Form the Spring of 2022, New York City has received close to 130,000 immigrants, with about 600 arriving daily. Around 64,000 migrants are still living in city managed makeshift shelters called “respite centers” and HERRC sites (“Humanitarian” Emergency Response and Relief Center) and on DHS (Department of Homeless Services) managed shelters.

In order to combat the portrayal of migrants as a burden, the discourses that pit us against each other and promote the manufactured notion of a so called “migrant crisis,” and in order to contest capitalist and neoliberal contradictory discourses on “scarcity” of resources (when, at the same time, consumerism is promoted): we are calling for SOLIDARITY, MUTUAL AID and DIRECT ACTION. 

On November 3rd, 2023 the DGSC Student-parent Organization and the Dominican Studies Group hosted the event Solidarity with Migrant Families. We set up a free store with winter clothes, toys, books, school supplies, toiletries and hygiene products, and warm food at the CUNY Graduate Center. Over 100 people from Latin America and West Africa of all ages, from infants to grandparents, came from at least 6 different migrant family shelters from around NYC and the majority from hotels-turned-shelters on midtown Manhattan, just blocks away from the Grad Center.

This distro was a community effort: The South Bronx Mutual Aid brought clothes, shoes, toys, books and household items. We received a monetary donation from The People’s Pantry of the CUNY Reclaim the Commons Campaign to buy sanitary pads and Halloween goodie bags, snacks and drinks for the children. There were hundreds of multilingual books provided by the Brooklyn Book Bodega and by Recirculation, and warm meals prepared by La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen (venmo @lamoradanyc and Gofundme) with financial support by NYU’s Abolition Lab class. Plus, we have counted with the helping hands from many classmates, union comrades, GC community students and staff, and the broader NYC mutual aid colectiva (you can also donate here).

We have been receiving donations from the GC community and beyond through the drive we’ve been hosting since September and continue to distribute clothes, shoes and other items out of the DSG office, through impromptu distros, as we receive information of newly arrived migrant families.

Thank you to all the friends who have donated, helped sort clothes, helped drive things, with logistics, and in many other ways!

Below are a short video and images that document a lovely afternoon of making connections, getting to know our new neighbors, of sharing joy and play, but also of important political work and multilingual conversations where multiple current struggles that converge took the center stage.