New York Proud
Stories from the City of Immigrants
PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
NY Immigration Coalition
DATE:
September 6, 2025
STORIES CURATED & SCRIPT ASSEMBLED BY:
Lee Sunday Evans & Liza Zapol
LOCATION:
Perelman Performing Arts Center
DIRECTED BY:
Sivan Battat
PRICE:
Free!
DESCRIPTION
The New York Immigration Coalition teamed up with Waterwell for an afternoon of immigration stories, music, and camaraderie to celebrate the vibrant role of immigrants in New York City’s past, present, and future to kick off the Fall 2025 New York Proud campaign. Featuring musical performances by Fogo Azul NYC and the Resistance Revival Chorus.
Over 200 New Yorkers joined us to hear artists and civic leaders read powerful, wide-ranging stories of belonging in NYC. See the full list below!
INFORMATION
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Morgan Spector, Actor (The Gilded Age, The Plot Against America)
Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer-prize winning Journalist and Author, Founder of Define American
Busy Philipps, Actress, Activist and Author
Bitta Mostofi, Immigration Policy Fellow, Former NYC Commissioner for Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs
Ruth Messinger, Global Ambassador, American Jewish World Service
Aasif Mandavi, Actor, Writer, Producer
Rev. Stephen Green, Senior Pastor of the Greater Allen AME Cathedral of New York
Ty Defoe, Playwright / Interdisciplinary Artist / trans futurist / Citizen of the Oneida Nation and Anishinaabe Tribe
Arian Moayed, Emmy & Tony-nominated Actor (Succession, Inventing Anna, A Doll's House), Co-Founder of Waterwell
Rabbi Dr. Barat Ellman, Fordham University, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)
Celine Song, Oscar Nominated Writer + Director (Past Lives)
Imam Ammar Abdul Rahman, Deputy Imam and Director of Youth and Community Engagement, Masjid Al-Haram USA, Bronx
Fatima Shama, Government Innovation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Former Commissioner for the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs
Dean Fuleihan, Former First Deputy Mayor, Senior Fellow at the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance
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The stories were curated and edited by Liza Zapol, with collaboration from Lee Sunday Evans, from the following New York oral history collections:
Queens Irish Oral History Project, Queens College CUNY, at the Archives at Queens Library
Bridging Our Stories Community Oral History Project, New York Public Library
New York Proud Campaign, 2024
Coney Island History Project Oral History Archive
The Elders Project from Incite Institute at Columbia University
The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves by Hamiton Holt, J. Pott, 1906
We're in America Now: A Survivor's Stories, by Fred Amram, Holy Cow! Press, 2016
Muslims in Brooklyn, Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library
Green Card Stories by Saundra Amrhein, Umbrage Books, 2011
We are Brooklyn: Immigrant Voices exhibit, as a part of the Brooklyn College Listening Project
GALLERY
