Junta for Progressive Action
A door opens to this generation's newcomers.
By Paul Bass
Published 01/03/02
Beauty & The Beast played New Haven's Fair Haven neighborhood the other day.
At least one of the climactic scenes did. I'm thinking of the scene in which waves of sparkles wash over a dark, decrepit, lonely castle. Its turrets sparkle again. So do the instantly repainted and refurnished rooms. A new spirit, new energy, transform the building from a dying memory of grandeur into a reborn home of love and community.
I thought of that scene two weeks ago when I happened upon a holiday party in a 150-yard Victorian castle of sorts on Grand Avenue. The building houses New Haven's oldest Latino organization, Junta for Progressive Action.
A year earlier I walked through that house and saw only ghosts. It remained unrepaired from an early '90s fire. The rickety stairs felt unsafe. The furnace was shot. Personal health problems paralyzed the tiny staff. The front was nearly naked from peeling paint. The National Register of Historic Places plaque looked like a sad joke. Maybe a half-dozen of people a week came to the building for an ESL (English as a Second Language) class. People in the neighborhood assumed the Victorian was one more abandoned Fair Haven hovel.
Returning for the holiday party two weeks ago felt like that Disney moment. Junta's outside sparkled with new paint and holiday lights. Inside, the rooms had been freshly painted, repaired, stocked with new furniture, a Christmas tree. Salsa pulsated from a boom box. A new crop of volunteers and board members served homemade arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), potato salad, pernil (pork shoulder) and baked ham from trays.
Most important, people filled the rooms, spilled into the hallways. More of them kept coming through that front door. Most of them were New Haven newcomers from Latin America. In just three months, dozens of them have found their way to Junta after school or after work to learn English, learn about music, get advice on wrestling with immigration or finding apartments.
The only complaint was from Nancy. She comes to Junta two nights a week for ESL class so she can learn to communicate with her kids' doctor.
"What? No class?" she said.
"We need," community organizer Norma Franceschi told her, "to celebrate."
By "we," Franceschi meant more than the people at Junta. Junta's rebirth is a reason for the whole city to celebrate, for two reasons.
One reason: Junta's revival shows other struggling community organizations how to prosper. A new board decided this year that a crucial institution wouldn't die. Community activists like Franceschi and Rafael Ramos gathered donations (paint from Grand Paint, furniture from SNET, furnaces from the gas company). Then volunteers remodeled the building.
This fall they recruited ESL and GED teachers. The word spread fast to Peruvian, Ecuadoran, Colombian, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Honduran factory workers in the neighborhood. Now Junta has two classes going a night, four nights a week. The classes cover "survival" English first--what to tell 911 in an emergency, how to apply for jobs, what to say to cops or store clerks.
Yale's Child Study Center came in to run an after-school art, music, and dance program.
The board recruited a dynamic new director, 35-year-old Kica Matos. Matos is comfortable among varied cultures: She grew up in Puerto Rico, the Fiji Islands, Trinidad and Tobago. She has dedicated her adult life to social justice work; a Cornell law grad, she was a death-penalty defense attorney in Philly before moving here. She has taken on helping people with immigration problems, a challenge Junta didn't face much when most of New Haven's Latinos were Puerto Rican.
Number two reason to celebrate: The role Junta can play in helping New Haven's latest arrivals succeed.
A city's vibrancy depends most on waves of newcomers who often risk their lives to come here, bring new cultural traditions and work hard.
At first they rely on informal networks. Then they turn to institutions like Junta to meet other newcomers, to navigate bureaucracies, to communicate demands.
Look at the flowering of Spanish-oriented stores on Grand Avenue. In the past year merchants have begun organizing to press City Hall for more lighting and better sidewalks.
Or take the case of Norma Franceschi. She came here from Argentina in 1971. She owns a deli/ grocery in Fair Haven. Hundreds of newcomers have come to rely on her to find jobs, or for guidance in seeking help from the police or social services. That's how she met Nancy. Nancy's sister works at the deli. Nancy had trouble communicating with her children's doctor. Norma steered her to Junta, where Nancy religiously shows up for classes with instructor Mari Camacho.
"Sometimes," Franceschi observed as people continued pouring in to the holiday party, "you have to sink so low before you can build back up again." True for Junta. True for Fair Haven--and New Haven, too.