Top: Denisse Cruz, who is raising money to build a women's shelter in Oaxaca, Mexico. Bottom: IRIS Team members. YAJI Photo.
The following article is part of a goal we've had for a few years: to co-report a story with students in the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative as part of their intensive week! The mission of the YAJI is to introduce high schoolers to grassroots journalism through The Arts Paper, the daily publication of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Learn more about our current cohort here and read their work, and work by YAJI alumni, here.
Denisse Cruz looked around, soaking in the scene around her. Halfway across the room, hand-carved boxes by the Afghan artist Mosa Sadat stretched out across a table, each more intricate than the next. A just-started quilt hung nearby, with bright strips of red and white cloth that had been colored in by dozens of New Haveners. Just a few booths away, warm trays of spinach fatayer and chicken shawarma waited for hungry attendees.
Just beneath Cruz’ hands, a stack of purple t-shirts told the story of women hundreds of miles away, their fronts embroidered with hummingbirds in raised, shimmering thread. She took a mental snapshot of the room, so she could remember the moment when the exhaustion of immigrant justice work inevitably crept in.
Cruz—an artist, activist, and immigrant rights organizer in New Haven—was one of hundreds of people who came through Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services’ (IRIS) celebration of America’s 250th anniversary Friday. For four hours, New Haveners gathered at United Church on the Green’s 323 Temple St. parish house for artmaking, education, and story collection on the cusp of the Fourth of July.
Throughout the morning, and despite an unrelenting summer heat, many spoke passionately about their hope for the country’s future, and belief that refugees are a central part of the country’s history and present.
In addition to IRIS, a refugee resettlement agency that has faced significant legal and funding challenges under President Donald Trump, collaborators on the event included Havenly, Sanctuary Kitchen, Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental MCAC), the ACLU of Connecticut and America 250 coalitions at both state and city levels among others.
Top: Lisa Kinney-Bajwa. Samir Iydroose Photo. Bottom: Henna in action. YAJI Photo.
“What we're trying to do is explain the facts [about immigrants and refugees],” said Maggie Mitchell Salem, who was named the executive director of IRIS in late 2023, and began her tenure in January 2024. “Even though we're not [currently] resettling refugees, our community sponsor groups are helping out, both as volunteers and as donors, making sure that the refugee groups stay stocked. People work multiple jobs. That is often what it means to be a non-profit.”
As attendees arrived, a sense of vibrant, diverse and polyphonic community permeated every room. In one, members of the ACLU of Connecticut prepared for an advocacy workshop, as the League of Women Voters handed out registration forms. In another, artists and volunteers ushered people out of the hallway, and into a main atrium filled with artworks on all sides, strains of live music drifting over the room. In another still, kids ran around, the bell-like sound of their laughter filling the air.
Lisa Kinney-Bajwa, a youth counselor for IRIS, worked on helping teens at IRIS create songs, using artificial intelligence (AI) and English language learning skills. “Some of their English levels are low, so AI provides a great foundation to build on,” she said. The songs varied in topics, from friendships to fitting into a new country to school. They used AI to write the lyrics to the song, then a different AI tool called Suno to actually make a song.
Kinney-Bajwa started working with young people on the songs in late April, and continued that work through the month of May. She emphasized that she wants them to use AI responsibly: kids aren’t copying and pasting their content, but using it as a tool.
“I asked them, ‘Is what [AI] made what you want to communicate?’ [and] ‘Does the song sound like how you want it to sound like?’” she said. Bajwa also taught the teens about genre and storytelling. A song called “I Ate and Left No Crumbs” was one of her favorites.
Top: U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal speaks: “What IRIS has done makes me proud to be an American. But be prepared to fight. ICE isn’t going to go away.” Lucy Gellman Photo. Bottom: Amber Boutellier points out West Haven, from which she hails, on a map where attendees could point to their home countries. YAJI Photo.
Nearby, attendees could record their stories and take a mock “Citizenship Test,” narrowed down from 100 questions into just 20. Erin Kelly, who works in community engagement at IRIS, had helped make the test part of the day’s activities, to show people firsthand how difficult it is to study for and pass.
That’s part of the nuance that gets lost in conversations around immigration, other volunteers noted: people don’t always understand the amount of work that goes into becoming a U.S. citizen. And many of the U.S. citizens take it for granted.
When Kelly began working in community engagement at IRIS, it was actually a homecoming. She had been in the organization’s education department, but was laid off due to budget cuts. In part, she’s motivated to do immigrant rights work because of her graduate work, during which she wrote about youth youth migration in Icelandic fishing villages while living in Iceland.
“I was a white woman going to a predominantly white country,” she said. “I had challenges with isolation and learning a new language, so I can relate to some of the struggles of the people who come here. But, I have certain privileges, as a white woman in America, that make it so that I cannot fully empathize with them.”
Top: Mosa Sadat and Laila Mohammadi at their station. Lucy Gellman Photos. Bottom: Some of Sadat's work. YAJI Photo.
Around her, the room—an artist’s fair, with more stories of migration and of making do as there were nationalities represented—buzzed with activity. Cruz, who hails from Oaxaca, is a longtime advocate for immigrants and the co-founder of Red Sin Fronteras para sobrevivientes de violencia, which translates to Network Without Borders for Survivors of Violence. Friday, she said she was there to both celebrate in community, and bring awareness to her work.
“In every crisis, the women are the ones who get the worst part,” she said, as she lifted a purple t-shirt for the organization and displayed a large, lavender-colored hummingbird on its front. In immigrant households, she noted, those suffering from domestic violence may be afraid to call the police, because law enforcement carries a risk of increased visibility, and visibility may lead to arrest, detention, or deportation. “After that, the community says, ‘It’s your fault,’” she said.
“What we are asking for is justice for them,” she said. Friday, she was also asking for donations for a women’s shelter the organization is hoping to build in Oaxaca. On a table in front of her, she had t-shirts and embroidered blouses for sale, as well as fliers for an upcoming fundraiser concert at Cafe Nine on August 12, featuring the band Mariposas Galacticas. Mariposas Galacticas includes former New Havener Camila Güiza-Chavez, who helped Cruz get Red Sin Fronteras off the ground in 2024.
“It’s [the work] has been but I try to keep my spirits strong and be around my community,” she said.
Top: YAJI Photo. Bottom: Olga Olichka (center) with friends Nina Opanasenko and Olena Zubarieva.
At a station nearby, artists Mosa Sadat and Laila Mohammadi chatted with attendees, eager to speak about Sadat’s art—and willing to share pieces of their own immigration story. The two, who fled Afghanistan in 2021, have worked to build a life in Branford with their young daughter, Lea. In many ways, Mohammadi said, life has been good: Sadat now works at Arrigoni Design, a boat builder in Clinton, and both of them are finding ways to get their art into the public eye.
But “it’s so hard,” too, Mohammadi said. A while ago, her parents moved to Iran, because they felt that it was safer for them than Afghanistan. Then the war began, and violence came to their front door. There were whole months where she wasn’t able to reach them. “Every day, I was worried about what would happen.” To remain level-headed, she and Sadat don’t watch the news very often.
Nearby, Ukrainian artist Olga Olichka embraced her friends and peers Olena Zubarieva and Nina Opanasenko, looking at a number of bright floral paintings from Zubarieva. Before the current war with Russia came to her native Ukraine, Zubarieva lived in Sloviansk, a town in the eastern part of the country that was decimated by the war. Now, she has nothing to go home to. Friday, she came out with several of her paintings, excited to speak about her journey as an artist.
“I want to share my creativity with people and I’m glad people like it,” she said. A small painting of brilliant blue flowers, swirling against a white background, peeked out from behind her hands. Around it, oil-on-canvas flowers burst into bloom, and made the hot summer outside feel more like springtime. “My painting is not about war. It’s about hope and happiness. It’s about memory.”
Across the room, Sanctuary Kitchen chefs Aminah Alsaleh and Rawaa Ghazi—culinary director and director of operations respectively—welcomed people to a station with fragrant and pre-packaged food, from chicken shawarma to muhammara in neat to-go containers.
Alsaleh, who came to New Haven after fleeing Homs, Syria in 2012, and then living in a refugee camp in Jordan for four years, said she loves to build a strong relationship with her community and to be able to share her story and food. When she arrived in the U.S. ten years ago—on the night of the 2016 presidential election—her culinary skills became a professional launchpad and a way to have conversations with other women across cultures.
That’s part of what Sanctuary Kitchen does. Founded a decade ago as an experiment in cross-cultural bridge building, the organization offers employment opportunities to refugees in the culinary arts. It mostly employs women from a myriad of countries, many of whom have come to the U.S. as refugees. For the IRIS celebration, Alsaleh was inspired by many of her home country’s street food and fast food items.
“My recipe for muhammara is my favorite,” she said. “When I came to America, I couldn’t remember many of the things. I looked for a good memory of food, so I talked to my family. They said that walnuts help your memory, so I put a lot of them in. Pepper, oil, pomegranate molasses. I like to share it with the community.”
She also spoke about how she has learned more about cooking—and community—at Sanctuary Kitchen. “Everyone who comes here has their own signature recipe from their country … I learned about bolani, and I love Afghani [sic] food, and I learned to make it. I share the recipes with my family.”
Top: ECoCA's Aimee Burg with Michelle Vong and Sasha Armster. Bottom: Members of MCAC brave the 97-degree heat. Lucy Gellman Photo.
On the Temple Street sidewalk outside, things were heating up as members of Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental (MCAC) beat the stagnant, baking heat—or, perhaps, learned to live with it—with the heartbeat of bomba drums and call-and-response of dancer and drummer. The drums floated over the street, stopping a group of elected officials as they spilled out of their cars on their way inside.
Ultimately, speakers included Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General William Tong, and State Sen. Martin Looney among others.
Born in Puerto Rico, bomba is a communicative form of dance and drumming that spread during the Afro-Caribbean slave trade. It rattled and thrummed to life in Loíza, once a bustling center of the slave trade, and spread out to Puerto Rico and across the vast Afro-Caribbean diaspora.
In its propulsive back-and-forth between drummer and dancer is the road map to freedom—an aspect of the dance that groups like MCAC and Proyecto Cimarron have held fast to in recent years, and particularly under the current administration.
“It’s part of our history!” said Kevin Diaz, founder and director of MCAC “Normally, the dominant race don’t bother to make sure that everybody knows their history. We make sure that this is part of our DNA. For 400 years, that drum has survived.”
Born in Manhattan and raised between New York and the coastal town of Cataño, Puerto Rico, Diaz pointed to the way that America, which was built by stolen people on stolen land, still finds ways to disempower people two and a half centuries in. He knows, for instance, that his peers and family members from Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens—except they don’t have the power to vote. He sees how the U.S. government actively fights against Puerto Rican statehood, while leaving the island without the critical resources that it needs.
“From my point of view, this is all part of the African Diaspora,” he added of the music, which taps into a long and layered tradition of resistance. Enslaved people “retained their culture and they made sure it survived.”
Then in March of that same year, the organization announced that it would be closing its offices in New Haven and Hartford, a painful decision that reflected how stretched its finances had become. It was then that IRIS moved operations to 323 Temple St., where it has kept its operations going since. Last October, following more layoffs, it also announced that it would not work with the federal government to welcome refugees for the first time in over four decades.
Salem said that decision came out of conversations with staff, volunteers, previous clients and community members, who saw that the administration would be welcoming not people fleeing their countries for fear of their lives, but white Afrikaners, whose families likely supported Apartheid.
“If we don’t do better than what the federal government is doing right now, it's actually going to be a potential nation-wide crisis,” Salem said. The organization, which always asked for help from volunteers, now relies on them heavily. Many of their volunteers are refugees and asylees themselves, who have returned to IRIS to pay it forward after the organization helped them adjust to life in a new country.
The momentum that they bring to the work may be more critical than ever. Just days before the event, the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in favor of Trump’s push to eliminate Temporary Protected Status or TPS, a program under which tens of thousands of refugees are able to live and work in the U.S. because their home countries are unsafe to return to. IRIS, which serves several TPS recipients who are already here, is scrambling to provide legal assistance.
As he perused Sadat’s creations, gubernatorial candidate Josh Elliott said he was grateful to take a moment to center and fete the contributions refugees have made in his community, and across the state (“I want to buy your entire table!” he said to Sadat with a laugh, trading anecdotes about the Shoreline).
“I think it’s incredibly important for elected officials to be up front and vocal about protecting our friends, families and neighbors,” he said. In the past year and a half, he’s watched IRIS struggle under the weight of funding cuts and new restrictions on refugee resettlement. He wants to see the State of Connecticut doing more to help the organization stay afloat.