Vol. 71/No. 26      July 2, 2007

Militant/Róger Calero

Day laborers in Mamaroneck, New York, learn English June 19 while waiting for jobs at Strait Gate Church, which has a majority Black congregation. The church now serves as hiring hall for day laborers, most of them Latino immigrants.

The settlement of the lawsuit includes payment of $550,000 for legal fees to the attorneys who represented the workers. After the agreement, the day laborers established a hiring hall at a local church in the Black community, a rare occurrence.

“The court upheld the fact that immigrants have protection from harassment and discrimination,” said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. The group filed the suit on behalf of six day laborers in April 2006.

Last November, federal judge Colleen McMahon ruled that town officials had “engaged in a campaign designed to drive out the Latino day laborers.” She ordered the two sides to settle.

“We are not under the anxiety of a cop or a neighbor harassing us,” Diego Durán, 60, originally from Venezuela, told the Militant. The settlement “can’t be seen as an isolated thing. It has to do with getting the federal government to give us papers.”

“This agreement should be made by other towns,” said Fabian Chimbo, 26, a carpenter from Ecuador.

Durán and Chimbo were waiting for work at the new hiring site for day laborers at the Strait Gate Church. The site opened the day after the settlement was ratified by the Board of Trustees. “Hire Workers,” reads a sign outside the church, inviting contractors and others to stop.

The church is one in a handful with a majority Black congregation associated with day laborer hiring sites, according to Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“It is an unusual gesture, and it’s a beautiful one, particularly because we know there have been tensions between African Americans and Latinos in places where they compete against one another for these types of jobs,” Alvarado told the New York Times.

The 1,500 church members come from nearby towns, and as far as Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York City, said Howard Coke, 46. Coke is a churchgoer who volunteers at the hiring hall during his time off from work as a food servicing manager.

Many of the day laborers waiting for work at street corners here told the Militant the cops still drive by where they are at, but they don’t stop to harass them as they used to do.
 
 
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