{"id":979,"date":"2010-03-04T20:03:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T20:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=417"},"modified":"2010-03-04T20:03:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T20:03:02","slug":"a-tear-coming-to-her-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=979","title":{"rendered":"…a tear coming to her eye."},"content":{"rendered":"

We met with a group of Hispanic immigrant families who are all part of the Alterna Project<\/em> in LaGrange Tuesday night. \u00a0 They live in a cluster of homes on Jefferson Street here as part of a “housing co-op.” \u00a0 Social justice advocate, and former La Grange College professor, \u00a0Anton Flores bought these homes and has entered into a cooperative agreement with the immigrant families. \u00a0 Flores has structured it so these families are paying for these homes basically at cost. \u00a0 Flores told me what motivates him is “Christian love…” \u00a0 This evening our family heard a tremendously poignant story from a family who came to \u00a0La Grange \u00a0some 10 years ago. \u00a0 Farm working jobs had dried up in Vera Cruz, Mexico, and the family had moved to crowded Mexico City for work. \u00a0 The father began working for a distribution company and was making a mere $50 a week. \u00a0 They lived in one room, \u00a0not much larger than the size \u00a0of a typical American storage shed. \u00a0 His salary was just enough to make rent and food each month in Mexico. \u00a0 He had a wife and a six-year-old son. \u00a0 They were desperately trapped in a poverty loop, with seemingly “no way to get ahead.” \u00a0 And they lived in an area infested with drugs, violence and gangs. \u00a0 “We were continually afraid to go outside on the street,” the wife said. \u00a0 There were regular robberies, homicides, child abductions… \u00a0 They were torn. \u00a0 While the family \u00a0didn’t want to leave their extended family, their homeland, their culture… “Besides the danger, we weren’t even able to afford shoes for our child,” said the mother. \u00a0 They decided to come here where the father got a job as a house painter and eventually started making enough to “get ahead a bit.” \u00a0 They also had another child \u00a0and are quite involved with the Alterna community now. \u00a0 “Here there is safety for our children — and they never go without shoes,” the mother added, a tear coming to her eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We met with a group of Hispanic immigrant families who are all part of the Alterna Project in LaGrange Tuesday night. \u00a0 They live in a cluster of homes on Jefferson Street here as part of a “housing co-op.” \u00a0 …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}