About Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment:
Regarded by the community as a trusted safety net service provider, Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment was borne out of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in 2012, working specifically in the Mayfair community and East San Jose. Over the past 10 years, Amigos de Guadalupe has expanded and evolved based on the needs of the community.
Annually, they provide comprehensive wrap-around services, including housing and immigration support, to more than 7,000 individuals and families. They provide transitional and emergency housing for families experiencing displacement, a safe parking program across five sites, and rental assistance support. All of their housing programs include case management services and critical mental health support.
Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment also serves as the only community-based organization in East San Jose providing immigration support with on-staff attorneys. According to a study by the Foundation for Child Development, anti-immigrant policies like “public charge” create a climate of fear that negatively impacts mental health and can lead to poor child development and life-long negative health outcomes. Undocumented individuals are also twice as likely to experience food insecurity and have poverty rates three times higher than the national rate of 13.5% (Gamblyn et al. 2017). Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment is a trusted source of support and information to a primarily immigrant community.
As part of their unwavering commitment to the East San Jose community, Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment serves as one of the five organizations that comprise the highly impactful ¡Sí Se Puede! Collective, working collectively to strengthen and uplift the Mayfair community.
Our Partnership:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, and in response to the increased needs of the community at the time, Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment experienced exponential programmatic growth – distributing over $6M in rental support to families and individuals, and providing additional wrap-around support, including food, case management, and educational resources to families as part of their housing services.
In alignment with The Health Trust’s Housing Focus Area, in 2022, The Health Trust awarded a grant to Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment to strengthen the agency’s infrastructure and operational capacity, to further support their mission and health-related services.
Borne out of a desire to support the East San Jose community, Amigos de Guadalupe takes a place-based approach to fulfill its mission. Can you share more about how taking a place-based approach strengthens communities experiencing deep health disparities?
There are so many ways to think about this, but we will look at this in the Amigos way – from both the heart and the mind perspectives. In the words of Cesar Chavez, “From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.” To us, this is the definition of community health.
The heart of Amigos is about being in relationship with our community. Offering “Radical Hospitality” to any person who walks in our doors includes people who are undocumented, people who are unhoused, people who feel forgotten and unheard, people who are afraid, people who don’t trust the system because it has caused them pain, people who arrived in East San Jose this morning, and people who have lived here for decades.
For us, being a place-based agency also means that we hire team members directly from East San Jose, who know what it is like to live in poverty. This allows us to live in community with the people we serve; we are not separate from our community; we are the community. We serve differently because of that and because we are from the community, people trust that we have their best interests at heart when they seek support from us. Data clearly shows that zip code determines health outcomes, and if this is true, then place must be important.
You are the only community-based organization in East San Jose providing immigration support with on-staff attorneys. What is the impact of immigration status on the health and well-being of your families, and how do you support the many needs of the people you serve?
Immigration status has a profound impact on the health and well-being of individual immigrants and greatly affects their children and families. Immigration status often comes with access to healthcare, both private and public, and access to additional public benefits, such as housing, food, and income assistance. Amigos attorneys advise clients about which public benefits they might be able to access without risk of public charge concerns. Once individuals and families gain access to public resources such as housing, nutrition, and income assistance, they can re-direct their efforts from basic survival to creating conditions for growth, building community, and speaking their own truth to power.
At its core, the Amigos’ Immigration Program is a legal services program providing: 1) Free, informed legal consultations in a language that our families understand; and 2) Providing both limited and full-scope legal representation on legal cases.
Immigration Reform is the true game changer. To truly create a more just society, we know that comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely necessary. This is a generally understood fact, and yet it will not occur without impactful, intensive organizing support, the kind that Cesar Chavez practiced for generations and the kind our young people need to learn and know. Comprehensive reform supports those undocumented families who have been here for generations, the DACA and DAPA families in our midst, and the families who line up at our borders in hopes of a better future for themselves and their families. Many of those families are literally fighting for their very lives while they seek the dream that is possible in America. In order to truly deal with immigration, it is the comprehensive addressing of the issues that will be necessary.
What initiatives or projects is Amigos currently prioritizing? How can the community support your current efforts?
In addition to our current basic needs services for families in Mayfair and East San Jose, Amigos is also excited to embark on two very special initiatives to help transform Mayfair into an even more thriving, powerful community where children and families can achieve their dreams.
As you may have heard, last summer, on behalf of the East San Jose community, Amigos purchased the family home of Cesar Chavez. Our goal in purchasing this important landmark was to act as community stewards of this place in order to protect this important part of East San Jose history and legacy; and to activate the sacred space in service to the community that Cesar Chavez fought so hard for.
We are moving forward with plans to renovate and activate the buildings to serve the East San Jose community, and beyond while also honoring the legacy of Cesar Chavez. Through visioning meetings, we have collected input from hundreds of community members, and are currently in the process of integrating all of the wonderful community ideas into a powerful vision and plan for the Cesar Chavez Community Center in ways that respect the Chavez legacy and serve the community. Community members expressed interest in a community organizing space where local families can hold house meetings and community organizing trainings in the spirit of Cesar Chavez and with a focus on systems change in East San Jose. Additional ideas include a learning center, a meditation garden, a community kitchen, and a community access point with important community services such as health information, legal immigration consultations, employment support services, financial assistance, and Chavez family history.
With the power of Cesar Chavez in mind, Amigos is also a founding member of the ¡Sí Se Puede! Collective which is about to launch a visionary effort to uplift the Mayfair community out of poverty. We know that for this effort to be successful, it will take the hearts, minds, and belief in the power of the Chavez legacy by all San Jose community members and our allies. We also firmly believe that it will be challenging, but also possible – as the Mayfair community deserves this level of effort and community transformation.
The community can support both of these efforts by joining us as allies and partners, through signing up for our newsletters to stay up to date on progress and upcoming events, and/or donating to help us reach our fundraising goals, especially for renovating and activating the Cesar Chavez Family Home as a Community Center / Interpretive Learning Center. Please join us! In addition, if anyone has pictorial history of the Chavez family legacy they would like to preserve in the Chavez family history portion of the home, please donate those to Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment, 1897 Alum Rock Avenue, San Jose, CA 95116, or contact sjayne@amigosdeguadalupe.org.
What gives you hope for the future of East San Jose?
Our hope for the future of the East San Jose community lies in the people of East San Jose themselves. We survive in spite of generations of oppression and social and racial inequities, and we continue to produce leaders of our community and well beyond. Not only have our children grown to thrive in some of the best universities in the nation, many have returned to reinvest their hearts and minds into our community, to lift it out of poverty and into a brighter tomorrow. Some have come back to work for Amigos directly, or they have come back to serve other members of the Si Se Puede Collective. Why do they return? They return because they believe in this community, they know the gifts it has given them, and they believe in service that uplifts our community. They know that their parents made enormous sacrifices to ensure their successful futures, and they know the importance of lifting up a community. That is the legacy of Cesar Chavez, and that is why we want to preserve this legacy.
We hope for Justice…A zip code should not define your future. We hope for the day that all of our community is lifted out of poverty and can determine their own futures, free from oppression and inequity. We work for that reality, and it is our vision for the future of the marginalized in East San Jose.
Learn more about Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment:
