4th Street

This past weekend I had what is always an uncomfortable and slightly unsettling experience: I ventured into the rich-yuppie bastion that is Berkeley's 4th Street shopping district. The home of upscale boutiquies selling makeup, clothes, furniture and kitchenware, 4th Street is somewhere I rarely venture, partly because I can't afford anything and partly because rich yuppies make me nervous. But to be honest, there's another, bigger reason that I don't like going to 4th Street: it makes me see a little too clearly the disparity between rich and poor, and it makes me feel a little too sharply how vulnerable those who don't speak English are in our society.

You see, besides being a swanky, upscale shopping district, 4th Street is also where the Latino day laborers hang out, hoping to score a job for the day. They line the street leading into the shopping center, some slumped against telephone poles--hands jammed deep into pockets, some seated on curbs--faces cast into deep shadow by the brims of hats that have been scorched by the noon sun and battered by rain and wind and maybe even snow. They peer up anxiously--hopefully--as you drive by, hoping to make eye contact, hoping you'll stop, hoping you'll pick them. They break my heart.

I've been in the labor/worker justice world long enough to know a thing or two about day laborers. To have actually met and talked to a bunch of them. It's a raw deal: the work is often grueling manual labor. It's usually not regulated, so the pay is low. There's no guarantee that you'll even get to work at all. Often, day laborers are viewed as loiterers, as trash, as people who should stop lurking on the street and find real jobs. But really, they're just people hoping to pay the bills and make ends meet for their families. They're just people who took their skills and experiences from their own countries and brought them here, to give to us. To make lives for themselves, and maybe, hopefully, a better future. I wonder how many of them find that better future after all.