Mamaroneck is a village in southern New York State, on the west end of Long Island Sound, about half-way between New Rochelle and the Connecticut state line. For the past few years, this village has had what they viewed as a problem with day laborers in the Village. So the Village appears to have tried to get rid of them. According to Judge Colleen McMahon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, the way the Village went about this task was reprehensible. For reference, I’ve obtained the ruling from Pacer. [For some reason, the document from Pacer is missing the cover page, which also contains the first two findings (which are just the identies of two of the John Does). I called the Clerk of that Court and spoke to someone who made it pretty clear that they really didn’t much care that it was missing. However, another source had a scanned/bitmapped PDF of the enitre document (the Pacer document contains searchable and selectable text). I’ve extracted the cover page from that document and made it available as a jpeg here.]
Understand that I’ve certainly seen first hand the clueless and unfair judgement of a liberal press, so I’m taking most of this with a large grain of salt. But while I have no particular difficulty believing that day laborers could have caused trouble, the littany of missteps on the part of the Village is startling. Quoting an editorial in the New York Times,
The problem was concocted. Mayor Trifiletti said publicly that the crackdown was necessary because “a vast number of laborers,” more than 200, had swarmed in from outside the village, upsetting what had been a manageable status quo. In fact, the number of laborers was less than half that and the great majority were village residents.
The crackdown was discriminatory. “That the village acted with malicious or bad-faith intent to injure the day laborers is easily proven,” the judge wrote. The police officers who blitzed contractors with tickets and intimidated laborers showed striking tolerance toward other people in town. Latino drivers who were not wearing seat belts got tickets; white drivers got a friendly gesture urging them to buckle up. Mothers and fathers dropping their children off for school and day care were not hounded or ticketed as the contractors were, even when they blocked traffic.
Something was out of control, but it wasn’t the laborers. Judge McMahon put her finger on it. About the only thing that had appreciably changed, she said, was “the increased hostility of local residents and businesspeople” to Latino men who had been congregating in the village without incident for many years.It is always hazardous and often unwise to pin labels of racism or bigotry on people. Unless a person is proudly wearing that ugliness — in Klan robes, say — it is best not to throw such words around. But it is impossible not to consider race and class when pondering the reasons for Mamaroneck’s foolish and reckless assault on some of its own residents, men who are browner and far poorer than the homeowners who complain about and hire them. And once you affix a label to a class of persons, it is far easier to generalize about their bad intentions. The trustee who called Mamaroneck’s day laborers “locusts” spoke for everyone who has ever used demeaning epithets to dehumanize and abuse innocent people.
Herb Pinder, in the Westchester Journal-News, summarizes some of Judge McMahon’s findings of fact:
- In March, police told “John Doe No. 1″ and other Latino men on a nearly daily basis that they could not stand in certain locations on Mamaroneck Avenue and that they had to keep moving; John Doe No. 8 was ordered to move on 15 to 20 occasions by one officer. Such findings were numerous.
- John Doe No. 6, drinking a soda in Columbus Park, was told to move by a police officer because “the location where he was seated was where children played”; during the U.S. Open golf tournament at Winged Foot in June, John Doe No. 8 and other Latino men “were told to find another spot to stand where people cannot see them.” John Doe No. 6 observed police force a worker who had been picked up by the contractor to exit the contractor’s vehicle, “then walk two blocks before re-entering the vehicle.”
- Police ticketed contractors as they were about to, or immediately after, they picked up day laborers; John Doe No. 1 was detained for up to two hours and asked where he was from before being released; “Chief Flynn specifically directed his subordinates that commercial vehicles that stop in Columbus Park . . . should be brought to the harbor and subjected to” extensive and time-consuming safety inspections. Flynn said he was acting upon complaints about unsafe vehicles picking up workers. The judge said, “This is not credible.”
- McMahon found “No evidence in the record suggests that anyone other than the day laborers is subject to the kinds of law enforcement actions [e.g., restrictions on their movements or presence] that are described in the” complaint; “Village police did not enforce with equal rigor, and sometimes even ignored, traffic and parking infractions that occurred in other parts of the Village or that were committed by persons other than contractors.”
- One store owner “observed Latino drivers being ticketed outside his store for not wearing a seatbelt; but when police officers saw white drivers not wearing their seatbelts, they made a gesture to show that the drivers should buckle their seatbelts but did not give these drivers a ticket.”
Now, understand that Judge McMahon is not universally loved. On the Right, we learn from Judicial Watch:
The president of the organization that represented the migrants, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that city officials had engaged in intentional discrimination that was motivated by racism and pro immigration groups across the country applauded the ruling, saying that this judge saw how racism robs people of their humanity.
These appear to be the only groups praising Judge McMahon, a Bill Clinton appointee with a controversial history. She ranks second on a list of 10 judges that should be impeached for abuse of power. Her critics say she regularly makes inappropriate statements in open court (such as, “this is not a gun society any more.”), she refers to her duties on the bench as “torture” and “pain and suffering” and she often ignores the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Comments on that and other right-wing and otherwise conservative blogs bring the expected rants about illegal immigrants, the need for the rule of law and the decline of society as midwived by liberal judges. Still, there are some things that really bother me about the chronology in the ruling (I’ve deleted all the references and anotations to make it easier to read; refer to the ruling document to get that information):
28. For half a century or more, immigrants – who typically numbered from 20 to 30 – have gathered on a daily basis in the Columbus Park area of the Village for the purpose of soliciting employment.
29. Columbus Park, a public park adjacent to the Mamaroneck train station, is located in an area of the Village of Mamaroneck known as Washingtonville. Washingtonville contains businesses and residences and is a dense and active neighborhood. It is also a very diverse neighborhood, with a large Latino population, as well as Chinese, Italian, Irish, African American and Caucasian residents.
30. Before the early 1990s, those seeking employment were predominantly white.
31. Today, those seeking employment (hereinafter the “day laborers”) are almost exclusively Latino.
Thus, taken at face value, the day laborers were accepted until they became predominantly Hispanic. It is also possible that some of the Hispanic day laborers were less well-behaved than the white laborers they replaced; I haven’t read completely through the ruling but I haven’t seen that this question was addressed. Personally I would speculate that there have always been problems. Perhaps the sorts of problems that arose were less familiar and less well-tolerated to the long-time residents. Still, I think that the essential point is that it appears that this location had been considered an acceptable pick-up point for more than fifty years.
Again from the ruling:
37. By way of background, plaintiffs allege that Village officials began a “campaign of harassment and intimidation” against the day laborers in response to pressure from Park View Condominiums, the developer of a luxury condominium across the street from the day laborer site. The parties have stipulated that in January 2006 construction did begin on a new luxury condominium building across the street. Further, plaintiffs allege and defendants concede that John Lese, an agent for the developer, wrote several letters to Village trustees and/or its attorneys prior to the commencement of the construction. However, since plaintiffs have not submitted the letters into evidence, and there is no other evidence of either their content or the dates on which they were sent in the record, this court cannot conclude, as plaintiffs allege, that Village officials were under pressure from the developer in or about August 2004, when the activity that forms the basis of this lawsuit began.
Whether or not the developer really did try to pressure the City into doing somthing about the laborers, it does appear to be the case that there were new economic pressures on this traditionally ethnic part of the Village. [From the description in the ruling, I’m guessing that this is the area being discussed; there’s a newish looking complex in the upper left, I don’t know if that is the condo in question, but in any event the pickup site would appear to have been between that building and the train station]. Discrimination based on socioeconomic status can be as powerful a motivating force as racial discrimination; the two combined even more so.
It appears that, while the laborers used to be picked up directly on the street, the site they were moved to — a parking lot at the north end of that block — required the contractors to leave the street and pass through the lot. That pickup location was allowed to operate for seventeen months, during which time the laborers and the contractors appeared to be under quite a bit of scrutiny.
At the end of the seventeen months, however, the Village seems to have rammed through a surprise ordinance that effectively shut that site down:
104. The resolution to close the parking lot as a day laborer hiring site was not on the agenda for the Board of Trustees Meeting on January 23, 2006.
105. It was unusual for the Board of Trustees to vote on a resolution that had not been placed on the agenda.
106. At the meeting, Trustee Thomas Murphy questioned the legality of the proposed resolution, and testified that he believed that the better course of action would have been to put it on the agenda for a subsequent meeting and allow for public comment.
107. Representatives of the Hispanic Resource Center were not present at the January 23, 2006 meeting and were unaware of Trustee Angilletta’s resolution.
108. By a vote of 3-2 the Village Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating:
RESOLVED, that the day laborer’s site at Columbus Park be closed as of February 1, 2006 to April 1, 2006, and will remain closed until further notice, based upon the response and participation of the Village of Mamaroneck’s neighboring communities in opening up a day laborer hiring site.
Mayor Trifiletti and Trustee Murphy voted against the resolution.
109. The intent and the effect of the resolution was that neither day laborers nor contractors would be able to use the parking lot as a day laborer pick up Site.
110. The decision to close the Site was motivated by the uncorroborated complaints of residents of the Washingtonville community (like Fava) and businesspeople in the area (like Marni Ranani-Nigro).
111. Following the January 23, 2006 Board meeting, Trustee Angilletta made public comments comparing day laborers to “locusts,” stating that they “are takers. They come in here and take, and they won’t ever give back to the community.”
Any sympathy I might have had for the Village of Mamaroneck Board of Trustees starts to evaporate pretty quickly when I read this. The lack of notice alone is, in my mind, a clear sign that they had no intention to be fair. Certainly they could have voted the same way after having providing notice and at least giving the opponents to this action an opportunity to participate in the discussion. Lack of notice and opportunity to participate was one of the Olde Towne Residents’ principal objections to the creation of a day laborer center in Gaithersburg over a year ago; this is no way to run a government.
I started writing this post about a week ago, and it’s been sitting as a draft in the blog software since that time. Mostly I haven’t been quite sure how I felt about it or what to say; not having been in the middle of the situation and not knowing the people involved, I have a hard time drawing conclusions with certainty. I also spent some time attempting to find someone other than the Mamaroneck officials who were defending their actions in specific. While I was able to find expressions of support for the general idea of shutting down day laborer sites, I had less luck finding defenders of the approach Mamaroneck took toward this goal. I’m afraid that this blog isn’t going to be any help whatsoever to the next person who conducts such a search.
As a follow-up, I note that the Judge just granted an extension period to allow the parties to figure out how to respond to the ruling. Interestingly, two new trustees, both Democrats, have been voted into office, shifting the ideological balance of the Board.
Candice Ferrette writes in the Journal-News:
Lawyers have asked a judge for more time to discuss what should come out of the federal ruling that found the village discriminated against its Hispanic day laborers.
The extension has been granted to Jan. 5. At that time, lawyers for the laborers are expected to submit their recommendations for a remedy to be imposed on the village and their request for legal fees, unless a settlement between the two sides is brokered.
This week, the situation was at somewhat of a standstill. Lawyers for the day laborers aren’t talking about what they might ask the court to impose on the village. Village lawyers are waiting to meet with the new Board of Trustees on Monday before they take action.
Two new trustees, both Democrats, were sworn into office Monday, shifting the balance on the board away from the Republicans.
That article has more detail on the discussions that are on-going:
The lawsuit charged the municipality with closing the former day laborer gathering site at Columbus Park and stepping up law enforcement in the area so that the day laborers would leave.
In her 70-page decision, McMahon said village police “disproportionately affected Latino day laborers and the contractors who sought to hire them.”
The mayor, however, in a news conference a week after the judge’s decision, said the police officers did nothing wrong and treat all people in the village equally. Police Chief Edward Flynn echoed his remarks and disputed the judge’s claims of “racial animus.”
Mariana Boneo, executive director of the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Hispanic Resource Center, said, “We’ve had enough dialogue.
“I think the village already knows the needs of the workers. At this point, there’s a ruling, and we’re in a different place,” she said. “What would come out now would have to be a legal document.