gaithersblog.net

First, I want to make it clear: I do not in the least intend this to be an anti-day-laborer or anti-immigrant blog. However, I do want to provide information on events in Gaithersburg, and I hope that everyone understands that this has in fact been one of the biggest, if not the biggest story in Gaithersburg for nearly the entire time I’ve been doing this blog, since late August. Also, I want to make clear that to the extent that I have a problem with the way things are going, it has less to do with the day laborers themselves (although I do wish they’d be a little more respectful of us and our property, and I do want the City to find an appropriate place for them to solicit work) as with the media, advocates and government officials who attempt to exploit and distort the news about the laborers to advance their own agendas. I try, in my posts, to be generally supportive of those who are making positive efforts to find real, practical solutions.

Anyway, one thing I intend to do over the coming weeks is to try to minimize the number of posts I put up with links to news reports about the day laborer situation, so that this issue pops up to the top of the post stack a little less often. Toward that end, I will simply put up a single post today and append to that any additional links I encounter over the rest of this week. As I add links, I will change the title to reflect the update, but the permalink will remain the same. If I come across a news item that merits special attention, such as the Washington Post editorial this morning, I will add it as a separate post.

Update 3: The Gazette has two items on the day laborers today, an article and an editorial. The article is entitled “County defies city’s ruling“:

But within hours of the enforcement last week, county officials let it be known to the day laborers — mostly Latino men, many of whom are also illegal immigrants — that they could use a nearby site under lease to the county government.

That site, a vacant commercial building and parking lot at 17 North Frederick, was slated last year to become an official employment center in Gaithersburg, but city officials rejected the plan, saying it was an inappropriate neighborhood location.

Early Thursday morning, a dozen day laborers were at the new lot pulling weeds and readying the overgrown site for their daily business. They were led in prayer by the Revs. David Rocha and Simon Bautista, who have advocated for the men in months of debate.

[…]

Humpton held an impromptu meeting with those gathered. Responding to the St. Martin’s proposal he reminded the group that temporary trailers next to City Hall had been proposed and rejected last month.

‘‘I’m a realist,” Humpton said. ‘‘My reaction … is that we’ll have as just much a fight from the community over there [as] we do at Walker Avenue — that people will come out and say, ‘Aha, City Council, you’re moving it from one area to another.’”

He predicted it would take a ‘‘huge coalition” to support the idea and get it through the City Council.

Several religious leaders and Latino advocates met privately Thursday morning to continue work on the idea.

The focus of the group — which includes representatives of Grace Church, St. Martin’s, Episcopal Church of the Ascension and the Latino advocacy nonprofit Casa de Maryland — is to create a broader coalition of religious and civic groups in support of St. Martin’s offer and, in the meantime, to help supervise the day laborers gathering at the county site at 17 North Frederick.

If only the local religious leaders had been willing to build this coalition months ago, when the Day Labor Task Force recommended it; perhaps we wouldn’t be having this stalemate now. Also, I expect that if CASA de Maryland’s role in this is more than as an interested party providing some input and advice to the coalition, we can expect significant public resistance to the arrangement.

The editorial makes it clear that the Gazette has no thought for the residents of any neighborhood that might be home to a day labor center:

[…]

Gaithersburg can’t wait for another winter to come and go with no place for these workers to shelter themselves from the elements while they wait for jobs that others consider too menial. And the situation mustn’t be encumbered by debate over federal immigration policy and reform.

This is one thing I still just don’t get. By and large, the jobs that these laborers get are outside, even in the winter. Can anyone explain to me why they need better conditions while they are waiting then they have while they are working? In Herndon, they wait outside under a canopy, 12 months a year, and are reportedly happy to do so. Propane space heaters — as are used on construction sites — can also be used to provide some releif when it gets particularly cold.

In more than a year of trying, examining almost 30 locations, about all Gaithersburg has been able to offer up in recent days is the suggestion that churches help with bus fare to ferry the workers to existing county-supported labor centers in Wheaton and Silver Spring.

The county has more experience with labor centers, witness its involvement nearly two decades ago when workers gathered before dawn each morning in the parking lot of a Takoma Park convenience store, prompting the first center operated by an advocacy group./p>

The county has more experience with labor centers, this is true. The success of those centers is open to debate and highly dependant on how you define “success”. If success is measured by the number of day laborers getting jobs at the centers and the lack of day laborers remaining at ad-hoc sites near the centers, they are failures. If success is measured by the ability of politicians to say they’ve dealt with the problem, or by the steady stream of money flowing from the public coffers into CASA de Maryland’s bank accounts, then yes, they’ve been highly successful.

Gaithersburg’s leaders still have a number of options. They include supporting a center in the county-leased building, working with Saint Martin for buildings at the church property, coming up with another centrally located site or continuing to fret and sit on their hands.

Remind me again why it has to be central to Gaithersburg, other than that the County has some agenda to put it there? Many of the laborers come to the existing site on busses, so they could ride busses to some other site as well. I’m not aware that any of the Gazette’s editors live near this location, surely they could recommend locations near their own homes. Or perhaps the Gazette’s editors live where no busses go.

Perhaps the best option is to admit they’re incapable of making a decision and let the county come to the rescue. When the mayor and council are up for re-election, the voters can decide whether that’s the kind of leadership they want.

Whatever they decide, I certainly hope that we do a better job selecting leaders than has the County as a whole.

Update 2: Aparently Martin O’Malley and Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) are having a press conference today at CASA de Maryland’s facility in Silver Spring:

O’Malley’s news conference with Richardson today will be in Silver Spring at CASA of Maryland, where he will aim to bring out more Latino voters.

Other than the comment on mocoprogressive that first tipped me off to the event, this sentence in the Post is the only mention I’ve been able to find regarding the press conference. If I find more information I may make a separate post about this.

Update 1: I missed this when it was put up a few days ago at the Washington Post: Video of Gaithersburg worker protest

Laborer site still sought

Publish Date: 09/23/06

By Sonia Boin
News-Post Staff

GAITHERSBURG — Day laborers who were threatened with arrest if they continued to gather at a commercial parking lot in Gaithersburg have moved up the street to a site Montgomery County is leasing.

But that doesn’t settle a yearlong search for a permanent site that can accommodate an employment center without bringing down a hail of complaints from neighbors or store customers.

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz said the city is waiting to see if another shopping center, one that has an adequate existing building, will agree to let the laborers use its premises.

“If that doesn’t come to fruition,” he said, “we might ask the county for a place close to the city limits.”

Mr. Katz was less than enthusiastic about a new possibility raised Wednesday, a field across from St. Martin’s Catholic Church with a trailer to accommodate the laborers.

He said the laborers would stand on the lawn, but potential employers can’t park on Md. 355 to pick them up.

I have also heard that there are no sewer connections on that lot, so that portable toilets would be required; something that some advocates have in the past identified as unacceptable, even though many of the laborers work on construction sites where such toilets are a standard part of the work environment.

Asked for their take on seeking a place outside the city limits for the average 100 laborers who gather every day, councilmembers who represent Gaithersburg and the upcounty said their minds are open.

Michael Knapp said he doesn’t have a problem with a site outside the city.

The article doesn’t say if this includes locations in his district, which includes parts of Montgomery County immediately to the north of the City limits, or if he’s thinking more to the east, south and west of the City, which would still leave it in Mr. Andrews’ district. Mr. Knapp was the most active of all the Council members in the early, secretive meetings among day laborer advocates and City and County officials and staff which resulted in the leasing by the County of the Gaithersburg site now being used without permit by Rev. Rocha and the day laborers, in collusion with Mr. Romer’s office.

Phil Andrews, who represents Gaithersburg and Rockville, said, “Gaithersburg needs to keep at it. It’s important to find a location that works for residents and day laborers and can be supervised.”

Asked about a location outside the city, Mr. Andrews said he has an open mind.

I’m surprised that Mr. Andrews has expressed any opinion at all on this issue; as far as I’ve been able to determine, he has been almost completely absent from this debate, and has done little to nothing to support his Gaithersburg constituents in their dispute with the County. In the one opportunity I had to speak with him, he stated that he thought these sorts of operational details were not the responsibility of the legislative branch, an ethical stance that in my opinion serves no purpose when his colleague is attempting to place a day labor site right under Mr. Andrews’ nose.

In an editorial in today’s Post, we learn:

Even after examining some 30 sites over the past nine months, the city has come up empty-handed: Some prospective neighbors, it seems, always object.

No, it isn’t a problem with the neighbors in most cases. It is a problem with the property owners. It has been extraordinarily difficult to find a landlord willing to rent for this purpose. In the very few cases where the landlord has been willing (or possibly unwitting), the unsuitability of the site for virtually any use and consequent long-term inability to find a tenant may well have been calculated into the landlord’s decision. Does the Post think that the City should accept any site offered, no matter how inappropriate? Or perhaps the Post thinks that the City should exercise eminent domain to solve this problem, forcing some property owner to relinquish his rights for the day laborers?

Gaithersburg’s dilemma is no different from that of other growing suburban localities in this area and elsewhere, where day laborers — most of them Hispanic and many of them illegal immigrants — are in demand. Like it or not, they are an integral part of the local economy, and their services are welcomed as house painters, construction workers, landscapers and odd-jobbers.

If they are an integral part of the local economy, why are so many of them standing around doing nothing? Does the Post suggest that the City has an obligation to warehouse surplus laborers? When most businessmen find insufficient demand for their product at a location, they typically abandon that location. Does the Post believe that day laborers should be immune from this risk?

Like other jurisdictions, Gaithersburg has been saddled with a problem that is the product of the federal government’s failed immigration policies. But also like other jurisdictions, Gaithersburg must make accommodations for a group of workers from whom the city and its residents clearly benefit.

“Must” is strong language. One would think from this editorial that there was some law that compelled all local jurisdictions to set up employment centers for day laborers. In fact, there is no such law, and the Post must know this. Moreover, there are those who argue that such centers, to the extent that they serve illegal immigrants, are themselves illegal. I myself wish to look past this question but for the Post to say that Gaithersburg must make these accommodations seems a bit much. In fact, if the Post were to look at the situation a bit more carefully, I believe that they would find that very few local jurisdictions have set up day labor centers. This is not because there aren’t day laborers in other jurisdictions, but rather because few of those jurisdictions were willing to try to do something about them — in most cases the problems — and yes there are problems — are simply allowed to fester.

In Silver Spring and Wheaton, Montgomery County has been operating day-labor centers for some time, without incident.

And without much benefit, either. I encourage the Post to visit those day-labor centers, and see first hand all the laborers who are not getting hired, and then to drive around in the area of those day labor centers and see first hand all the informal laborer pickup sites. Why do so many laborers avoid the day labor centers? Please read the report of Gaithersburg’s Day Labor Task Force:

Despite the desire to provide all these educational and social service opportunities, the main thing the workers did at all of the centers was to wait for work. In Silver Spring the workers waited in an outbuilding sitting on chairs, talking, and perhaps eating. In Herndon they waited under a cloth canopy, unless they were called in for English classes. In Wheaton the men watched a flat panel TV, browsed the internet on computers and talked. (The internet access was clearly unrestricted.) The Wheaton ESOL classes were held in the evening because the workers did not want classes to take them away from the opportunity of getting a job. It seemed that the Herndon center did more to encourage the workers to learn English, and their greater involvement in self-management presented opportunities for self improvement and the ability to make a difference in their own lives. The permit condition which prevented the Herndon center from providing social services at the center did not keep the workers from receiving services. It was also true that if services were primarily available at employment centers, workers who obtained long term employment would no longer have access to these services. Furthermore, women who did not visit the centers (we didn’t see any women in Wheaton or Herndon) couldn’t benefit from the centers’ services.

[…]

The ability of the centers to obtain participation by all of the day laborers was critical to their success, and was not uniformly observed on the task force visits. Herndon partnered their center with an anti-solicitation ordinance and zoning regulation giving property owners a duty to prevent congregation of workers. This seemed to be effective. […]

The Silver Spring center appeared to be particularly unsuccessful in convincing all workers to seek work at the center. On the day of the task force visit at least 30 men were congregating at the 7-Eleven less than a mile from the center. The employment coordinator for CASA indicated she was aware of this problem and that CASA encouraged these men to use the center, but they could not require them to do so.

Back to the Post editorial,

[…] a day-labor center makes eminent good sense; it would move the workers indoors and provide an organizational structure, toilets and possibly classrooms to teach English.

Just because there are indoor toilets available doesn’t mean that the laborers will use them. The laborers don’t like to be indoors because they can’t see the contractors when they come. This is also why so few of them make use of the English classes — they don’t want to be occupied if there’s an opportunity for work.

A center could still be established at the county-leased site, but the city objects.

The City objects because the site is inappropriate, not just because of the problems the laborers cause for the neighborhood, but also because access to that building for contractors is unacceptable, and the current zoning does not allow such a use. Furthermore, the building is too small for the classrooms envisioned, doesn’t meet modern code and there are no occupancy permits granted or even applied for. Does the Post believe that the City should just close their eyes, cover their ears, and go “LA LA LA LA LA” while the County throws good money after bad on a site that just won’t work?

A Catholic church not far away is also offering some of its property — but the city objects to that, too.

The offer from the Catholic church — St. Martin of Tours — came very late in this process, after repeated statements from that same church that they were not willing to host the laborers. The piece of land in question (the vacant lot to the right) has significant problems as well, that have not been addressed in the church’s offer.

Update: The New MoCo Progressive also has some thoughts on this editorial.