Decade of service to poor
While most U. S. cities are still wondering what to do about dayworkers, Malibu advocates opened their first hiring site in 1991, more than 10 years ago. These advocates for the poor, former resident Connie Fox, Artifac Tree (charity thrift shop), founder Honey Coatsworth, Rev. Larry Peacock, Rev. Susan Klein, Ronn Hayes, Valerie Sklarevsky and others had formed a coalition, hosted a fundraiser, gathered support from local officials and law enforcement and had its grand opening in early 1991.
However, the grand opening celebration, attended by many city-to-be dignitaries was short-lived and heart-breaking for those who had fought to open that first site at Zuma Beach. Because before the year was out, determined nearby residents had the site closed on a zoning violation. Leaving the poverty and the real ongoing human problems suffered by the workers, unaddressed and the community conflict still intact.
That same year, Malibu became a new city and voted in its first City Council-Walt Keller, Larry Wan, Carolyn Van Horn, Mike Caggiano and Missy Zeitszoff. They set up a community task force made up of some of the same advocates of the first hiring site and moderated by Rev. Larry Peacock of the Malibu Methodist Church. The City Council instructed them to convene and suggest a plan. The task force studied and made proposals for possible location, operations and funding sources. The new council approved implementation of the new proposal by a unanimous vote.
A nonprofit 5013 charity, the Malibu Community Labor Exchange, Inc. (MCLE) was set up to manage the operation. Many on the task force became the new volunteer board of directors. The MCLE partnered with the City of Malibu and Los Angeles County to operate a the site on county land through a cost-free lease in the Civic Center. While presently operating in front of the Malibu City Hall, the Sheriff’s Department plans to move back next year. Or it may be sooner since the City of Malibu has just leased space in a commercial building on Stuart Ranch Road, northwest of the present city hall. The city plans to do its improvements and move in by the end of this summer.
The council’s decision to sanction a Labor Center rather than to rely exclusively on punitive ordinances banning solicitation of work, saved Malibu from being brought in to costly civil rights suits – a situation suffered by Agoura Hills. Their dayworker ordinance was challenged and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as having violated the first amendment of freedom of speech. Agoura Hills’ legal costs exceeded several hundred thousand dollars.
It is apparent that the issues surrounding day laborers are muddied by a diversity of legal, moral, social and economic viewpoints. So it goes without saying that dayworker centers emerge out of conflict and controversy. Yet here in Malibu, hirers and hundreds of workers have been the beneficiaries of our City Council’s willingness to step into the muddy waters, if not in the name of love of humanity, social, political, or economic expedience will do.
Perhaps this was the case in Malibu 10 years ago. It now exists in Phoenix, Ariz. Even as the debate continues, the Phoenix City Council voted $120,000 for capital improvements for its first dayworker hiring center. At least three other Arizona cities are considering centers. It’s what cities all over the country are doing, judging from calls and surveys that the MCLE fields almost every week. According to an AP press release last week, “Local communities are looking for ways to resolve the conflict between the thousands of day laborers in search of jobs and those who don’t want them hanging out on the streets while they wait for them.”
Both Topanga and the City of Thousand Oaks have called the MCLE for advice. In the case of Thousand Oaks, a community advocate has offered to pay us to meet with and share our experience with their community, city council and staff. We can easily share how the MCLE came to be, but that will not guarantee their success since success will be in the eye of the beholder.
Approximately 70 workers come to the Labor Exchange each day and the center has sent out thousands of jobs over its eight and one-half years. That is success. But success itself can be an attractive nuisance. Poverty has a network. Some might say that our success is also a failure because word-of-mouth of worker success brings more workers.
I have weighed this apparent minus-the attraction of more workers, immigrants, and some homeless-with the positive that we have achieved. People getting permanent work gives them dignity, changes lives and makes one feel somehow more human. My conclusion is that a well-run center, cognizant of the needs of a community, can do a great deal of good for both individual workers and the community that far outweigh the negatives.
Clearly, the Labor Exchange is a community-based success of which Malibu can be proud. Two former active street corners no longer exist as worker hangouts. In 1995, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission awarded the project a John Anson Ford Award at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Last year, the MCLE was invited to become a charter member of the National Day Laborer Organizers Network. Last week, the MCLE joined thousands of others in a peaceful workers march in Downtown Los Angeles to support the Multi-ethnic Immigrant Workers’ struggle against all forms of economic and social injustice.
Yet, ironically, being on the cutting edge of opening a successful dayworker center feels a lot like being at the edge of a precipice, offering a startlingly scary view of a myriad of social problems, including the plight of the immigrant poor, homegrown poverty, homelessness and substance abuse. The view is abysmal. But it’s clear that Malibu, indeed, America, is still a very long way away from weeding out the roots of poverty, whether homegrown or global.
Mona Loo