the next six stories you will read here are very special. They are the stories of how six immigrant communities here are dealing with the U.S. Census.
What makes them so different?
It’s the bond that you will see that links them.
This work is the result of a unique collaboration of six Chicago area ethnic news media Read the rest of this entry »
By Jessica Allen | January 14th, 2010
The Indo-American Center just off Devon Avenue has been ready for the 2010 U.S. Census for months, not wanting to overlook any opportunity to get the attention of the area’s large Indian community. When the census forms are mailed in March, they hope the area will be properly counted. Read the rest of this entry »
By Zoe Jennings | January 14th, 2010
It is seven o’clock on a Thursday evening at St. Francis the Catholic Worker in Uptown, and tonight, Filipino food – an aluminum container of spring rolls and big metal pots of white rice and noodles – fills a table in the dining room. Myrla Baldonado sits on a stool in the main room. She is talking about toxic waste left at American military sites in the Philippines, and she passes out cards drawn by Crizel Jane Valencia, a little girl who died from leukemia attributed to the waste. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jessica Abels, Raphaelle Neyton and Shasha Zou | January 14th, 2010
In the U.S. Census’ most recent American Community Survey, it is estimated that 51,972 people of Arab descent currently live in the greater Chicago areas of Cook, DuPage and Lake County. Another estimate, provided by the Advisory Council on Arab Affairs to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, puts the number of Arabs at 150,000 in the metro Chicago area. A Zogby International study suggests the number is actually 182,000. Read the rest of this entry »
By Kate Endeley and Clara Lingle | January 14th, 2010
The level of participation by the Korean community in the 2010 U.S. Census may well be influenced by a new law in the Republic of Korea that for the first time allows Korean citizens living abroad to vote in national elections at home. Read the rest of this entry »
By Matthew Bellassai and Alex Hollander | January 14th, 2010
Crusaders will soon descend upon the community of Little Village, armed with cans of spray paint and posters to cover the walls of this Chicago neighborhood while its neighbors are sound asleep. These people aren’t vandals who seek to deface the city—it’s a city, in fact, that these crusaders care deeply about. Read the rest of this entry »
By Arianna Hermosillo and Nadine Shabeeb | January 14th, 2010
Grazyna Zajaczkowska pulls out an 1,832-page Polish Yellow Pages directory. The Director of Immigrant Services of the Polish American Association (PAA) in Chicago does it to underscore how many Polish-Americans live and work in and around Chicago. She puts the number at more than one million people, an astonishing figure if accurate. Read the rest of this entry »
Another profile of Chicago’s ethnic news media
Esfuerzo de Amor
By Angela Evans
Sunlight streams through the windows of café Macondo in Chicago’s Lincoln Square. Beams of light dance across the warm, neutral shades and rich red tones of the walls, and on Spanish language posters. On one wall the shelves are jammed with books that tell about Hispanic culture via music or film or jewelry.
It is fitting that the creator of arteyvidachicago.com should choose this place for an interview.
Amor Montes de Oca is a smiling, spirited woman. She is small with thick, cascading dark hair. She is dressed simply in a black turtleneck, jeans and a plaid scarf tied snugly around her neck. Something about her is subtle, yet knowing.
Oh, and Amor stands up to greet you with a friendly hug upon first meeting.
The labor of her love the past two years has been the Hispanic arts and cultural calendar of events website, aptly called arteyvidachicago.com.
What began as a simple endeavor to offer a comprehensive listing of high-quality events for Chicago’s Hispanic community, has evolved to include: artist galleries, links to various Hispanic organizations, music reviews and the brand new book reviews— with more on the horizon.
Montes de Oca, 38, came from Mexico City a little over 20 years ago and Chicago has been her home base since then. She studied fine art at DePaul University and is now a photo researcher for educational publishers. Though she also considers her website a full-time job as it requires most of her free time.
Since Montes de Oca has always been involved in the arts one way or another, she found that she was always recommending events she thought worthwhile to people in her circle. Because she was always scrounging through various websites and publications to identify such events, she decided she could put it in one place that it would be available to more people.
“They wouldn’t be discouraged to not find anything if the information was not readily available…Instead of going to 10 different websites, they could just go to one,” she says. “The purpose was to connect the organizations with this programming to the audience.”
Many of the organizations that host cultural events are catering to a niche audience, she says. And because the organizations are usually small in nature, they often don’t have the budget for marketing to reach their intended audience, she explains.
The worst-case scenario occurs when these organizations have to cancel events due to this lack of audience, she adds.
And so, she decided she would do something.
She wanted to help musicians avoid empty nightclubs and gatherings. And she wanted to make sure the community was aware of the organizations holding exhibits and lectures.
The connection between programming and the audience seemed to be missing. And so, she put the two together, giving birth to arteyvidachicago.com.
While Montes de Oca describes her website as “one-man band,” she did receive help from a few key individuals.
Her husband, David Derr, a graphic designer, helped her with the logo and other design elements. The technical person who developed the format for the website made it easy for her to use as well as very user friendly. Catalina Maria Johnson, Ph.D., writer and host/producer of “Beat Latino”, rounds out the mix with her contribution of music reviews.
As for the website’s appearance, the maroon color of its background is immediately attention-grabbing, while the smaller boxes housing illustrated logos or words of affiliated organizations on each side of the homepage pose as interesting, complimentary details to the layout of the page.
“That’s something that ran parallel to the richness and diversity of how art and cultural events can be,” Montes de Oca explains. “Also, it parallels with the richness of the Hispanic culture- it’s so vast and vibrant and significant as well as diverse. So I wanted to be sure that it was attractive to capture the attention of the Hispanic community, but also any other community that had any interest in world culture. It’s not for Hispanics, it’s for everyone.”
Leo Suarez, 25, owner of Macondo, is friends with Montes de Oca and has collaborated with her on marketing plans for the café and various musical events. Suarez says Montes de Oca stands out because of her willingness is to help out, even with things that have nothing to do with her. “She always has tons of ideas,” he says.
When Macondo first opened, Suarez says they had people coming in mentioning, “Oh we read about you guys on arteyvida.”
This is how Montes de Oca is made aware that the connection has been made. Verbal confirmation at arteyvida promoted events. “I would like to think that maybe they would not have gone had they not received that information from my website.”
Web visits boasting an increasingly steady 70 percent reader return rate also provides a good indication.
On one occasion in particular, a gentleman came up to her at a Les Nubians performance she helped set up. The man was explaining to Montes de Oca how grateful he was for her putting the show together, because it was sort of perfect timing. He was searching for an anniversary gift for his wife, read about the show in arteyvida’s newsletter, and so bought tickets for the event. His wife was surprised and they attended the show with a slew of their friends.
Montes de Oca was flattered to hear this. She thought it would make their anniversary even more memorable if the couple could meet the artist personally. So she took them back stage. She recounts the couple taking pictures, hanging out and having a good time. Montes de Oca expresses how glad she was to be allowed the opportunity to make their experience that much more memorable. She credits the website for this.
Montes de Oca has a strong vision for developing her website, but time is her biggest hurdle.
She recognizes the importance of pacing herself with the website because she does not want to compromise the quality of the product she is providing to her audience.
Maintaining the website has not only impacted the community it serves, but it has also directly affected Montes de Oca herself.
“I am well-informed,” she chuckles good-naturedly. “It serves two purposes, it helps me as a person and as an art patron and fan know what’s going on. As well as, I attend a lot of these events myself. I’m even more motivated to go. I take my family. It gives me an opportunity to take my son and show him something cool, something new.”
Hopefully, future voyeurs to arteyvidachicago.com will also discover something cool, something new, just as well.
(Angela Evans is an intern with the Community Media Workshop)
Chicago’s Haitian community is linked by two radio stations, and they will be talking about what the earthquake has meant to their island this weekend.
There will be a specially long broadcast from 4:30 p.m to midnight by Frantz Remy on WHPK, 88.5 fm, on Saturday. And Euniel Mondesir will talk about the situation from 6:30 to 7:30 Sunday on 1590 WNOX AM.
When an event like this happens, this is when ethnic radio matters. And here too is a good example, likewise, of coverage by WBEZ on the issue locally and globally
Emmanuel Owusu arrived in the U.S. from Ghana on a student visa in 1972. He spent most of his next 33 years in Chicago and was a legal permanent resident.
But U.S. immigration officials picked him up in 2006 because of a 1979 conviction for misdemeanor battery and retail theft, according to a story in Sunday’s New York Times.
The ailing 62-year-old barber lived the next two years in Arizona in a government facility ran by a private contractor. There he died of a heart ailment, battling deportation to the end.
”I am confused as to how subject came into our custody???” the Phoenix (Immigration) field office director, Katrina S. Kane, wrote to subordinates. ”Convicted in 1979? That’s a long time ago,”’ the Times reported.
“In response,” the Times reported, “a report on his death was revised to refer to Mr. Owusu’s ”lengthy criminal history ranging from 1977 to 1998.” It did not note that except for the battery conviction, that history consisted mostly of shoplifting offenses.”
What raises this story to such high level are the powerful and compelling details.
The Times acquired previously unreleased government reports that, in many cases, gave the full story or another story than the one offered at the time by federal officials. The American Civil Liberties took part in the Times’ effort to gain the documents.
One government document, for example, said that “unbearable, untreated pain” had been a significant factor in an immigrant’s suicide.
Where do you take this story now?
You check with local immigrant and immigrants groups, such as the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights for the names of persons who may have suffered inadequate care in an immigration detention facility.
You find out from the ACLU what immigrants’ stories might be linked back to Chicago.
You look for legal and other experts here and across the country who have tracked the conditions in these facilities, and again, you focus in on details about immigrants with roots or ties to Chicago.
On your own, you check the records of U.S. immigration offices for deaths and serious injuries suffered by immigrants from the Chicago area in these detention facilities. You check with the major consulates that serve Chicago’s immigrant communities.
If you are short on time and support, you look for help elsewhere. Can you link up with a radio station, a magazine, an immigrant publication elsewhere and share the work?
Can you find an academic expert or an advocacy group that can walk you through the process? If you have any relatives, friends, neighbors who can recall instances, you build your reporting from there.
Those are my suggestions. What else can you do? Let’s share some thoughts, some experiences, some contacts here.
Here is the New York Times story:
Steve
Powered by WordPress and Fjords04 Web Design Services, based on Qwilm. Thanks to Domain Name Registration and Merchant Accounts for contributing.
