You are invited to Pulaagam: A Celebration of Fulani Heritage on Saturday, June 7, at 3pm at the Columbus Arts Festival. The event will take place on the Word Is Art & Acoustic Lounge Stage (map) and coincides with Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice), one of the holiest annual celebrations in Islam. Share the Facebook Event. Suggested parking: RiverSouth garage, 232 S. Front St.)

Ohio Immigrant Alliance hosted a community conversation for the public, advocates, and policymakers to share how we can advance a more dimensional immigration narrative in Ohio, during a difficult time for everyone.  We heard from Houleye Thiam of the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights; Viles Dorsainvil of the Haitian Community Help & Support Center; Jona Hilario of OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership; Claudia Longo of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio; and Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance about what we know from public opinion research; how immigrants want to be seen in the media; and how content creators can help ensure a broader picture comes into focus. The discussion will be moderated by Ohio Voice.

OHIA is seeking volunteers to help deliver copies of “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home” to every member of the U.S. House and Senate on June 11 in Washington, DC! Read more here and watch online on the Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s Instagram.

Ohio Migration Anthology is back at the Columbus Arts Festival June 7, from 3-4pm in Bicentennial Park. We’ll crowd-source a poem and expand the call for contributors to Volume 3 in 2025. Join us in Columbus on June 7!

Sara Hamdi, Tina’s eldest sister, is joining the National Immigrant Justice Center for “Chance to Come Home: Overcoming Injustices in the U.S. Immigration System,” a town hall in Los Angeles, CA on May 10. Catch it in person in LA or via livestream here.

Come meet contributors to the Ohio Migration Anthology and celebrate the series’ inclusion in the Ohioana Book Festival 2024! Purchase copies of volumes 1 and 2, and learn how to become a contributor to volume 3!

On January 30, 2024 at 1 p.m. ET, members of the public are invited to attend a webinar to learn more about the people behind “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home.”

Written by Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance and Suma Setty at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), “Broken Hope” is based on 255 interviews conducted by OHIA Organizer Maryam Sy between 2021 to 2023. The men and women Sy interviewed had lived in 22 states and were deported to 27 countries, primarily in Africa. They had a median U.S. residency of 17 years, as well as families, businesses, homes, and careers they were forced to leave behind. They told Sy they envision a world where they can come back to the lives they left, and that they want to be seen and heard in the immigration debate.

Head out to Mac’s Back’s Books for an evening dedicated to Volume 2 of the Ohio Migration Anthology, with local contributors Judy Bateman, Miles Budimir, Ray Danner, and OHIA Director Lynn Tramonte.

Writers and artists from various migration paths, and with various migration stories, will share their work and create with the crowd at the Word Is Art & Acoustic Lounge inside the Columbus Arts Festival 2023. This is the second year the Ohio Immigrant Alliance and OPAWL: Building AAPI Feminist Leadership are bringing artists to this stage. The performance takes place on Sunday, June 11, at 12pm.

Contributors to the 2021 book Far From Their Eyes: Ohio Migration Anthology are hosting a reading and book signing at Loganberry Books December 12 at 2pm. The event is being organized by Michele Rudolph with the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers.