Sandy Sweeps Away New York City’s Only Day Laborer Center
A storm surge from Hurricane Sandy unmoored the Bay Parkway Community Job Center, and New York City’s only center for day laborers, online and moved it a couple hundred feet inland from the Bensonhurst shore, cracking one of its walls in the process. Ligia Guallpa of the Worker Justice Projects, which operates the center, and Lionel, one of the center’s founders, tried to show it to me Tuesday afternoon, but the New York Police Department objected. “I’m trying to be nice, okay? You have to go,” Office Dym instructed us. “We’re here for a reason,” he said, getting out of his vehicle to push me away. “It’s not safe.” “See?” Guallpa lamented. “This is what they do to us every morning when we have workers.” The police have blocked off the “hazard area” around the center, though just why was not remotely apparent, when we subsequently snuck in the back way. Despite repeated inquiries form Guallpa and the Worker Justice Center, the authorities have refused to estimate when the “hazard area”…