A black and white paste-up image of a day-laborer wearing a sun hat and looking away from the camera. The image is surrounded by missing posters of day laborers. Guadalajara, Jalisco, México.
Image Credit: Mtenaespinoza on wikimedia commons

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht, 1939

I’m not a day laborer or even an immigrant. I’m an artist. But how I make a living hardly matters in the current emergency. Our national community is under attack. Our immigrant friends and neighbors are under siege. Armed masked men are conducting militia raids in our hometown, on our streets. They are terrorizing immigrant workers, destroying families, and attacking values and rights precious to us all.

I’m no good at sitting quietly in times like these. So, I stood up, along with dozens of other volunteers in Pasadena, just like thousands of others around the country, trying to do what we can, nonviolently and creatively, in solidarity with immigrant workers and families.

Solidarity begins with sharing basic connections and acts of friendship.

At first it wasn’t clear what I could do. The near-daily raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents chasing and assaulting immigrant workers across Southern California have been chaotic, violent, and dangerous. One day laborer at a Home Depot not far from Pasadena was chased to his death on a freeway. What could a peace-loving civilian woman like me do in the face of an armed invasion?

Quite a bit, I realized. I learned of a program called Adopt a Corner, set up by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which advocates for low-wage workers. They run a job center in Pasadena and have organizational members around the country.

As the raids have spread and intensified, NDLON has been connecting people from the wider community into a growing web of nonviolent resistance to authoritarianism.

We are all in this together, in different ways.

Solidarity begins with sharing basic connections and acts of friendship. I go to the Home Depot in Pasadena three or four mornings a week. I get to the parking lot early, before the contractors’ trucks start showing up and workers start to disperse.

My Spanish is limited so I can’t always have conversations with the day laborers, the jornaleros. When fellow volunteers translate, that helps a lot. I go up to workers and say hi. I bring tangerines. I love sharing a bit of sweetness as we connect—learning names, sharing stories, affirming among ourselves a common humanity and purpose.

The stories are not always happy. One man had recently fallen off a roof and was in a lot of pain. We drove him to the emergency room. On-the-job injuries are a constant hazard of dangerous jobs like roofing, demolition, and disaster cleanup. Employers often skimp on safety equipment and training.

When we’re not engaging with jornaleros, we volunteers patrol the area. I carry a GoPro, ready to record any kidnapping or assault. I shot video of an ICE action at the Sierra Madre Villa train station in Pasadena.

My eyes were really opened by being an Adopt a Corner volunteer. It’s common to complain about our jobs as a daily grind. For day laborers, every morning is a new opportunity, but it’s also an unending struggle.

Now add to that uncertainty the fear of losing everything in a raid. It’s horrible to contemplate. But jornaleros don’t have the luxury of paid time off to stay home sick, or safe from ICE. Their families would suffer. So—in a daily demonstration of courage, determination, and love—they go back to Home Depot.

And as long as they do, so will I. I’ll be there, standing with them.