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(conclusion) Naui drifts through the crowd, holding his camera inches from Minutemen’s faces, “You want to do some ethnic cleansing today?” he taunts. His bright red sweatshirt is silk-screened with the image of a Sioux in full headdress. Though born and raised in Costa Mesa, California, he does not consider himself American; he is Mexica [meh-SHE-ca]—indigenous Aztec Indian. “Racists go home! Racists go home!” he chants through a rolled up poster, sticking his impromptu horn in the lenses of demonstrator’s cameras. Video cameras buzz in faces like flies; when one gets too close, it is batted away. Everyone is hoping to film their adversaries in a Rodney King-style incident so they can post the video on YouTube.com. YouTube has become the propaganda showcase for anti-minuteman protesters and the Minutemen alike. Amateur activists edit together shaky videos crafted to portray adversaries negatively; links to these videos are shared and posted on web logs and forums. Recently, a scene captured by Naui showing kindergarteners shouting down a Minutemen protest made international news and was shown on Spanish language news broadcasts here in the United States. While most protests become a war between Minutemen and counter-protesters, verbal abuse of day laborers themselves is not uncommon, and there has been at least one incident of violence. Last March, the San Diego City Attorney’s Office filed criminal complaints against anti-immigration protester John Monti alleging he verbally abused and punched immigrant workers during an anti-immigration protest in November, 2006. Monti claims it was he who was attacked by the day laborers who hit him and smashed his camera. He was recently acquitted of all charges. Los Pichoneros A clutch of stocky men—extras, really, in the street theater unfolding— hang back off the street. Their sun-browned faces are blank with bewilderment; their weathered hands in worn pockets. Day laborers like these primarily perform unskilled, manual labor for homeowners and construction contractors. Although the average day laborer looks for work six days a week, he encounters it only infrequently. A 2006 study, written by the UCLA-based Center for the Study of Urban Poverty (CSUP) estimates that only about ten percent will find work on a given day, forcing them to live and feed a family on an average of about $700 a month; these men whom the Minutemen target are among the poorest people in America. Spurred by employer demand, hundreds of day labor hiring sites are sprouting up in home improvement store parking lots, parks, vacant lots or truck rental businesses, or, like this Dana Point site, around a busy donut shop. The day laborers here are just a few of the more than 110,000 such workers waiting for work at day labor hiring sites like this across America, according to the CSUP study. The average site supports about 30 workers. While the day labor trend is largest in the West, it is following migrants North and East (though the largest site in the CSUP study is located in Langley Park, Maryland. It has seen as many as 349 job seekers waiting for work in a given day). They estimate that three-quarters of this workforce is undocumented. Raymondo arrived here from Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1988. He watches the ruckus from the sidelines with his two young children, Jessica and Juanito, a tattered gray sweater hangs on his lean body. His lined face is accustomed to the sun. Raymondo has made a life for himself and his family as a pichonero, as the day laborers here call themselves. Like their namesake, the pigeon, pichoneros feed themselves by scratching up crumbs from the dirt. “We have the right to be here,” he says. Torres refers of the leyes de Dios, the laws of God, which, in his opinion, supersede the laws of man. He feels that the need to work and feed his family overrides all other concerns. “Está cabrón,” he says. Life’s a bitch. "Minuteman Ron" is hoarse from yelling at the day laborers. His "Jim Gilchrist for Congress" cap shades a trimmed grey mustache. "Making Our Borders Secure," the cap advertises. Gilchrist is president of the Minuteman Project and ran a single-issue campaign in 2006 for California’s 48th Congressional seat. Spitting his disdain and disgust, Ron thumbs at the impassive laborers. “Look at this pus oozing out of this country,” he seethes. He refers to the day laborers collectively as "the Josés." Save for the rage in his face, this white-haired man looks grandfatherly. “Half of these illegals are probably felons!” he declares, echoing common Minuteman lore that the crime rate is higher among immigrants. Statistics, however, fail to support this assertion. In fact, a 2007 study co-penned by University of California, Irvine professor Rubén G. Rumbaut suggests that the likelihood that day laborers including those here in Dana Point are felons is one-fifth that of native-born American men. “Rigorous empirical community studies all point to the same robust and consistent results -- the foreign-born have the lowest incidence of crime commission, arrest and incarceration,” Rumbaut says. “We don’t ask them to prove their citizenship” Up the street, one block away but very distant from the fray, a group of day laborers accepts breakfast from Patti, a mission worker from St. Edward Catholic Church. Unnoticed and completely ignored, she spends her Saturday mornings feeding the poor from the trunk of her little white car. The workers sip coffee from Styrofoam cups as she rolls small burritos and offers them to any who approach. “I do what I do out of love,” she explains. The echoing cacophony of the morning’s protest nearly drowns her out. “We don’t ask them to prove their citizenship.” |
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