“Politicians shift whichever way the wind blows. I like to think of the Hagedorn Foundation as working to partner with local organizations to change the wind and the way that the public thinks about and reacts to immigrants, so that their message to politicians will change the way politicians interact with this population. We’re trying to change the wind.”

—Darren Sandow, Executive director,
Hagedorn Foundation.”

The headline in the lead editorial of Long Island’s Newsday on May 16, 2007, endorsed a Hagedorn Foundation report on Long Island’s Hispanic population, saying it “should be required reading.” The report found that the Island’s Latino population of 330,000, nearly triple that of 1980, had far outstripped the growth in other segments of the area’s population. Prepared by two economists, Mariano Torras and Curtis Skinner, the 32-page document assessed the impact of the growth of the Latino population on the economy and concluded that many different criteria, including $5.7 million a year spent by these Hispanic residents, indicated that they were important to the economy and also a significant political and cultural force.

Darren Sandow, Executive Director, said the foundation is dedicated to promoting social justice on Long Island and seeks to welcome immigrants and help them become assimilated into the community. “The executive order [in Illinois] set the bar very high in the way we embrace the immigrant and Anglo community,” he said. “We get most of our ideas from partnering with folks such as Carnegie Corporation and other foundations that are part of the Four Freedoms Fund. We have learned a lot from bigger foundations and that is an important message to smaller foundations—that there is a lot to be learned from partnering.”

In addition to the economic report on the Hispanic population, the foundation has studied the population of Greenport in Suffolk County and found that the village had a 30 percent year-round population of Latinos, not the frequently reported 10 percent. The foundation is also studying the development of a hybrid model of elements of the New Americans Initiative and those from other programs that would train volunteers from a number of organizations across Long Island. The curricula of these training centers would be centered around past and present U.S. immigration, the current immigration debate, the process of naturalization and citizenship and a wide range of topics about the structure of the government. Trained volunteers would then run citizenship workshops. In June 2007, Long Island WINS, a media campaign supported by the Hagedorn Foundation, began airing ads on cable television channels that stress how immigrants contribute culturally and economically to Long Island. The Hagedorn Foundation (HHF; www.hhfdn.org) was founded in 2006 by the estate of Horace Hagedorn, who headed the Miracle-Gro Company before it merged with Scotts.

Drawing on a metaphor used by Martin Luther King, Jr., Sandow says, “Politicians shift whichever way the wind blows. I like to think of the Hagedorn Foundation as working to partner with local organizations to change the wind and the way that the public thinks about and reacts to immigrants, so that their message to politicians will change the way politicians interact with this population. We’re trying to change the wind.”