No Feliz Dia Del Padre

by Javier Guiterrez/PNN

I have worked para muchos anos (I have worked for many years). I have done anything and everything just to feed myself and my family- now I am tired. I sell my labor on the street – hoping that at the end of each month I will be able to send money home to my family in Mexico, and put poco dinero away for another time, another place. There is only one problem, the new police chief, Greg Corrales of The Mission Police station has decided "to clean up" el’ Mision. What he means by that is to clean up agente pobre – the poor people. Since he has been at the job he has been "cracking down" on flower and Tamale vendors, (mostly elder mujeres), day laborers like me and homeless people who sleep on the streets. That is why we will have no feliz dia del padre.this year…that is why we had to speak up.

‘Tenemos que ser Unidos’ (We Must Be United), "We have to lose our fear, we have to stand up for our rights, Daniel Rosas, a fellow day laborer spoke outside of the Mission Police Station on Friday, June 15. Over 50 day laborers came to the station to present the police chief and Mayor Willie Brown with a handwritten father’s day card

We have held repeated meetings, marches, speak-outs, and individual talks, to express our views but the Mission police station continues to ticket us and our potential employers for minor traffic violations and they refuse to strategize around alternate methods of ensuring traffic safety. That’s why we have decided to appeal to the Mission Police station one more time and then to take our demands to the person to whom the police are accountable - Mayor William Brown.

"We are not against the workers, we think they are fine, we just want them to have their own place.." Mission resident Joe Pacoro told another reporter from PNN in an interview after the laborers had left the Mission to visit the Mayor.

"The program they have now doesn’t work, it’s a %100 failure, if they took a building that’s being offered to them out on Bayshore they could have a big roomy place, it’s a great building" , stated another mission resident who openly supported the policies of the new police captain . "the police chief is doing a great job"

When asked what they thought of the new building that The San Francisco Day Labor Program had secured on Cesar Chavez Blvd they replied, "It’s a Whole in the WALL!!"

We asked a representative from The SF Day Labor Program why she thought the Mission residents called the new building a whole in the wall, she replied, " Because they want to move the workers out of the area, they want to get rid of us, that’s what this whole thing is about" She went on to relate a police "set-up" that took place a few weeks ago where they told the workers to move to another area and then proceeded to load them into a police van and arrest them, " Chief Corrales openly stated that he did that blatant set-up just to teach the workers a lesson"

"The Chief is doing a great job, he just doesn’t want the workers to get run over, he wants them out of harms way" one of the Mission residents proclaimed when told about the police round-up.

When we arrived at The Mayor’s office later that morning we were told that the Mayor couldn’t speak to us today because he was muey occupado
(very busy) but his press secretary would present our card to the mayor, and that he would be happy to meet with some of us on another day, many of us decide to wait for as long as it takes….

I have worked para muchos anos.. Now I am tired, I only hope that we will be listened to, that we can be left alone to work, to feed our families, only then will this be a Feliz dia Del Padre.