Thread: Day-labor site draws protesters

http://www.dallasnews.com

Day-labor site draws protesters

Denton: 6 Minutemen condemn illegal hiring, attract critics

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, January 8, 2006

By PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE / Denton Record-Chronicle

DENTON – Six members of the Lone Star Minutemen hoped a protest Saturday morning would interrupt the usual flow of commerce at El Sitio, Denton's day-labor site.

At dawn it looked as if it would be a slow day. But by 8:30 a.m., an hour before the protest was scheduled to end, the daily exchange that links 50 or more workers with employers returned.

Denton County resident Cindy Lou, who has joined other Texas Minutemen several times to observe and report activity along the Texas-Mexico border to the U.S. Border Patrol, organized the Denton protest against the site, which she said was part of a nationwide protest against illegal hiring.

"I've looked into this since May and photographed workers and employers," she said. "If they want to come legal, that's one thing, but when they take jobs away from Americans, that perpetuates economic disadvantage for all."

Denton resident Jose Luiz, one of six men at the site before 7:30 a.m., said that someone had come the day before to tell workers of the upcoming protest.

"Usually there are 50 or 60 people here, but because of this a lot of them stayed home," Mr. Luiz said.

Members of Peace Action Denton, the National Coalition Building Institute and the Denton County Democrats also showed up. They stood in front of the cars of employers as they drove up to negotiate with workers and clapped as they left.

"They did that so that they [the Minutemen] couldn't photograph license plates and harass them later," said Edra Bogle, outgoing Denton County Democrats president.

A group of about 15 counterdemonstrators also followed the Minutemen into Denton. Most of the counterdemonstration group came from Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington. After learning that the Minutemen planned to convene at a nearby restaurant for breakfast beforehand, several of the counterdemonstrators went to the restaurant, too, they said.

Denton Police Department spokesman Jim Bryan said that while the city doesn't check papers on workers, when immigration authorities have visited, they've found that most of the workers were legal.

Denton resident Rudy Acosta, who is married and has an 11-month-old daughter, said that he has his papers to work and that El Sitio is where you go when you want to make money.

"The last choice is on this corner," Mr. Acosta said.

Sandra Bean said she was bothered by a man holding a sign that linked the Minutemen to the Ku Klux Klan.

"I wish he would go away," she said. "People don't want to discuss legal and illegal. They just say you're racist."

Texas Minutemen president Shannon McGauley of Arlington, who also has been to the border on patrols, agreed.

"We're not for segregation. We did away with that in the 1970s. But we can't absorb 3 million more workers."

E-mail pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com

ALPAC Survey on Protest issue

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=Surveys