Thread by @mazsidahmed

I was away and offline last week so I didn’t get a chance to share one of @Documentedny's biggest achievements. We made our first film! In partnership with @Waterwell: I Know What Pandemic Means

bit.ly/33VQ41W

@Documentedny @Waterwell The film was born out of a conversation on a @BorealisPhil REJ Fund call in which @wendi_c_thomas shared a project @MLK50Memphis was working on. An oral history series of essays on how workers are surviving the pandemic. It's a remarkable series: bit.ly/3tWjjMI

We wondered, what it would be like to ask undocumented immigrants who signed up for our WhatsApp news service about their experiences?

.@wendi_c_thomas was kind enough to share the prompt questions that they had used in their project

We received dozens of responses. They were incredibly powerful. People shared the difficulties they experienced as well as the ways they found joy in the pandemic.

We reached out to theater group @Waterwell to see if we could create something to mark what this past year was like for undocumented immigrants in New York City.

Director Frisly Soberanis interviewed a number of members of our WhatsApp community and created this powerful testament to their experiences: I Know What Pandemic Means

bit.ly/340wPnP

We premiered the film first with the WhatsApp community and received wonderful feedback.

We hope this documentary will serve as a time capsule to remind people of what New Yorkers who suffered the most went through and how they created their own support systems in the absence of government support.