Another Successful Coffeehouse Fundraiser in Partnership with Sanctuary Committee - Beth El!3/14/2025
Casa is enormously grateful and proud for the showing of community support at the start of February through the Sanctuary Commitee's HIAS Weekend Coffeehouse event at Congregation Beth El. Our partners at Beth El in Sudbury organized an afternoon of heartfelt sharing and rousing calls to action. Thank you for inviting Diego & Naren to speak to the theme of "Meeting the Moment" and organizing an incredibly successful fundraiser in aid of Casa's mission. We are excited to be building on the strength of several partnerships like this across MetroWest.
Thank you to the Needham Area Immigration Justice Task Force for inviting us to table at the forum they co hosted earlier this week with Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s Heather Yountz and the incredible Students Teaching Instruments to Create Community Harmony. It is essential to continue our education and collaboration amongst the ally community! As we move deeper into the fall, we look back at our annual convivio celebrated at the end of August as a testament to the strength of the ever-growing Casa community. We continue to recognize the ridging of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural divides that not only occurs in Casa leadership spaces -- our concejo / directiva but which is happening in our day-to-day work, organizing with workers in wage theft / harassment cases as well as the multi-faceted immigration solidarity projects such as welcoming recent arrivals from Central America, south America, and Haiti.
September, October, and November have brought and continue to bring direct engagement with clinics to support the sheltering and integration of Haitian families and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) processing for eligible families & individuals. Know-your-rights workshops for recently arrived folks more broadly, as well as the tiredless support of a good many un-accompanied or semi-un-acommpanied minors thorugh Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) visa work. Finally, we have the hope to train new volunteers in assiting families with self-help ('pro-se') asylum application preparation. Please stay tuned for details and dates to come soon! In solidarity, Casa  Throughout the course of almost two decades and several hundred cases, Casa has supported severely injured workers in accessing medical care and compensation. Since under current law employers face no consequences for obstructing their claims, there are no guardrails to protect workers from being harmed or retaliated against for speaking up for themselves. We are deeply disappointed that the Act to Protect Injured Workers, which strengthens the workers’ compensation anti-retaliation law, did not pass this session.
After more than five years of legislative hearings, briefings and meetings, the bill had garnered broad support, with over half of the legislature formally signing on in support. Until very recently, the bill had met with virtually no opposition or critique. However, for the first time and at the last minute, industry groups recently raised concerns with some aspects of the proposal. Although we believe that these concerns can and will be addressed, there was no time to do so before the end of the session. We will be well-positioned early in the next session to address these concerns and expand on the broad support we have already built. However, enactment of these basic, urgent protections for some of the most vulnerable and invisible workers will take a real grassroots movement. The fundamental right to seek medical attention and benefits during recovery – free from retaliation or obstruction – will require even more public support and action to be passed in 2025. We hope you will join with us and other workers centers to as we build out a plan to see this project into next year with unstoppable momentum. We have great appreciation for the many ways in which members of our communities have helped the advocacy for an Act to Protect Injured Workers. Thanks to our efforts, a substantial number of Senators signed on to the Budget Amendment associated with the bill. Although we now know the Budget Amendments on the House & Senate side which were proposed will not be moving forward, we are hopeful the momentum which brought us to this point can mean the ultimate passage of the bill before the end of the session. More soon!
~ In solidarity, Casa |
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