The new faces of day labor

Written by admin on November 2nd, 2009



U.S. citizens are joining immigrants in store parking lots

Las Vegas Sun
By Timothy Pratt

Mon, Nov 2, 2009 (2 a.m.)

It sounds like a George Lopez joke.

“Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day.”

Except it’s true.

In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley’s economic free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings outside home improvement stores and plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of work.

Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable trend is occurring nationwide.

“It’s the equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

But it is not only a sign of the times, they add. If the numbers of citizens among the day laborers in cities across the country continue to grow, it’s likely to increase the ire of followers of TV host Lou Dobbs and others who will see illegal immigrants as stealing food off the tables of the nation’s native-born or naturalized poor.

Or, it may flip certain canards upside down in the immigration debate, easing tensions in some communities.

In the Las Vegas Valley, where the most recent unemployment rate was 13.9 percent, one face of this phenomenon is Ken Buchanan. The 50-year-old describes himself as a “food and beverage” guy, most recently working for four years at Renata’s Sunset Lanes casino and, before that, 30 years in a string of restaurants, hotels and casinos here and in his birthplace, Chicago.

But in 2006 Renata’s closed for remodeling. When the casino reopened as Wildfire, the management did not rehire Buchanan, he said.

In the months that followed, Buchanan discovered the difficulty of seeking work in his fifth decade, eventually winding up at Green Valley Car Wash, where he stayed for about two years, he said.

The banks foreclosed on the house he was renting. In the attempt to grab his things two steps ahead of the constable, he wound up missing work. He lost his job. He became homeless.

A Hispanic man Buchanan met in Renata’s sports book told him he had picked up work standing outside the Home Depot on Pecos Road at Patrick Lane. One July day, Buchanan gave it a try. At first, he got nothing but sunburn. But then he started to get work. Now he’s at the Home Depot six days most weeks.

Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he has been seeing the same thing elsewhere. “It’s happening, though still not in massive numbers,” Alvarado said. In the past six months or so, he has heard of “americanos” on the street corners and parking lots of Silver Spring, Md., Long Island, N.Y., and Southern California locations.

“It’s just beginning,” he said. “But I think it’s only going to increase.”

A recent morning’s swing through the valley produced reports of the same phenomenon. At Star Nursery on Cheyenne Road west of Tenaya Way, Nicolas stood shivering under a hooded sweatshirt, hoping a car or pickup would stop. The Mexican immigrant said he had seen a couple of “white guys” showing up recently, though not on the blustery cold days last week.

At Home Depot on Decatur Boulevard north of Tropicana Avenue, Jose said the same thing, adding that “it’s never more than three or four, but they’re coming out.”

Farther south, in front of Moon Valley Nursery on Eastern Avenue, Israel said a couple of “americanos” — white and black, he added — have come out for work in recent months. “But they tend to stay only a few days.”

As a salesman at Moon Valley, Mike Fugitt’s job includes making sure the laborers don’t come into the nursery’s parking lot, because their presence draws complaints from some customers. In the past three months or so, he said, more of those laborers have been telling him, “But I’m an American.” That includes some Hispanics, he added. “But I treat them all the same; they can’t be trespassing,” he said.

Workers at all the sites said the presence of the americanos hasn’t made work scarcer or produced any conflict. Some suggested that people hiring day laborers prefer Hispanics anyway, because of their reputation as hard workers.

Shaiken said shaking up the mix at day labor sites may eventually produce conflict in the greater society. “It essentially shreds the argument that Americans don’t want certain jobs,” he said.

In the current economy, he added, “we’re almost sure to see die-hard opponents of illegal immigrants seize on the fact that we have legal workers in day labor markets,” heating an already-inflamed debate.

In the longer term, it may also lead to a more rigorous analysis of future labor markets, including revised estimates of how many immigrants would be needed under a guest worker program, as proposed in recent congressional bills.

At the same time, Shaiken said, the issue won’t become central to the debate before Congress over what is known as comprehensive reform, including a pathway for legalizing millions of workers. “The point is, do we really want a labor market with day labor work as a career path? It’s more a commentary on the economy right now,” he said.

Although Alvarado allowed that the change in day labor sites was an undeniable sign of the withering economy, he also sees a “beautiful irony” in U.S. citizens seeking work as day laborers.

That’s because his organization has defended the free-speech rights of day laborers in at least 10 court cases over more than a decade. Up to now, courts have ruled in favor of the laborers.

“We always knew (these cases) would be useful not only for immigrants, but also for U.S. citizens,” Alvarado said. “We knew there would be a time when the economy would reach this point, and they also would be looking for work this way.”

Buchanan likes to wear a Cubs or White Sox cap as a sign of his Chicago heritage when he stands with one or two Hispanic laborers about 20 yards south of a larger crowd. He said he has gone through an education of sorts in the past four months. He has always worked around Hispanics in restaurants, hotels and casinos, but now he understands the issue of immigration from up close.

His sojourn got off to a rocky start. On one of his first days on the street outside Home Depot, another laborer told him he should move along because too many people were at the spot.

“I told him, ‘I’m an American citizen and you’re trying to push me off American soil?’ ” The man walked away, and Buchanan says he hasn’t had another problem with his competitors since.

Instead, Buchanan has found himself defending the rights of his fellow laborers on more than one occasion. One day, a man tried to hire a bunch of them for $5 an hour. Again, Buchanan pulled out the “citizen card.” But this time, he was telling the other person that he, a U.S. citizen, knew about minimum wage laws, and was going to make sure those laws were followed. “I said, ‘You want me to write down your license plate number?’ ” Buchanan recalled. The guy drove away.

Now, he said, “I get along with everybody here.”

He stands in a smaller group because he thinks that helps to get work. He reads the daily tea leaves of the trade, like the end of the month being a good time for moving jobs, because many people are moving in or out. His best week so far: $140. His longest stint without work: the first two weeks, “until I learned to be more aggressive.”

Antonio Bernabe, day labor organizer for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the appearance of more and more U.S. citizens seeking day labor work on corners and in parking lots poses new challenges for organizations such as his. In recent months, he said, he has found himself explaining to a whole new group the legal rights of workers, as well as approaching local authorities to discuss the entry of new people into what he called “the world of day labor.” That group includes blacks and Asians, he said.

Another difference is that now he’s giving those explanations to laborers in English.

Bernabe said organizers came across one case where a local sheriff had been sending officers to answer complaints about day laborers and then found one day that the sheriff’s neighbor, a citizen, was among them. Police in that area have been less likely to harass laborers since then, he said. These events will occur more, changing people’s attitudes in the process, he said.

“For a long time, people have looked at day laborers and said, ‘The problem is the immigrants.’ Now the economy is changing. Now people may see it’s a problem of the labor market, of the rights of workers,” Bernabe said.

Buchanan, meanwhile, looks forward to a future that includes a steady job and an apartment. “I’m trying to dig my way out of this,” he said. When he does, however, he sees himself as a changed man.

“Before, I was part of the majority. Now I’m part of the minority … I’m not going to forget this. I’m not going to forget any of this.”

http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/02/new-faces-day-labor/

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Forgotten Corners of the Economy

Written by admin on October 28th, 2009

As unemployment rises, the illegal treatment of day laborers only worsens. Where’s the government?
STEPHEN FRANKLIN | October 21, 2009
Another dead day on the street corner and Gonzalo Mejia is wondering how he will get by. He’s been finding work just one or two days a week lately. Worse yet, a contractor recently stiffed him out of $400 worth of pay.”All the time there is less work,” grumbles Mejia, a short, muscular man in his mid-50s. His pals nod in agreement as they wait like hawks, ready to swoop down on the next contractor who pulls up. But it’s well past 9 A.M., only three cars have trolled by in search of workers, and hardly anyone has budged off the street.

Yet it is not just the disappearance of work that troubles him and the 150 or so men killing time at Milwaukee and Belmont, once Chicago’s busiest street corner for day laborers. Everything has become so difficult, so frustrating, so dangerous. For workers with minimal protections against employers who steal from their wages or sometimes leave them dead or maimed, life has lately become bare existence.

Before the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed, the day laborers here tried to hold the line with employers at $10 an hour for basic work. Nowadays the going rate has dropped to $8 an hour, and some more desperate workers have grabbed $5-an-hour offers, saying it beats waiting around.

Day laborers here and across the U.S. have long suffered from employers who cheat them out of their wages. But there are more complaints recently about employers who give them bad checks or hire them at one rate and then pay less when the work is done or who vanish when it comes time to pay up.

“They say the job is for two or three days and they’ll pay you when it’s done. And then they disappear. Most of the guys have the same problems,” explains Mejia, who was earning $18 an hour as a carpenter when there was work. Nowadays, he takes $12 an hour if he can get it.

Latino immigrants dominate this and nearly all of Chicago’s day-labor street corners. But there has also been a rush of U.S. citizens, many of them newly unemployed or low-wage workers, as well as other immigrant groups.

Some day laborers will even continue working for weeks when they have not been paid. “They need money so desperately; they keep working, hoping to get paid. But they don’t, and that’s sad,” says Kasia Tarczynska, a Polish-speaking worker with the Latino Union of Chicago, which serves day laborers. She works with the Eastern European day laborers — Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Bosnians, Albanians, and others — who have been showing up increasingly on Chicago’s street corners and who suffer from roughly the same problems and abuses as the rest of the day laborers. Many are also undocumented immigrants and because of their limited English skills and the street corner’s pack mentality, they stick to themselves.

The flood of new workers has worsened conditions, say the men and workers from the Latino Union, because the increased supply has driven down the wages that the day laborers had struggled to maintain. But some also have made the work dangerous for themselves and others. “They face the greatest dangers because [many of them] have not done day labor before, and they don’t have the training,” explains Eric Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union.

The arrival of new groups of increasingly desperate workers threatens to wipe out a decade of efforts to set pay and safety standards on the nation’s street corners, says Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois at Chicago expert on day laborers. He is a co-author of a 2006 national study of day laborers, the first and only one of its kind. It is a grim accounting of what takes place on more than 500 street corners across the U.S. where day laborers gather early each morning to catch the best jobs.

On any single day, about 117,000 day laborers are out looking for work or are on the job, the study said. Three out of four of these workers, according to the study, are undocumented immigrants. But because workers often float in and out of the street-corner job market, it is estimated that as many as half a million people do day labor during the year.

The West Coast accounts for the greatest number of the nation’s day laborers, over 40 percent, followed by the East, the Southwest, the South, and the Midwest. About 43 percent of the employers are construction contractors. Another 49 percent are either homeowners or renters. This makes the worker situation even more hazardous, since these employers are unlikely to have safety equipment or know about safety rules.

***The danger of their work is a reality to the day laborers who reel accounts of falling off buildings, getting hit by falling construction supplies, and being trapped while digging ditches. Their stories help explain the 125 percent spike in the number of Latinos killed in construction jobs between 1992 and 2005, a figure that Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis called “unbearable” in a June speech to safety engineers in Texas. Seventy-five percent of the day laborers contacted in the 2006 survey said their work is dangerous, and one worker in five reported being injured on the job in the last year. But more than half of those injured did not get any medical care for their injuries, mostly because they couldn’t afford it or the employer refused to cover them under workers’ compensation, according to the survey.

Day laborers often turn to Chicago attorney Jose Rivero because he is willing to file workers’ compensation cases against shady contractors with the likelihood of minimal rewards for his clients. It is not uncommon for contractors to file bankruptcy or simply vanish or to threaten workers against taking them to court or reporting them to officials, Rivero adds.

But he has been getting fewer calls lately and doesn’t think that is because the work has suddenly become safer. The injuries he sees are “as horrible” as ever. “I think the economy is a big factor,” he explains. Workers know that they will be “blackballed” by contractors if they talk to a lawyer, he says. Because they are desperate to hang on to the work, they don’t take such risks.

But the day laborers’ biggest day-to-day worry, according to the 2006 survey, is getting paid. Nearly half said they had not been paid by an employer in the months just prior to the survey, and another 48 percent told of being underpaid. There has been no comprehensive survey since 2006, but my reporting suggests that these trends are worsening.

Chris Newman, Legal Programs Director for the National Day Labor Organizing Network, which links together several dozen groups that serve day laborers, says the level of wage theft “has been amplified by the [financial stresses] downtown. Before, you would be owed $200, but now it is more likely $2,000.” Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago adds, “I can’t tell if you have unscrupulous employers taking advantage of what’s happening or it’s the financial problems facing those higher up in the contracting chain.”

***As the ranks of the workers on the streets have swollen in the last decade, day labor activists like Newman have steadily complained about the federal government’s failure to stop the wage theft or to halt the unsafe conditions the workers face. Now, they say the Obama administration should take these steps:

First, the Labor Department should increase the ranks of investigators in its Wage and Hour Division, the office responsible for making sure employers do not cheat workers out of their wages. Kim Bobo, author of the recent book Wage Theft in America and head of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based group organization, praises the administration’s plans to hire several hundred more investigators. “But that’s not enough. They need double the number of investigators,” she says.

Second, employers need to live in fear that will they face stiff fines for violating federal wage and worker-safety laws. They should not be allowed to negotiate down the penalties so that overworked federal bureaucrats can clear the cases. The likelihood of serious penalties should increase for employers with repeat violations. “Every time we file a case, [the Labor Department] settles it for 50 cents on the dollar, and that means workers don’t get what they are owed,” says Bobo, whose organization operates a network of worker centers around the U.S. She adds that the government should make employers’ violation records more “transparent” and accessible so businesses can be tracked.

Third, the government should develop direct ties with day-labor and worker centers, creating a system that will regularly inform workers of their rights and educate them on safe workplace practices. Theodore says the government should use the locations as worker development centers, where they can train and improve workers’ skills. By authorizing the centers to directly file workers’ complaints, the government can also expand its investigative outreach to the workers, he says.

Fourth, federal offices serving day laborers should be more accessible to workers, especially in the case of undocumented immigrants who are both fearful of visiting government buildings and who usually cannot enter them because they lack proper identification. “The agencies are designed to serve bankers, not low-wage workers who cannot make a 3 P.M. meeting,” Bobo says. So, too, she says there need to be more government workers able to communicate with the largely Latino day-laborer work force. After the Katrina disaster, the government was hard-pressed, she recalls, to cope with the number of Spanish-speaking day laborers drawn to the recovery work in New Orleans.

To Newman, however, the most important step is “harmonizing” the government’s immigration and labor-enforcement policies. “If undocumented immigrants are unable to come forward and form unions and file complaints and get redress from unscrupulous practices, then the bad guys will continue on,” he says.

As for prospects of the Labor Department improving its day-to-day performance, he is quite upbeat about Solis. “The team that she is assembling is fantastic,” he says. “There are all the indications that the U.S. will get its Labor Department back after eight years of self-mutilation.”

Solis, the daughter of Latino farmworker immigrants, tells me her agency is hiring 250 investigators, some of whom will be bilingual. She wanted more, “but we didn’t have the money.” Besides “looking at increasing penalties” against employers who break the laws, she also plans to create a strike force to focus on firms with the “most egregious abuses.” If the companies cooperate, the agency will offer them training and assistance, she says. And if they don’t want to comply, “we are not going to sit around,” she adds.

The agency will closely investigate how employers who use the government’s recovery funds treat their workers. “They better know we are taking a different approach here,” she says. As for workers’ fears of dealing with a government agency, she vows to increase the agency’s links with organizations that “have the trust of the community.”

***Help dealing with abusive employers or those who put him in dangerous situations could not come fast enough for Guillermo Caicero. Not long ago he got into an argument with a contractor who promised him $15 an hour but paid him only $10 an hour when the work was done. He complained and the employer called the police. But the police “didn’t do anything,” he says.

Four years ago he tumbled off a roof and broke a leg, he says. Several months ago, the 50-year-old day laborer dislocated an arm on the job. Not long ago a pipe also fell and hit his head, sending him to a hospital. But the contractor refused to pay for treatment or time lost, and Caicero was not covered by workers’ comp. He went to a county hospital and was able to get free care, Caicero says.

Despite it all, here he is, on the corner, waiting and waiting.
Stephen Franklin is a former labor writer for the Chicago Tribune and author of Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (2001).

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Labor advocates push for law making wage theft a criminal offense in L.A.

Written by admin on October 27th, 2009
LA Times
October 26, 2009 | 12:43 pm

Advocates for day laborers and other low-wage workers are pushing for a new city law that would target unscrupulous employers by making wage theft a crime in the city of Los Angeles.

They have found an ally in City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who plans to introduce a motion on Tuesday directing the city attorney’s office to write an ordinance that would criminalize nonpayment of wages.

“People think that just because they pick up somebody on the street or at a day laborer center that they don’t have the responsibility to pay them if they don’t like the work,” Alarcon said. “This would make it illegal for somebody to do that.”

Los Angeles would join a handful of cities, including Austin, Texas, and Denver, that hold employers criminally responsible for not paying their employees. State and federal laws govern overtime, minimum wage and other labor standards, but the penalties typically are meted out through civil, rather than criminal, procedures. A local ordinance would allow city prosecutors to file misdemeanor charges against employers.

Alarcon said he was motivated by a recent study that showed many low-wage workers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago often don’t receive minimum wage or overtime pay.

The study, based on interviews with more than 4,300 workers, found that 26% of workers weren’t paid minimum wage the week before and that 76% of those who worked overtime the previous week weren’t paid the proper overtime rate.

According to the report, the violations were widespread and occurred in various industries, including construction, child care and apparel.

“We were shocked ourselves,” said Ruth Milkman, a UCLA sociology professor and one of the authors of the study.

Milkman said employers need to know the laws – and that there are consequences for not following them. “If criminal penalties are what is needed, there is no reason not to try that,” she said.

Gary Toebben, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said that people who work deserve to be paid, but that there are a lot of unanswered questions involving a possible ordinance, including what the trigger would be for an arrest and if it would cause additional backlogs in the courts. Before any ordinance is drafted, city officials should include private employers in the discussion.

“If the City Council is considering this, they would want to sit down with employers and labor attorneys … rather than simply passing a law,” he said.

– Anna Gorman

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/labor-advocates-push-for-wage-theft-law.html

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Attorney General Milgram warns N.J. law enforcement about role in immigration program

Written by admin on September 4th, 2009

 

by Tanya Drobness/The Star-Ledger

Wednesday September 02, 2009, 7:47 PM
MORRISTOWN — The state’s attorney general is warning local law enforcement agencies seeking to deputize officers as immigration agents not to ethnically or racially profile people, but one mayor has fired back with an admonishment of his own.

Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello, who has four months left in office, today said Attorney General Anne Milgram should not interfere with the locals, adding she is politicizing the matter during a gubernatorial election year.


(Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerA Feb. 20, 2009 file photo of Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello. Cresitello has said that he intends to start a program which would make police officers act as immigration agents to better protect residents amid human trafficking, drug and gang activity.)

“She’s drawn herself into the current election cycle and is playing politics with a very important issue that protects the residents of New Jersey,” Cresitello said. The mayor also said he intends to have six of the police department’s 58 police officers become deputized Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, operating under federal guidelines, “not her guidelines.”

“If she were to interfere with that legal process, I will take appropriate legal action,” Cresitello said.

David Wald, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said politics is not involved.

“The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer in New Jersey,” Wald said. The officers’ “first responsibility is to enforce the laws of the state of New Jersey.”

Milgram sent letters Friday and Tuesday to officials in three counties saying they should show no bias when upholding the law. Her concerns follow moves by Morristown officials and the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office to deputize officers as immigration agents, and she said effective policing comes with maintaining a “positive relationship” with the community.


(Saed Hindash/The Star-LedgerAttorney General Anne Milgram at a press conference in August. Milgram is warning law enforcement agencies to follow the rules when questioning people about their immigration status.)

“Community fear that a police officer will convert every citizen encounter into an immigration inquiry destroys that relationship and will discourage reporting by victims and the cooperation of witnesses,” Milgram said.

Latino leaders and immigration advocates have been voicing the same message for months.

“Immigrants will not go to the police for anything. This will hurt the relationship between the people and the police, and it will affect the entire community, not just the Latino community,” said Diana Mejia, co-founder of the Morristown-based Wind of the Spirit immigration-resource center.

The attorney general said participating law enforcement agencies must provide her with proposed agreements and operational plans. Deputized officers also must submit monthly reports to the state Division of Criminal Justice.

Under Milgram’s guidelines, state, county and local law enforcement officers must not act as immigration officials when patrolling the streets. Deputized officers may question people’s immigration status after they have been arrested for serious violations, she said.

Monmouth County and Morristown, along with the Hudson County Department of Corrections, are among 79 departments nationwide that have been accepted into the program, known as 287(g), which was overhauled to allay fears it would be used to target or harass immigrant groups.

In Monmouth County, unlike Morristown, the program applies only to corrections officers who work in the jail and do not make street arrests, Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno said. Guadagno, who is running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket, said Milgram, who works for Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, was “misinformed” about the county’s role in the program.

“Under our program, we simply ensure that if you are detained in our jail and you are an illegal alien, you will be identified, processed by federal authorities and deported if appropriate,” Guadagno said.

Morristown Police Chief Peter Demnitz declined to comment today on Milgram’s letter.

Cresitello drew national attention two years ago when he took a hard line against illegal immigrants and tried to deputize police as immigration agents. He has softened his stance, but the issue re-ignited during the primary election campaign. Cresitello lost in the June Democratic contest.

The Hudson County Department of Corrections has been participating in the program since August 2008, according to ICE’s website. Corrections director Oscar Aviles did not return calls for comment.

The program initially came under fire from Congress’ investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, for failure to supervise participating agencies. In May, government investigators said that in some cases, police officers who had been deputized as immigration agents swept up large numbers of immigrants for minor offenses, such as speeding and drinking in public, in an effort to rid their communities of those who were in the U.S. illegally. Under the revised program, participating agencies are required to make the identification of illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes their priority.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/09/attorney_general_anne_milgram_1.html

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Local immigration advocates feel ‘Sense of betrayal’ over President Obama’s policies

Written by admin on July 30th, 2009


Ny Daily News
by Albor Ruiz 

When President Obama’s enemies protest his policies, it is not a surprise. However, when his friends publicly show their disagreement - and their disappointment - it is time for serious reflection on the administration’s part.

Scores of local immigration advocates and sympathizers - people who can safely be called pro-Obama New Yorkers - felt compelled Wednesday to do exactly that: They let Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano know their strong displeasure with the administration’s about-face on immigration.

“We are getting to the tipping point. Immigrant communities that helped to elect President Obama strongly believed that there would be reforms. Now, there is a creeping sense of betrayal,” saidChung-Wha Hong, executive director of theNew York Immigration Coalition, which organized the demonstration. “There is a huge disconnect and contradiction between what the President is saying and what Secretary Napolitano is doing. You can’t have it both ways.”

The protesters rallied outside the offices of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, at Park Ave. and 68 St., where Napolitano was giving a speech. They protested her recently announced expansion of the disastrous 287(g) program that authorizes police, traffic cops and correction officers to arrest immigrants without cause. The program has been under intensive investigation by theJustice Departmentfor rampant mismanagement on the part ofImmigration and Customs Enforcement, and racial profiling on the part of lawmen. The most notorious example is the infamousSheriff Joe Arpaio, ofMaricopa County,Ariz., who operates the nation’s largest 287(g) contract.

At the time of its inception the 287(g) was extolled as a public safety program designed to get “illegal criminal aliens” off the streets. Instead, the program has become synonymous with racial profiling and human rights abuse.

In reality, the much-ballyhooed program has done nothing to increase public safety, enhance national security or solve the immigration crisis. Many police chiefs across the nation oppose the 287(g), arguing it undermines community trust and makes their job much more difficult.

The administration’s decision to expand the controversial program is a slap in the face to those who believed President Obama’s pledge to tackle immigration reform.

“President Obama must reject programs that undermine American values and instead focus on providing millions of immigrants with a path to legalization while at the same time protecting Americans’ constitutional rights,” said Udi Ofer, the advocacy director of theNew York Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that participated in the protest.

Not only is the administration expanding the 287(g), but Napolitano also is continuing the use of the e-Verify database, another deeply flawed law enforcement measure. The database is used to check a person’s work eligibility, even though government studies have shown that e-Verify is full of errors that could cause hundreds of thousands of legal residents to lose their jobs.

The fact is that six months into the Obama’s administration, its actions are nothing more than a continuation of Bush’s backwards and unfair policies and have little to do with the President’s vehement promises to work for a fair and comprehensive immigration reform.

Those actions have many wondering if the “change” and “hope” mantras so effectively used during the presidential campaign were just convenient vote-getting gimmicks.

Wednesday was the first public protest by President Obama’s friends against some of his policies. But when it comes to the administration’s profoundly unjust immigration actions, it certainly won’t be the last.

aruiz@nydailynews.com
Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2009/07/30/2009-07-30_sense_of_betrayal_over_obamas_policies.html#ixzz0MnRWALS8

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response »

Immigration and Obama: Change We Can Believe in or More of the Same?

Written by admin on July 29th, 2009

By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet. Posted July 29, 2009.

Rights groups say that the Obama administration’s continuing the racial profiling begun by his predecessor.

Can a president who is, by any measure, far more forthright and lyrical than his predecessors about the pernicious effects of racism simultaneously promote and expand the racist policies of past administrations? This is the question vexing many in immigrants rights, Latino, civil rights and other circles following what feels to them like the contradictory messages about racial profiling coming from the Obama Administration in recent weeks.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »

Immigration and Obama: Change We Can Believe in or More of the Same?

Written by admin on July 29th, 2009

By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet. Posted July 29, 2009.

Rights groups say that the Obama administration’s continuing the racial profiling begun by his predecessor.

Can a president who is, by any measure, far more forthright and lyrical than his predecessors about the pernicious effects of racism simultaneously promote and expand the racist policies of past administrations? This is the question vexing many in immigrants rights, Latino, civil rights and other circles following what feels to them like the contradictory messages about racial profiling coming from the Obama Administration in recent weeks.

On the one hand, many observers applauded Obama’s July 15th speech to the NAACP convention and last week’s statements about the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Some found reassurance in statements like the one Obama made about the Gates incident last week: “…what we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.”

But when they heard the crushing sound of new reports documenting the effects of the Obama Administration’s treatment of immigrants, the president’s MLK-like cadences on racial profiling rang hollow; A recently released report by Syracuse University concluded that “immigration enforcement under the Obama Administration is returning to the unusually high levels that were reached under President Bush.” Critics say that thousands of immigrants — and hundreds of U.S. citizens– continue to be prosecuted, jailed and deported by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in no small part because of racial profiling.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Slow economy spells little work for day laborers

Written by admin on July 27th, 2009

by Elisabeth Arriero - Jul. 27, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic


Once at the center of controversy, day laborers have become increasingly scarce as residents make fewer complaints about them and their numbers dwindle.

Experts, leaders and laborers credit the changes to the slow economy, which has meant lower wages and less consistent work for day laborers. Some also attribute the decline to intimidation from anti-immigrant activism and legislation, leading many to leave the state in search of more promising markets.

It is a stark contrast from just a few years ago, when hundreds of day laborers would hit the streets of Valley cities each morning and visit work centers in search of jobs ranging from construction to house cleaning.

“The money was good then,” said Trinidad Vasquez of Mesa, who stood at Gilbert and Broadway roads last week hoping for work. “I could work seven days a week if I wanted to.”

These days, he hasn’t been so lucky.

Salvador Reza, coordinator for the Macehualli Work Center in Phoenix, said that at the site’s peak two years ago, 60 of the 120 day laborers there would find work. Now, the center averages 75 workers a day, with perhaps only 10 getting work, Reza said.

Day-laborer numbers have also dwindled on the streets, Glendale Vice Mayor Manny Martinez said.

“One reason . . . why is that a lot of them have gone back,” he said.

Nik Theodore, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-author of a 2006 study on day labor in the United States, said that unlike downturns in the 1990s or in 2001, this recession has hit the day-laborer population directly.

“This is the first one that hit the housing market so severely,” he said.

According to Theodore’s 2006 study, “On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States,” construction contractors employed 43 percent of day laborers. Day laborers’ top occupations were construction laborer, landscaper, painter, roofer and dry-wall installer.

But Theodore said that when construction projects across the country came to a halt, many day laborers lost their relatively stable income.

On a recent day at Gilbert and Broadway, laborer Julio Zayas noted that “only three people have been picked up today.” A few years ago, all 15 of the men would have found jobs.

Gone are the days when a worker would get hired for a job that took three days, Vasquez said. Four-hour shifts and odd jobs around the house are the new norm.

But Zayas said the day laborers who continue to come to the Valley’s corners each day do so because they have bills to pay in the United States and money to send to family members in their native country.

The situation creates a breeding ground for lower wages, less opportunity and unscrupulous employers, Reza said.

“It’s beginning to be a trend,” he said. “Usually, they wouldn’t go for less than $10. But in a situation this bad, someone offers $7 and they’ll go.”

Vasquez and Zayas said they have noticed a similar trend. While Vasquez said he doesn’t accept anything less than $8 per hour, he’s known of others who will take as low as $5 per hour.

Theodore said that although he doesn’t have any recent data, he suspects the median hourly wage has dropped substantially from its 2006 level of $10.

Perhaps the biggest threat to day laborers is increasingly tainted ethics. Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said reports of labor violations, non-payment of wages, and underpayment have risen since the recession began.

In 2005, one in two laborers reported having been cheated at least once.

“In better times, you would walk off a job after a day or two of not getting paid,” he said. “Now they’re working for longer periods of times because they’re desperate.”

Newman said more day-labor groups are banding together against the “pronounced and vitriolic anti-immigration sentiment” in Arizona that has silenced many workers‘ rights.

Rather than continue fighting for higher standards, Mesa pastor Magdalena Schwartz said she’s known many who just move to other states, such as Texas or California, or else back to their home country.

“This is the reality for a lot of people,” said Schwartz, of Discípulos del Reino. “They have to move because they can’t find a job here.”

But while many day laborers have left the state, Newman said he had faith that the ones who have stayed will get through the economic storm that has gripped the country.

“They’re used to living at the margins,” he said. “They make do by surviving on less and continuously looking for opportunities for work.”

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/07/27/20090727daylaborers0727.html

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Sandy Springs targets day laborer traffic

Written by admin on July 27th, 2009

Drivers hiring workers must pull off road; limits also placed on locations

By APRIL HUNT 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

andy Springs can’t do anything about the day laborers lingering at major Roswell Road intersections, hoping that a passing car will bring work.

That’s because anyone can be in the public right of way. Plus, the upscale city has admitted it has — and needs — those kinds of workers by adopting a new local law that focuses more on traffic than its does the people on the sidewalk.

“We are not stopping anyone from seeking employment or from hiring,” councilman Rusty Paul said. “We are just trying to be smart about safety.”

The problem has come from the traffic jams — and risks to pedestrians — created when a driver stops to offer work. Police Chief Terry Sult said the workers will ignore traffic in their rush to land a job, creating hazards and sudden stops on some of the city’s most heavily traveled roads.

In some cases, the workers swarm around a potential employer so quickly it blocks traffic completely, Sult said.

So under the new law, the city will fine any driver who doesn’t pull off and park to hire the workers. The citation is $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second and $1,000 and up to three months in jail for the third.

“There is an orderly way to do things,” Sult said. “We can’t have people slamming on their brakes because someone in front of them decides to stop and hire someone.”

The city weighed the issue for a month before approving it Tuesday. No one spoke out against the measure, and some churches have even signaled they approve of the push for safety.

The new law does limit where people can solicit work. The laborers face the same fines for being on private property, such as parking lots, unless the owners give permission.

The laborers also have to stay 300 feet away from freeway ramps, city attorney Wendell Willard said.

That distance — that of a football field — should keep traffic on busy I- 285 and Ga. 400 moving, he added.

Traffic flow, and the hiring process, would also run more smoothly with more job centers.

City officials said they hope the new law will encourage more of the hiring centers like the one that Holy Spirit Catholic Church opened on Northwoods Drive earlier this year.

There, workers register for jobs daily and the staff helps keep track of there comings and goings as a way to protect them from being mistreated. Plans are also under way to offer language classes for workers as they wait.

“I am very proud of our community for doing this,” Mayor Eva Galambos said. “We are doing the right thing by everyone.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/sandy-springs-targets-day-100983.html

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

*****ACTION ALERT Ask DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano “Why are YOU proliferating racial profiling?”

Written by admin on July 24th, 2009

*****ACTION ALERT
Ask DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano “Why are YOU proliferating racial profiling?” 

Janet Napolitano is a guest on the Bill Maher show today. Please email the producer and share the devastating impact of ICE ACESS and 287(g) programs in your community. Bill Maher should know to ask Napolitano why she insists on proliferating racial profiling through the 287(g) program.

Submit a question for Bill though his HBO site:

1) Register for an HBO account (it’s free!) 
2) Login to your account
3) Submit a question by clicking “Reply to this Topic” at: http://boards.hbo.com/topic/Maher-Overtime/Submit-Questions-Overtime/2000007509

It is more powerful if you share the specific impact on your community but here are some sample questions/comments: 

1) Tell Napolitano that cosmetic changes to a fundamentally flawed 287(g) program will do nothing to alleviate the severe civil rights abuses and the problems of deputizing local police to enforce federal immigration law.  

2)  Why have you expanded the 287(g) program when it is well documented that it leads to public safety concerns, racial profiling, and civil rights abuses? 
3) Recently your boss President Obama denounced racial profiling. Yet why do you continue to contract with pronounced racist sheriffs, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who use the program to persecute people of color? 
Go to facebook and post these questions on Bill’s Maher page as well.
All you have to do is become a fan and you can post commnets on his page, after you are done you can un fan yourself from his page. 
http://www.facebook.com/Maher?ref=ts

If you twitter sign this petition : http://act.ly/bf

In Solidarity
The National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Rally at Bill Maher Taping: Ask Napolitano about DHS Racial Profiling!! // For Immediate Release

Written by admin on July 23rd, 2009

For Immediate Release // Excuse Cross Postings // Please Forward

Contact (Engish y Español):  Loyda Alvarado (323) 434- 8115 

What:     Press Conference, Rally, and Demonstration 

Why:      To Urge Bill Maher to Ask Secretary Napolitano about DHS Racial Profiling Practices, 287(g), Joe Arpaio

Where:  7800 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA   (Near corner of Beverly and Fairfax)

When:   Friday, July 24, 2009

Time:     5:30 to 7 pm

(Los Angeles)  Immigrant, civil, and labor rights advocates will hold a rally and press conference outside the taping of Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday at 5:30 pm.   Protestors will urge Mr. Maher to ask tough questions of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano about her relationship with the notorious Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio.  Specifically, Secretary Napolitano should be asked why DHS has not severed its contract with Arpaio (Napolitano’s hometown sheriff), and why DHS opted last week to expand a failed experimental Bush immigration enforcement policy that has demonstrably resulted in mass racial profiling.

During his press conference yesterday, President Obama used very strong language to denounce racial profiling practices by local police.   However, last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the expansion of the widely-criticized 287(g) program, which outsources federal immigration enforcement authority to local sheriffs.  In recent years, Joe Arpaio has become a symbol of the program’s failure, as his use of 287(g) has resulted widespread allegations of racial profiling.  The Department of Justice recently launched a high-profile investigation of Arpaio’s practices.    Indeed, Sheriff Arpaio’s relationship with neo-nazis has been noted by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon; Arpaio himself has said it’s an honor to be called KKK; and he has even posed for photos with high-profile neo-nazis.     The New York Times has published several editorials calling for the termination of the 287(g) program in general and Arpaio’s contract in particular.  Those editorials are available here,  here, here, and most recently, here.  

Salvador Reza, a community leader in Phoenix, issued the following statement:  ”Secretary Napolitano has the legal authority and the moral obligation to end Arpaio’s reign of terror in her hometown of Phoenix.  Instead, she is expanding the 287(g) program and intends to make the country look like Maricopa County.  We hope Bill Maher has the courage to ask hard questions of Secretary Napolitano.”

###

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

New Orleans day laborers want wage theft criminalized

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

Facing South Magazine:

Post-Katrina New Orleans has become the center of a national effort to protect migrant day laborers from wage theft.

As Facing South has covered, following the 2005 hurricane season, the Gulf Coast region saw an explosion in its Hispanic population, particularly in New Orleans where migrant workers came to fill the construction jobs that opened up during the post-Katrina recovery effort. Estimates indicate the New Orleans metro area’s Hispanic population has tripled in the last three years, from about 60,000 to about 180,000.

Many of New Orleans’ Hispanic migrant workers have faced rampant wage theft, coercion and abuse. Following the hurricanes, in what labor rights advocates have called the “disaster after the disaster,” hundreds of contractors along the Gulf Coast employed migrant workers to clean up debris, repair damaged roofs and restore flood-soaked buildings, Contractors then reneged on promises to pay workers after that work was completed. The exploitation has been especially rampant in New Orleans, where thousands of workers employed by construction contractors to rebuild homes are still routinely shortchanged and denied promised wages once the work is completed.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Money woes may force day-labor center to close

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

by Connie Cone Sexton - Jul. 21, 2009 10:16 AM
The Arizona Republic

The land in and around the Macehualli Work Center in northeast Phoenix has been a field of dreams for many years for Salvador Reza, who runs the day-labor center.

He worked to create a place to help men and women find temporary day jobs, but also wanted to develop the land into housing and possibly, a two-story employment and training center.

But now, Reza’s ability to hold on to the site at 16801 N. 25th St. near Bell Road is in jeopardy, he said Monday. Two years ago, Reza’s organization entered into an agreement with Chicanos por la Causa. “Unfortunately, the economic crisis hit and CPLC was not able to fulfill its commitment,” he wrote in a letter to supporters, alerting them to the need for funding.

Edmundo Hidalgo, president and chief executive officer of CPLC, confirmed the situation. “At the time, when we conceptualized the mixed-used project, the residential portion was to provide resources because of some of the shortages on the commercial side. But then the residential portion was no longer viable.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Immigrant actors tell their story

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

Day laborers in Los Angeles offer impromptu street theater between jobs.

By Jennifer Bleyer | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

LOS ANGELES - Until recently, Gildardo Maldonado’s experience as an actor did not extend far beyond the small role he once had in a Christmas passion play back home in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Xico Paredes had even less experience performing, although he had always loved singing songs and telling clownish jokes for his friends’ amusement.

The two men are normally part of the vast corps of immigrant day laborers who gather by the thousands on street corners and curbs across Los Angeles every morning, hoping to be hired to mow lawns, pour concrete, clean swimming pools, or hammer roof tiles.

But lately, Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Paredes have also become amateur thespians. As members of Teatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras – Day Laborer Theater Without Borders – they are part of a Spanish-language theater troupe of day laborers who perform for their fellow workers at job sites around the city.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Day Laborers Await Court Date for ‘Peddling’ Tickets

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

Written by Alex Garcia, Sun Contributing Writer

San Fernando Sun

“For now, we feel good because we’re not going to pay anything [right now].”

Those were the words of Oscar Velasquez, a Guatemalan day laborer who showed up last week at the branch of the Superior Court of Los Angeles in the city of San Fernando to comply with a ticket for “peddling” received May 19 while waiting for work outside a Home Depot store on Foothill Blvd.

Instead of paying for the ticket, Velasquez and five other day laborers requested a court date to go before a judge. They were given a Dec. 17 court date to present their case before a judge, who will decide if they must pay the citations or not.

“We don’t know if they’re going to rescind the tickets we have,” said Velasquez, who last year spent three days in the city of San Fernando jail for not paying a previous infraction.

As the San Fernando Valley Sun/El Sol reported last week, dozens of day laborers at the site have been issued “peddling” tickets by the San Fernando Police Department (SFPD) since last year.

Their crime: entering the parking lot of the commercial plaza where the home improvement and several other businesses are located. They must stay out on the sidewalk while waiting for someone to hire them for menial jobs.

The day laborers say the citations issued are a form of harassment by SFPD officers who they claim have even cited them while they exited restaurants in the plaza still with coffee in their hands. Velasquez said he was even ordered by a SFPD officer to go from the sidewalk into the parking lot so he could give him a ticket.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Day labor site growing despite new laws

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

Sandra Emerson, Staff Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

UPLAND - The group of day laborers who once stood in the Home Depot parking lot to wait for work have moved their location to the sidewalk along Mountain Avenue.

The Upland City Council approved a no-trespassing ordinance in March to give businesses an extra hand in preventing people from congregating in their parking lots without the owners’ permission.

Within the past few weeks a larger group of day laborers has been seen standing within the public right of way.

“Actually what might be the issue is on the property they scattered in groups where they would blend in with shoppers,” said Robin Hvidston, member of the Minuteman project. “It may just be that the visibility of the numbers are now apparent because they’re standing together.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Promised Land

Written by admin on July 21st, 2009

The stigma of ‘illegal aliens’ makes migrant workers targeted prey

New Orleans City Business
July 20, 2009
by Richard A. Webster

Hours after Councilman Arnie Fielkow proposed an ordinance that would protect Hispanic day laborers by criminalizing wage theft, WRNO 99.5 FM talk radio show host John Osterlind took to the airwaves to express his disappointment.

“My head is spinning and I’m an Arnie Fielkow fan,” Osterlind said on his June 30 broadcast. “Do we want laws on the books to protect illegal immigrants?”

Osterlind opened the phone lines and the first caller, Marcus, lashed out at Fielkow’s proposal.

“Most of the (day laborers), if you get real close to them, you smell liquor,” Marcus said. “They’re drug addicts, alcoholics and most are illegal aliens.”

The next caller, Jalinda from Thibodeaux, took Marcus to task.

“Just because they’re here illegally doesn’t mean we have the right to treat them like dogs. If you make a verbal agreement pay the guys,” she said.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Day Laborers on Long Island, Left at the Curb

Written by admin on May 11th, 2009
NYTimes
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: May 10, 2009

Just south of the commuter train tracks in Huntington Station, Long Island, a weary pileup of streets forms a little district of desperation.

Down along New York Avenue, Fairground Avenue and Depot Road, men in groups of a half-dozen or more linger by a gas station, a bar, a tire-repair shop. They are Latino day laborers, waiting for trucks to pull up with jobs to do.

When times were good, there was lots of work. But hardly anyone is building or renovating now, and the men go days and weeks without being hired. Wages have plummeted, and when a job is done, the men are often paid nothing and told to get lost. The sidewalks they have claimed are small outposts of the national pain created by the burst housing bubble.

The men have no safety net: no unemployment insurance, no food stamps. They are nobody’s responsibility, and nobody pays them much heed, except those who find them distasteful or frightening and have pushed for laws to shoo them out of sight. It’s like this across Long Island. In Huntington Station, jobless laborers sleep in the woods. They do the same out east, in lush Southampton, and in points between.

The presence of an underclass stranded by a lack of work, with no place to exchange sweat and skill for a day’s pay, is an affront to decency in a place that enshrines the work ethic and owes these men so much. In this kingdom of home and lawn maintenance, they blew leaves, trimmed hedges and grass, spread mulch, painted houses and patched drywall. There is little demand for the informal labor market now, and the men who made it work have been left at the curb.

Long Island owes them gratitude, but — gratitude? Are you kidding? The men are lucky they aren’t being harassed and racially profiled by the police, swept into federal custody, as local authorities are doing to Latino immigrants across the country.

Suffolk County has begun a police crackdown on gangs and drugs in Huntington Station, which are a problem there, as in any poor community. But outreach to day laborers — to help them assimilate, find jobs or housing, or perhaps go home — is harder to find.

There is a fenced lot on Depot Road with benches and portable toilets — a day laborer hiring site supported by Huntington Town. It is not working as well as planned. To gain the tiniest advantage, the men have dispersed ever farther from the site. Even on a bright spring morning, all those men standing around give the neighborhood a feel of disarray and aimlessness.

The same could be said of government efforts to deal with day laborers, which boil down to a question: Do we welcome you, or try to push you off the streets, and the economic ladder?

In places like Huntington and Southampton, some residents are attacking the problem with level heads and kind hearts. Volunteers in Huntington house homeless laborers in churches every night, all winter. Sister Margaret Smyth, a Roman Catholic nun who has spent years serving the poor on the East End of Long Island, works with Southampton’s day laborers, fighting homelessness, hunger and wage theft.

“We’re getting more and more cases of workers not just underpaid, but just plain not being paid at all,” Sister Margaret said. “We take them to court. Poor Southampton court system, I must have 40 cases with them.”

When she’s not being her own nonprofit legal service agency, Sister Margaret is a travel agent, raising money to buy immigrants air fare home.

“I’ve never bought so many tickets,” she said. “I just bought four in the last week and a half. We’ve gotten very good at it. I joined a club on the Internet, and with Spirit Airlines, I can get a one-way ticket to Guatemala for $120.”

The immigration problem is far bigger than Sister Margaret. It’s a federal failure that has fallen into the laps of local governments. But reform is finally showing signs of moving forward in Washington, and local government would be smart to help it along, starting now.

It could step in to magnify Sister Margaret’s labors. It could support nonprofit agencies and help the men to organize themselves, to run hiring sites across the Island. It could fight the crimes of wage theft and harassment. It could give the men soup. It could abandon reflexive hostility to day laborers as the equivalent of a pest-control problem.

It could act decently, without starting a huge fight over immigration policy.

“We can always pray for a miracle,” Sister Margaret said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11mon4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Hate brews in Maricopa ~ Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres

Written by admin on May 11th, 2009

Huffington Post
May 11, 2009
By Valeria Fernández - Phoenix, Arizona

Disturbing video of armed neo-Nazi supporters of Sheriff Joe Arpaio trying to incite violence during a peaceful protest against alleged brutality in Maricopa County jails has human and civil-rights groups worried.
YouTube Preview Image The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) andAssociation of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) criticized Arpaio for not condemning the actions of his supporters and instead getting his picture taken with the neo-Nazis.

On Saturday, May 2nd close to 3,000 people marched for six miles to protest the Sheriff’s alleged abuses of civil rights inside and outside his jails as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration.

The march was inspired by the cases of several women who reported intimidation and brutality by jail guards. Hundreds of prisoners reportedly started a hunger strike to denounce jail conditions and treatment.

The protest ended outside the Durango jail complex where the marchers were met with a handful of neo-Nazis stepping on the Mexican flag, doing the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute and yelling racial slurs. Some observers said that the heavy presence of Phoenix police, who are not controlled by theSheriff’s Office, was what kept violence from erupting.

Phoenix, the seat of Maricopa County and capital of Arizona, is the fifth largest city in the United States with a population of over 1,500,000. Maricopa County’s population is roughly 3,900,000.

Photos and videos circulating on white-supremacist web pages show the Sheriff getting his picture taken with them. J.T Ready, one of the neo-Nazis that stepped on the Mexican flag compared the actions of Arpaio to those of Adolph Hitler, saying the latter was his “hero.”

“The hate and bigotry of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his supporters must be exposed, confronted and overcome”, said Pablo Alvarado, director of NDLON. “What is happening in Maricopa County is nothing short of a human rights crisis on United States soil”.

During a press conference outside the jail complex on Saturday, Arpaio complained that the protesters caused him to have to put extra security in the jail. When asked whether or not he was concerned about attracting support from neo-Nazis, he dodged the question, replying: “I arrest anyone who breaks the law.”

Later his office issued a statement saying that he had no control over who shows up at these protests.

“Any time that white supremacists groups and other groups like that support Sheriff Arpaio, it speaks for itself,” said Bertha Lewis, executive director of ACORN. “They know one of their own. In fact, he actually is very proud to be associated with the KKK,” [Ku Klux Klan] she added.

Lewis comment was in reference to a remark made by Arpaio on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in 2007. He was asked to respond to critics who question his tactics in enforcing illegal immigration. “Well, you know, they call you KKK. They did me. I think it’s an honor, right? It means we’re doing something,” Arpaio said, according to transcripts of the show.

The local Anti-Defamation League has warned that the current negative atmosphere against undocumented immigrants in the state, fed by local politicians like Arpaio, is attracting hate groups to Arizona.

In the past, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon criticized Arpaio for conducting immigration raids at the request of individuals related to white supremacist groups.

Other videos of the neo-Nazis:

The Association: Joe Arpaio and Neo-Nazi friendship exposed!
(This video ends with footage of Arpaio talking with “white nationalist” demonstrators.)

Mexican vs Neo-nazi white minutemen Sheriff Arpaio supporters
(Filmed by A.J Alexander)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/crossover-dreams/hate-brews-in-maricopa-di_b_201397.html

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

NDLON Statement on Exchange Between Arpaio and Neo-Nazi Supporters and Planned Expansion of “Posse” Program

Written by admin on May 7th, 2009

 

(Phoenix, Arizona)  On Saturday, an estimated 4,000 people marched peacefully for six miles from the Maricopa County Sheriff Office to its “tent city” jail to draw attention to an emerging civil rights crisis in the nation’s fifth largest city.  The march was nearly disrupted by the actions of several, well-known white supremacists who hurled racial epithets in an effort- as the Anti-Defamation League noted- to incite violence.

Alarming video footage and photos on white supremacist web pages have surfaced documenting an amicable exchange between Joe Arpaio and his neo-nazi supporters. The videos show Arpaio taking photos with white supremacists and passing along information about the marchers’ progress.

In the past, Arpaio has been criticized by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for directing law enforcement resources at the request of white supremacists.   Just yesterday, the Sheriff issued a press release announcing the expansion of his “Posse Program” which deputizes and arms local vigilantes.

The following is a statement of Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in response to recent events: 

“The hate and bigotry of Sheriff Arpaio and his supporters must be exposed, confronted, and overcome.  What is happening in Maricopa County is nothing short of a human rights crisis on United States soil.  

“It is particularly troubling that this is happening in John McCain’s backyard and in Janet Napolitano’s hometown, as both have taken a prominent role in efforts to reform immigration law.   Indeed, it is inexcusable that Janet Napolitano allows another hour to pass without terminating the 287(g) contract between her office and Joe Arpaio. 

“Above all, we are concerned for the safety of migrants, Latinos, and those who speak out in Arizona.   Arpaio has shown a propensity to retaliate against his opponents, and he has now demonstrated a willingness to encourage the same dangerous, right-wing militias Janet Napolitano warned the country about last week.  

“On behalf of our 41 member organizations, we call upon the White House to swiftly intervene in order to restore the rule of law and to ensure community safety in Maricopa County.” 

YouTube Preview Image

####

National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Contact: Yadira Hernandez (707) 318 2771
for more information on this campaign: http://ndlon.org

Posted in Arizona Campaign, Uncategorized | No Responses »

« Older Entries