PC Unidos is a collaboration of local organizations that have bi-lingual services in Park City and Summit County. They consist of the Christian Center, Peace House, Planned Parenthood and more. They realized they would be more effective in serving their community if they joined forces. They started meeting every month about a year ago.
Once it was clear Donald Trump would be the next President of the United States, group member Pepe Grimaldo said all of the organizations in their group started getting calls from worried immigrants.
“We heard some concerns about how the authorities here in Park City are going to go ahead and act," Grimaldo said. "‘Is it a reaction, are we safe here? Are we going to be stopped here randomly, is the immigration or ICE going to come in and randomly pick up people?’ People are kind of, quote unquote, freaking out, right? So, in each organization – we start talking and we have our meetings every month and everybody, actually in our group actually said, ‘You know what, this is what people that I work with is telling us. They’re very afraid – they’re very afraid for their kids, their afraid for families, for their jobs, “Am I going to lose my job?”’ etc, etc. So that’s why we want to do this event.”
The event is scheduled Friday at 6 p.m. at St. Mary’s Church. Group member Max Ventura said the meeting will be an exchange of questions and answers.
“To calm down our community," Ventura said. "What we decided was to come up with this event and let them talk and also let them know that there are people who believe in them and they are welcome in Park city. But we’re going to have people that know this topic better for example, immigration attorneys, we going to have the law enforcement. Mayor Jack Thomas will join us. Also the Mexican consulate although there’s people from all over Latin America the Mexican Consulate decided to join us in this effort.”
Though the meeting will be conducted mostly in Spanish, employers are encouraged to attend. Translators will be available.
The Latino community make up about 25 percent of Park City’s population and fill many jobs in the resort industry.