With over 4,000 COVID-19 cases reported in NYC, over 10,000 across the country, and over 200,000 around the world, we are not just in a public health crisis but in a growing economic crisis and communications crisis.
ELA is responding — remotely, since our office is closed to keep everyone safe — by doing more of what we’ve already been doing over the past few years: connecting language to issues of health and justice, and making sure the mulitlingual individuals and communities we work with are heard and get access to critical resources. We are especially focused on creating essential public service announcements in Indigenous and minority languages (like Ismael’s in Mixtec) that are spoken by tens of thousands of New Yorkers, including the most vulnerable, but for which there is no other available information.
We’ve been doing this — with few resources, but with a big push from speakers — in a wide range of languages on a wide range of subjects, including the Census, “Know Your Rights”, NYC’s municipal ID program IDNYC, the rights of children in detention, and most recently COVID-19. Please help us spread the word and find resources — and let us know if communities or programs where this is needed!
