Youth Activists of the Peace Project at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk, Connecticut have been working to help improve conditions for local day laborers. The Center for Youth Leadership, the parent organization for the Peace Project, works to promote youth activism among students in four high schools, including McMahon, around Connecticut. This past school year, Peace Project’s Day Laborer Study Team surveyed local day laborers and published an extensive research report on their working and living conditions.
Lorena Martinez, 17, told WKCD all about the study and the group’s work with day laborers:
In the Peace Project, we promote safe schools and safe communities. We have a focus on dating violence, day laborers and human trafficking. The Peace Project is a program of the Center for Youth Leadership, which is a network of four high schools that engage 250 students in youth activism. The students in the Center for Youth Leadership’s program practice what we call socially engaged philanthropy, which includes grant making, volunteer programs, public awareness activities and social change campaigns.
I am going into my senior year. I got involved in the Peace Project during my freshmen year and joined the day laborer study team my sophomore year. The team needed bilingual speakers to work with day laborers. Originally, we thought we were just giving them breakfast and talking to them to see what their lives were like. We soon realized that people do not treat them well. It’s really sad. For example, contractors will often take them to towns far away from Norwalk, not provide them with lunch or bathroom breaks, and make them find their own way back to Norwalk.
Beginning with workers’ rights
The idea of working with day laborers came to us in May 2006. In April the principal of our high school asked the Peace Project to defuse a potentially explosive situation at school. Spanish-speaking students wanted to support immigrant-workers rights day by walking out of school on May 1, which is workers’ rights day. The Peace Project acted quickly. We mobilized 400 students in a series of in-school demonstrations and debates about workers’ rights. For example, one of the debates was between an American-born teacher and a teacher who is now legal, but was illegal when she came to America. Their debates sparked tons of questions from students and teachers.
Addressing the needs of day laborers
Given the stories we heard on workers’ rights day, we decided to focus our attention on day laborers. No one really knows about them, and the men do not know how to get services and advice with problems. Since September 2006, we have visited the day laborers once or twice a month. Food isn’t the only thing we bring them. We provide them with clothes, flu shots and information about agencies in town. We’ve had several meetings with a small group of day laborers to talk about organizing for their rights. And we’re trying to get the city to place a port-a-potty on the corner where the men gather. Do you know what it’s like not to have a clean and private place to go to the bathroom?
One of the big things we did last year was to hold a health fair for the men. The fair was based on a health survey we conducted with them. We brought dentists and nurses, and provided blood pressure, HIV, and Lyme disease testing, as well as general checkups.
Another big thing we did was to start a wage clinic for the men. We reached out to Connecticut Legal Services when we found out that many of the men were not paid for the work they did with contractors. We learned that wage abuse is one of the biggest issues the day laborers have to deal with. So, we helped Connecticut Legal Services set up a wage clinic for the men and we staffed the clinic twice a month, which made us the only teens in Connecticut to work in a wage clinic with day laborers.
Embracing respect
The day laborers call us “angels from heaven” because of the work we’ve done with them. For me, it’s been an eye-opening experience. I’m a daughter of immigrant parents. My parents didn’t have an experience like the day laborers, but I know that they’ve struggled a lot here. Sometimes, just because you’re an immigrant and you don’t speak English, people don’t treat you very fairly. 
We’re all human. I thought, people need to learn how to respect one another and even though we all have different circumstances, we’re all the same, so we need to respect each other and help each other.
So this experience really affected me. My friend actually did a documentary film on these men and we used it educate people at school and in the community. We’re trying to educate people about these men, so they can learn their situation first instead of judging them.
Before I came to high school, I didn’t really know about these things. All these programs at school told us that we definitely have a voice and that teens can do something, and we are strong. It helped me a lot and I think it helped a lot of my peers as well.
