School of Media Studies

We Save Us: A Morada for Mutual Aid, 5/24

WE SAVE US: a Morada for Mutual Aid

A conversation with Carolina Saavedra, Marco Saavedra, and Yajaira Saavedra from La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen

Monday, May 24th, 7:00 PM (EDT)

Mon, May 24th, 7:00 PM (EDT). This event will take place online via Zoom. Register here to access the Zoom link. This event will be interpreted in Spanish and English and ASL, and will be closed captioned.

“Since we opened the doors of our family restaurant in 2009, we have been preserving and sharing our Mixtec culinary and cultural traditions with neighbors and friends, while actively participating in different causes led by the South Bronx community in pursuit of social and racial justice.

We say that “activism is our secret seasoning.”

—Yajaira Saavedra, community organizer and co-owner of La Morada.

La Morada is much more than a restaurant. The Saavedra family chose its name to signal the space as a refuge and sanctuary for communities in the South Bronx. “A morada is more than a home,” Antonio, Yajaira’s father, says, “when you are working in the fields, a morada is where you take refuge from the rain.”

For years, the Saavedras have been collaborating with grassroots activists that advocate for tenant rights for residents in the Bronx; for labor rights for undocumented workers; for the abolition of the NYPD and ICE; for the liberation of all incarcerated people; for financial aid for undocumented families; for vaccine access for food delivery drivers and restaurant workers, many of whom are undocumented; for food justice; and against food apartheid, environmental racism, and gentrification in the South Bronx.

In mid-April 2020, when the pandemic was at its peak in the city, La Morada opened its doors as a Mutual Aid-Kitchen—running out of food within hours on the very first day. A year later, with the support of friends, accomplices, and collaborators, La Morada has delivered hundreds of thousands of warm, highly nutritious meals to residents in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan; fed the Occupy City Hall protesters during the summer of 2020 and the Teamsters strikers in Hunts Point in January 2021; and helped sustain dozens of food programs in the South Bronx and community fridges around the city.

Join us Monday, May 24 at 7:00 PM (EDT) for “WE SAVE US: A Morada for Mutual Aid,” a conversation with Carolina, Marco, and Yajaira for on mutual aid efforts and accountability, and to mark the launch of the Archives in Common website—a bilingual archive that is attempting to collaboratively document these efforts, led by faculty leader Ángeles Donoso Macaya. At this conversation, we will also hear from other groups that have been collaborating with La Morada and doing mutual aid work in The Bronx, including Ariadna Phillips, founder of South Bronx Mutual Aid.

Click here to read more about the efforts of the Mutual Aid Kitchen at La Morada and what Mutual Aid means to them and the communities they serve:

Click here for more information about this event which is free and open to the public, and will be interpreted in Spanish, English and ASL, and will be closed captioned.

Click here to Register for this event and for access to the Zoom link.