Along with Chicago’s The Violet Hour, which will spend May donating proceeds from its signature Old Fashioned to the National Immigrant Justice Center, Le Virtù, Brigantessa and Cala all count themselves as members of SanctuaryRestaurants, a joint project between ROC and Presente.org that launched in January. Though Sanctuary Restaurants encourages many benevolent restaurateurs to channel proceeds to their local immigrant justice organizations, it does use some donations to fund its English as a Second Language courses for restaurant workers, trainings that teach kitchen staffers how to access more lucrative front-of-house positions (held mostly by whites). It also lobbies President Trump to create a path to citizenship for restaurant employees and to end deportation threats and “harassment of immigrants (including Muslim immigrants),” as the organization describes it.
