Latinos on the East End. Breaking the Box.
How blaming, shaming, minimizing, and silencing have expanded beyond the institutional realm into an even more damaging sphere that deadens the soul of our shared community.
Today, OLA of Eastern Long Island has 20 full time and 2 part time employees that make up four main departments serving the full East End region. The East End of Suffolk County is comprised of 10 independent police departments, 12 local municipal governments, 10 justice courts, and 23 independent school districts. Our mission to build a safer, healthier, and more equitable East End can only be accomplished through collaboration, honest dialogue, and compassion.
This presentation is offered as a way to explore some of the elements that deaden our natural and needed responses to violence and institutional harm. This presentation is not a request to solve OLA’s struggles by offering money, volunteer time or strategy
This is a way for me to share, at a deeper level, where I see the damage and where I see the hope. How people respond to these conversations in terms of measurable outcomes is not my focus for this evening. I am hoping to free myself from the transactional burdens so that I can be present in a different way.
Concepts that come up for me as I consider this presentation: A silent surrender, a way to survive, hidden hostility, words without actions, actions without thought, the natural order of chaos and change, what does vulnerable mean, heal thyself, the strong will survive - at what cost, ours and theirs, true love.
Producer: Minerva Perez
The four main departments of OLA:
An immigration law practice with three dedicated immigration attorneys and one legal advocate. This team provides direct representation, all-encompassing pro se support as well as in depth consultations. We offer public and targeted trainings related to work permits, asylum and juvenile pathways. All services are free.
Youth Connect: An adolescent mental and emotional health program that serves all middle school age children through college age regardless of ethnicity or level of wealth. All work is done in a bilingual and multicultural approach. We have Latino and African American team members offering help line support 7 days a week, in-classroom workshops, and family programs in Spanish and English. All programs and services are free to students, parents and schools.
Advocacy work is done by 4 advocates as well as myself. Tracking trends in exploitation (housing and employment), law enforcement response, local laws and enforcement, court processes, health access, public transportation, county policies, and state policies dictate our approaches and partnerships to effect meaningful change at the individual level and broader systemic level. This team also provides community-based education on topics ranging from constitutional rights, becoming your own advocate, emergency planning, license requirements for your new business, and more.
Arts and Culture
We have developed new works in theatre, recently the first ever East End production only in Spanish. We are in our 22nd year of the OLA Latino Film Festival, the OLA Pachanga features live and emerging Latino artists and Art shows. We engage Latino artists to offer workshops to adults and youth. We created and produced two shows on LTV: Conversations with OLA, and Sabor con OLA. These arts and culture are offerings designed to bridge audiences as we explore our deeper human connections.
Minerva Perez has been an East End advocate for the last 20 years. She joined OLA as a volunteer in 2006 in response to the shocking anti-immigrant bills being proposed by the Suffolk County Executive. She worked for six years as the director of the Retreat’s 24-hour Domestic Violence Shelter for families fleeing domestic violence. In February of 2016 she was hired by OLA as its first full time Executive Director and only employee.