Community Issues
© 2024 The flag of Baltimore. All rights reserved.
In the back of a taqueria on South Highland Avenue, a handful of activists gathered around two tables they had set up.
They tried to speak into a microphone, but it didn’t work. Their efforts to translate from Spanish to English were interrupted by the sound of flames coming from the kitchen grills.
They smiled before asking the restaurant to reject the combination of Ranchera and Latin Hits so they could tell the media that they had raised about $100,000 in about six hours.
“We are all united in this grief,” said Lucia Islas, a member of the Latino Racial Justice Circle, a network advocacy organization that supports Baltimore’s developing Spanish-speaking network at levels small and large.
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In the days after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, government agencies, network allies and religious groups mobilized the public to the families of the six employees of the structure who died when a roughly 1,000-foot freighter lost power and crashed into the bridge. prematurely. On Tuesday, two bodies have been recovered so far. Such a network is deeply rooted in southeast Baltimore, where helping each other is a daily practice for Islas and others; Four other people are still missing and presumed dead.
All six men were Americans, but not from “America,” as people sometimes use to refer to the United States. They were family members, football fans, dreamers. They were victims of a catastrophic event that investigators are still trying to explain. They were in the wrong position at the wrong time when a gear of the global market positioning device lost control and collapsed the bridge supports they stood on like fragile toys.
“We’re made of steel,” said Carlos Crespo, a member of the group.
Members of the Latino Racial Justice Circle have created a GoFundMe site for victims’ families; They were amazed at how quickly he raised funds. The organization plans to split the money lightly among the six families, they said, while “passing the baton” to the mayor’s office for immigration affairs, which has organized a fundraiser through a Baltimore City civic organization. Bottom.
Baltimore city and county officials have worked long hours this week to meet families’ quick wishes.
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“The desires are enormous,” said Giuliana Valencia-Banks, Baltimore County’s immigration affairs coordinator, as well as all levels of government, faith groups and nonprofits.
Your workplace will continue for families and increase the budget for long-term future wishes: cash assistance for rent, car payments, food, and school. There will be gaps in investment in cars and universities that will need to be addressed, he said.
Donna Batkis, a licensed clinical social and longtime best friend of Baltimore’s Latino community, spent a lot of time with the victims’ families Tuesday and Wednesday as they waited for news of their loved ones.
“All right, other people were there,” Batkis said.
Government officials were also in attendance. The same applies to devoted leaders and volunteers. The FBI had a team of bilingual interpreters who relayed the data to families as soon as it became available.
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“They’re suffering a lot, they’re suffering, they’re living in this liminal space,” said Father Ako Walker, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Highlandtown, a predominantly Latino parish. Like Batkis, Walker spent a lot of time with families this week as a component of a “ministry of presence”: being with them, offering comfort and showing solidarity. In addition to feeling pain, many families of the victims have unanswered questions, he said.
“Between the numbness and the anger, if you go through all the cycles of grief, each and every one of them is represented,” Batkis said, describing the mood in the family detention room Tuesday and Wednesday. “There is heaviness, but there is also hope. There is excessive sadness, worry and horror,” he said.
Batkis has been responding to crises for years. But families will want continued support for their intellectual fitness, she said.
The demand for this and the preference for offering it was temporarily extended, thanks in part to an online organization through which Spanish-speaking intellectual fitness providers can connect and recommend their clients.
Amy Greensfelder, executive director of Pro Bono Counseling, a local intellectual fitness nonprofit that connects personal professionals with others in need, said many therapists were quick to offer assistance and now boast the status of “People stepped up,” she said.
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As this week’s events unfolded, Greensfelder thought about other recent events that have also affected the local Latino network: a space fire on Lombard Street earlier this month that left two children dead, a twist of fate in a structural area of Interstate 695 that killed six workers. Now the Latin American network is being asked to show resilience again, he said.
This adds to the trauma many immigrants still experience after fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, said Flor Giusti, a retired clinical social worker who has worked with Spanish-speaking immigrants in Baltimore for decades. The U. S. is not legally allowed to worry that seeking help or coming out of anonymity will endanger the lives they have established here.
“There are thoughts and that weighs heavily on some members of the network that can be barriers,” Giusti said.
They pay taxes but would probably be afraid to open a bank account; They are frontline workers, but they can refuse medical care.
“He’s very strong,” Giusti said.
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On Thursday morning, under the blossoming magnolia trees in Patterson Park, members of Redemption City Church in Canton and other local pastors led a collection of songs and prayers.
“We’re going to come in combination with our community, with our neighbors, to grieve the losses, to mourn this tragedy, to come in combination with those families as we seek to pray and offer and offer as much as we can. ” said Eric McAllister, director of cumulative worship at Redemption City Church.
A few days earlier, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore County Administrator Johnny Olszewski and others had bowed their heads to worshippers at Dundalk’s Mount Olive Baptist Church, about a mile and a part from the bridge.
“The city will stand with you [the victims’ families] through this ordeal, every step of the way,” Scott wrote on social media platform X.
Walker, the pastor of Sacred Heart, said it didn’t matter what devotional association the families had; He said he would make his church available to them as funeral facilities if they so desired. He is making plans for a prayer Mass in the coming weeks. to honor the sick and plans to organize a monetary offering.
The men who died were from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. There is a sense of “walking together” among those who make up Baltimore’s Spanish-speaking community, regardless of their country of origin, Walker said.
“If there’s a food distribution in Curtis Bay, we move on to Curtis Bay. We’re moving on to [Prince George’s] County. Wherever they call us, we pass,” Islas said Wednesday night.
They did so while Latinos were among the first and hardest hit by the COVID pandemic in the Baltimore area, Crespo said. They’re doing it now. They will do so in the future.
“As an immigrant and proud Baltimoreans, we have that in our DNA, that resilience,” Valencia-Banks said. “The point of generational trauma that exists in our Latino network is immense, as is the ability to come together and help everyone else. “.
“We may not have a circle of relatives when we arrive, but we build that circle of relatives, whether it’s when family circle members sign up for us or if it’s a circle of relatives that we form in our neighborhoods and devotees. “communities, as a component of our work,” he said.
Immigrant workers are more likely than their U. S. -born counterparts to work in the service sector, as well as in structures and other hazardous jobs, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“When other people attack our state, when other people attack our city, when other people attack our county for creating spaces for immigrants to call those places home, we want them to be our brothers and sisters and to be the ones to do the things that keep us going. Our country is on the move,” Valencia-Banks said.
Islas described the experience of Latino immigrants this way.
“We didn’t come here to invade this country, we came here to have a better life,” Islas said. “We’re making paintings that others don’t need to do. “
Islas and fellow volunteer Carlos Crespo praised the community’s painting ethic. Your neighbors build, repair, feed, clean, lead, heal, farm, pray, and pay taxes in this community.
They repair their potholes on a towering bridge at night.
Islas, Crespo and their organization helped raise $97,000 in six hours for others they didn’t even know.
“The men who lost their lives are Maryland residents,” Valencia-Banks said. They are the breadwinner and support of families here and in communities thousands of miles away.
Walker attempts to delve into a local tragedy closer to Easter: the Christian holiday that marks Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
“Families don’t bring this cross alone, we’re here for them as a community, as Baltimoreans and Marylanders,” he said. “So even as we move forward with this pain and suffering [as a result of] the loss of Our six brothers, we know that death does not have the last word. “
Journalist Jess Nocera contributed to this report.
Community Issues
© 2024 The flag of Baltimore. All rights reserved.