gaithersblog.net

The time: 10:54 am, Sunday, September 10, 2006.

The place: Grace United Methodist Church, Gaithersburg, Maryland.

I’ll let y’all draw your own conclusions.

Announcement here:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF PLANS FOR
A CLOSED EXECUTIVE SESSION

Notice to the general public is hereby given that the Mayor and City Council of Gaithersburg plan to conduct a closed executive session on Monday, September 25, 2006, immediately following the scheduled joint work session of the Mayor and City Council, pursuant to Section 10-508(a)(7), State Government Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, to consult with counsel to obtain legal advice. The topics to be discussed include various legal issues related to permitting/zoning and operation of a day laborer center, and enforcement of zoning regulations. The closed executive session will be held pursuant to a motion properly adopted at the joint work session scheduled for Monday, September 25, 2006.

The City has posted the outcomes of the September 20 meeting of the Planning Commission. All items on the agenda (which I summarized here) were approved, along with eight plats for Watkins Mill Town Center, also known as Casey West.

I’ve so far found three articles on this issue in the Spanish-language press, all by the reporter Luisa Fernanda Montero. The Madrid, Spain-based EFE news service has an English-language version of one of their stories avialable, carrried here by notimexico. Quoting,

Maryland town to jail laborers who don’t obey anti-trespass order

By Luisa Fernanda Montero.

Gaithersburg, Maryland, Sep 20 (EFE).- Authorities in this town near Washington instituted Wednesday a policy of arresting for trespassing the mainly Hispanic day laborers who traditionally gather at a local parking lot to await potential employers.

The disagreement between the laborers and local officials has sparked a series of conflicts in Gaithersburg, where for months officials have tried without success to relocate the more than 100 Latino immigrants who each day gather in the lot next to Grace United Methodist Church to wait to be hired for the day by various firms, mainly construction companies.

[…]

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz said Wednesday that the closing of the parking lot was not an effective measure and the city was continuing to seek a truly viable solution.

He said that given city budget constraints, the problem has also been finding an appropriate place to establish a labor center.

“They’ve decided to take us out by force,” said Rev. David Rocha, a Methodist clergyman and leader of the day laborers, on Wednesday.

“The majority of the immigrants are here because they can’t get ahead in their countries. They pay taxes and … don’t take jobs away from Americans. By limiting their options we’re promoting crimes like falsification of documents,” said Barbara Thomas, a neighbor who said she had never felt threatened by the workers.

There’s another EFE story in Spanish, which is a little different than the one in English, on terra.com. (Correction: I just realized that this story is from August 28. But it is still interesting so I’ll leave it up.) From the Bablefish translation,

“all the day laborers are not undocumented”, clarified to VĂ­ctor Ramirez, state delegate by the District 47, that noticed that the city is going to have to find an exit because “of any way the workers are going to be there, they are not going away to go”.

For the day laborers, meanwhile, the days happen time and time again, with the same uncertainty. Sometimes there is work, sometimes no.

“Much people do not have confidence here to us, because here we are dressed like workers, they think that we are malefactory”, said to EFE Mario Ramirez, a Salvadoran day laborer who has been four years in the United States.

“They have come and have been talking with us and they have given account of that not we are delinquent, but that we are people worker”, she added Ramirez, which she emphasized in which he and their companions want “to be part of the solution, nonpart of the problem”.

Finally, Montero has an article in the local paper El Pregonero, which is published by the Archdiocese of Washington. Here’s from text from the Bablefish translation:

Every day near one hundred workers they meet in the parking that separates the United Methodist Church of Gaithersburg and a well-known commercial center, located to the left margin of Route 355, with the hope to find a a temporary job that the sustenance for its families allows them to gain honestly.

But two years ago, a group of resident neighbors of the street Walter, adjacent to the property, initiated an aggressive campaign to evacuate to them, ignoring the predisposition of the city to relocate to them of ordered and gradual way. As anything they have served to the attempts of dialogues between neighbors and day laborers, to the point that, in several occasions, the police has seen itself in the obligation take part to preserve the security of both groups.

“They entered the country illegally, they are undocumented, that it is a crime”, it affirmed a man who carried the American flag but that he refused to give its name, limiting itself to vociferate that the day laborers had to leave, while the workers, the activists and the monks who supported to them lead a press conference.

[…]

“the city of Geithersburg has demonstrated that it does not have the ability nor the leadership to find the solution”, it asserted David Rocha, leader of the day laborers and shepherd of the Methodist church Way of Life.

Note that the URL for this article at El Pregonero will likely change next week when it moves from being the “actual”, or current edition to the archive; if I forget to change it then it can probably be found by changing the word “actual” in the URL to the string “09-21-06″. [Updated 9/29/06 with new URLs]
This week’s editions of Washington Hispanic, El Tiempo Latino aren’t up on the web yet, and WTOP Noticias doesn’t have a story yet, but I expect that they all will have coverage eventually. I’ll update here if they do.

Update: Here’s one in an El Salvador paper, translated by Google (Google & Altavista both provide translation services, and either can give better results depending on the style used in the original):

“We do not come to rob nor to kill, we come to work”, assured Ricardo Morales, a young person who interrupted his studies of law in El Salvador to prove luck in the United States.

Lead monks, activists, neighbors and day laborers met to reject the decision of the city and marched with placards until the doors of the mayorship, where once again the conversations began to try to find a solution that benefits the workers, who contribute with their work to the economy of the zone.

Update: El Tiempo Latino’s story is here, Google translation here:

Reverendo the David Rocha, of the Methodist Church, that headed a manifestation of day laborers Wednesday, indicated that the complaints are infundadas and that behind all this “are racism feelings”.

The last year neighboring and members of the civil grouping Minuteman truncated the plans of opening of a center of use to a block of the habitual parking. The City approved to repair the premises to the service of the day laborers. The rent was paid by the county of Montgomery, but never used.

Yesterday, Thursday, the day laborers were transferred to the parking of that premises, still without preparing, located in the 17 N. Frederick.

Washington Hispanic’s story is here, Google translation here:

The city of Gaithersburg at any moment has expressed its support to the day laborers, but due to political pressures and of some residents of the zone the allocation of the premises for the workers was not approved, which already are even rented by five years.

But, before the order of the day laborers, the city decided to yield the exteriors to them of the premises in temporary mention of way.

“The city signed contract so that it works in the center of use for day laborers, but did not obtain the approval”, indicates to Gustavo Towers, executive director of House of Maryland.