Running for Justice

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

March 6 -- With each footfall, a dozen day laborers who set out on an historic run this weekend from Santa Monica’s Pier to New York City are hoping to focus attention on the national debate swirling around immigrant rights.

Sponsored by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the runners will huff and puff 3,000 miles across America’s heartland with stops at Native American reservations, big cities and small towns to “promote peace and dignity throughout the country,” according to the group’s statement.

In their wake, the same twelve runners -- who began the race Saturday to the cheers of some 50 people who gathered at the pier -- will carry the hopes and aspirations of the estimated 117,000 men and women that a UCLA study says seek work every day on street corners or are busy painting, gardening, cleaning homes, caring for children or picking the vegetables that feed American citizens, organizers said.

In Latin American culture, the tradition of running has long been used to find the right spiritual path, organizers said.

“Running has always brought balance whenever our people needed guidance and help,” said runner Salvador Reza. “We believe this run will give us the guidance and help we need now to overcome the anti-migrant laws, proposals and sentiment that permeate America today.”

The runners first stop was 11th Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, where they discussed the importance of organizing with the dozens of day laborers that gather each day at the corner to find work.

After receiving various complaints from neighbors and businesses alleging that day laborers at the site were noisy, loitering and urinating in public, City Council members asked staff to begin exploring options to build a day laborer center similar to those in Burbank, San Bernardino and Pomona.

NDLON Spokesperson Chris Newman said his group would be in support of such a site locally.

“Day labor centers tend to be the best public policy intervention available to cities in dealing with day labor practices,” Newman said.

Santa Monica won’t be the only place the runners will rest their Reeboks in Los Angeles County.

Runners are scheduled to stop at key destinations -- including Pomona on Monday -- to inject their voices into a national debate that has brought the attention of Congress and the President. It even spawned a grassroots movement, known as the Minutemen Project, whose members volunteer their time to sporadically guard America’s southern border from illegal immigration, which they say is wreaking havoc on land owned by ranchers and draining the fiscal resources of border states.

NDLON counters that Americans benefit substantially because of the jobs performed by day laborers, many of whom came to America illegally.

The rally and press conference on the steps of Pomona City Hall will be used to call for the approval of a resolution against the Sensenbrenner Federal Immigration proposal, which criminalizes violations of federal immigration laws; against anti-immigrant vigilante groups and for an official statement that declares the city of Pomona a sanctuary for all immigrants, according to the NDLON.

By Tuesday, organizers say the 12 runners will make a morning stop at a day labor center established at a Home Depot in San Bernardino, which has been a flashpoint of protests by Minutemen organizers. Groups in favor of the site have also gathered at the Home Depot to express support for the day labor facility in recent months.

The journey coast to coast is expected to take two months to complete, said Newman, and along the way organizers are expecting hundreds of people to join in the run. However, only the twelve who began the trek – a mixture of current and past day laborers, as well as NDLON members – are scheduled to complete it.

A joint celebration and ceremony in New York City and Washington D.C. are planned after the runners completed their Olympic feat, said Newman. The journey is long, but worth it, if they can draw attention to the plights of one of the most discriminated groups in America, he said.

According to NDLON organizers, day laborers are routinely exploited by predatory employers and denied workplace rights, often deprived of their civil rights by municipalities seeking to arrest and harass them, increasingly victims of hate crimes and the main target of anti-immigrant vigilante groups and politicians.

“With their Run for Peace and Dignity, day laborers are saying enough is enough,” states a press release issued by the group Saturday. “Day laborers want to build communities, not divide them. Unlike many of their detractors, the runners intend to explore productive dialogues to achieve peaceful coexistence.”

The National Run for Peace and Dignity intends to:

• Promote a realistic and inclusive immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship and to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” for undocumented Human Beings and their families,
  
• Highlight and celebrate the contributions of Macehualli Day Laborers and their worker centers to this country’s economy and its cultural wealth,
  
• Denounce unjust anti-immigrant proposals and expose the virulent political motives of their proponents and vigilante groups,
  
• Build communities in harmony with Mother Earth that embrace a spirit of tolerance, peace, and reconciliation in response to the increasingly hateful and divisive attacks against migrants in general and day laborers in particular, and
  
• Develop the leadership skills of day laborers by discussing issues that are relevant to their lives, including their place in the immigration debate, the state of day worker centers and corners, the findings of the first National Day Laborer Study and current efforts to protect their civil, labor and human rights.