Palisades restaurant teaming up with This Is About Humanity for Community Hour this month
By Dolores Quintana
The Draycott in Pacific Palisades has kicked off its new program called Community Hour. It happens every Monday through Friday each week starting in August. Community Hour actually lasts longer than an hour, it runs from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Each month, The Draycott will partner with a different organization to highlight their work and donate a portion of Community Hour’s proceeds to.
It is set up to function as a typical Happy Hour. Here is the menu:
- Boujis Fries $12
- Boujis Bread $12 with cultured Butter and sea salt
- English Pea Dip $8 with grilled sourdough bread
- ½ Dozen Point oysters, Mignonette, lemon $18.00
- Shrimp Cocktail with Dijon aioli, horseradish cocktail sauce $12.00
- Marinated olives, lemon, Fellen pollen $6,00
- Pigs in a Blanket: mini beef franks, puff pastry, mustard aioli $8.00
- Wagyu sliders: house pickles, aged cheddar, tomato aioli $5.00 each
The restaurant said, via an emailed statement, that “The Draycott is partnering with This Is About Humanity — a community of allies and advocates dedicated to raising awareness about and supporting separated and reunified families at the US-Mexico border. A portion of profits made during Community Hour will be donated directly to TIAH and we hope to not only raise funds but also raise awareness about the incredible work they are doing. We’re excited to bring the neighborhood together for such a great cause and look forward to working closely with the community to continue this important work. Snacks and cocktails will be available during Community Hour for your enjoyment.
We spoke with Zoe Winkler Reinis, co-founder of This Is About Humanity, about the grassroots organization’s important work.
What is This Is About Humanity? What does the organization do?
Zoe Winkler Reinis: This Is About Humanity is an organization dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the families at the border that have either been separated or reunited, We are a group of three women, myself and my two partners, Yolanda Selene Walther-Meade, and Elsa Collins. When I started to see the family separation happening at the border about four years ago, I just couldn’t move on from it. In those kids, I saw my own kids. In the parents, I saw myself. The only thing that separated us really was where I was born. It has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, it has nothing to do with that. It’s really just about humanity and how we treat people. We weren’t certainly not going to solve the problems of immigration [in the United States]. It’s a broken system. It’s been broken for years on every side. But we were going to stand up for people and their rights as human beings and children. This was the first time I’d ever even been made aware of this issue and it’s been going on for years and years and years. I’m 42 now. So I wanted to make it relatable and simple for people to understand because it’s such an incredibly complex subject. But separating children from their parents isn’t complex at all. It’s just evil. That was where we started. We started as a donation drive and we ended up being this incredible organization that literally just a couple of months ago and we got a million dollars from Lauren Sanchez. We’ve helped to build shelters in Tijuana. We work with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center here in Los Angeles, we partner with them. We work with World Central Kitchen, feeding families in Tijuana. It’s the first time that they’ve ever sort of gone to a place that wasn’t a natural disaster,
We work with this amazing organization called Yes, We Can. In Mexico, unless you have your papers, which most of these families do not, you are not allowed to go to school. So these families are literally just these children are just sitting in shelters waiting for their numbers to be called. We partnered with Yes, We Can and they build schools in retrofitted buses. We were able to like have these children actually thrive while they were waiting and go to school and be kids. We built learning centers in the villages we work with.
We do trips where we take 40 people to see for themselves exactly what’s going on there to hear stories and to be of service. We’ve done about 26 of those trips already.
What would you like to accomplish?
I hope that we can let these families know that they matter and that we’re going to work really hard until all those kids are reunited with their families. There are still, I think, over 187 children who have not been reunited with their families. I would say, we’re just going to continue to work really hard and tell everyone what is happening over there. Because I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, really. You see something horrible on the news, and you just move on, which is totally normal. It’s what we all do. But I want these families to know that we’re continuing to fight for them. It doesn’t have to be like a political issue. You can ask questions, you can have conversations and you can come to a better understanding. It’s literally, me and my two partners, we don’t have a board. We don’t have overhead.
I think you have a great idea. You are making it real for people and taking the politics out of it.
Zoe Winkler Reinis: Once you see it with your own eyes and you hear these stories. As a human, you just relate, because you can’t…I mean, when you hear the stories, they’re just so horrific. So it’s like what other choice did these families have? You see these people, and the only people I’ve ever met and I’ve been going now for four years, every month, are incredible people who are moms and dads and daughters and sons and children who come by themselves. There’s one child that we’ve been working with for the entire four years and he actually just graduated from USC. He came here by himself from Africa. He said that the scariest moments were having to go to immigration court. They weren’t the crossing or the rainforest or coming here in the caravan by himself. They were literally sitting in immigration court. You know, people accused of crimes are given lawyers if they don’t have one, right? Immigrants are not. There could be a child as young as two years old or as young as five months old going to court by themselves, [A child] not speaking the language, not understanding what’s happening [in court]. So, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center has vowed to make sure that in LA County, no child goes to court by themselves.
As you can see, The Draycott has picked a very deserving group to be the recipient of the donations for this month. It’s a great cause and will be a great time at the restaurant every Monday for the month of August. By the way, the Bubbles and Balloons program continues on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. Reservations are strongly encouraged and can be secured here.
