Medical Support for Emma Gonzalez

I, Andrea Diaz am reaching out for support. Our dear friend and family member and my step mother Emma Iris Gonzalez needs our help. Many of you remember Emma’s warmth, vitality, empathy, and skill both as an educator and an artist. She retired from her work in the schools in her early eighties and had hoped to spend the last phase of her life continuing to paint the vibrant canvases chronicling women’s lives that so many of us admire. It was not to be. Today, her auto-immune disease has advanced to the point that she needs continuous oxygen support and 24-hour care. Her savings are close to depleted. And, she has been stranded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, throughout the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We want to bring her home into her circle of care and love for what may be her final days. But Argentina is in lockdown. The government there is not issuing visas for noncitizens to enter the country or for citizens to leave it. This means that none of us can visit Emma in Argentina or go there to bring her back home to New York City. Emma’s Argentinian caretaker Milagros is willing to accompany Emma on her flight home and stay briefly until we can get Emma settled with the appropriate care. We have requested an emergency non-immigrant visa for Milagros from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires to enable her to make the trip. So far, the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed communication and response from the U.S. State Department. We are continuing to press for this to come through.

We hope to raise $44,000 to pay for the Portable Oxygen Concentrator and numerous sets of charged batteries to support her Emma’s 20+ hour plane trip back home. Air travel on a first-class direct flight to NYC is extraordinarily expensive because of the circumstances. She will need a medical ambulance transport from her place in Buenos Aires to the airport and from the airport in the United States to her apartment in NYC. We’re researching the possibility of a Medivac air ambulance as an alternative. Once home, she will still need 24-hour care, but we’ve been working to ensure that insurance, which is not available in Argentina, can kick in once Emma’s back home.

Emma touched many people through her work and her art. We can help her now. Please give what you can so that she can be surrounded by those who love her. This illness has already stretched her finances beyond capacity, as she has sought medical help. Every cent you give will go toward bringing her home and caring for her until insurance takes over.

Below is a brief overview of Emma’s work and legacy as a social justice educator and an artist.

For over 35 years Emma has been a key leader, staff member, and board member of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. She has provided training and coaching to support educators and young people in New York City public schools build community, promote equitable practices, and implement evidence-based social emotional learning (SEL) programs. Emma has had a special gift and passion for mentoring young leaders. She has supported schools in developing peer mediation programs and in implementing innovative Morningside Center youth leadership programs that she created, including Class Meetings for Problem Solving; Student Diversity Panels; and Peace Helpers. Before joining Morningside Center, she earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in Education and in Human Behavioral Sciences. For ten years beginning in the late 1970's, Emma worked at Union Settlement Association in East Harlem where, among other initiatives, she created and directed the Family Life Institute at the settlement's Washington Houses Community Center. The therapy was based on self-exploration and self-empowerment providing people access to the skills of self-knowledge, and communication; and, exploring/ strengthening family ties through talking/healing circles. Emma's work with children focused on exploration using art and games as well as lots of attention on self-discovery.

Diversity Panel featuring Emma’s Morningside Center Work

Throughout her life, Emma has been an artist as well as an educator. During the past few years, she began cutting down on her work in the schools to focus on her painting. In 2015 she had a solo exhibit in Havana, Cuba at the Díaz Peláez, Belkis Ayon Gallery. This was followed by an exhibit of two of her paintings in Cuba with well-known Cuban female artists at the Expo Sintonía Vital, Centro Habana. In NYC she worked with artist Nitza Tufiño on printing techniques at the Rafael Tufiño Print Workshop. In 2019 Emma had a major solo exhibit entitled Women of Puerto Rico: Boricua Essence 1920-1950 at Taller Boricua curated by Nitza Tufiño.

To purchase an art piece please contact Andrea Diaz  to view Emma’s paintings that are for sale.