Last year, the Community Asylum Seekers Project celebrated its 5th year. We commemorated this by gathering in a day-long retreat and reexamining our mission statement, crafting a new statement that centered the actions of asylum seekers and the process we’re engaged in of cultivating a supportive community to accompany their journeys.

“The mission of the Community Asylum Seekers Project is to cultivate a supportive community for those seeking asylum in the U.S., while offering basic needs and accompanying them on their journey towards building a life in this country.”

Out of that conversation came a desire to reimagine our logo and what it says about our work. With the help of Vermont graphic designer Meg McCarthy, who generously donated her time and her talents to CASP, we engaged in conversations with asylum seekers about how they visualized our collective project.

Several things came out of those conversations, and they offer meaningful insight into the process of rebuilding a life with the help of a supportive community. Asylum seekers spoke of motion, dynamism, and moving toward light. The process of seeking asylum is active and full of agency for those participating in it.

We returned again and again to the symbol of a butterfly, as a symbol of migration, movement, resilience, and hope. Monarch butterflies are a key symbol for the migration justice movement, being known for migrating from the U.S. to Mexico and back every year. Butterflies fly freely across boundaries, rivers, walls, and surveillance towers, revealing our governments’ borders as petty fictions with no bearing on the needs, rights, or movement of living things.

Monarchs are also threatened by climate change and corporate encroachment onto Mexican land, revealing another important element in the rise of human migration.

Please join us in celebrating our beautiful new logo – and look out for it in all of our communications!