gaithersblog.net

• Mariana Minaya writes in the Washington Post: Giving Teens Alternatives To Becoming Mothers:
  

  Social services advocates hope to reduce the growing number of teenage Hispanic mothers in Montgomery County with culturally sensitive programs about healthy sexual practices, building self-esteem and improving parent-teen communication.

  This follows the story a few days ago about the high birthrate among Hispanic teens.

• William C. Flook writes in the Examiner: Herndon to decide fate of labor site this month:
  

  The future of Herndon’s embattled day labor site will be decided this month as the Town Council mulls whether to dismantle the center or renew a permit that two years ago thrust the town into the middle of a national immigration debate.

• Kathleen Miller writes in the Examiner: Area day laborers to gather for national convention:
  

  More than 200 day laborers and advocates are expected to gather in the Washington area to protest immigration raids in communities, brainstorm ways to combat negative stereotypes and discuss job standards during a weekend convention that begins today.

Mariana Minaya writes in today’s Washington Post:

In the county, which has one of the lowest overall birthrates in the United States, the birthrate increased 16 percent from 2002 to 2005 among all women 15 to 19, according to a report by county staff. In the same period, births for women in that age group dropped nationally and statewide.

Births among Hispanic women 18 to 19, which have particularly driven the growth in teen pregnancies in Montgomery, have increased more than 30 percent in the past decade, according to the report.

Candace Kattar, executive director of Identity Inc., a nonprofit group in Gaithersburg that serves Latinos, said low-income and undocumented teen moms often might not see pregnancy as a barrier to goals such as an education or career.

“A lot of the teen Latino moms are actually quite happy to be pregnant as teenagers,” Kattar said.

Mocoprogressive has a post up about how the crisis in the market for subprime mortgages could have a particularly big impact on the Hispanic community — as many as 40% of subprime mortgages are held by Hispanics. As Gaithersburg has a particularly large population of Hispanics (nearly 20% of the population of Gaithersburg was Latino as of seven years ago), could this be hitting Gaithersburg particularly hard? I found an interesting interactive map here [it was linked from this page, which also has an interesting paper on the geographic distribution of subprime mortgages, and links to several more useful maps] which shows Percent of conventional home purchase mortgage loans by subprime lenders in USA. If you zoom in on Maryland, and then on to Montgomery County, you can see that Gaithersburg and Wheaton are the most vulnerable localities in the County. However, as you were doing all that zooming, you probably did notice that this is nothing compared to the situation in Prince George’s, Eastern Charles and St. Mary’s Counties, where in much of those areas as many as 10% to more than a quarter of all conventional home purchase mortgage loans are from subprime lenders. This does not, however, correlate strongly with the map of Latino population in those areas.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Shady Grove eyed for laborers
  

  Short expected to meet late Tuesday with county officials to determine which site to recommend to Leggett, he said.

  County-owned properties near the Metro station include the waste transfer station and several industrial sites along Crabbs Branch Way. All are outside Gaithersburg’s city limits.

  Short said none of the sites is within a mile of the Metro station.

• Chris Robinson writes, Woman robbed at gunpoint near Old Towne (I mentioned this earlier. Mr. Robinson’s article on this appears only to be in the print edition of the Gazette, I can’t find it online. Below is a brief transcription of some additional information in the article.)
  

  The men demanded the woman’s handbag, then fled on foot after getting it, according to a police report. No injuries were reported.

  The handbag later was recovered a short distance from the crime scene, with only an undisclosed amount of mony missing, [Gaithersburg Police spokesman Cpl. Rudy] Wagner said.

  The robbery is the third in or near Olde Towne since Christmas Eve. Wagner said the case doesn’t necessarily indicate a spike in robberies and no additional police patrols are planned.

• Chris Robinson writes, Business brings hope to El Salvadorian town
  

  For six years, Gaithersburg businessman Kevin Bohrer has sought to improve the quality of life for a little town in Central America, and now he close to seeing it happen.

  ‘‘If we could get health care a little closer, our guys, when their kids have problems and they’re back there, could get health care on a more ready basis,” said Bohrer, president of Goshen Enterprises and a cousin of former Gaithersburg Mayor Edward Bohrer. ‘‘For them to have health care readily available is great.”

  Goshen Enterprises donated $4,000 for construction of the 500-square-foot facility, which the El Almendro Town Council had planned but ran out of money to complete. It’s a single-floor building with one room for patients, a small waiting area, a small storage room and an outside waiting area.

  The company also is picking up the tab for employing the medical staff, Bohrer said

  To broaden its altruistic mission, the company partnered with St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg.

  Donations to Goshen Enterprises’ ongoing social projects in El Almendro can be made directly to the church.

Several items in this week’s Gaithersburg Gazette:

• Push is on for light rail along upcounty transitway, by Melissa A. Chadwick
  
  

  ‘‘It ought to be a light-rail project, which will attract more riders,” said Congressman Albert R. Wynn (D-Dist. 4) of Mitchellville.

  Other officials agreed.

  ‘‘I have never seen economic development around a bus stop,” said State Sen. Robert J. Garagiola (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown. ‘‘It needs to be rail.”

  Thirty-one elected officials, community activists and candidates for state and county office signed a petition of support for a light-rail CCT.

  The group also unveiled a marketing campaign for the project, declaring the CCT is ‘‘Good to Go.”

  Maryland’s Secretary of Transportation Robert L. Flanagan said in a telephone interview on Monday that the Department of Transportation is reviewing both the light-rail and bus options and will choose the better mode of transit sometime next year.

  ‘‘It is our responsibility to develop the best light-rail alternative and the best bus-route alternative,” he said.

  It is too early to know which will be best, he said.

  This was the event I blogged about earlier.

• Developer asks to re-lease West Deer Park apartments, by Jaime Ciavarra
  
  

  ‘‘[T]he redevelopment of this property for townhomes … is simply not feasible and cannot be financed,” Scott Copeland, principal of RST Development, wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Mayor Sidney A. Katz. ‘‘On the other hand, by retaining it for rental units … we will address a market where there is a housing shortage.”

  The shift is a first in city history, and planners are researching how and when returning the buildings to rental units could be approved, said Greg Ossont, the city’s planning and code director.

  The city already authorized a new site plan for the construction of luxury townhouses in January 2005. To return to rental units, RST will have to go back before the Planning Commission and may need to add measures — such as more parking spaces — to bring the buildings up to current code.

  ‘‘It’s not as simple as tearing the fence down and renting them out,” Ossont said. ‘‘The city needs to go through the legal planning process again. We’ve got a lot of question marks at this point.”

  This is an ongoing story.

• Spanish Catholic Center moves again, this time to Olde Towne, by Sebastian Montes
  
  

  The Spanish Catholic Center first opened its Gaithersburg branch in 1986, most recently operating out of cramped offices on East Deer Park Drive. After the move to Olde Towne, the center plans to be up and running today.

  The new building is at 415 East Diamond Ave. In July, the City Council rejected the site as the site for a day-laborer center.

  In its job placement program, the SCC sees 60 to 70 workers from across the upcounty four days a week, last year providing more than 8,000 employment leads. At two informational sessions each morning — the first for men, the second for women — the SCC does not ask a worker their immigration status.

  I don’t know where to begin on this one. The whole day laborer thing started when the SCC was at 117 N Frederick. Also, is there a reason why the SCC would not consider contracting to run the proposed day labor center in Festival?

In reading various news sites over the past few days, I’ve encountered a few interesting articles I’d like to highlight:

• Poll watchers split on Hispanic turnout, By Keyonna Summers, The Washington Times

  Hispanic rights activists and immigration-policy researchers disagree on how many Hispanics will turn out to vote on Nov. 7.

  Advocates say Hispanics are encouraged by rallies last spring and motivated by local government efforts to limit day-laborer practices and housing of illegal aliens. Researchers argue that the rallies had little effect.

  Wilma Linares, of the immigrant advocacy group CASA of Maryland, said local politicians have ignored immigrants’ concerns about affordable housing, health care, education and immigration reform, and that Hispanics will respond on Election Day.

  “We want our politicians to understand that … we have 90,000 Latinos who are capable of voting in Maryland alone and we are going to do everything we can for them to get out and vote for those candidates who are really looking to improve their response to the issues that we’re interested in,” Miss Linares said last week at “Your Vote Is Your Voice,” a nonpartisan campaign to rally immigrant and black voters.

• Latinos’ power in numbers, By Tom Dunkel, Sun Reporter
  

  Democrat Thomas Perez, the Montgomery County councilman who was forced out of the state attorney general’s race when a court ruled that he did not have sufficient legal experience in Maryland, is involved in voter registration efforts on behalf of Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who hopes to unseat Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

  Both of Perez’s parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic. His father became an American citizen almost immediately. His mother waited about 60 years. The reason for her change of heart was the momentum shift toward stricter immigration policies that started in the late 1990s.

  Perez contends that thousands of Marylanders like his mother have awakened politically. That might be a partisan opinion, but what’s certain is that the Latino community traditionally has been less predictable in its voting allegiances than other ethnic groups: About 53 percent are registered Democrats, with Republicans and independents about evenly split.

  What if that math changes? In a statewide contest for governor or U.S. senator, that pool of fluid votes - now about 95,000 strong - could be decisive if it coalesces in larger-than-normal numbers behind a particular candidate.

  But the specter of Herndon, Va., hangs over Gaithersburg. In May three of that town’s councilmen were bounced from office for being too day-labor friendly.

  Census figures from 2000 showed that Gaithersburg is 20 percent Latino, but some estimates run twice that high. There’s a substantial visual presence, from strip malls with purely Spanish-speaking clientele to the large numbers of Latinos walking and riding bicycles downtown. Non-Latinos seem to be on a step quota: They glide by in cars, but infrequently stroll downtown streets.

  Stephen Schreiman, who belongs to an anti-immigration citizens watchdog group, is the most vocal Gaithersburgian critic. He wants nothing to do with any politician perceived as immigration-friendly or amenable to day-labor sites.

  “It’s very personal,” says Schreiman. “It’s directly affecting my way of life.”

  Roy Passin says uncontrolled immigration adversely affects his business. He owns Roy’s Place, a saloon-like restaurant decorated with vintage campaign posters, movie memorabilia and beer signs that has been a fixture on the edge of Olde Towne for more than 35 years.

  Latino men with too much free time to kill, he says, illegally park in his lot, loiter near the property, get drunk, smash his security lights and basically spoil the ambience.

  “In certain ways,” says Passin, 84, the influx has changed Gaithersburg “a hell of a lot.” And, to his mind, generally not for the better.

• Panel Aims to Blunt Problems Brought on by Rise in Immigration, By David J. Silverman, Capital News Service
  

  Local officials from Maryland’s smaller towns suggested on Friday that more Spanish language resources are needed to cope with the increasing number of immigrants in their communities.

  “The debate about English-only really is irrelevant here,” said Mayor Adam Ortiz of Edmonston, a town in Prince George’s County. “We have got to communicate key information, particularly about public safety and particularly about the health, safety and welfare of this community.”

  Kim Propeack, director of community organizing and political action at CASA of Maryland, an advocacy group for the state’s Latino community, recommended using Spanish language translators at public hearings and similar events to boost civic activism among immigrants.

  She said translators are one of many options for dealing with immigrants that achieve optimal results without “demonizing” people.

  Some in attendance weren’t convinced.

  “To say that we all need to learn Spanish is a bunch of bologna,” Anna Marie Angolia, vice chairman of the Cottage City Town Commission, said after the meeting.

  John A. Schaffer, a councilman from New Carrollton, said that the biggest problem stemming from immigration in his community is overcrowding in homes.

  “We need to stop single family homes from having 31 people in them,” he said, noting that additions to many of the single family homes in his community were destroying the city’s ambiance. The panel agreed that more information was needed to inform city and town legislators on how they can enforce building codes.

Update: The Video of this meeting has been put up on the web.

It was another long meeting, and almost impossible to summarize. City hall was packed, with many people having to sit in the gallery [*]. The public testimony went for about two hours, with each person getting at most three minutes. The speakers ran the gamut, from law-and-order ideologues to bleeding hearts; from pathetic, sobbing jornaleros to angry, fist-pounding authoritarians. There were moderates seeking practical solutions, clergy concerned that the jornaleros be treated with the consideration that any human is due, and citizens just wanting to thank the Mayor, Council and City staff for working so hard to try to solve a problem that other communities just ignore.

Generally, the former task force members who spoke gave their support to the proposed site. Most of the people who had been involved in the process over the past year were supportive, although insistent that the City pass an antisolicitation ordinance. Several of the regular critics — Demos Chrissos, Susan Payne and Stephen Schreiman in particular — were there and gave impassioned statements against any sort of center. There were a number of people who have, as far as I know, never been to a Mayor and Council meeting before and likely were there only because Chris Core told them to go. Several members of the clergy stood to offer their support for and participation in a proposed local coalition of faith organizations that might run the center. There was a large contingent of day laborers, supported by several advocates including Kim Propeack of CASA de Maryland.

There were accusations of racism and insistence that racism had nothing to do with it; predictions that the city would be overrun by half the population of Mexico City, stories of immigrants bringing and spreading disease and crime, stories of helpless Latinos fleeing rape, abuse and poverty, and owners of businesses at the shopping center predicting the loss of their livelihoods as their customers abandon them because of their fear of the the day laborers.

In the end, the Mayor and Council rejected the extremes and voted (3-1, Marraffa against and Schlichting not attending because of a conflict) for the resolution endorsing the proposed site, with an amendment intended to further nudge the County to hire a local Gaithersburg group to run the center, rather than their Division of Hispanic Outreach, otherwise known as CASA de Maryland. A printed, draft anti-soliciation ordinance was available with the other background materials, although this document is not yet up on the City’s website, and was not introduced for consideration by the Council. Still, the Mayor and the Council did reiterate support for the adoption of such an ordinance, and stated that the County had no say in whether the City were to have such a law. I have a copy of the draft ordinance and if the City doesn’t post it soon I’ll try to summarize it for you.

It’s way too late now, I need to just publish this post and go to bed. I’m sure that there’ll be lots of news coverage tomorrow — there were television cameras and print photographers, and reporters at least from the Washington Times, the Gazette and the Town Courier. So as I see stories tomorrow I’ll try to link to them.

Goodnight.

* If you’ve never been there, the main chamber has maybe five or six rows of leather chairs, providing seating for maybe 75-100 people. There’s another room directly above the chamber called the Gallery — because they do frequently exhibit art up there — where they set up several rows of more spartan folding chairs and a big TV set playing the live cable TV feed. If you get there late and the chamber is full, you have to go up to the gallery and watch on TV. But if you want to speak, there’s a stairway you can come down to get in line for a turn at the podium. Usually, by halfway through a meeting, the crowd in the main chamber starts to thin out and people gradually move down from the gallery to the good seats.

In an article in the Baltimore Sun, Kelly Brewington writes,

Although relatively small, Maryland’s Hispanic population has surged in recent years. It increased 41.5 percent between 2000 and last year, a larger growth rate than any other ethnic group, according to U.S. census estimates. Prince George’s County’s population is about 11 percent Hispanic, while in Montgomery, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, Latinos make up nearly 14 percent of the population.

As these percentages line up with the Census figures, I’ll assume that’s where they came from. And according to Census, “Noncitizens who are living in the United States are included, regardless of their immigration status.”

At CASA of Maryland in Silver Spring, O’Malley was hoping to receive a boost from Richardson, the nation’s only Latino governor and a rising star in the Democratic Party.

I wrote about that event several days ago.

Other candidates also were hoping to gain whatever benefits Richardson might bring, The crowd of 150 consisted of many new voters and day laborers, but also a large number of politicians, including comptroller candidate Peter Franchot and attorney general hopeful Douglas F. Gansler.

Montgomery County Councilman Tomas E. Perez, who was forced by a court ruling to abandon his bid for attorney general, presided over the event.

At one point, he humorously dubbed Isiah Leggett, an African-American and the party’s nominee for Montgomery County executive, the county’s “first Latino on the County Council.”

I’d be curious as to how, exactly, Mr. Perez intended that, and what Mr. Leggett thought of the comment.

In addition, Ehrlich sent a letter this week to the chairman of a legislative panel urging a hearing on more stringent identity requirements for driver’s licenses, saying illegal residents are fraudulently applying for licenses.

“I would think, as a nonpartisan observer, given a history of real missteps in his relationship with immigrant and Latino communities, that he would be working much harder now,” said Kim Propeack, a spokeswoman for CASA of Maryland.

However, figures show that neither party has a solid lock on Latino voters. Of the 74,018 Latino registered voters, about 39,000 are Democrats, about 18,000 are Republicans, and about 16,000 are independents.

As of August, 2006, there were 3,105,236 registered voters in Maryland. Using the figures above, Latinos would be about 2.4% of registered voters in the state. According to the most recent Census data, there are 5,600,388 people in Maryland, 5.4% (or 302,421) of whom are of “Hispanic or Latino origin”. Thus, it appears that the general population registers to vote at about a 55% rate, while Hispanic residents register to vote at less than half that rate, around 24%.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are between 225,000 and 275,000 “unauthorized migrants” in Maryland. Not all of these are Hispanic — nationally, Pew estimates that around 78% of all unauthorized migrants are from Mexico and “Other Latin America”; the rest come from Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

If one uses the 78% figure for Maryland (probably a bad figure in this context but it is the only one I have), then the “unauthorized” Hispanic population would be around 60 to 70% of the entire Hispanic population of the State. Making another likely unjustified adjustment, based on the oft-cited claim that Census undercounts Hispanics, one might make a very rough guess that around half of Maryland’s Hispanic population is here illegally. The thing I find interesting about these numbers is that, allowing for the fact that I’ve made tenuous adjustments to very rough numbers, it may in fact be that voter registration among legal Hispanics would be be right in line with voter registration in the general population, something that I would find to be a very reassuring sign that Hispanics who become full members of the community are just like the rest of us. And if you make a further adjustment for the liklihood that compared to what one might find in the general population, a relatively high proportion of legal Hispanics are not citizens with the right to vote but rather resident aliens, then it is possible that voter registration among Hispanics may actually be higher than for the general population.

Leaders said they would continue the fight by registering voters. CASA had registered 500 voters by the primary, and many in the community have said they are worried that Latinos won’t come out to the polls in November.

Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez, a Democrat from Montgomery County, said she was disappointed by low turnout at precincts in her district during the primary.

“The Latino voters did not come out,” she said.

Gutierrez said that on a recent afternoon she did an informal poll at her hair salon. Of the 14 people, all of them U.S. citizens, none had ever voted.

Unfortunately, the Board of Elections doesn’t track voting by race, so it isn’t possible, except perhaps through unofficial, estimated data such as exit polls, to know how turnout among Hispanic voters compares to turnout among all voters. Turnout in the 2004 presidential general election was about 78% statewide. In 2002 — probably more comparable because it was a gubernatorial general election — turnout was lower, around 62%. If there is truth to the claim that turnout among Hispanic voters is lower than turnout for other voters, then it is possible that all this fuss is over less than 40,000 votes, which as much as anything, is probably a sign of exactly how close this gubernatorial race has become.

Over on The New MoCo Progressive, there was continued discussion of the Post’s Editorial excoriating Gaithersburg for its inaction on building a day labor center. One anonymous commenter, addressing him or herself to another anonymous commenter, said “Your comment just proves that the immigrant-haters do NOT distinguish between U.S. Citizens of Latino heritage, like Gov. Richardson, and Illegal Immigrants. The haters just hate anybody with a Latino background.” This got me kind of annoyed, and I wrote this response,

anon 8:31:

While I have no idea what legal voter’s mindset is, I think that you’re drawing conclusions from awfully thin evidence. Also, “immigrant-hater” is argumentative and inflammatory. There is no proof that anyone posting to this forum “hates” immigrants, legal or otherwise.

I myself am disappointed — and occasionally get angry — with anyone who shows a lack of respect for other people, their culture and their property, and I apply this symmetrically. I’m often disappointed with the Minutemen, for example, especially when they seem to be demonizing entire groups of people in an unfair manner. I’m also often angry with people who feel that they have no obligation to respect local cultural norms when visiting places away from their home. This includes both “Ugly American” tourists (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_American if you don’t understand the reference) as well as Latino immigrants who pee on churches and fail to learn enough conversational English to get by after more than a decade in this foreign land.

Note, please, that my anger is specifically targeted to those who do these things. I actually do patronize several of the Hispanic stores and restaurants in Gaithersburg and it always brings a huge smile to my face when the clerk is so clearly trying his or her best to conduct the transaction in English — to become a real, integral part of the community. But at the same time I really appreciate efforts by the immigrants to share their culture with us in a positive manner.

I don’t know if you’ve ever attended the annual mass-naturalization ceremony at Gaithersburg’s Olde Towne day, but it is a truly inspiring event and I challenge anyone to watch it without getting a little choked up. This is not hate, it is not racism. This is wanting everyone to respect each other, to play by the rules and and to get along. I can usually look the other way when someone breaks a rule here or there; I’m not sure I know anyone who never breaks any rules. But when someone routinely breaks both the rules and the customs, disrespects others and generally makes no attempt to fit in to the community, then I have a problem. And I really do wish you could understand the difference between that and hate.

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