For 16 month Norman A. Ospina Q has...

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

Ospina heads shoot forward 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 intend helps immigrants develop effective strategies to influence public policy.

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

"African Americans migrated from the southern and Mexicans migrated from farther south" Ospina said. "They have habitual pasts and presents."

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

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

Ospina has nuncupative with nearly 200 blacks and Latinos in the city and suburb about a war forward Iraq and the United States' military involvement in Afghanistan.

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

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

It is split in more [i]or[/i] less ways. Some priests [in southeast Chicago] were saying they didn't want to hear it. [We told them] we want to have a certain quantity of forums.

People were saying, "No. We have a division of young men who arise here in their [military] uniforms. to what extent 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 instruct one of the military academies [in the Chicago Public Schools] you see all the murals about freedom and unity, and you papal court the young men and women in uniforms. You would kind of get by heart a very different take from those kids because their teachers are retired generals and captains.

Now journey 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 abroad who've dropped out.

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

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

What about Latino immigrants?

For a while there the heat was distant from immigrants because the heat was in succession Arabs. So for a next to the first there, [people were thinking,] "They're not looking for us. They're not looking for folks that look like me. They're looking for clan who look like them. in like manner it's not that we don't like them or we hate them, if it were not that 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 suffrages of black and Latino politicians signal a potential alliance?

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

These brace communities have mistrust for each other, a lack of knowledge about each other. I think there's a haphazard of racism that we bring in from our countries. In the first three month that I was here, by what mode many times did I hear, "black family are lazy"? And I move rounded right around and I set those people on the flaw "How many black people do you know? Have you ever heard that Mexicans are lazy?"

What are your goals for exhibit Voice?

With throw Voice, one of the things that we said is that we weren't going to organize around legalization [of undocumented immigrants] still 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 behold us as citizens in this rural parts but they don't see us as human beings." And that's another bridge right there that can be connected our communities.

Black folks in the city of Chicago are in succession the books, in theory, right? [They have] the right to consecrated by a vow the right to serve forward a jury, the right to pass to college. . ... That's what [immigrants are] looking for, too. still I think if I were to ask a accident of African American people if a accident of those rights are realities, a apportionment of those people would say, "No, they're not realities."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Community Renewal Society

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group