Casa Maria provides relief to Tucson's poor
Monday, 23 February 2009 00:00
Every morning around 8 a.m. a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathers outside Casa Maria Catholic Worker House in South Tucson. Within three hours, volunteers hand out about 650 individual bag lunches and 225 family bags.
Casa Maria, 401 E. 26th St., provides a free soup kitchen, personal toiletries, hot showers, medical aid, legal services as well as the opportunity to “raise up the barrio,” said Brian Flagg, the center's coordinator.
sack lunches from the stack of crates beside him, helping to feed at
least 1,000 people each day.
“It's about creating organization among the families; developing community organization to try to change things and provide people with a voice,” Flagg said.
The center also offers United States citizenship courses in Spanish. These courses are aimed at those who are eligible for the Spanish version of United States naturalization test.
A person is eligible to take the naturalization test in their own language if he or she is a permanent resident older than 50 years old and has lived in the U.S. legally for at least 15 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Since 2006, more than 30 people have become naturalized citizens with the help these courses, illustrating Casa Maria's overall purpose of “investing in human capital,” Flagg said.
“We want to get people here to be leaders,” he added.
Flagg is one of six volunteers, or Catholic Workers, who work and live at the center, carrying out the principles of their faith. He is paid $10 a week.
“The idea is to live a simple life and practice every day the works of justice and mercy,” Flagg said.
The volunteers at Casa Maria work to mobilize the surrounding community by organizing protests to fight city council decisions the center deems harmful to the poor.
During election season, the center's volunteers volunteered regularly for Mi Familia Vota, a non-partisan organization that encourages Hispanic citizens to vote.
Casa Maria was founded in 1981 as a part of the Catholic Worker Movement and is one of 168 Catholic Worker communities around the country, according to the organization's Web site. It operates solely on private donations of food, clothes and money.
The Catholic Worker Movement began during the Great Depression and is largely known for establishing hospitality houses for the homeless and poverty-stricken, according to the Web site.
Flagg hopes Casa Maria's dedication to developing the community will allow the center to continue to operate for many more years.
“The yuppies to the north want to close us down but churches stick up for us,” Flagg said. “It will be hard to wipe us off the face of the earth.”
Written by Michelli Murphy You are reading Casa Maria provides relief to Tucson's poor articles
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