Marta Moreno isn’t surprised to hear that racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants from other countries remain Boulder County’s most marginalized populations.
Every day, the founder of el Comite de Longmont helps immigrants by referring them to legal assistance, addressing their basic needs, promoting advocacy and empowerment and building community bridges.
“With this new administration, we have no news but bad news,” she said. “People fear that if they go anywhere for help, immigration enforcement will be there to meet them.”
As a result, immigrants in Longmont and elsewhere aren’t feeling welcomed and they are not accessing services that could help them, she said.
El Comite has responded by ramping up learning sessions helping immigrants understand what they can do to empower themselves and navigate the system. Moreno is also personally pushing every immigrant who is a permanent resident to become a U.S. citizen, “because it’s going to get bad, and people need to become citizens.”
“I tell people, ‘I can’t do it myself. You have to march. You have to call. You have to sign up,’” she said.
Moreno said el Comite continues to struggle to pay the bills. That’s not the case with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. It’s among a handful of local organizations serving immigrants that have seen a “Trump bump” in volunteers and donations. Volunteers and donors in the city of Boulder, in particular, see the issue of immigrant rights as a humanitarian issue as opposed to the policy debate it’s often presented as in Washington, said Nicole Melaku, Executive Director of CIRC.
But outside the city of Boulder, “it’s a little bit harder to have these conversations,” she said.
The challenge to grassroots organizers working on behalf of marginalized populations now is that they have been running on adrenaline and are exhausted. “This is going to be a long ride and we need to take care of ourselves,” she said. “We have an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and answer the question of who we want to be as Coloradans for the next 20 years.”
