Folks,
Last week, Payday Report was hosted with the immigrants' rights group Frontline Dignity and the Pittsburgh Documentary Salon at the art space Navushouse.
Over 40 people attended, and we raised over $500 for immigrants' rights causes. We also had conversations about how filmmakers and activists could work more closely together.
Payday Report screened several films about the growing Brazilian immigrant community and the problems they have faced because of ICE. We hope our readers checked out the various short films that we presented.
Our first film looked at the harrowing story of a Brazilian immigrant who spent nine days traveling through Central America to cross the Rio Grande. She hails from the state of Rondônia, where horrific drug violence has led to some Brazilian immigrants getting asylum status in the United States.
Despite being an immigrant herself and not fluent in English, she said she would have voted for Trump if she could have.
The second video looks at old traditional Brazilian harvest holidays being imported to the Mon Valley of Pittsburgh.
Growing up in the Mon Valley when the steel mills were closing in the 1980s and 1990s, I never had the opportunity to experience Festa Junina. As the Brazilian population has grown by 70-80% over the last decade in the Pittsburgh area, Brazilian immigrants searching for good, affordable housing have begun to populate the vacant communities of the Mon Valley.
Five years ago, the Mormon church in Clairton, which provides space for Brazilian Mormons, started hosting an annual Festa Junina. People dress up as peasants and dance in quadrilhas, a Brazilian form of square dancing.
For nearly 25 years, Mullaney’s Harp & Fiddle Irish Pub, owned by an Irish immigrant, has hosted Brazilian watch parties at this historic bar in Pittsburgh’s Strip District neighborhood, a once grungy market district that’s been gentrifying.
Mullaney’s typically hosts Irish music nights and Steelers games, but for more than two decades has also been the place for Brazilians in Pittsburgh to watch the FIFA World Cup. Outside of their bar, they even fly a large Brazilian flag right next to the United States flag.
Over the past decade, the number of Brazilian immigrants in Pittsburgh has increased by 70%. Now nearly 2,000 Brazilian immigrants live in the city of Pittsburgh, with a population of 300,000, and nearly 10,000 live in the Greater Metro area, according to local activists.
However, despite Pittsburgh’s growing Brazilian population, the city lacks a Brazilian sports bar. So, in 2002, Brazilians in Pittsburgh started watching the World Cup at Mullaney`s, and after Brazil won the Cup that year, they continued the tradition.
Payday increasingly is making videos that telling stories about immigrants communities that are other publications are ignoring. In the process, we are finding new ways to work wtih immigrant rights groups like Frontline Dignity. The support of our readers makes this possible.
