Dear Friends,
We have had a wonderful first year at Immigrant Movement International! As you may know, IM International serves the community on a daily basis through a variety of services. We have worked with numerous community organizations to provide workshops and classes to the community including N.I.C.E, the Queens Museum of Art, NYCOSH, Make the Road, the Corona Youth Orchestra and Centro Comunitario, Occupy Wall Street among others.
The first Sunday of every month we had Make a Movement, a day that we dedicate to carrying out actions related to cultural enrichment and immigration. Some of the past actions include the Immigrant Respect Letter Writing Campaign to our elected officials in Washington, trips to Detention centers to visit immigrants, a town hall on the Dream Act with the New York State Youth Leadership Council and a Slogan Writing Workshop.
In addition to our monthly actions, IM International put on several major events this year. In the spring we hosted a Conversation on Useful Art featuring panel discussions with artists and group discussion with the community. In November we held Re-Conceptualizing the 21st Century (Im)Migrant, a convening that brought together politicians, community organizers, academics and immigrants from our community to discuss issues relating to immigration. The convening culminated with the development of our Migrant Manifesto. The first reading of the manifesto took place at the United Nations Annual Student Conference on Human Rights.
Following the convening in November, we put out an open call to artists around the world to respond to the Migrant Manifesto by taking action on December 18th, the International Day of the Migrant.We had an overwhelming response with over 200 artists participating worldwide that included all continents. The actions highlighted the fact that human migration is an increasingly central phenomenon of contemporary global existence, asserting and promoting the fundamental human rights and dignity of migrants and their families.
We culminated our year by joining the working group on immigration from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and marching with various organizations on the first public immigration stand form OWS.
We would like to thank our three amazing interns, Ahram Jeong, Anjali Cadambi and Anya Pantuyeva for their exceptional work with us this year. We wish them luck in all of their future endeavors!
We are excited to announce that we will be staying in our headquarters in Corona Queens for 2012 and will be presented by the Queens Museum of Art. We will keep fighting for immigrant respect and continue the conversation on political and useful art through our work with the community and our public actions. If you would like to support Immigrant Movements’ initiatives in the year to come, please click here to make a tax-deductible gift.
Thank you for all of your support, we wish you the best in the New Year!
Warm Regards,
The IM International Team
Alejandra Salcedo, Alexandra Hodkowski, Camilo Godoy, Elisabeth Ingwersen Ganung, Jill Seymour and Tania Bruguera
