Near the Street Where You Live
José de la Isla     [Photo]

Just as all politics are local, to paraphrase the late House Speaker Thomas Tip O'Neill, so too are research surveys. That's why the ground-breaking study by UCLA, the New School University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, on day workers is so interesting.

It tells us as much about ourselves as it does about those workers.
Earlier, I had been the member of a team that held focus group sessions in a part of Houston that had failed to keep up with urban development. On numerous Saturdays, our team met with neighborhood residents from the near north side to learn what they wanted their community to become. In the urban planning vernacular this is called "visualizing."

The group I "facilitated" (jargon for listening and writing down what they said) referred to problems along Main Street. They complained about vagrants, drug users, panhandlers, the homeless and "immigrants." Most of the latter were migrants from Mexico and Central America who solicited day jobs from contractors.

Women felt menaced when they drove by. One reported being whistled at and remembered a mooching sound that sounded like salacious kissing.

The workers, coming from the surrounding neighborhoods, were also consumers at nearby shops, especially on payday. Many of them supported families in the home country. Often they had children back there. Mostly, they were law-abiding. Always, they wanted safety, security, fair play and normalcy.

We learned all this through the "hot chocolate strategy." By offering some guys at the site a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day from a thermos and a paper cup, they candidly answered all of our questions.

Subsequently, we also learned that the city of Austin, Texas, was a light year ahead of us. They had formed a center beside I-35 (easy on and off and close to transportation) but they had provoked uproar of protests, and even pickets.

Eventually, residents were won over after many of them inspected the facility and met day workers, or saw them wearing bright orange safety vests while conducting neighborhood improvements. An invitation to a barbecue at the site didn't hurt, either.

Lynn Svensson, an expert on these projects, said to the Austin Chronicle back in 1999, "You come into the town and everybody hates the day laborers." But after forming a well-organized facility (with restrooms, a canteen, easy access, and fair minimum wages guaranteed), everybody loves them.“

Austin city officials were happy because a neighborhood-level problem was solved. A major national bank had plans to provide banking services from the facility. The police had fewer robbery incidents, as some bad guys with guns had made day workers easy Friday night targets. Some transnational working-class families abroad faced relief from their misfortunes. Even the Immigration and Naturalization Service was cooperative.

That is how First Worker Corp. came about.

CASA of Silver Spring, Md., is another good example. And there are others. But for every gold star approach, among at least 300 hiring sites in 22 states, many are haphazard. That's why we decided to design for Houston something slick, state-of-the-art, practical and futuristic.

On paper, First Human Capital immediately gained a city grant, organized labor lined up behind it and Catholic Charities gave its support. The new concept was not just a hiring center but a worker training center with the community college and non-profit organizations involved. It would have a small food court and banking services. Short educational programs would pipe in streaming video. The world-class Instituto Technologico de Monterrey in Mexico signed on to provide computer literacy classes.

The most innovative feature was yet to come. Research showed that about 10% to 20% of workers, on any given day, would not get a job. Those workers, however, could go into training to make use of their time by volunteering for a community improvement project, such as church landscaping and lawn care, esplanade care, trash clean-up, commons maintenance, home maintenance (including weatherizing for the elderly and needy), as part of low- or no-cost services.

In turn, volunteer workers would get Time Bank credits for professional services and deep discounts from merchants.

Day workers in First Human Capital could be assessed a very small fee when they were placed with a contractor for a job to help defray some of the operating costs. After a year or two, the whole enterprise could become self-supporting.

Now comes the rub: a new city council member was elected to the near north side and he left the decision on the enterprise up to a civic association. By then, much of the older leadership had been replaced. Believe it or not, skyrocketing property taxes had turned some people against major improvements, and a substantial number of homeowners' children (heirs apparent) became noticeable in public forums, along with people from surrounding communities.

The biggest hurdle was overcoming deep-set stereotypes and imagery that confused "immigrants" with vagrants, drug users and panhandlers. The mania defied reason.

In the end, the vote, although close, went against the state-of-the art, futuristic First Human Capital project. The result suggests that some people find it preferable to live in a make-believe underdeveloped past.

The new UCLA day worker study is a swift kick in the pants, telling us it's not a bad time to reconsider our positions and get in line with the future. The study recommends additional worker centers "because we believe they can improve conditions dramatically in the day-labor market."

I would add that, done right, they add community improvements.

The study also reminds us that there is something about that lip mooching sound that not only turns off the public but it lingers and lingers. All the good that can happen turns into a nightmare when some people can't get over that mooching sound.

(Hispanic Link contributing editor José de la Isla is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power and the forthcoming book, Day Night Life Death, with photographer Wilhelm Scholz. He may be reached by e-mail at Jdelaisla@houston.rr.com)

© 2006, Hispanic Link News Service
02/05/06
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