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By Lucy Chumbley
Washington Window
Vol. 75, No. 6, May 2006

Each morning, whatever the weather, a group of mostly Latino day laborers, or jornaieros, gathers in the parking lot of Grace United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg to wait for work.

"People know that when they start to gather in any corner, any parking lot, contractors are going to drop by," said the Rev. Simon Bautista, the Diocese of Washington's Latino Missioner.

While this informal arrangement usually serves its purpose - finding contractors labor and laborers work - without oversight it can create a public nuisance and leave many people vulnerable to exploitation, Bautista said.

For the last two years, members of Gaithersburg's faith community - including the Episcopal Church of the Ascension - have joined forces to ask the city council to open a center for day laborers.

At a minimum, this center would provide shelter from the elements with restroom facilities where laborers could wait for work and maybe take an English class, Bautista said. At best, it could provide services ranging from employment assistance to healthcare services and immigration counseling.

The problem of the parqueadero - the parking lot - began when the Spanish Catholic Center, an agency that offered many of these services, closed its doors in July 2003.

An increasing number of laborers continued to congregate at the site, and eventually moved to the adjoining property owned by Grace United Methodist Church.

The jornaieros adopted the church, and the church community adopted them.

In early 2004, two pastors from Grace United Methodist Church and Bautista, who also serves as the Latino missioner at Ascension, Gaithersburg, met to discuss the situation and decided to bring the matter before Mayor Sidney A. Katz and the city council.

"It is crucial to have a day laborer center," Bautista said. "The reason is that it is not only going to help the workers - it is going to help their families. It is important to have it because that will show a kind of opening from the people of faith to the new wave of day laborers."

Katz responded by appointing an ad hoc group to explore the feasibility of creating a day laborer center, and matters seemed to be moving ahead.

"Everything was going very well," Bautista said. "The mayor and his staff located funds to support the creation of the center and a building, and CASA of Maryland was going to run it."

But the proposed plan failed after meeting with dissent from local residents and members of the newly formed Maryland chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group working to stem illegal immigration.

That could have been the end, Bautista said, but thanks to the mayor's "good heart" and the support of the faith community, it was not.

Last Dec. 19, Katz appointed a 14-member task force to research options for a day laborer center and make a recommendation to the city council. The Rev. Joe Clark, who was then Ascension's rector, but has since retired, was one of the members.

For the next 12 weeks, the task force sought input from laborers, existing day labor centers, contractors and community members, and put together a 136-page report on its findings.

Meanwhile, Bautista and other advocates formed a small committee to keep an eye on the process. This group has organized three early morning candlelight vigils to keep the matter in the public eye and to pray for the work of the task force.

"These vigils have been peaceful vigils," Bautista said. "What we do is reflections from the Gospel. Supporters of the laborers and laborers give their testimony."

The theme of the first vigil was hope, he said, while the third, which took place April 10 - the day the task force made its recommendation to the city council - focused on thanksgiving for the panel's work.

Around 50 people attended the April 10 vigil, Bautista said, then filed in to the city hall to hear the task force's recommendation: that a facility offering limited services be constructed in Gaithersburg and managed by a faith-based organization in partnership with local government.

This option would provide a place where day laborers could seek jobs, take English classes and learn of health and human services resources available in the city and county.

Bautista said while this limited option was not his committee's first choice, he is pleased that the project seems poised to move forward, although he said that the faith-based model "has to be more integrated" in order to serve the laborers and the community well.

"We do not have the experience running this type of effort," he explained.

He also pointed out that Katz and the city council are not bound to accept this recommendation, so modifications to this proposal are still possible.

"Now the issue is fully in the hands of the mayor and the city council," he said. "I believe that the city council will go forward. I hope that I'm not wrong, because it has been our hope all these months that something positive is going to happen to benefit the day laborers and their families."

The city council is expected to come back with a plan on May 1, Bautista said, and until a plan is finalized and a center is built, his committee will continue to meet.

"We will continue," he said. "I'm not planning to give up. Only when I see that everything is done."

Following the April 10 meeting, four Gaithersburg churches - Ascension, St. Martin's Roman Catholic and Grace and Camino de Vida United Methodist - wrote to the city council expressing their ongoing support for a day laborer center in Gaithersburg.

"We believe it is paramount to respect the human dignity of the day laborers and recognize that they only seek honest work," the letter states. "We believe that the City of Gaithersburg, our local government, has the primary responsibility to provide the day laborer center."

"We're talking about human beings here," Bautista said. "People who leave their culture, jobs, family to hit the road and look for a better way of living, for a better life. I'm not saying we need to recognize them as heroes - just not miss the perspective that they came here looking for a better life, just as people have always come here looking for a land of opportunity."

Jesus began his life as an immigrant - exiled to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod - he said, adding that the faith community has a responsibility to speak for the voiceless and the hopeless.

"I believe that all people in this country need to be treated as children of God. I do not believe that is asking too much," he said. "I believe that we need to awake and become more aware that this is a human issue that affects any faith-based community.

"I believe there's a call from the Gospel that will not allow me to go home and sleep well until I've done what I can."

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