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Leaders We Deserve

When he was a high school senior in 2018, David Hogg survived one of the deadliest mass shootings in an American school, at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Since then, David co-founded March for Our Lives, an organization that has motivated young people around the country to keep the issue of gun violence in front of the rest of us, and he went to Harvard. Now David has taken his activism to the next level; he's co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a grassroots organization dedicated to electing young progressives to Congress and State Legislatures across the country to help defeat the far-right agenda and advance a progressive vision for the future. "Our mission, "says the web site, "is to identify and elect more trailblazers – youthful, audacious, and charismatic leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. We pledge to stand with them, equipping their campaigns with the tools to succeed: from fundraising and messaging to scheduling and budgeting. We’ll raise the banner of their cause, rallying funds online and in person." And these young leaders are not out there alone. Take a look at Leaders We Deserve's Advisory Board. Impressive! And then, if you can, consider whether you might like to join me in supporting this next generation of leaders.

Civic Shout

What's better than a petition that's a bit left-leaning, brief and to-the-point, from a nonprofit partner organization you trust on an issue you care about, that comes right into your inbox and you can sign with your email address? Civic Shout, based in Delaware, sends me one or two petitions each day, on topics like protecting old-growth forests, racial justice, urging Congress not to give public land to mining companies, extending the deadline for higher education financial aid, and protecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For each petition, you know what organization is sponsoring it, and what the key text of the petition advocates. Sign the petitions you support, and skip the ones you don't. This is not a fundraising operation; it's strictly petitions created by some of the best known nonprofits, like Sierra Club, Save the Children, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and more, on issues that are near and dear to my heart. I've looked all through their site, and there doesn't seem to be a way to sign up, but if you skim through their list of most recent petitions and sign one, I think that will get you on the Civic Shout mailing list. I'm sure that's how they found me, and I'm so glad they did.

They Arrived Homeless. Now They’re Helping Others Make New York Home.

This article appeared in the New York Times on November 11, 2023. It made me happier than almost anything I've read in a long time.

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At a makeshift welcome center in the Lower East Side, those who came before help those who are new, and a community begins to grow.

 

Newly arrived migrants meet with volunteers at a weekly gathering on the Lower East Side, where they are connected to legal help and offered donated clothing and a hot meal. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

By Nina Agrawal

Nov. 11, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ET

The migrants started lining up by dawn. After trekking to New York from across Latin America, young people and families had made their way to an elementary school on the Lower East Side to be greeted, in Spanish, by immigrants who had come before them.

Most of the greeters were Venezuelan, and many had made the same trek just weeks before. They guided the newest newcomers to tables covered in clothes and shoes, connected them to legal services, or offered a haircut and hot meal.

Yicel Rondon arrived in New York earlier this year with her partner and two children, after fleeing Venezuela and Colombia. “We came here with nothing — just the clothes we were wearing and our documents,” she said.

The makeshift welcome center run weekly out of the cafeteria at P.S. 20 Anna Silver Elementary has become one of the first stops for new migrants as they get their bearings in a new country. Many arrive with few connections to New York and have ended up in homeless shelters, which officials have said are past the breaking point. The city has recently stepped up a campaign to encourage migrants to move out of the shelter system — or out of the city altogether.

But the center is also a sign that some of the new immigrants are settling in and, in some cases, becoming self-sufficient.

Before the latest influx, the Venezuelan diaspora in New York City was tiny, estimated at 21,000 in 2021, including about 14,000 persons born in Venezuela. In the last year and a half, the number has roughly tripled. Officials have estimated that at least 40,000 Venezuelan migrants have arrived in New York City since 2022. While other migrants might have a consulate where they can turn, Venezuelans do not. Their consulate is closed, a result of deteriorated diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela.

The city opened an intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown earlier this year to help place migrants in shelters and connect them to services, months after the city declared a crisis. The administration of Mayor Eric Adams set up an asylum application assistance program in June. It helped migrants complete more than 5,600 applications by mid-October, officials said.

But the city has received more than 130,000 newcomers, and their needs are enormous. Various volunteer groups and nonprofits have also provided clothing donations and other assistance. But migrants attempting to apply for asylum or protection from deportation need help to muster documents and navigate a complex court process.

Jesus Aguais and his nonprofit organization, Aid for Life, have since July 2022 tried to fill the gaps. Mr. Aguais, who is Venezuelan, has been established in New York for decades. His organization grew out of a sister nonprofit, Aid For AIDS, that Mr. Aguais set up in 1996 to provide free antiretroviral medication to people with H.I.V. in Latin America.

“We started providing nutrition to Venezuelans with the Venezuelan humanitarian emergency,” he said. “Then we expanded to migrants. This is all linked. We helped them in Venezuela, then in Colombia, then Peru, then Panama, now in New York.”

 

Many of the volunteers helping migrants are migrants themselves. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

In addition to weekly welcome events, called “jornadas” in Spanish, Aid For Life holds legal workshops explaining the asylum process and has clinics where Venezuelan paralegals volunteer. They help migrants submit asylum claims and applications for temporary humanitarian protection — both of which enable them to work. The paralegals, who have been flying up from Miami, are now about to open an office locally to help with the volume of cases.

“This is about building community from the inside out,” Mr. Aguais said. “It’s not just about humanitarian aid. This is the first step to integration.”

On a Saturday in October that topped 70 degrees, that first step began in line outside ABC Playground, next to P.S. 20. An Aid For Life staff member directed first-timers to volunteers who asked about everything from their nationality to their pregnancy status, and what services they needed.

Gelson Montero, 28, had come to the jornada a week prior, following the advice of an aunt who had arrived earlier. “Because of that I have these clothes,” he said, pointing to the sweatshirt and pants he wore.

Mr. Montero and his partner, Yusmely Parra, 24, arrived in New York on Oct. 5 and Ms. Parra gave birth the next day. It was the first time Ms. Parra was well enough to come to a jornada.

Breastfeeding her newborn with one hand, she sifted through piles of clothes with the other, pulling out a pair of jeans and a bra for herself, a princess dress for her older daughter, and a one-piece suit for the baby. Among a limited supply of shoes, she was lucky to find a pair of sneakers that fit. Volunteers handed her a pack of diapers.

 

Yusmely Parra gave birth the day after she arrived in New York City. She came to the Lower East Side gathering a few weeks later. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

Migrants also came for hot food: rice, beans, and chicken or meat prepared by the nearby Dominican restaurant, El Castillo de Jagua. “It’s delicious,” said Yusty Parra, Mr. Montero’s aunt. (She is not related to Yusmely Parra.)

Mr. Aguais spends about $3,000 each week on the food. Other expenses include the permit for the school, bags of dry goods to give away, and token thank you gifts for volunteers. Small grants cover the costs and are supplemented by donations of clothing and food. Each week, Mr. Aguais also enlists the help of 30 to 40 volunteers.

The jornadas have served more than 20,000 migrants, he said.

Yordany Corona, 16, came for a free haircut. His barber on this day, Roybert Suarez, arrived in New York in September and began volunteering right away. Yordany’s father chatted with other newcomers while Mr. Suarez closely shaved his son’s neck.

Nearby, Selitza Castro, 51, a volunteer, explained that she has come every week since she arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal last year. She moved out of a homeless shelter and into a rental apartment in Brooklyn a few months ago.

“Those of us who have been here longer, we are a little more established — not very, but a little,” Ms. Castro said. “We feel like family, helping others who have arrived more recently.”

Volunteers offer a haircut and shave to migrants who had been on the roads for weeks before arriving in New York City. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

Andy Borowitz, political humorist

If I could live for one day in someone else's brain, I'd choose Andy Borowitz as my brain host. It takes a special kind of person to find humor in today's political climate. Borowitz, a writer for The New Yorker, is exactly that special. A Harvard-educated American writer, comedian, satirist and actor, he won the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. His new book, Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, published in 2022, looks at the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump. When Biden won the presidency, I worried that Borowitz would lose his edge after five years of satirizing the other guy. That didn't happen; Borowitz is sharper than ever, and finds plenty of grist for his mill. Sign up to get The Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox every weekday. 

Heather Cox Richardson, historian

"What's past is prologue," Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, and how right he was. By reading and learning about our history, we begin to understand why today is happening. Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American history at Boston College, writes her daily Letters from an American to set the events of the day in context and connect the dots between past and present. It's my first read every morning, before I tackle the newspapers. Subscriptions are free, and if you want more, she also has a weekly podcast, Now and Then, on Tuesdays.