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It's time once again to brag on my favorite QNs based community center, @centrocorona!
If you are a person with resources and want to support cultural organizing in the heart of Corona, Queens, please click. If not resourced, please share (widely!) https://donorbox.org/50k-for-centro-corona
If you are a person with resources and want to support cultural organizing in the heart of Corona, Queens, please click. If not resourced, please share (widely!) https://donorbox.org/50k-for-centro-corona
For those unfamiliar with Centro, here's a little picture of the home they are fundraising to rent for the foreseeable future. No, it is NOT Taqueria Nixtamal. Look closer! Serious radical cultural organizing is happening in there...
TO BE CONTINUED!!
OK we are BACK. A few more things about Centro.
FIRST, let me be clear, that @centrocorona is not your typical NPIC type place. All fundraising at Centro is done by a committee of volunteers, and all of it with an explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-NPIC lens.
FIRST, let me be clear, that @centrocorona is not your typical NPIC type place. All fundraising at Centro is done by a committee of volunteers, and all of it with an explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-NPIC lens.
That means constant assessment of how work is valued in capitalism, how that breaks down by race/class/gender, and how philanthropy requires that work to be framed/presented. Centro Corona doesn't apply for any funding that doesn't align with the values of the community...
and constantly checks in with community members about how money is being raised and how it is being spent. Not abstractly--like with very clear spreadsheets, accounting for every line item. We discuss these in bilingual community meetings. It is even fun, mostly.
So what's the money for? Mostly rent, let's be real. This is still New York! The space is huge. But what happens in that space??! So much!!
More than anything, Centro is a lab and home base for tons of arts and cultural programming, from the Mobile Print Power collective (exactly what it sounds like--a mobile screenprinting collective) to the Roosie Queens choreography team, to the Sumak Warmis Andean dance group.
I first learned about Centro during their annual Day of the Dead/Dia de lxs muertxs celebration, where they honor the lives of people who contributed to anti-oppression and liberation movements.
In the summer, they run an amazing sex-ed camp for youth and families, where young people and their parents develop shared language to discuss gender and sexuality together. Sounds awkward, is actually lovely--the sex ed class you wish you'd always had.
During the year, the space is full of political organizing meetings & cultural events, film screenings, poetry readings, celebrations, and discussion groups. Many campaigns have been born there, many more will be born. This space constantly generates new ideas and connections.
Not to mention, in the past year (and ongoing!) Centro served as a relief hub for hundreds of Corona families weathering the worst of the pandemic in the literal episode of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every week they delivered food, household items, and cash to families in need...
and coordinated virtual hangouts for youth, health and mental health supports, monthly newsletters and more to maintain a connection to the wider Corona community.
Ok, I'm in deep now, but if you take nothing else from this thread, community centers like this don't come around every day--they are the product of love and effort and commitment. Your financial donation to pay the rent make it possible to keep that going for yet another year.
So dropping the link once again (just in case) and thanks for reading if you read this, thanks for donating if you donate, and thanks for sharing if you shared.
https://donorbox.org/50k-for-centro-corona
Check out Centro on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/centrocorona/
https://donorbox.org/50k-for-centro-corona
Check out Centro on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/centrocorona/
