Another Friday, Another Junta and a few other things.

I'm going to break up this entry with some more pictures from the border tour.  This is Monument 1. That rope is the border.  This is also the spot where Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico meet!

Las Americas is now closed on Fridays because we have ZERO DOLLAZ.  By zero I mean very little.  We can apparently save $800 by not using the electricity on Fridays.  Still, I must be downtown at 7:30am for our “Junta para trabajadores” (meeting for workers).  Of course, Qiong and I made the most excellent decision of seeing Transformers at 11:15pm the night before.  We got back around 2:30 in the morning, and I woke up 4 hours later to leave. (If you are wondering how we got to the movie theatre, considering that the bus stops at 8, Aurolyn went to Miami for a week and I drove her car.  She said I could use it for emergencies.  This was, indeed, an emergency.) It was worth it.  We got way more than $8.50 worth of explosions in that movie.

I stumbled downtown bright-eyed and bushy tailed (read: half asleep.) and met up with Turina and Ray. The past two weeks we forgot to bring bread. Ray’s coffee also tasted like water today.  Last week we decided that we would have to have three separate meetings for the most populated corners.  It would be nearly impossible to get all of the workers from one end of the block to walk to the other end, even if it was only for five minutes.  Finding work is cutthroat when there’s almost nothing to do.

We created a membership form for people to sign up to be part of the “jordnaleros” (day workers) group.  Ray asked each corner to elect someone to be their representative, and then we would have a meeting with the representatives.  At our usual corner at the end of the block, the men joked around and pointed at various people, saying they should be “el presidente!” One guy offered (jokingly) to be the secretary.  It was all very lighthearted, not mocking.  But in the end no one really wanted to take on the job.  Understandable. We did get some people to sign the membership forms, though. 

Again, the white rocks and rope are the border.  This is where a kid kicked a soccer ball across the border, then stepped over to get it.  Teehee!

I’ve seen a noticeable increase in the receptiveness of the day workers.  Now, when Ray talks about how wage theft is an issue of power, and that the employers use the diverse immigration statuses of the workers to divide them, they no longer half listen and mill about.  Generally they stand in a circle around ray, and a few nod in agreement.  They seem especially keen on the idea that while one person cannot do much, a group of them united can.  They like the idea that a group of five or six of them could show up at a dishonest employer’s door and ask him ever-so-politely to pay up.  I’m a little concerned about this idea, however, because some of the workers get really pissed off about the wage theft, and say that they should go to their house and beat them up, or get them thrown in jail.  Obviously, if you have a group go to a house, they have to be as peaceful as possible so that the cops don’t get called.  If they get thrown in jail, this new-fangled fingerprint identifying database the border patrol told us about could possibly identify some of them as undocumented. 

We’ve started taking intake forms with us.  If one of the workers has a lot of information about what happened to him (employer’s information, dates he worked, etc.), we can fill it out right there and hopefully take some next-steps.  We’re going to try and call the employers first and see if they will just pay up.  Hopefully they won’t realize that we at Las Americas don’t actually have the authority to make them pay, but we can also threaten to file an actual wage claim form with the Dept. of Labor, who can make them pay. 

On Tuesday, we drove one of the workers to find the place where he had worked and didn’t get paid.  The place was locked, though.  Ray and I drove by a few days later and saw that there were people inside doing some work.  We got out to talk to them, but they claimed to not know of the person we were looking for.  They may have been lying, it’s hard to know.  We took pictures of their cars with our camera phones (yes, I felt badass.).  We’re going to do some investigating to try and find out who owns the building they were working in. 

From here, though, we are going to try and set up “one-on-ones.”  We will call a few of the workers that were particularly vocal or adamant, and see if they will meet us for coffee to talk.  We tried this last week, but (Ray was late) they didn’t show up. 

Speaking of this, I have a concern.  Apparently Ray, my supervisor, will be gone from July 15-30.  This means that the other intern and I will be continuing this work on our lonesomes.  While this might be a good experience, I fear that 1) I will have no idea what to do.  2) I don’t yet have the skills (language, knowledge of the laws, organizing expertise) to organize a scattered group of day workers in a city I am not all that familiar with.  3) the workers won’t take me as seriously because I am young, white, and a woman. This last concern is being alleviated a little bit, because as they come to know us more, we’re starting to be known as the people that deal with wage theft.  I know they will come to me with concerns about dishonest employers, but will they listen when I talk about power? About joining together above and beyond immigration status?

This is a stretch of the old fence.  I think we were actually in New Mexico here.  That's one of the legal interns, but she just left for Europe.  She's looking back towards El Paso here. 

P.S. Someone wanted to know about the day worker’s schedule.  Not all of them live in Juarez.  In fact, of the 14 people that signed the membership form, 5 live in Juarez currently.  There are buses in Juarez, and some have to take a bus to the bridge and walk over (it costs $.30 to cross to the U.S. and $.35 to cross back.  Because of this, a lot of people try to hitch-hike across so they don’t have to pay the toll).  I talked to one worker who gets to his corner at 6:30am and stays there until about 2 or 3 if he doesn’t find work.  The street that they stand on isn’t that far from the bridge itself. Definitely walking distance (I’ve walked there several times.  I discovered a great grocery store that’s about 500 feet from one of the bridges).

Its hard to say how many employers there are.  Most of them are contractors that people hire to do their lawns or paint, etc. Sometimes when you drive by in a car, a couple of guys will shout “labor!” at you.  When a truck drives by slowly they whistle and run up to the car.  If the truck parks, 8 or so workers will all run up to it at once, vying for a seat in the back of the truck.  They travel various distances to work.  Some go all the way up to Las Cruces, NM.  As for getting back, that’s not always part of the agreement.  A lot of times the employer will drop them off at the nearest bus stop and let them find their way home. 

ALSO, if you’re wondering what came of the protest, the answer is nothing so far.  I talked to Eddie, the managing attorney (the guy that represents Duarte), today.  He said that there has been no response at all from Jolicouer, the guy that handles parole requests.  They haven’t even given a written response yet, which they are required to do when they deny someone parole.  Apparently channel 9 news (NBC, I think?) wants to do a full story on Duarte.  Cool.