Rally for day-labor center turns heated
Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 26, 2006 12:00 AM


Both sides spoke out loudly about their rights.

The day laborers who solicit work along Thomas Road near 36th Street in Phoenix talked about their right to feed their families.

The furniture store owner talked about his right to hire off-duty police officers to run off the solicitors in his parking lot.

About 70 day laborers and their supporters turned out Saturday to protest the off-duty officers.

"The message here is that the city of Phoenix cannot be in the service of a vigilante," said Salvador Reza, the activist who organized the protest.

And about 20 members of an anti-illegal immigration motorcycle club called the American Freedom Riders turned out to counterprotest.

The undertone was about immigration, and the overtone angrier and more aggressive than many earlier immigration demonstrations.

Some of the counterprotesters shouted obscenities and racial insults at the Hispanic workers, and the workers shouted right back - in between shouts at the potential customers pulling into the furniture store parking lot, asking them not to buy furniture from its owner, Roger Sensing.

"We'll be here every Saturday until Christmas," Reza said.

Reza is lobbying to get a day-labor center established in the neighborhood, where workers can gather and potential employers can hire them. Local business owners complain that the workers gather in their parking lots instead, scaring off customers.

"They're out there running my business away," Sensing said.

It's been an ongoing battle.

Sensing had repeated conversations with Phoenix police, according to Lt. Lauri Williams, demanding more officers to police day laborers. But given other manpower demands, including officers hunting for the "Baseline Killer" and the "Serial Shooter," who preyed on that central Phoenix neighborhood, police suggested that Sensing could hire off-duty uniformed police officers to keep the laborers from trespassing.

Sensing enlisted other businesses up and down Thomas to chip in money to pay two off-duty officers to patrol between 32nd and 40th Streets. The police responded by providing those officers, as they would to any business, and established protocols for the officers to follow.

"It isn't about day labor," Williams said, "it's about trespassing."

Reza believes that the city or private individuals should establish a day-worker center like the one on 25th Street near Bell Road in north Phoenix.

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