Day laborers from around the country, members of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, will meet starting Thursday at Hofstra University in Hempstead. More on this below.
Also on Thursday a gathering of day laborers and their supporters is set for Farmingville where a local organization, United Day Laborers of Long Island-Farmingville Committee will march from the house from which workers were evicted by local authorities last month to the Brookhaven Town Hall. The group will assemble at 33 Woodmont
Place, at 7:30 and march to the Brookhaven Town Hall for a rally at 8:15. Irma Solis of the Committe says they will march " to continue to keep the focus on the Town of Brookhaven, the County Executive and the Suffolk Police's failure to give tenants proper notice of their plan to shut the house tenants had been living in" and their "failure to make proper living arrangements for the tenants who were all left without a place to live"
At the Hofstra meeting the National Day Laborers Organizing Network will hold their annual meeting. The organization has chapters all over the country. They have organized day-laborers and established hiring centers. Local hosts for the meeting include the Workplace Project in Hempstead directed by Nadia Marin-Molina and Carlos Carneros. Topics to be covered in their
meeting include the creation of day worker centers, worker leadership development, strategic alliance building, litigation campaigns defending day laborers civil rights, organizing efforts to protect workplace rights, legalization for undocumented immigrant workers and their families, and emerging economic development projects.
As part of the conference on Friday from 9:30 am to noon at the Hofstra Student Center a forum "How to solve day Laborers Problems" will include Nassau county Executive –Tom Suozzi, Mayor Wayne Hall –of Hempstead Village and Representatives from Farmingdale and Freeport villages.
For information about the NDLON conference contact Nadia Marin at the Workplace Project at (516)565-5377 or nadiamarin@yahoo.com. Contact Irma Solis of the Farmingville Committee at amrisilos@yahoo.com
In Farmingville an attempt to establish a hiring center was defeated 2 years ago. An advocate of this facility at the time, Brian Foley, is running for Brookhaven Town Supervisor at a time when political opposition is taking advantage of anti-immigrant sentiment and when hate crimes against Latinos on eastern Long Island are increasingly reported in the press.
On the East End last year, hiring centers were proposed and quickly rejected by local village officials in Southampton. Advocates for the center included members of the Southampton Anti-Bias Task Force and the South Fork Chapter of the Long Island Progressive Coalition.
Recently a representative of the NDLON national office met with local advocates of a hiring center and the need for organizing among the workers was discussed. Meanwhile scores of workers stand on the streets of the Hamptons as well as Farmingville.
