New Orleans        I was pleased recently, as I read my daily New York Times, to see one of their columnists, Michelle Goldberg, who I read fairly regularly and admire, throw out some suggestions for donations in the Times Opinion Giving Guide 2025.  This is an interesting feature that seems newish to me, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention previously.  The “grey lady,” as the Times has often been called seems to recognize that their opinion columnists are just that:  writers with opinions.  Coming to that realization, they now let them throw out suggestions for end of the year gifts to various nonprofits.

Goldberg chose two organizations to support who were involved in immigration defense in this terrible time in which the full force of the national government and military seems to have been directed at this community, so critical to many American communities and to the US economy.  One group, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, was based in Southern California that she had run into on a reporting trip.  I wasn’t familiar with their work, but I have no doubt it’s worthy.  The other group she mentioned, I know well and have worked with for a long time, which she described as being at the forefront of the resistance to the attack on undocumented workers in Los Angeles, and that’s the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which she described as “… an organization founded in 2001 to assist the often undocumented and frequently exploited workers who power California’s construction, moving and landscaping industries.”  NDLON is actually so much more that that since its affiliated worker centers are dotted throughout the country.

Earlier this year, I shared some behind-the-scenes props for the work NDLON’s legal director Chris Newman was doing in partnership with CASA and its director, Gustavo Torres, perhaps the largest immigrant worker center and advocacy operation in the country, based in Maryland and working in Virginia, DC, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.  These were the two groups that stood toe-to-toe against Trump and the deportation program since the beginning, especially the singly out of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, an injustice that they are still trying to resolve.  Just yesterday, I had received another notice of CASA’s work on the legal front, when they won an injunction prohibiting ICE from arresting people in Washington, DC, without a warrant or “probable cause of unlawful immigration status and flight risk…”

Goldberg may have just been moved by her visit to the West Coast to report on resistance to Trump’s program, but NDLON and CASA have been the two most prominent national organizations standing in the administration’s way in my opinion.  Many others also deserve support, but they have been the rocks many have built on.  For example, now that ICE is terrorizing the immigrant community in New Orleans, attention has finally come to the draconian law, Act 399, passed by the Louisiana legislature making it illegal to “knowingly commit any act intended to hinder, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere with or thwart federal immigration enforcement efforts.”  Obviously, such a law won’t stand any constitutional test and the ACLU of Louisiana has sued to block it.  The lead plaintiff is the Immigration Servers and Legal Advocacy or ISLA, based in the city that provides legal help to immigrants, an excellent organization that my daughter and I have joined in supporting now and in the past.

We need to do what we can for these kinds of groups, especially now.  My comrade, Pablo Alvarado of NLDON, was quoted by Goldberg in her piece saying,

Despite this influx of energy, Alvarado said that foundation money is drying up; some philanthropists seem wary of crossing Trump. His hope lies in individual people eager to fight authoritarianism, who see ICE’s expanding power as the tip of the spear. “This is the moment when we need to build solidarity, love and power from the bottom up,” he said.

These days, justice, as the saying goes, is “just us,” which means we need to do whatever we are able to do to support those who are leading the resistance nationally and locally.