Long Island Wins: Working for Immigrants in New York

Maryann Sinclair Slutsky is Campaign Director at Long Island Wins, an immigration-centered communications campaign based on Long Island, NY.

In the 1980s, Long Island experienced a massive influx of Latino immigrants, most of them fleeing civil war, crippling poverty, and natural disasters in Central America.  As these immigrants became increasingly visible—while they waited to be picked up by employers on street corners, in vacant lots and parking lots, and at more formal “shape-up sites”—tensions grew between the mostly white, middle-class, longer-term residents and these Spanish-speaking newcomers.  The September 2000 beating of two Hispanic workers in Brookhaven’s hamlet of Farmingville shone a national spotlight on Long Island’s accelerating immigration problems, and attracted the active attention of anti-immigrant organizations such as the Minuteman Project, which quickly gained footholds in communities from one end of the island to the other (see our series on the history of the Minutemen here).

With these tensions in mind, the Hagedorn Foundation [Ed.: fixed the link]—a Nassau County-based organization that promotes social equality on Long Island—decided to take action.  The foundation convened a group of local immigrant advocates and then commissioned a survey to determine how Long Islanders thought about immigrants.  The results were discouraging: a majority of Long Island residents agreed that “immigration, overall, hurts Long Island more than it helps.” Based on those findings, the Hagedorn Foundation decided to launch a media campaign that would, over time, shift public opinion towards a reasonable solution for immigration issues.

That media campaign became Long Island Wins (LIW).  Our mission is to highlight the contributions of immigrants in our community, enhance public perception of immigrants, and build support for public and private immigration initiatives that benefit all Long Islanders.  We consider ourselves a sensible voice on Long Island immigration issues, and we build support for local solutions where everyone “wins.”

LIW is a media resource for the Long Island community on immigration issues. We conduct message trainings that teach organizations, elected officials, and concerned citizens how to speak about immigration. We assist organizations with framing messages, developing communication strategies, and helping generate press.

A big part of our outreach takes place over the Internet.  On our blog, we pay attention to both local and national immigration stories, and on any given day, readers might find exclusive coverage of area hate crimes alongside analysis of federal immigration policy.  In recent weeks, Long Island Wins’ Pat Young has drawn the attention of bloggers and media outlets across the country with his coverage of the alleged Minuteman murderer, Shawna Forde, and the subsequent infighting within the fractured border patrol movement.  When Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero was murdered in the Long Island village of Patchogue last November, our blog had some of the most complete coverage of the incident, and we’ll be following the upcoming murder trial extensively, with live blogging and Twitter updates.

In addition to our blog, we’ve recently launched a new web 2.0 outreach initiative, and we’re now organizing advocates and spreading immigration news through our Facebook page and Twitter feed.  As part of the revamping, we’re launching a new website in September, which will help us integrate our different modes of communication, and make it easier for folks to get involved with our various action campaigns.

LIW also conducts community outreach and organizing. Currently, we’re in the midst of a clergy outreach campaign to educate and mobilize Long Island religious leaders on immigration issues affecting their communities and congregations. We provide guidance and tools for discussion as well as action. We’re also working on an ESL Campaign to reframe the immigration debate by demystifying the widely held belief that immigrants do not want to learn English. We plan to educate Long Islanders about the disparity between ESL supply and demand, as well as how ESL will help immigrants become full participants in their communities and add to Long Island’s prosperity.

Our latest outreach initiative is a “Welcoming Campaign” in which we’ll work with residents in two Suffolk towns to host conversations, provide educational materials, and facilitate community-building activities that will help create a sense of basic shared values around the issues of immigration and diversity.  These sessions are aimed at native-born Long Islanders to help orient them to the changing demographic makeup of their towns and villages.

Also, we’ve just partnered with the Nassau County Police Department on a video that will educate Nassau County residents, especially immigrants, that Nassau County’s law enforcement policy is one of respect and compassion for everyone— regardless of status—to ensure public safety for all.

While our outreach on Long Island takes many forms: on-the-street petitions, educational programs, and online immigration coverage, to name a few, our basic mission is the same across platforms.  We want to avoid counter-productive dialogue, and work on supporting and promoting immigration solutions that work for everyone on Long Island.