They Want to Work

It has been more than six months since the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Redondo Beach, click Calif., violated the Constitution with an ordinance making it illegal for day laborers to solicit work from the sidewalk. The city had used the ordinance to crack down on immigrant laborers in…

Day laborer supporters rally in Pomona – ContraCostaTimes

A group of day laborers urged Pomona City Council members on Monday night to continue providing funding for the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center. The center, also known as the Pomona Day Labor Center, has been open for about 15 years with financial support from the city. In recent years, the center received financial assistance through the city’s now defunct redevelopment agency. The center has not received funding since the middle of last year following the approval of state legislation approving the dismantling of redevelopment agencies around the state. The passage of the legislation kicked off months in which the future of redevelopment agencies became unclear. Day laborers and their supporters, which included students, labor organizers, immigrant rights activists and others, held a rally outside of Pomona City Hall prior to the start of Monday’s meeting. – Contra Costa Times 04.03.2012

Guatemala Day Laborer’s Dream of Being Announcer Comes True – Latin American Herald Tribune

LOS ANGELES – The voice of Luis Gonzalez is heard Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Radio Centro Laboral, a Los Angeles-based online station over which this Guatemalan day laborer broadcasts a message of hope. Listening to him speak and hearing his tone of voice, story his cadence and diction, it sounds like his natural destiny in life was to be an announcer – but getting there took him 50 years. “I’m 52 years old and all my life I admired the great radio announcers, I dreamed of being one, but thought it was too hard because I only studied up to the sixth grade and I’ve always had to work hard to earn a living,” Gonzalez told Efe in an interview. He came to the United States in the year 2000 looking for a better life, and eventually came upon one of the day-laborer centers of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, where immigrants from different countries gather every day hoping for contractors to show up and give them work.