On Mother’s Day, the upper sanctuary of Lincoln United Methodist Church echoes with music. The two dozen congregants seated in the pews flip through the homemade song books, whose laminated pages have begun to peel back at the edges.
At the front of the Pilsen neighborhood church, two pulpits flank the altar. Rev. Walter Coleman stands on the left, Rev. Emma Lozano on the right. Through most of the service, Lozano acts as translator between Coleman, her husband, and the mostly Hispanic crowd of parishioners. When the band starts to play, she’ll tap a tambourine to the beat and sing along to the church’s repertoire of songs.
Towards the end of the service, Lozano brings out a sheet of paper. Coleman explains they have been working with a family from the church for more than two years to bring the rest of their 13 kin from violence-ridden Guatemala to Chicago. They plan on bringing them through Mexico, where at the U.S. border they’ll seek asylum status. Local gangs in the country have kidnapped their children in the past, and the parents worry for their safety. Today, Coleman and Lozano are petitioning volunteers to sign the sheet and say they’ll act as sponsors.
“We’re going to ask that 12 or 13 people put their names down,” Lozano says in Spanish. “You don’t have to pay anything; you just have to say that you all are responsible.”
Most Sundays, Lozano hears pleas from families like these. After church, people will cluster near the front of the altar, waiting speak to the pastor. Though some just want to catch up, most are seeking help: A father and breadwinner wonders if he’s eligible Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), President Obama’s attempted immigration directive. A single mother asks Lozano to accompany her to family court and act as her translator and advocate. Teens confide their worry about the rise of Donald Trump; they wonder if he’s provoked the hateful messages they’ve seen written around town (like “Rape Mexico,” which was scrawled on the church’s front doors the day after Easter Sunday).
What do we do? They’ll ask.
Lozano says, Don’t worry, rubbing their shoulders.
Lozano and Centro/Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the grassroots organization she founded, are pillars of this predominantly Mexican south Chicago neighborhood. They speak for the undocumented families who, because of their limited English and their fear of deportation, cannot speak for themselves.
“There’s not enough hours in the day for the things that Emma Lozano needs to do,” Giovany Gomez, 24, says. Gomez is the church’s media director and also does DAPA outreach for Centro. “She just continues to push forward and seek out injustice, and when injustice is made apparent to her, she makes the moves to fix it.”
History of Activism
Though Lozano presides over a crowd each week at Sunday service, she hasn’t always felt comfortable as a leader. Her older brother, Rudy Lozano, was a community organizer and close advisor to Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago. Lozano credits the ideas behind Centro to Rudy. In her younger days, she considered herself merely a “soldier” for his cause.
“I didn’t raise a lot of questions and didn’t have to be in any of the decision making, just, you know, ‘tell me what to do and I’ll do it,’” Lozano explains. “I was a young mother and I wanted to do the work in the movement but I didn’t want it to overcome my family life.”
But soon after her brother's assassination in 1983, Lozano thrust herself into grassroots leadership, establishing Centro Sin Fronteras in 1987. During the early years as an activist, Lozano learned the fundamentals of community organizing.
“Within 24 hours if there was a social justice issue we needed to move on, we were organized block by block,” she says.
She was also learning how to get those in power to listen.
Gomez describes Lozano’s and the Centro’s approach as three pronged: a well-developed political clout with aldermen, congressmen and national Latino leaders; a strong grassroots home base in Centro; and a keen understanding of the legal recourse immigrants have.
In January of 2016, the Department of Homeland Security announced a directive to increase raids targeting Central American immigrants. The Centro immediately sprung into action. It hosted a series of “Know Your Rights” workshops, one at which U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D.-Il.) spoke. Gutierrez and Lozano have known each other since before he first ran for office in 1993. Lozano says her organization’s door-knocking campaign, which garnered 4,000 signatures in his district, led Gutierrez to develop his 2009 immigration legislation.
Coming to her church opens a parishioner to a tight-knit family in faith, and also a vast network of other immigrants, political leaders, and organized activists all striving more or less for the same goal: comprehensive immigration reform.
Encouraging others to find their voices
On the 1st of May 2016, a crowd of a few dozen filed into the basement of Lincoln United to prepare for a protest march to Union Square and Trump Tower. The demonstration was held on May Day in remembrance of the Haymarket Street protests, now symbolic of the fight for labor and immigrant rights.
Many marchers are from the neighborhood. Others have made a multi-state journey - a church in Indiana shuttled in a group of Central American refugee children.
As demonstrators tie brown bandanas around their heads and pull on homemade neon-yellow tee shirts reading “Stop Deportations,” the room fills with sounds of gathering: eruptions of laughter, the clamor of bucket drums, idle chit-chat. But once Lozano beckons for people to take their seats, the crowd nestles into silence.
“Jesus Christ and his family were migrants and refugees,” she says. “So if anyone says he is Christian and says that praises Jesus Christ but is continuing to mandate the deportations of all of us, he’s not Christian.” The crowd is hushed, listening. “Amen?” she asks. The crowd responds, “Amen.”
She teaches the marchers a series of chants, both in English and Spanish, among them “When I say ‘Dump,’ you say Trump.”
After warming up the crowd, Lozano beckons Elvira Arellano to come towards the front.
Arellano gained national recognition as a symbol for immigration reform in 2006 when she refused to offer herself up for deportation three years after being arrested alongside a number of other undocumented workers during a raid at O’Hare airport. Instead, she took sanctuary in Humboldt Park at Adalberto, the first church Lozano and Coleman started before expanding to Lincoln United.
“Elvira Arellano is a symbol of the undocumented,” Lozano says as Arellano approaches. Someone in the crowd shouts, That’s right!
Arellano, and three young males - her family - shuffle to the front to address the marchers. Her eldest is 17 now, but was just a toddler when she took sanctuary. She has since had another child here in the U.S. with her current partner, who stands with her now.
“The word of God says that faith without action is not faith,” she says. The crowd cheers.
Arellano says she toiled over whether or not to take sanctuary - would she really be safe in the church? Would laws become stricter because of her defiance? - but Lozano and Coleman provided consistent support and encouragement. Throughout her year in sanctuary, Arellano says she was most impressed by how such a small community church could accomplish such “large miracles.” She calls Lozano her angel.
Arellano participates in many press conferences and demonstrations like the May Day march. And, every Sunday, she attends the same Division Street storefront church that hosted her for that fateful year.
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At the end of the Mother’s Day service, Lozano’s eyes search the pews. The church’s lay minister, perhaps sensing what Lozano seeks, locates the paper and hands it to her friend. Lozano’s face lights up – they’ve received 11 of the 13 sponsor signatures.
“And with me and the pastor signing, we’ll have 13!” Lozano cheers.
A few days later, she’s on a plane, headed for the consulate in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo. She’ll spend the next few days ducking Mexican kidnappers. She’ll anxiously await the Guatemalan family’s arrival from Mexico City, and then shuttle them to an undisclosed hotel. She’ll negotiate asylum agreements for all of the ones she can, and accompanies them to their new home, Chicago. Then, the next Sunday morning, she’ll take five of the 13 to Lincoln United with her.
