Here are specific ideas and examples for how neighborhood groups can
successfully engage immigrants living in their communities.
Community groups often have trouble involving neighborhood immigrants.
Yet neighborhood groups can have great success in involving immigrants.
Here are three fundamental steps to involving immigrants in neighborhood
orgizations.
1) Meet and listen to immigrants on their home turf
2) Involve immigrants on their home turf, and in ways they feel comfortable
with and enjoy
3) Help immigrants organize on issues they say they care about.
This outreach is important, because Immigrants are often the people most
severely impacted by neighborhood problems, But too often immigrants fall
between the cracks. Neighborhood groups often fail to connect because of
language barriers and other challenges. Immigrant organizations often do
not deal with problems at the block level.
This is written in the hope that neighborhood organizations can find at
least one or two ideas they can use today to involve more immigrants in
their groups.
CONNECTING AND LISTENING
Often neighborhood groups hesitate to do outreach to immigrants in their
community because they do not speak the language of the immigrants. but I
have found that being nice and helpful can go a long way in making
connections, and most everybody can be nice.
I have also found that often the key to building successful connections
with neighborhood immigrants starts not with flyers written in Somali or
translators at board meetings, but with one-on-one personal contacts in
the community. Every time you share a cucumber with your laotian neighbor,
every time you say hello to your Oromo neighbor getting into his car,
every time you bring a plate of cookies over to the Latino family who just
moved in across the street, could be the start of the conversation that
leads to your neighborhood group developing working relationships with
large numbers of your community immigrants.
And I find that two good questions to ask are: what do you like about your
neighborhood, and what would make your neighborhood better? there is a
good chance one or two problems will consistently show up in the
conversations, and then your community organization will have a good issue
to work with neighborhood immigrants to fix.
Here are a couple of examples how one small connection led to major
immigrant community involvement;
In Burnsville there was a community garden. There were apartment buildings
around the garden with large Latino populations, but no Latino gardeners.
One day one of the gardeners was working on his car, and one of the Latino
youth came over and asked him what he was doing. The gardener invited the
youth to help him on the car, then asked if the youth could introduce him
to the kid's parents. He met the parents, told them about the garden, and
invited them to take a plot. the family liked the garden and they told
their neighbors and friends. Now the garden has a big contingent of
Latinos.
Here is another example of how one small contact can lead to a major
involvement.
In the Harrison neighborhood, I was drinking water at a drinking fountain,
when two students came up and said hello. They were Hmong, and I think
they were practising their English. I said hello, and asked them what
school they went to. They said Jordan Park. I asked how they liked their
school. they shook their heads. I asked why. They had run out of
English., but it was clear from their hand gestures that they were getting
hit.
They were going to an after-school tutoring program, so I went and talked
with their tutors. they gathered other students going to Jordan Park,
they were all Hmong refugees who had just come to the United States and
spoke virtually no English. And they all said that they were getting hit
and bullied by other students at Jordan Park school. They also said that
they liked to play soccer. We offered to help them get a soccer team
together. That soccer team was the foundation to getting hundreds of North
Minneapolis Hmong involved in winning a series of issues on schools, police
and parks.
Neighborhood groups trying to reach out to and listen to community
immigrants need to go to where the immigrants are: the parks, the stores,
the apartment buildings, the churches and mosques, the schools, the
laundromats, the community gardens, the bus stops. And when you are
talking with neighbohrood immigrants, try asking them what they like about
their neighborhood, and what would make it better.
Here are some examples of ways neighborhood groups can listen to immigrants
So let's say you notice a number of Latino families are going to the local
park Saturday mornings. I suggest setting up a lemonade stand, with
cookies, perhaps frisbees, soccer balls, games. Wear neighborhood
organization shirts. When people come over say hello, ask what they like
about the park, what would make the park better. If e.g. half say that the
drinking fountains don't work, invite the park director to join you at the
table, and he can work with the families and the neighborhood group to get
the drinking fountains fixed. Even if you do not speak Spanish, unsually
there will be someone - maybe one of the students - who can speak both
languages.
Let's say you have a lot of immigrants living in highrises. Set up a table
with lemonade and cookies next to the ground level elevators. Set up two
easel stands, with one asking what they like about the
neighborhood/building, and one asking what would make neighborhood/building
better. write down answers. Even if you do not speak any somali, people
will likely gather to help you. My experience is that this will often turn
into a mini party. And if a problem keeps coming up, be ready to work with
the people there on the issue. When we did this at Seward Towers West, the
biggest issue was cable TV.
I also know neighborhood groups who have set up cookouts in front of
apartment buildings, with volleyball nets and games, and talked with the
residents when they came out. If you can doorknock inside the building a
couple of days in advance, great. If not you can pass out flyers on car
windshields or the front stoop, or just wait for the aromas to pull people
out.
And if immigrants are digging at the community garden, bring over some cold
water, and ask how they like the garden and what would make it better.
Do immigrants have local stores and restaurants? patronize them, and ask
questions about how the neighborhood impacts their businesses, give them
information about your organization. Again a neighborhood organization
shirt will help
You could even talk with immigrants at the bus stops. In Harrison one
morning we went out to bus stops with muffins and a few questions on mass
transit. Pretty much everybody happily participated.
And if immigrants live on your block and you have a National Night Out
event, go to their houses and invite everybody to participate. If the
kids and not the adults come out, ask the kids to take you over to invite
the parents.
Learn how to say hello, goodbye and thank you in the top three or four
languages spoken in you neighborhood. You will get a lot of good will if
you say hello to a laotian grandmother in her native language. Even if you
get it wrong, she will laugh and then help you to say it right.
I also found it helpful to do some reading about the countries the
immigrants came from, and conversations can be started by asking them about
their home country's history and current situation. and I have found that
if they talk with you about the countries they come from, they are often
more ready to talk about what is going on with their families in this
country.
And if you see a problem, if you can, help them. As we visited parents to
set up the soccer team,, I would see problems like piles of Star Tribunes
or even New York Times piled on their front porch: their phones cut off:
and orange notices on the door in English telling them their water was
about to be cut off. Honestly, my attitude was "This is just social
service, it is a waste of time for me to be fixing these problems." But I
knew nobody else was coming out to these houses, so I gritted my teeth and
made the calls to get the newspapers stopped and the phones reconnected.
Weeks later when we asked these parents to come to a meeting with school
board member Lydia Lee, they all agreed to come - because I had earned
credibility by fixing their problems.
One more little trick: I carried my phone with phone numbers of people I
knew were bilingual. So when I saw an English language orange notice
saying the water was about to get cut off, even if the families spoke no
English, I would call the bilingual person who could translate between me
and the family about the problem with their water.
And here are some other tips for building those initial connections with
immigrants in your community.
If your local park or high school has sports teams, go to the games, root
for the teams, wear your neighborhood organization shirts, bring ice
water. You can ask questions before or after the game.
Voter registration lists can help you identify and visit immigrant families
door to door. although many immigrant households will not have registered
voters.
And if you can overcome the obstacles and make those connections there is
a good chance neighborhood immigrants will be turning to you for help.
Often immigrants have a lot of trouble figuring out how to navigate the
system and how to make the system work for them. Neighborhood groups
usually are very good at knowing how the system works and how to navigate
it. so when you are successful in building an initial connection and hear
the problems they are having , chances are good that there will be problems
that you can help them with, and that you can build a strong working
relationship with your community's immigrants.
ALLIES
Here are some of the allies that can help you with your immigrant
outreach. Stop in, ask to sit down with them. . When you visit these
potential allies, start with asking them about their organizations, the
people they work with, the needs and problems they face. Don't start with
what you want them to do for you.
Businesses and business Associations.
churches, mosques and temples
Schools
Social Service Agencies
A surprisng ally for us were school clubs. We did a lot of work with the
Henry High Asian club, and also the University of Minnesota Hmong Minnesota
Student Association and Hmong Men's Circle.
Ethnic media
Check if there are any ethnic sports groups in your neighborhood, such as
an Ecuadorian volleyball league that plays at the local park.
LANGUAGE
Language is perhaps the biggest barrier to neighborhood groups connecting
with immigrants.
Obviously the best thing is to have staff or leaders who can speak
immigrant languages. But even if you have no staff or leaders who can
speak e.g. somali, you can still probably succeed in communicating with
immigrants.
Here are my suggestions:
In group settings such as a lemonade table at a park or elevator, I think
if you have to you can wing it even if you speak no e.g. Somali. Kids tend
to be bilingual, and chances are good that there will be at least a few
people who know English who will help you.
If you are going door to door, chances are fair that at some houses there
will be students at the house that can speak English. My bigger problem
was that if I went to Hmong houses of people I did not know, often I could
not get the door open A lot of immigrants do not know who to trust, and
the default setting may be that they trust nobody. When I was going door
to door to houses that didn't know me, I tried to bring soccer players with
me to translate and to get the door open: If you have gotten to know an
immigrant family on your block, ask if they will go with you to visit other
families on the block speaking the same language.
And I suggest that you wear neighborhood organization shirts or badges so
the immigrants can know you are not selling vacuum cleaners or religion.
Bring flyers - even if they are in English - and business cards.
both colleges and high schools may have community service requirements, so
you may be able to get some e.g. Somali speaking students to get some help
with languages.
Neighborhood organizations - and other nonprofits - can hire University of
minnesota students who qualify for work-study, and the university will pay
for 75% of the student's pay, and organization 25%. Also true for other
colleges. So for a few hundred dollars you can hire a college student who
speaks e.g. Somali, so the neighborhood group can pick up a language and
outreach capability
If you are in a situation where you are totally desperate to communicate
with an immigrant who speaks no English, you could even use Google
translate: You type your message in English, Google translates it into
somali, and vice versa.
INVOLVEMENT AND TAKING ON ISSUES
After building connections and listening for immigrant's top neighborhood
problems, the next step is to involve immigrants in the neighborhood
organization. The best way is to involve immigrants on their home turf, in
ways immigrants feel comortable with and even enjoy, and deal with issues
immigrants say they care about.
A big obstacle often faced is that it is often very difficult to get
immigrants to come to off-site standard meeting rooms and sit through
multi-hour meetings. At the same time, the immigrants I worked with were
not willing to e.g. throw themselves into the middle of 35W blocking
traffic to protest. The key is somehow finding ways for immigrants to
speak out that they feel comfortable with and enjoy and would be willing to
do again, and would also get the attention of the wider community and help
the immigrants win issues.
Here are some examples of immigrants organizing on their home turf in ways
they are comfortable with and even enjoy.
North Minneapolis Laotian gardeners had for over 40 years been using a
community garden next to Olson Townhomes, they wanted to save the garden
from being bulldozed to make way for high density development from
Bottineau LRT.
They went to an informational Bottineau LRT meeting, but within 45 minutes
they had all left: partly because they did not understand what was going
on and partly because the meeting seemed to have no relevence to their
problems
So instead Laotians organized a garden tour. It was a big success: over
100 people came for the tour, and the Laotians got to explain why the
garden was so important to them. And because both the constituency and
garden tour was so unusual, they got extensive metro-wide media coverage,
including stories from both channel 5 and channel 11. The Laotians enjoyed
doing the garden tour, and would definitely be willing to do it again.
Here's another examples.
To listen for problems, we helped set up a soccer team at an apartment
building in North Minneapolis that was 100% Latino. The families talked of
two big problems: substandard housing conditions, and a 100 foot tall pile
of construction debris next door they called La Montana. Homeless People
partied and slept in the bushes of La Montana, and left used hypodermic
needles and broken bottles that the children could get into.
It would be difficult to get the familes to come to an off-site standard
meeting, so instead the Latino families invited councilmember Samuels to
come to a soccer practise and talk with the families and the players.
There was a a very good turnout, and the families felt comfortable enough
to tell the councilmember about their problems, they then gave
councilmember Samuels (and later councilmember Yang) a tour of their
building, and took pictures of all the code violations they found.
Councilmember Samuels showed the CD with the pictures of code violations
to the inspections department: they re-inspected the building, and code
violation citations went from 6 to 300. Residents also gave councilmember
Samuels a tour of La Montana complete with the used hypodermic needles, and
they worked together to get La Montana knocked down and replaced with a
soccer field. When La montana came down a big celebration was thrown on
the field that brought out most of the Latino families. Because the
constituency, the La Montana issue, and the organizing were so unusual,
these North Minneapolis Latino families got extensive metro-wide media
coverage, including stories by channel 5, channel 11 and the Star tribune.
A series of Bottineau LRT informational meetings were organized, sometimes
drawing in over 100 people. However, there was a confirmed sighting of
only one Asian at the meetings. A number of Hmong families live on Oliver
Ave. one of the proposed routes. It was important to have Hmong
participating in the process, but they likely would not sit through a
series of multi-hour meetings.
We needed to find ways they could get their voices heard that they
enjoyed. So We took a group of Hmong for a ride on the Hiawatha LRT to
Mall of America. We made several stops, and wrote down what they liked
about LRT and what would make it better for north Minneapolis. they had
great ideas, and had a good time. The LRT trip was so successful that it
was then done with North Minneapolis Latinos, Laotians, and Harrison and
Heritage Park residents.
In addition, we took a group of Hmong on a tour of the possible bottineau
LRT routes, and set up a full sized mockup of an LRT train on Oliver Ave.
After the tour, the Hmong voted that they wanted the train to go down the
Wirth Parkway train tracks.
Finally, we asked the Hmong to go to just one LRT community meeting . In a
room In Crystal filled with mostly older white people, the Hmong students
definitely stood out as they showed pictures of their tours and research
and told the committee Hmong participants had voted for the Wirth route.
A few weeks later the decision was made to send bottineau LRT down the
Wirth train tracks.
In summary when Involving immigrants, try to involve them on their home
turf, help them organize in ways they feel comfortable with, and work on
issues immigrants say they care about. If you can do this, chances are
good that you can get large numbers of immigrants involved in your
neighborhood organization.
MEDIA
One strength of doing organizing with immigrants in ways that they enjoy
is because both the organizing and the constituencies involved can be
unusual often local and even metro press can be interested in covering the
organizing.
Even if you are not a writer, and think that you do not have the time to
write newspaper articles, I suggest that after meetings and events you
always try to pick out an unusual picture, write a caption, and send it to
local, ethnic, and metro media. And the Daily Planet. In addition to
putting it up on social media. Local and ethnic media often do not have
the money to hire a lot of reporters, and are grateful to get content
submitted to them.
And often reporters for the metro media will troll the local and the
ethnic media and the Daily Planet . Several times I had articles show up
in the Daily Planet or North News or Hmong Times, and I would be contacted
by Channel 5 or the Star Tribune and they would want to do a follow-up.
And I would often put links to the media on the Minneapolis Issues List so
the government people would be reading the articles.
So even if you are not a writer, send out a picture and a caption. Media
is often the key to winning the issue. Because you are organizing with
immigrants, groups not usually heard from, and maybe your events are also
unusual, there is a good chance metro media could be interested in covering
what you do.
Send it in English if you do not write in the language of the ethnic
newspaper.
RECRUITING IMMIGRANTS FOR MEETINGS
As part of a campaign to get Hmong speaking police officers in North
Minneapolis, we organized several meetings at Farview park with the mayor
and the North Minneapolis councilmembers, and managed to pull in about one
hundred hmong at each meeting. This is what we did for turnout.
Getting adult Hmong to come to community meetings was hard and time
comsuming, so we went for the big turnout only about three times a year.
It would always be for a meeting such as to get Hmong speaking police, a
topic that Hmong would immediately see as important and directlty impacting
their lives. About a week in advance we would visit the Hmong houses and
personally invite them. We focused first on the Hmong families we knew.
When possible we would bring someone to translate, but usually there was
also someone at the house that could translate.
We would give them a flyer about the meeting: preferably in Hmong and
English, but since the flyers had virtually no impact on the turnout, we
would use English only flyers if necessary.
Then the day of the meeting we would go to each house in a van, and pick
the parents up. this was absolutely essential to getting the parents to
the meeting.
We typically also put out Hmong language flyers in businesses and passed
them out at school clubs and social service agencies, but these flyers
would typically have very little impact on turnout. At one meeting we
calculated that 5 Hmong out of 100 who attended came on the basis of the
flyers at stores etc.
We had three Farview Hmong soccer teams playing games on Saturday
mornings, so we scheduled the community meetings for early Saturday
afternoons, then we would take the soccer players complete with uniforms
from the soccer fields and marched them straight into the meeting rooms.
the solid sea of red was very visual, and councilmember Samuels took his
seat in the middle of the soccer players.
If instead of a meeting about Hmong police we tried to recruit Hmong for
e.g. a housing committee meeting: if instead of personal invitations we
just passed out a bunch of flyers in Hmong: if instead of picking them up
in a van we expected them to drive themselves in: and even if we had
translators and daycare and cookies at the meeting: the number of Hmong
who would go to the meeting was likely to be near zero.
Hmong and other immigrants can also often be shy and silent at meetings,
so for the Hmong police meetings we would go out to the houses a few days
before the meeting and ask the Hmong about problems they had with crime
and with talking with the police. This helped them be ready to tell their
stories to the elected officials
An additional way to bring more Hmong into the meeting was to give them a
job to do. So for one meeting we asked the Henry High Asian club to cook
some Hmong eggrolls and serve them to people in the meeting. This pulled
in about 10 Hmong students and one mom who led the cooking operations. The
eggrolls got a big thumbs up from mayor Rybak. BTW Blong Yang played a
major role in these meetings, and Blong was also one of the first coaches
for the Farview Hmong soccer team.
Top police brass fought us all the way, but after three years of
campaigning, the Hmong got their Hmong speaking outreach officers.
Because the constituency and the organizing were so unusual, we got a lot
of metro press coverage on this issue, including from the Star Tribune and
Minnesota Public Radio.
NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION MONTHLY MEETINGS
I remember one time sitting in a Jordan Area Community Council housing
meeting. I saw that everybody there got satisfaction in participating on
the housing committee, and even enjoyed it.
Then I thought of the Jordan Hmong families I knew. I probably could cajol
some of them to sit in one housing committee meeting, but probably could
not get them to regularly go month after month, because I could not see
the Hmong famlies I knew enjoying the meeting. Between the multiple jobs,
multiple English lessons, and large familes, and maybe no car, coming to a
housing meeting would be a major burden, and then sitting through the
meeting would be confusing even with translators and they would not see it
as impacting their lives.
I think neighborhood groups should always be trying to recruit immigrants
for their monthly committee meetings. But I think involving immigrants on
their home turf on issues they say they care about is going to get
more immigrants involved. And I also think that those immigrants most
likely to get involved in monthly meetings are those who have already come
to value their neighborhodd group for the work done on issues immigrants
care about
But even here I thought of one subset of Hmong who could find it strongly
in their self interest to be involved in monthly committee and board
meetings. Henry High has a lot of very successful and motivated Hmong
students studying hard to get into top universities with scholarships. I
think if it was explained to these students that if they were involved in
their neighborhood groups it would help them get into college and get
scholarships, I think some of them would be willing to participate. I
suggest interested neighborhood groups contact the Henry High Asian club.
This may also work with other immigrant high school students.
DETAILS OF IMMIGRANT ISSUES CAMPAIGN
P.S. For those who may find it helpful, here is more detail on how we Went
from listening for problems to success in getting more Hmong police.
When driving soccer players home, at one apartment we noticed on several
occasions groups of 20 to 30 older teenagers hanging out in the yard. We
asked the players who lived at the apartment building if these teenagers
lived there. No. Were they friends of people who lived there. No.
Eventually we found out that a local gang had taken over the building, and
hit residents, threw rocks through windows, and drew disgusting
pornographic graffiti on the inside walls.
We worked with the Hmong families living in the building to call 911 when
the teernagers came. but these families spoke almost no English. We
practised calling 911 with them, but it never worked very well, even when
residents said 'I speak Hmong'.
We then asked if the residents would like to talk with a Hmong police
officer. they said yes. Yet despite numerous calls to the 4th precinct we
were never able to get a Hmong police officer out to the apartment building.
We then researched where Hmong officers were assigned. this included going
to each police station and asking to speak with a Hmong police officer. We
found that the fourth precinct, which had about 7,000 Hmong residents. had
two Hmong police officers, both assigned to the overnight shift, and none
assigned to the day or evening shift when most people are awake. These
officers had been on the force for about two years. We also found that
most of the Hmong officers were assigned to the 5th precinct, which covers
Lakes Harriet and Calhoun and has about 200 Hmong residents.
We organized several meetings with our councilmembers and mayor so the
Hmong could make their case for moving one or both of the Hmong officers
from the midnight to a day shift. Top police officials fought the
proposal, saying that new officers were required by the police union
contract to spend the first five years on the midnight shift. We then read
the police union contract. At the next meeting a police lieutenant showed
up and repeated to the elected officials and the Hmong that the union
contract required the new officers to work the midnight shift for five
years. But Blong Yang, then private attorney and Farview soccer coach,
pulled out the union contract and read that new officers just had to serve
just one of the first two years on midnight shift, so our 4th precinct
Hmong officers could be moved. Game over.
Shortly after, the North Minneapolis Hmong community got their Hmong
outreach officers.
South Minneapolis Somalis who heard about the Hmong outreach officers,
also pushed to get Somali officers assigned in their communities. We helped
get Somali officers to come to an East Phillips apartment building where
outsiders were getting into their buildings and sleeping and doing illegal
activies. Over 60 Somali residents met with the Somali officers, and the
police and the neighborhood group got the landlord to put in bright lights
in the front doorway, which residents said cleaned up the problem.
For turnout we doorknocked a week before the meeting and an hour before the
meeting, We handed out flyers with a picture of the Somali officer, And we
served Somali cookies and Sambusa and juice.
WEAKNESS TO STRENGTH TO VICTORY
P.P.S. Let me finish with One last example of turning weakness to strength
and immigrants winning a victory against seemingly hopeless odds. A group
of North Minneapolis Hmong students started going to schools in Wayzata and
Hopkins, getting school bus rides from Choice is Yours, paid for by the
state. Because the money for the bus rides had to be renewed every
biennium, Hopkins and Wayzata Hmong students went every year to the capitol
to talk with and get support from elected officials. They were not voters,
they were not citizens, they spoke limited English, but still they went.
In 2011, the day before the Hmong students went to the capitol, the
Republican controlled Senate Education Committee voted to defund the bus
rides. to save their transportation, somehow the Hmong students were going
to have to convince the Republicans to reverse themselves. The Hmong
students were so eloquent and so passionate about how important their
education was to them, they won Republicans over and the school bus money
was included in the final budget. Senators Torres Ray and Bonoff have
worked with these students for years, thank you.
The school bus transportation funds are likely to be under threat again in
2017. Hopefully CURA will be taking Hmong students to the capitol during
their break so they can speak out for their education and their school bus
transportation
Jay Clark