The Parable of the Good Samaritan was told in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” According to Merriam-Webster a neighbor is someone living or located near another.
For Celine Woznica and many of the hundreds of volunteers who responded to the surge of migrants to this area, the definition of neighbor is anyone you bump into who is in need, even though they are new to the community.
We have been hearing about the surge of migrants at the southern border for a long time, but the border came to all of us about two years ago when governors like Greg Abbot started sending migrants north from border states to cities like Chicago. A WBEZ post estimates that 36,000 have arrived in the Chicago Metro Area since then.
Celine and her husband, Don Woznica went to their pastor, Rev. Carl Morello, to see what they could do to help.
The result was that she responded to these “new neighbors” by working with many others to create the Migrant Ministry, which is situated in the building which housed the now-closed St. Edmund School, recently rechristened Centro San Edmundo.
The ministry has offered newly arrived migrants an opportunity to choose clothing, toiletries, blankets and outerwear. It offers a place for medical services from doctors at Loyola Medicine and connects migrants to people who can offer legal services and help getting work permits.
Many pitch in. Margie Rundick runs the Housing Ministry and has organized the resettlement of 11 families. Laura Larson and Sue Morrissey run an engaging ESL program. Margo Kavanaugh coordinates breakfast for the migrants, and every Tuesday and Thursday morning approximately 30 volunteers arrive to serve the 250 to 300 migrants who show up every week.
Many faith communities provided housing and/or volunteers. For example, Al Corzine, a member of Grace Episcopal Church, said his congregation housed about 20 migrants, primarily from Venezuela, from late November to the end of March. He personally “hosted” the overnight shift 8-10 times, which included making sandwiches for them.
Some of the new neighbors have found housing in Forest Park. The Marquez family, for example, moved into an apartment in Forest Park in January of this year. Milagros, 45; Jose, 39; Meison, 24; and Amisaday, 12 arrived in Chicago from Venezuela last fall.
According to an article that appeared in the Review: “While barriers to navigating their new life in the United States loom over their heads, the home offers the family hope in the face of much uncertainty.”
The Oak Park Board of Trustees voted earlier this year to allocate $300,000 from a Supporting Municipalities for Asylum Seeker Services grant to the Community of Congregations for migrant rental assistance.
A post from Refugees International states, “Extreme hunger, poverty, massive human rights violations and the collapse of the health care system have left Venezuelans in very dire circumstances.”
Because she is fluent in Spanish, Celine got to know many of them well. As she listened to their harrowing stories, she wondered if they had received support from another organization she was involved with: Church World Service.
Celine’s parish has participated in CROP Hunger Walks (CROP is the fundraising arm of CWS) for many years, and this year, Migrant Ministries was selected as one of the local organizations that would be given a portion of the funds raised through the walk. Realizing that CWS was one of the international organizations that supported the Venezuelans on their 3,000-mile journey, she asked them, “Would you like to walk with us?”
When the CROP Hunger Walk day (May 5) finally came, 18 Venezuelan men, women and children all showed up and proudly displayed the Venezuelan flag on their faces and backs and carried signs that said, “Thank you, CWS, for feeding migrants on their way north.”
Participating in the walk was not only their way of thanking CWS for having fed them on the way up but also partnering with the Oak Park community to raise funds for a worthy organization.
Venezuelans also partner with Migrant Ministry to help with the flow of “shoppers” and to cart the heavy bags of donations from one place to another. They help distribute the higher-demand items such as suitcases and strollers and volunteer in the clothing distribution rooms.
Part of the American narrative myth is that all of us, except for the indigenous people who were already here when Columbus “discovered” America, are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. What these new neighbors show us is that it is often the newcomers who remind us of who we are and who put, as members of a ministers’ group often say, the “neighbor back in the hood.”