NORTHAMPTON — For those fighting the separation of children from their parents after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and the increase in deportation proceedings against undocumented immigrants, legal expertise is key.
For that reason, the Smith School for Social Work and the Institute for Emerging Adulthood have teamed up to create a fundraiser for the legal fees that face immigrant families who have been separated from one another.
“My hope is to really fill the Academy of Music to capacity,” said event organizer Jaycelle Basford-Pequet, director of the Institute for Emerging Adulthood. “This might be a really incredible opp for people to be able to connect face-to-face with one another about such a big issue.”
Basford-Pequet said the event organizers hope to create a space where people can sit beside each other and consider the current political climate together, rather than interfacing with that news through a screen or status update.
“I think that’s really a human rights crisis that’s happening domestically,” Basford-Pequet said, referring not only to families separated at the border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, but also to those separated by deportations nationwide.
The event is titled “Ofrendas” — “offerings” in Spanish — and will take place at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Academy of Music. The fundraiser will feature a panel of local experts who will speak about the separations, and will also include a multimedia performance from Northampton artist Diana Alvarez.
Tickets to the event are $25, and 100 percent of proceeds will go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization that is providing migrant families with legal representation in their cases. Tickets can be purchased online at www.ofrendas.net.
The panel will feature several local experts: Smith College and Westfield State University faculty member Maria Del Mar Farina, a clinical social worker specializing in, among other areas, immigration; Dalila Hyry-Dermith, a social worker at the Department of Public Health; Eduardo Samaniego, an organizer with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and himself an undocumented immigrant; and Jorge Renaud, a senior policy analyst with the Prison Policy Initiative.
Alvarez’s performance is titled “Quiero Volver: A Xicanx Opera,” which is described on her website as a “multimedia performance to honor women, and non-binary, and genderqueer people of color.” The performance includes original music, poetry and documentary video.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.