By Marley Seaman
Margarita Grasing, the Executive Director of the Hispanic Brotherhood of Rockville Center, Inc. and a Baldwin resident since 1969, has helped the area's minority community for more than 20 years.
"Our mission is to help the Latino community," Grasing explains. The Brotherhood offers a wide variety of services to the community, helping residents get government entitlements and housing aid. It also offers legal representation, adult English as a Second Language programs, activities for seniors, and tutoring for students. Each year, it holds a scholarship dinner to raise funds for distinguished high schoolers, giving several $1,000 scholarships.
"She's done a fantastic job here in Rockville Center," says Mayor Eugene Murray. "It's through her efforts that many of these children are finishing high school. Through her efforts a lot of these children are staying in school."
In addition to her work with the Hispanic Brotherhood, Grasing has taken part in dozens of councils and commissions. Most recently, she was Chairwoman of the Nassau County HIV Commission. The group consults with the Health Department and Board of Health to gather information and make decisions about how to educate the community and fight the disease.
Grasing's work has won her numerous awards, which cover one wall of her office like a coat of paint and spill onto the adjacent furniture. She's particularly proud of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Living the Dream" Award the Employment Opportunity Commission gave her in 1995. The award recognizes her contribution to her community and to society. But prefers going about her work to dwelling on prizes.
"I wish they'd give me money for the agency the same way they give me awards!" she laughs.
Grasing's commitment to helping others solidified when she witnessed the Cuban revolution firsthand as a teenager.
"My family left [Cuba] when Fidel Castro came to power," she says. "I saw a lot of injustice done ... My father lost everything. He had commercial banks, and the government nationalized all the banks. I saw a man that worked all his life lose everything in one day."
The local Hispanic community was alive and growing when Grasing moved to Baldwin, and it has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the 2000 census, Hispanics are the largest minority in Nassau County. There are more than 3,000 in Baldwin and Baldwin Harbor, a number that has doubled since 1990.
"All you hear is Spanish on Grand Avenue," she says.
She helped establish the Hispanic Brotherhood in 1984, and has run the organization ever since. She urges the community's Hispanic population to become more politically active.
"We need to be counted," she says, "And we also need to vote. You can have millions of people here. If you don't use the power of the vote, it's useless."
While all of the Hispanic Brotherhood's programs are important, Grasing says, it is the organization's work in housing that is most important.
"Having a roof over your head is a human right," she says, echoing a sentiment voiced by the late Pope John Paul II. "If you don't have housing, how can you have anything else?"
