Day Laborers to SFPD: Stop the Crackdown

San Francisco, April 30 – On the eve of International Workers' Day, representatives and supporters of the Mission District's day laborers, who are among the city's poorest and most disenfranchised workers, took SFPD Captain Corrales to task for an escalating pattern of harassment and repression. At Mission Police Station, amidst a room packed to overflow with some 30 hostile, mostly white Mission District home-owners, landlords and merchants, along with dozens of other residents who were just concerned with the mounting tensions, in a heated, emotional meeting that lasted three and a half hours, six Spanish-speaking current and former day laborers, together with about 50 advocates and supporters, confronted Corrales, demanding an immediate end to his three-month-long, on-going campaign of racial profiling, aggressive ticketing, sweeps, and threats of turning laborers over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Flanked by dozens of uniformed officers, Corrales, who was hired as the new police captain in the Mission in early February, forcefully denied any collaboration between the SFPD and the INS, and claimed that the SFPD was only enforcing traffic laws on Cesar Chavez St. between Bryant St. and the on- and off-ramps to Hwy. 101 near Hampshire, ticketing day laborers who step off the curb onto the street to get into employers’ cars, which Corrales said constitutes “an extremely dangerous traffic hazard.” To illustrate his claim, Corrales pointed to a large, multi-colored map of the southern Inner Mission and eastern Noe Valley from Chavez to 24th St., Dolores to Hampshire, distributing numerous hand-colored copies to attendees. The easternmost two and a half blocks of Chavez St., marked in yellow, were the only area on the map where day laborers were getting ticketed, Corrales said.

However, Day Labor Program Director Renee Saucedo countered that she had received many recent reports of police ticketing workers at various points along Chavez and 26th Sts. from Hampshire to South Van Ness, often in response to complaints from homeowners, and near the corner of Chavez and Valencia, due to calls from merchants in the area. The reports frequently describe police officers forcing day laborers to move along, often threatening to hand the workers–predominantly undocumented immigrants–over to the INS if they refuse to cooperate. Saucedo said she has witnessed the motorcycle cops “circling like vultures,” and a strategically parked police van scares potential employers away.

While some Mission homeowners said they were undecided as to where they stood on these issues and wanted more dialogue in pursuit of a workable solution, many spoke vehemently in support of the crackdown, complaining about day laborers allegedly committing “quality of life” crimes such as public urination and loitering. A dozen or so of the most hostile homeowners heckled and hissed Saucedo and others who spoke out in support of the day laborers’ right to live and work free of harassment and repression.

Advocates from the Day Labor Program responded that these issues only underscore the lack of available resources, such as safe and accessible public restrooms and an indoor space where day laborers could wait for employers. Supporters also pointed out that the day laborers’ quality of life is threatened whenever they are targeted by police for seeking out work to support themselves and their families. Some pointed to the increase in racial profiling and anti-immigrant attacks by politicians and law enforcement since September 11.

This reporter, speaking as a community health worker who does outreach to sex workers in the Mission, said that in the months since Corrales became the new police captain, most of her clients, including many undocumented Latina immigrants, both biological and transgender women, have been arrested or swept out of the Mission and forced to live and work in other areas, such as the Tenderloin. Corrales then confirmed this report, vowing to “eliminate sex workers from the Mission.” Not surprisingly, the hostile homeowners, who had heckled this reporter and others, applauded Corrales when he made this statement.

Among the day laborers who spoke was José Echevarria, a founding member of the Day Labor Program. The Program began in 1989, when day laborers and community supporters saw the need for a center that could provide resources, job training, and other services, and began organizing to achieve that goal. Today there are an estimated 500 day laborers, who are mostly Latin American immigrant men, living and working in San Francisco.

Elly Kugler, worker advocate and job developer at the Day Labor Program, explained that only few day laborers came to this meeting because outreach efforts focused on mobilizing allies among the neighbors, and while the workers hold organizing meetings elsewhere twice aweek, “we didn’t feel the police station was the safest or most comfortable place, nor the most tactical place for the workers to be spending their energy.”

“We were overjoyed to see a sample of the Mission community vocally and actively supporting the rights of day laborers,” Kugler said. “We believe that this struggle concerns the Mission as a whole and is relevant to every Mission resident.”

Epilogue, May 13 – According to Saucedo, the police stopped issuing tickets the following day, but for the past two weeks they have continued to order the men off the sidewalk. Then this morning a man received a ticket and was fingerprinted right there on the street by SFPD officers.

But Saucedo remains optimistic. “Thanks to day labor organizing and community support, the workers have won their right to wait on certain streets for work, and although we still have a ways to go, I am confident that we will win in the long run.”