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More join to protest alien law
Meet with Sarto: 'A sleeping giant has been awakened,' says board president

October 14, 2006
By JEANNE HOVANEC STAFF WRITER
CARPENTERSVILLE -- Local Latino business owners and community figures met with Village President Bill Sarto on Friday afternoon to give him their support over the ordinance debate sweeping through the village.
The 35-member group formed the Carpentersville Community Alliance shortly after the Oct. 3 board meeting that included roughly 2,000 participants eager to discuss the Illegal Alien Immigration Relief Act co-sponsored by two village trustees.

The alliance, made up of mostly Latino business owners but also community leaders, teachers and ministers, said the board meeting opened its eyes and made it want to reach out and have a clearer voice in the community.

"We just wanted to thank him (Sarto) for his support in trying to end the ordinance," said alliance founder Sylvia Realoza, an exclusive agent for Allstate Insurance. "We have come together and we are not going away once this ordinance is voted down."

Sarto said the alliance came to him and said it wanted to take on a more active role in the village.

"A sleeping giant has been awakened," Sarto said. "I encouraged them to get more involved. Forty percent of our population is Hispanic, and there is only one Hispanic on the board. I told them they needed to not only take a more active role in the upcoming Spring elections, but in all of them, and they agreed."

Although it was an amicable meeting, Kristin Kumpf of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said the alliance was anxious to see what Sarto would do next after he chose not to remove village Trustees Paul Humpfer and Judy Sigwalt from the village's audit and finance commission.

Sarto had sent the trustees an e-mail earlier in the week saying he would remove them from the key committee if they did not withdraw the proposed ordinance by Thursday night. In a last-second decision, Sarto decided not to remove the trustees because he said he wanted the village to work together to solve the real issues and not focus on an "extraneous issue."

Sarto said the alliance understood why he made that decision.

"I don't think the alliance was upset at Bill as they were disappointed that Paul and Judy did not drop the ordinance," Kumpf said. "The point they were trying to make to Bill was that the village is already the laughing stock of the country and they were upset common sense didn't seem to work."

Group not just for Latinos

The two parties also discussed a potential boycott that Latinos were going to conduct on non-Latino-owned businesses, but Realoza said that idea was cast aside, because doing that would have been counterproductive to the alliance's goals.

"We as business owners should not promote that," she said. "I wouldn't appreciate that, and we need to get through this in a positive manner."

And one way the nonprofit is showcasing that is in its name. Realoza said the alliance chose to name itself the Carpentersville Community Alliance because it wished to include other businesses in the village -- not just those owned by Latinos.

"Our next goal is to invite anyone who wants to join and work for a better Carpentersville," Realoza said. "Naturally we only have Latinos now because we have been feeling and hearing everything going on because of the ordinance, but we want everyone to be a part of fixing our village."