Tensions have been building in Albany Park over what to do with the old CTA bus turnaround on Pulaski just south of Foster, a parcel owned by the Park District where 100 or so day laborers congregate in hopes of finding work.
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Last winter the local alderman, Danny Solis of the 25th Ward, agreed to hold a public hearing on the issue with state senator Miguel del Valle and the Latino Union, a Pilsen-based workers’ advocacy group headed by the Reverend Jose Landaverde. As a goodwill gesture, the laborers moved their operation to an industrial stretch of Cermak at the corner of Allport, where they put up a sign and set up a tent.
The hearing was held on January 18 at the Westside Technical Institute. The intent was to discuss the problems that exist at labor corners around the city. But many of those who attended were Pilsen residents, and they wanted to work out a solution for the corner in their neighborhood.
Residents and business owners like the new site because it’s a good two blocks from the nearest home and nearly as far from the nearest shop. Saldana says that in the six months since it was set up there’ve been no accidents, no incidents with police, and no negative feedback from residents.
The Chicago Park District bought the CTA bus turnaround in June 2002, and it’s slated for development as a bike path and river walkway. Even residents sympathetic to the laborers’ cause don’t think there’s room for a laborers’ site too. The laborers and their advocates insist there is. “We are willing to build the trail–whatever it takes,” says Landaverde. “It can be a park, a bike path–and a workers’ center.”
No one seems particularly concerned that many of the laborers are undocumented. “We end up with workers who risk a lot to make it across the border,” says Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “On the other hand, when they make it to Chicago they have fairly free movement.” Jessica Aranda, an organizer with the Latino Union, says at first Alderman Laurino “had some kind of hesitation about cooperating fully because of the status of workers.” But she hasn’t heard that concern expressed by residents or other city officials. “It’s not an issue we’re dealing with on the surface. I don’t know if there has been hesitation underneath.”
