Comite de Jornaleros v City of Redondo Beach

This groundbreaking civil rights lawsuit begin in 2004, when the City of Redondo Beach initiated the “Day Labor Enforcement Project.” Under a local ordinance that made soliciting day labor a crime, police arrested over 50 day laborers. The Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach and NDLON, represented by MALDEF, immediately brought suit, arguing that the City’s ordinance violated the First Amendment.

On September 16, 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, struck down the ordinance, declaring: “We agree with the day laborers that the Ordinance is a facially unconstitutional restriction on speech.” The case is the first at the federal appellate level to decide the constitutionality of an anti-solicitation ordinance aimed at day laborers. On February 21, 2012, the Supreme Court declined to hear Redondo Beach’s appeal. The Supreme Court’s decision removed the City’s last chance to preserve its unconstitutional restriction on speech and confirmed the Ninth Circuit’s decision as controlling law throughout the western United States.

Brewer’s 1070 Countersuit is Counterproductive for Arizona

Phoenix, AZ. In response to the Governor of Arizona pressing her countersuit to defend SB 1070, Pablo Alvarado, Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a litigant in the injunction suit against SB 1070 issued the following statement:
“Like Governor Wallace before her, Governor Brewer is choosing to stand on the wrong side of history with her defense of unconstitutional, regressive, and immoral legislation.
Brewer will lose in court and in the court of public opinion. Any short term political gain by scapegoating Americans in waiting will be offset in droves by future generations in Arizona who will have been inspired to wipe away the stain on the state caused by her repugnant, unconstitutional, and anti-American nativist crusade.
Yet, like a driver who refuses to admit they’re lost, the Governor refuses to turn around.
Governor Brewer’s inability to govern and failure to provide real solutions to the state’s problems will no longer be shielded by the diversion created by her spectacle of scapegoating.”
The Governor’s countersuit today precedes another event in court. Tomorrow, on the anniversary of the implementation of SB 1070, local leader Salvador Reza of the Puente Movement as well as Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, will face trial for their act of conscience that prevented Sheriff Arpaio’s raids on last July 29th….

President Obama’s Commitment to Immigration Reform will be Measured by his Actions

(Los Angeles) Following President’s speech on immigration, Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network made the following statement:
“Immigration reform has been on the national agenda for ten years, and we are mindful the politics have never been more poisonous. However, we hope the President will use his political capital and his persuasive powers to help steer the debate back to a more productive course. After all, the loud voices who favor punishing this generation’s Americans-in-Waiting are the very same people who suspected the President himself was an undocumented immigrant. It’s time to move beyond the Arizonification of American politics. The nation’s first African American president has a unique opportunity to take racism out of the political discourse on immigration.
Like Congressman Luis Gutierrez though, we all want to feel the same sense of hope and optimism we felt in 2008. However, words alone will no longer be enough. The President must earn Latinos’ support through actions that move the country toward a policy granting us political equality, through the regularization of our immigrant families’ status. The goal contained in Arizona’s SB1070, the criminalization of immigrants, is mutually exclusive with the goal of legalization. While Republicans have coelesced on a nativist position that will be shamed by history, it is not sufficient for the President to simply blame Congress for inaction. The President must lead by example, and we will measure his commitment to immigration reform by taking stock of his actions.If the President seriously wants to move the debate forward, he can start by answering the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s call to freeze the misguided Se Communities as a first step.*”

Pablo Alvarado is available for media inquiries.

NDLON staff is also available for interviews on Se Communities FOIA litigation, Arizona work, and to provide reporters access to day laborers so their voices can be included.
* In a letter sent Thursday, May 5th, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called on the President to place a moratorium on SCOMM saying, “[it] will contribute to the criminalization of immigrant families by casting them under a cloud of suspicion and by further conflating civil immigration violations with criminal conduct.”

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network represents 43 member organizations and more than 120,000 corner day laborers throughout the country. The mission of the National Day Laborer Organization Network is to improve the lives of day laborers in the U.S. by unifying and strengthening its member organizations to be more strategic and effective in their efforts to develop leadership, mobilize day laborers in order to protect and expand their civil, labor and human rights. Visit www.ndlon.org
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