It is the time of year when we naturally reflect on where we have been and where we are going. In 2021, we cultivated partnerships and coalitions to provide opportunities for our community to explore and organize solutions to important issues and to amplify the voices of change makers.
Today we’d like to share with you some of the things we are proud of accomplishing this year. Not all of them are about the ends, many of them are about the process, and the community we created and the love we generated in the doings.
| Some of our favorite projects of this year include: 🎉 the ongoing creation of our immigrant-owned and worker-led cooperative, La Fondita Latina. After years of seeing workplace abuses and wage theft, after years of seeing head of households detained and separated from their families leaving a single partner unsure of how to provide for the family, we are creating alternative employment in which everyone is a co-owner. This fall, La Fondita Latina sold over 1,000 tamales to fundraise money to support the development of the coop! ✊🏾Our Environmental Justice Working Group supported Hughes Land Back initiative with sharing lessons learned, resources, articles and data with Indigenous leaders. 🙌🏾 Fuerza Latina's hotline, which was formed in 2006, has continued to field hundreds of calls this year. We have helped youth held at the border connect with their families here, we have connected families with a loved one in detention to attain legal aid and learn how to navigate detention and bond hearings to freedom. We have helped women escape abusive situations of domestic violence, and walked with workers injured on the job, workers whose wages have been withheld and families on the cusp of an eviction. Our team has grown to nine members, a mix of native Spanish and English-speakers. Our vision is to walk with the callers we serve, bringing them the information they need, in a context of love, to feel empowered to navigate a crisis and go on to help others. 🙌🏾 The School Justice PSD campaign closed the year-long chapter after launching in Summer 2020 and has continued with building relationships across the state for a Police-Free coalition. Fuerza Latina, FCCAN and Padres y Jovenes Unidos organizers of color came together for the National Week of Action with Dignity in Schools to create know your rights trainings and information for students over social media. ✊🏾The Fort Collins Homeless Coalition (FCHC) has taken a step back to reflect on lessons learned from the pandmic, and the past year's organizing efforts. We demanded that Fort Collins develop pandemic emergency plans that include homeless, marginalized, and incarcerated people; joined legal action against the State of Colorado demanding emergency housing for all; and are continuing to fight for the safety and survival of all. 🔥 Fuerza Latina Hosted a series of DACA clinics in collaboration with Immigration Lawyer Kim Medina, the Poudre District Library and DREAMer leaders from Fort Collins. ✊🏾 In partnership with ISAAC of Northern Colorado, we hosted a vigil for healing and immigration justice, this space was to share, collectively heal and tell stories about the immigrant experience in this community. 🎉Fuerza Latina hosted over a dozen of vaccine clinics in Fort Collins, with the help La Fondita Latina, undocumented leaders we registered and vaccinated over 2,000 members of the latinx and immigrant community this year alone, and continue the efforts into the new year with third doses and doses for children. 🔥FCCAN joined the Children in Nature Network, in a state-wide coalition dedicated to deepening youth's access to nature and work together to strengthen efforts to advance equity in access to nature. 🙌🏾 Fuerza Latina worked with Colorado Legal Services and Colorado Poverty Law Project to create a user-informed Housing Empowerment Guide for tenants and mobile home residents during the pandemic. Fuerza also worked with ISAAC, La Familia and the Poudre River Library to host three housing clinics with free legal consults with housing attorneys, Know Your Rights trainings, and one-on-one rent assistance by community members for community members. 🎉We successfully hired two, youth community organizers of color! Yurixhi Toro Rivera and Litzy Listra, welcome to the team! ✊🏾The FCCAN spokescouncil came together for our annual retreat where we developed our first-ever organizational values that ground us in the work and our highest vision for the community moving forward. We're partnering with local artist, Cristyn Hyper where we'll have some amazing art work that represents our values soon. 🔥We worked with local community members to develop a new, fully bilingual website for Fuerza Latina ! 🙌🏾We returned back to hosting monthly, in-person Healing Justice workshops, partnering with the Wolverine Farm to provide Writing with Ancestors community spaces. 🎉 Fuerza Latina, The BIPOC alliance and la Cocina hosted the first ever dia de los muertos parade in Fort Collins, hundreds of folks gather in old town to celebrate an honor their gone ones, we had food, drinks, a mariachi group, aztec dancers and we hosted a gathering of traditional rituals with a curandera. |
| Now is the perfect time to say thank you. As we reflect back and look forward, we are ever more grateful for the support of our community. Thank you for providing resources, creative collaborations, and opportunities for us to listen, learn, and do better. |