In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the village of Oak Park organized a roundtable discussion that brought together men and women from all over Latin America who spoke on the challenges of their community – including strengths and how the community can better organize to support itself.
About a half dozen speakers, including a dentist, restaurant owner, village trustee and others, addressed a handful of people Sept. 28 at the Oak Park Library and more people online in real time. One consensus was that while the community offered support, there still needed to be social support for recent arrivals.
The roundtable was not the first time the village has made an effort to recognize the month — which runs through Oct. 15 — but it did mark the first time the village tried to dig down and assess the needs and values within the larger Hispanic community.
The event was the brainchild of Park Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer Danielle Walker. She has been the DEI officer for just over a year. Walker considered the roundtable discussion to be a hit.
“This is the first one the village has put on, and it won’t be the last,” Walker said afterward.
Most but not all of the speakers were first generation Americans, with a number of them who’ve helped their parents and other family members navigate the social, legal and professional systems in the United States. They expressed the need still today for newly arrived immigrants to have help understanding the system, though they agreed Oak Park and the surrounding area do offer opportunities for migrants to succeed.
“It does seem like everyone here has found a lot of what our families came here to get,” said Erika Bachner, a River Forest village trustee. “If I were to tell my family in Colombia or El Salvador I was an elected official, I don’t know what they’d even think about that.”
Juan Munoz, the vice president of business development at Kribi Coffee, said he feels the community is allowed to express itself without being excluded in Oak Park.
“What I have found is creating those opportunities for power [including] embracing Spanish as a language at the schools … creates an opportunity to avoid being ‘othered,'” Munoz said.
“I oftentimes think about bringing other voices into this space,” said Nora Sanchez, the Latinx language and culture librarian at Oak Park Public Library.
She’s been at her job for years, and she said she works to make the public space welcoming and accessible to everyone, even those who can’t necessarily speak English. Sanchez said Hispanic experience isn’t monolithic, and not every immigrant has the same story or is from the same country and shares the same needs. Understanding that, she said, is an important part of outreach.
Bachner agreed.
“Working with the kids in our community, as Latinx, there are a wide variety of experiences,” she said.
The roundtable Thursday was part of a slate of events the village has scheduled for Hispanic Heritage Month. A handful of other meetups and cultural events, including a language access listening session Oct. 4, a festival Oct. 7 and an outdoor screening of the film “Encanto” Oct. 13 are on tap.
Sanchez said these efforts make a big difference to Hispanic children who might not always see themselves and their cultures represented in the community.
“I just feel that a big part of what I struggled with was a sense of belonging in this community and being seen,” Sanchez said.
She said she can recall going into schools and talking with Hispanic children who had never heard their cultures discussed outside their home.
“A part of what I want is the Latinx community to feel seen here,” she said, recalling how she once went to a school and talked about Dia de los Muertos to fourth and fifth graders.
The October celebration of the “day of the dead” is widely celebrated in Latin American communities, though less so in the United States. She said a child came up to her and said, “I’ve never heard anyone discuss my culture in school.”
“We deserve that,” Sanchez said. “Every child deserves to feel like they belong … because everyone wants that.”
Jesse Wright is a freelancer.
