Fernando Lopez

Solidarity, Not Charity: A Group of Undocumented Immigrants’ Approach Provides COVID-19 Relief where the State has Failed

This crisis has exposed the already existent disparities against marginalized communities under capitalist economies such as the one in the USA. Many people in communities of color have been excluded from government services as well as intentionally suppressed for generations, so this exclusion as of “who deserves to be saved” is to be expected.

Familias Unidas’ response to the crisis comes as no surprise as well. Community members leading this effort have been engaged in immigrant rights movements in the Deep South since Katrina—from organizing against wage theft by contractors to exposing ICE’s rogue operations in New Orleans.

Familias Unidas began in 2018, offering housing, food, and skill training (like sewing classes) to recently arrived migrants and asylum seekers. Their goal: create a safety net upon arrival for migrants with no support networks, focusing on Central American indigenous and Garifuna people, who often don’t speak English or Spanish.

Given the current crisis, Familias Unidas shifted the scope of their outreach and scaled up their operation. Each week they deliver food supplies to over 650+ mostly undocumented and/or asylum-seeking families (an equivalent to about 3300+ people)

The usual food box for 5 people includes maseca (cornflower), sugar, beans, pasta, rice, cooking oil, salt, canned sauces, canned fruit, packages of instant ramen, fresh vegetables, and personal hygiene products such as toothpaste, tooth brushes, soap, pads, among other items.

Familias Unidas En Accion has been coordinating with several organizations to make this possible, some of these organizations are New Orleans Co-Op, The New Orleans Jazz Market, Family Justice Center, Banchalenguas Languague Justice Collective, among others, as well as a credele of volunteers picking, packing and delivering the goods across the New Orleans Metro Area.

As one of the founders, Leticia Casildo, repeatedly tells new volunteers as they enroll “We are creating solidarity, not charity. We can’t stand by and do nothing while communities are being discriminated against in the face of a global pandemic. A Pandemic does not discriminate, however we are seeing that the government response does discriminate against so many, and even though this comes as no surprise, we must come together and lean on one another”

Grassroots efforts led by undocumented people who provide support where the state has failed offer an example of cooperativism and empowerment that build on solidarity work that existed before the pandemic. The coronavirus has helped surface existing inequities and economic hardships that show how the “normal’’ was never sustainable. Familias Unidas’ work, in the face of being excluded, offers a tangible example of how to create something together and better that includes all of us.