Gala – ALDEA PJC

The People's Gala

10 Years of Aldea

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Join us in celebrating ten years of justice, dignity, and community.

Aldea, The People’s Justice Center, warmly invites you to The People’s Gala on Saturday, October 24, 2026, as we mark a decade of standing with immigrant families in the fight for safety and belonging. For ten years, we have fought in courtrooms, communities, and the halls of government, side by side with our neighbors, to ensure that everyone has the right to live in safety with the people they love. Everyone who has supported us along the way has played a role in this work, and we have not forgotten a single one of you. This celebration belongs to all of us. Come share a meal, celebrate the families whose courage inspires this work, and honor the community whose strength has carried us every step of the way.

Together we have built something powerful, and together we begin the next ten years of this fight.

Announcing The People's Gala Keynote Speaker:

We are thrilled to announce that Berks County native Dr. Amelia Frank-Vitale will join us as the keynote speaker for The People’s Gala, celebrating Aldea’s 10th anniversary on October 24.

For ten years, Aldea has stood alongside people navigating an immigration system that too often reduces human lives to cases, numbers, and legal categories. Dr. Frank-Vitale’s work asks us to look more closely at the people behind those systems, and at the courage, creativity, and community that emerge even under extraordinary circumstances.

An Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Princeton University, Dr. Frank-Vitale has spent years studying migration, violence, and deportation in Central America and Mexico. Her research has taken her alongside people migrating across Mexico and into the lives of young Hondurans rebuilding after deportation.

Her book, Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds, traces overlapping systems of control, from gangland borders inside San Pedro Sula to the long reach of U.S. border enforcement. It makes a hard case: deportation doesn’t stop migration. It keeps people moving. And U.S. policy is helping fuel the very “crisis” it claims to solve. Drawing on years spent accompanying migrant caravans, Dr. Frank-Vitale shows how those caravans become both protest and survival strategy, a direct response to a border regime that keeps expanding.

At The People’s Gala, she’ll bring that perspective into conversation with the work Aldea and our community have carried forward for the past decade: What does it mean to defend human dignity in a world increasingly defined by borders? And what can we learn from the people who refuse to let those borders define them?

We are honored to welcome her home to Berks County as we celebrate ten years of Aldea and imagine what the next ten can look like.

Interested in Sponsoring the People's Gala?

Your business can stand with immigrant families this October. The People’s Gala marks a decade of Aldea’s work in courtrooms and communities across Berks County. Sponsoring this celebration puts your name in front of hundreds of neighbors who all care about justice and belonging, and helps fund the legal services immigrant families depend on in Reading.