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Posts Tagged ‘Corona Queens’

Art or Exploitation : Living as an Immigrant in Corona, Queens

4 Jun 2011

Full disclosure : I am a resident of Corona, Queens and partially grew up in this neighborhood. So perhaps my critique, concern, and commentary comes from a personal place. I also acknowledge that I am not an immigrant. My parents came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico so their immigrant experience is different than that of the immigrants that live in Corona, Queens. I own that as well.

I was supposed to participate in a poetry event today at Immigrant Movement International, just a few blocks from where I live.
I wondered what was this organization that I was being invited to share space with? I have lived at my current address in Corona for a number of years and had never seen or heard of it. Also many years of being involved in the Latino social justice movement here in NYC had me thinking I was pretty aware of the different organizations doing work.

Turns out Immigrant Movement International isn’t so much of a movement but rather the art project of one Cubana, Tania Bruguera.

From her website on the project :

Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International, presented by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, is a long-term art project in the form of an artist-initiated socio-political movement. Bruguera will spend a year operating a flexible community space in the multinational and transnational neighborhood of Corona, Queens, which will serve as the movement’s headquarters. Engaging both local and international communities, as well as working with social service organizations, elected officials, and artists focused on immigration reform, Bruguera will examine growing concerns about the political representation and conditions facing immigrants.

As one of those artists, I decided not to engage Immigrant Movement International, in fact this blog post will be the extent of my engagement save when I pass the building when I am walking with my children to the park. I have to worry about the mobile police unit on my corner, how to pay for my own unfunded art space/home, and if a crime against a Latino family friend 20 years ago- an immigrant on immigrant crime if you will- well ever see justice.

Just as adventure tourism that claims to give a “border crossing experience” is problematic, so is an art project that claims to be movement.

By engaging the local community through public workshops, events, actions, and partnerships with immigrant and social service organizations, Immigrant Movement International will explore who is defined as an immigrant and the values they share, focusing on the larger question of what it means to be a citizen of the world. Bruguera will also delve into the implementation of art in society, examining what it means to create “Useful Art”, and addressing the disparity of engagement between informed audiences and the general public, as well as the historical gap between the language used in what is considered avant-garde and the language of urgent politics.

Since when is a funded art project coming into a neighborhood a movement?
Read more…

19 Years Later, We Are Still Being Killed for Being Latino

6:12 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|New York City · 4 Comments

30 Mar 2010

This past Saturday, the family of Manny Mayi Jr., activists, and supporters gathered at the corner named after him on 108th Street and 36th Avenue in Corona, Queens. They were marking 19 years since the Queens College honor student, oldest son of Dominican immigrants, had been chased over a dozen blocks and beaten to death by a racist gang who yelled racial epithets.

As if losing your son weren’t enough, Altagracia Mayi, Manny’s mother, who stands at barely five feet tall, has been fighting not just for the name of her son, who was originally defamed by local media who said he was chased from William Moore Park because he was tagging, but for equal justice under the law. William Moore Park in Corona, Queens is known locally, and somewhat offensively, as Spaghetti Park, because it formed what was the center of an Italian immigrant community. That community wasn’t so welcoming to the growing Latino population, especially Dominicans and Mexicans, that began to move into the neighborhood in the late 1980′s. I know that for myself, who partially grew up in the neighborhood, knew that the area famed for it’s renowned Lemon Ice King of Corona, wasn’t a safe place for Latinos or people of color in general.

Translation of Altagracia’s Words : I want to thank you for always remembering, in 19 years, the name of Manny Mayi. Like I have always told you, Manny Mayi was an honors student, a good student of a high quality that few of those people have. I am Latina and I live proud of being Latina, not like those dogs who commit crimes and stay as if nothing has happened. I live proud.

19 Years Without Justice for Young Dominican Killed in NYC Hate Crime

6:49 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Dominicans|Events|Immigration|New York City|Violence · 1 Comment

27 Mar 2010

While the trial against those who are accused of murdering Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero wages on in Long Island, the memory of Manny Mayi Jr. and the relentless search for justice by his mother, Altagracia, is a reminder to the Latino community, and all communities that there is no expiration date in the struggle for our children.

March in Memory of Manuel Mayi Killed Brutally by a Racist Group

108th Street and 36th Avenue
(7 train to 111th Street)
2pm
March 27th, 2010
Manny was an 18-year-old Queens College honor student, Manny Mayi, was murdered in a racist attack on March 29, 1991. The young Dominican man was walking home in, what was then, the Italian section of Corona Queens when a gang of white youth chased him down 108th street. Manny’s life ended 16 blocks later when he was beat with pipes and baseball bats. The medical report listed as the cause of death: fracture of skull, and contusions of the brain due to blunt force impact.

A report released by the Justice Committee found that police refused to drive around witnesses who wanted to identify the gang members who allegedly committed the violent act. The report also says police failed to secure a key witness and allowed her to flee the country; in addition, the D.A. postponed the case 47 times and did not keep the family informed about any developments. Of the three arrested, Joseph Celso was the only one who stood trial, but was soon acquitted.

We want to put pressure on the city, state and federal government showing that someone killed in the hands of racism will not be tolerated!!! Please join this family’s fight for EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW.

Rally at 2pm where Manny was killed and step off to march at 3pm.

Justice Committee, P.O. Box 1885 NY NY 10159-1885
(212) 614-5343

On a more personal note, this happened in a neighborhood I grew up in and the neighborhood where my children grew up in. Altragracia Mayi came to my older daughter’s first birthday party. This is history, this is the future of my children, this is familia.

Immigrants : The Economic Heartbeat of NYC

8:33 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · economy|Immigration|New York City · Comments Off

15 Jan 2010

The reports of immigrants providing the economic backbone in the U.S. keep on coming in. The latest, released earlier this week by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, states that in New York City immigrants represent 43 percent of workforce and $215 billion in economic activity.

Neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Flushing, Washington Heights, Coney
Island, Elmhurst and Corona are examples of vitality spurred by successful
immigrants, according to the report. Immigrants have been a major factor
in New York City’s most recent period of economic growth, and the report
notes that between 2000 and 2008 the number of immigrant workers increased
by 68 percent, wages paid to immigrant workers rose by 39 percent, and
immigrant contribution to the gross city product increased by 61 percent.

The DiNapoli report also found: Between 1970 and 2008, the City’s immigrant population more than doubled, to 3 million. In 2008, immigrants were 36.4 percent of the City population, but 43
percent of the workforce.
The median household income of New York City’s foreign born population
nearly doubled to $45,000 in 2007 from $23,900 in 1990, a growth rate that
outpaced inflation.
The number of immigrants owning homes in New York City doubled between
1991 and 2008, and foreign born residents accounted for 60 percent of all
homeowners in 2008.
Foreign born workers made up 46 percent of the City’s physicians and
surgeons, 55 percent of its registered nurses, and 87 percent of the
City’s taxi drivers and chauffeurs.

Latino Soldier’s Sad Homecoming

4:00 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Dominicans|Iraq War|New York City · Comments Off

4 Aug 2008

I can hear the church bells from Our Lady of Sorrows church from my apartment. It is just a block from where I live, in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Queens, NYC where Mexican storefronts and Dominican storefronts compete with each other. In this neighborhood and across the United States, the ongoing Iraq war and ending it is a top issue for Latinos because it is our sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and neighbors being sent to the front lines and returning, not as they left, but in boxes.

On Thursday, he came back. The police cars with flashing lights guided Sgt. Alex R. Jimenez’s coffin past the laundry, the travel agency and the minimart to 104-35 37th Drive in Corona. The procession paused in front of the bouquet of yellow and white flowers.

“You’re home, you’re home,” his friends and relatives cried as they surrounded the car holding his coffin, holding each other up for support.

It had been more than a year since Sergeant Jimenez, 25, was reported missing after an ambush on his two-Humvee convoy in an area south of Baghdad known as the triangle of death. He was one of three members of the same Army unit — Company D, Fourth Battalion, 31st Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum in upstate New York — captured in the attack. Four Americans in the same unit and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.

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