Being Sanctuary People: How Faith-Based Communities Can Respond to the Needs of Immigrants

About The Event

The FHC Immigration Task Force is offering a timely program of urgent importance, “Being Sanctuary People” for those interested in the well-being of immigrants and eager to be engaged on their behalf. On Sunday, March 9, Dr. Gina Pérez, will speak at Forest Hill Church about her latest book Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latino/a Communities. The event includes a meal at 12:15 p.m. followed by the presentation.

If you’d like to attend, please register by March 5 at this link:

Register

Dr. Pérez is a Cultural Anthropologist, Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College. She describes herself as a scholar and person of faith. An author of several books, Sanctuary People has heightened relevance considering the oppressive policies of the Trump administration toward immigrants.

Sanctuary People examines the role that faith communities in Ohio have played in the development, proliferation, and strengthening of sanctuary practices and other forms of organizing connected to Latina/o communities and Latin American migrants. By focusing on efforts to help those affected by immigrant detention and Puerto Ricans displaced in the wake of Hurricane María, Dr. Pérez reveals the ways faith communities, activists, and community leaders are creating new strategies to address the increasingly precarious contexts in which Latina/o people live, and how they are imagining and enacting new forms of solidarity. The story of Leonor Garcia and Forest Hill Church is portrayed in the book as an example.

Dr. Pérez will inform us about the distinct alliances, relationships, and ways of knowing and being that faith-based activists have employed to create places of safety. The role of faith-based organizing in these communities contributes to what Puerto Rican journalist Mari Mari Navárez describes as the need to “build a more horizontal society, a place for everyone to live and work and love in.”