With colorful signs, loud chants and the honking of passing motorists, approximately 200 supporters of the Herndon Official Workers Center marched down Elden Street to the town’s historic downtown district Friday night to hold a candle light "vigil" for the controversial county-funded day laborer gathering site.
The rally was a joint effort of the Herndon Official Workers Center and representatives of the Los Angeles-based National Day Labor Organizing Network, hosting its annual national conference this weekend in Silver Spring. The march also included the participation of local workers’ unions and Herndon citizen supporters of the site.
The signs, chants and organizers’ speeches delivered in a mix of English and Spanish focused on protecting the right for everyone to find work, the successes of the Herndon day labor hiring site and the moves made in the last year by Herndon’s Town Council designed to target illegal immigrants.
Martin Rios, assistant director of the Herndon Official Workers Center, welcomed supporters from all over the country at Herndon Middle School and briefed the group on the recent attempts by Herndon’s Town Council to replace the site with one that will check for legal residency status.
Chants ranged from the traditional Latin American rally cry, "Si, se puede" ("yes, we can") to a song with lyrics in Spanish, "because we are day laborers, we will not move on."
"We’re here to support our fellow workers, people who just want to find work in peace," said Luciano Castro, a union construction worker and legal immigrant living in Alexandria. "It’s important that people hear us, to realize that we are still fighting for everyone to have the right to work."
THE MARCH COMES in the wake of the collapse of a U.S. Senate immigration reform package and ahead of a Town Council review of the Herndon Official Workers Center permit renewal Aug. 14. The council has issued several requests for proposals for a new site operator that will check for work authorization status over the course of the last year, but has yet to come up with a valid application.
The support for Herndon’s two-year-old day labor site as it stands comes from workers with and without legal residency status, said Pablo Alvarado, president of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.
Their main concern comes with replacing a site that is focused to the needs of day laborers with a temporary job placement site, which can require more time and steps towards connecting laborers with work, Alvarado said. That arrangement, which has been proposed by some members of Herndon’s Town Council, would greatly diminish the viability of the site, he added.
"There are already [temporary job placement businesses] in the area for people who want to use them to find their work," he said. "The jobs of day laborers can’t be organized like that … this is a type of work where many times people come on, work a day or two, and move on."
THE RALLY attracted not just day laborers and their families, but other members of the Herndon community both who supported and opposed the site.
"Even if I don’t agree with what they are saying, they’re in their total right to demonstrate," said Herndon resident Bill Campenni, a member of the anti-illegal immigration movement Help Save Herndon, as he watched the crowd.
Chris Griffin, a Herndon business owner and legal U.S. citizen who immigrated from Scotland more than 30 years ago, said that she showed up to support not just the laborers but reform of the U.S. immigration system.
"The fact is that the federal government isn’t doing what they should be when it comes to immigration and the local government doesn’t happen to be dealing with it in a very humane way," she said. "There needs to be a clear pathway to citizenship if we’re ever going to move past this."
Whether the workers did or did not have papers was immaterial to Herndon resident Bob Ashdown, who is on the community advisory board for the labor site. The question of morality in using public services rests not in their citizenship but in their humanity, he said.
"The moral principle here is that you must treat all people with dignity and respect," Ashdown said. "These people have come to our country to work and support their families, and some of us have chosen not to welcome them."
AS THE MARCH passed by the store front of Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern, a local bar adorned with American flags and filled with the after-work Friday crowd, restaurant patrons began to press against the glass as they gazed at the supporters. Several used profanities as they condemned those in the march.
"They live here and they don’t pay taxes, of course I’m upset," said Karen Pifer, a Herndon marketing worker watching the rally from the restaurant. "I want nothing to do with these people living in my home town."
The main objective in hosting the rally in Herndon was not to cause controversy but to try impress on local residents and government officials that Herndon’s sizable Hispanic community would not be going away and should be embraced, rather than isolated in the town, according to Alvarado.
"If the people in this community want to have a community which is constantly living in horror and fear, they can do that," he said. "But if it’s a place where there is hatred and where people are afraid to leave their homes, that is not a healthy community."
"We need to find a way to live together."