q. has engaged immigrants from Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador, as well as other Latinos. He talks to them on their jobs, in their homes, in their schools and at their churches.

Ospina heads Project VOICE--a five-year organizing effort in immigrant communities--for Chicago's branch of the American Friends Service Committee, an international social justice and peace organization. The project helps immigrants develop effective strategies to influence public policy.

While each of the groups he works with took different paths to reach the city, Ospina believes their similarities far outnumber their differences.

"African Americans migrated from the South, and Mexicans migrated from farther south," Ospina said. "They have common pasts and presents."

He wasn't surprised when nearly every black and Latino member of the U.S. House of Representatives recentiy voted against a resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq.

While the House approved the measure 296 to 133 on Oct. 10, it was opposed by 32 of the 36 black representatives and all 15 of the Latinos who voted.

Ospina has spoken with nearly 200 blacks and Latinos in the city and suburbs about a war on Iraq and the United States' military involvement in Afghanistan.

He talked with The Chicago Reporter about what he's heard.

Were the people you spoke with opposed to a war with Iraq?

It is split in some ways. Some priests [in southeast Chicago] were saying they didn't want to hear it. [We told them] we want to have some forums.

People were saying, "No. We have a lot of young men who come here in their [military] uniforms. How can we do that? That would be disrespectful." And the other priests were saying, "I think that the community is already divided and I think that the community really wants a safe, comfortable place to speak about this."

In Farragut High School, one of the military academies [in the Chicago Public Schools], ... you see all the murals about freedom and unity, and you see the young men and women in uniforms. You would kind of get a very different take from those kids because their teachers are retired generals and captains.

Now go over to Association House, [a West Side social service agency that operates an alternative school]. We just had a workshop there with ... a group of 65 [black and Latino] kids. These are tough kids who've been kicked out, who've dropped out.

I said, "How many of you have ever seen a nuclear weapon?" No one had. "How many of you have ever seen a gun?" And all of them raised their hands. "How many of you have known someone who was killed in the military?" And one or two raised their hands. "How many of you know someone who's been killed by gang violence or the police?" About 90 percent of the hands went up.

These are the kids that would go to war, but they were still stuck in that point where they knew that they were getting harassed by the police, getting harassed by the Chicago Public School system. They live in this duality where they know they're getting screwed, but at the same time they're Americans.

What about Latino immigrants?

For a while there the heat was off immigrants because the heat was on Arabs. So for a second there, [people were thinking,] "They're not looking for us. They're not looking for people that look like me. They're looking for people who look like them. So, it's not that we don't like them or we hate them, but we're not necessarily going to do anything about it right now, because, if we do, then we're going to be identified with them"

Do the votes of black and Latino politicians signal a potential alliance?

I think politically it was excellent that the black caucus and Latino caucus voted that way. I think that it needs to extend beyond the race issue into economics, economic justice issues here and abroad.

These two communities have mistrust for each other, a lack of knowledge about each other. I think there's a lot of racism that we bring in from our countries. In the first three months that I was here, how many times did I hear, "black people are lazy"? And I turned right around and I put those people on the spot. "How many black people do you know? ... Have you ever heard that Mexicans are lazy?"

What are your goals for Project Voice?

With Project Voice, one of the things that we said is that we weren't going to organize around legalization [of undocumented immigrants] but we're going to organize around this issue of human rights and human dignity. And this is what I told you that [a black colleague] said: "They see us as citizens in this country but they don't see us as human beings." And that's another bridge right there that can connect our communities.

Black people in the city of Chicago are on the books, in theory, right? [They have] the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury, the right to go to college. . ... That's what [immigrants are] looking for, too. But I think if I were to ask a lot of African American people if a lot of those rights are realities, a lot of those people would say, "No, they're not realities."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Community Renewal Society
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group