FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM APRIL 11, 2019 • THE QUEENS COURIER 11
LIC fundraiser benefi ts families separated at border
BY BILL PARRY
bparry@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
A fundraising event will take place
on the Long Island City waterfront this
Sunday benefi ting an organization that
helps reunite families separated at the
southern border.
Dining for Justice will take place at
the Sound River Studios beneath a giant
clock that counts down until the end of
President Trump’s fi rst term in offi ce.
“You know it’s kind of funny, but I didn’t
think about it,” event organizer Jonathan
Forgash said. “But yeah, it couldn’t be
more fi tting.”
Th e Astoria resident was driven to help
Immigrant Families Together, an organization
founded by Long Island City
resident Julie Schwietert Collazo, which
raised money to release a Guatemalan
woman from an Arizona ICE detention
facility and bring her to the city where
she could be reunited with her three children
who had been separated from her at
the border.
“I was in Court Square last June when
Julie brought Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia to
New York to be reunited with her children
who had been taken from her,” Forgash
said. “I held a successful fundraiser at
Sound River Studios where they gave us
their gorgeous event space for free and
they were so pleased they off ered the
space again for Sunday’s event.”
Forgash, the co-founder of the Queens
Dinner Club, organized Dining for
Justice as a food tasting event featuring
dishes from M. Wells, Queensboro,
Kurry Qulture, John Brown Smokehouse,
Alewife, Sugar Freak and charcuterie master
Rodrigo Duarte among others.
“Chefs are big hearted people,” Forgash
said. “It is from this place that they donate
their skills and eff orts to help the families
that are being detained, and separated at
the border.”
Immigrant Families Together (IFT) has
responded to the family separation crisis
Courtesy of Brandon Stousy
caused by the Trump administration’s
zero-tolerance policy and immigration
detention by raising and posting bond for
more than 70 parents, grandparents and
other siblings. IFT provides ongoing support
to families, ensuring that they have
the resources that they need to build a
safe, healthy and stable life while they are
pursuing their asylum claim.
“Th is fundraiser has enormous symbolic
signifi cance,” Collazo said. “By coming
together to share food, to build the
beloved community of which Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. spoke, or to create a radical
welcome, as poet Elizabeth Alexander has
said, we are not only engaging in the most
basic and beautiful human exchange. We
are also raising funds to create opportunities
for these families to build a new life,
and to quite literally feed themselves in
this new land.”
Th e event is Sunday, April 14 at the
Sound River Studios, located at 4-40
44th Drive, from 5 to 8 p.m. Tickets are
still available at https://www.eventbrite.
com/e/dining-for-justice-food-hall-tickets
57288871557 and children 12 and
under can attend for free.
Th e countdown clock was installed in 2017
aft er Trump’s election by Long Island City
artists Matthew Barney and Brandon Stousy
in collaboration with Jane Lea, the architect
who designed it, Jade Archuleta-Gans,
who largely built it and Kenzan Tsutakawa-
Chinn, the light designer and fabricator. Th e
artists no longer do interviews about the
piece, but Stousy did send a statement.
“We see it as a civic project, like the
national debt clock, and we don’t want it
to become about who made it,” he said.
Forgash said the Trump countdown
clock will make a fi tting backdrop to
Sunday’s event amid reports the White
House is considering putting the family
separation policy back in place.
“It absolutely makes an awesome background,”
Forgash said. “Look, I’m a patriot
who loves my country, but I’m also a
father and to me it’s nauseating that anyone
would do this to families.”
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