Day laborers gather at Hart Part, Queens for a hot breakfast given by a local soup kitchen. Residents are angry at the increasing crowds milling outside the park (Photo: Smriti Rao)
On any given day, you would find day worker Jose Manuel at Hart Park, 69th at 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights. The painter from Mexico comes to the park each morning hoping to be picked up for work. On Tuesdays, a mobile soup kitchen run by St. John’s Bread and Life provides him and his friends with a hot breakfast of pasta and beans that makes the wait, which has gotten longer, a little more bearable.
“I have been coming here for a long time now,” said Manuel, eating his breakfast. “Earlier they weren’t this many people,” he said referring to about 60 day laborers still waiting for work at 10.30 in the morning. “But now there are no jobs,” he continues, adding “maybe in January it will get a little better.”
As Manuel and his friends mill outside Hart Park waiting for work; across the street, Stathis Amides, the superintendent of the building across the Park is seething. He stands with a small camera in his hand to record any digressions the workers make.
“I have been seeing this for a year now,” says Amidis, referring to the mobile soup kitchen. “They feed the people, then the workers take their platters to Roosevelt Avenue, and litter all along the block,” he said, adding he was normally up at about 6 am each day to clean up after the workers. “This is a very big problem for me,” he fumed.
Amidis is not alone in his anger towards the workers. A group of irritated residents went as far as posting on a neighborhood blog, their complaints against the soup kitchen and the workers.
Amidst calls for the soup kitchen to move elsewhere in Woodside, the angry residents, who were unnamed on the blog wrote: “Their [the soup kitchen] intrusion into our neighborhood is unwanted and unneeded. None of the residents ever take food from them.” Saying the soup kitchen feeding immigrants was a “creepy intrusion,” the residents worried about their children being exposed to the workers, complained about the bathrooms in the park getting dirty and said the soup kitchen and the day laborers both contributed in reducing the quality of life in the neighborhood.
St.John’s Bread and Life says it is bewildered by the open hostility. “We have been doing this [running the soup kitchen], at the same site, for the last two years now,” said Anthony Butler, Executive Director of the program that feeds roughly 300 laborers at Hart Park each Tuesday and about 3000 others city wide. “But the complaints started just two months ago. It’s kind of xenophobic, really,” he said, adding while undocumented labor was a big issue in the Country, people were being scrooges at this time of the year. “So, should we only feed people who are legal,” he asked adding there was a great deal of racism when it came to to the complaints. “We have seen a 20-30% increase in laborers because of the recession, and we have also seen an uptick in anti-immigrant sentiment. The undocumented [laborers] get blamed for everything,” he said.
Meanwhile, Amides, who has to deal with the workers on an everyday basis, said he wasn’t against the workers, only their attitudes. “Everyday, they bother the tenants,” he said, referring to the workers, “they tease the young girls, “Yo mamita, Yo mamita,” he mimicked.”I understand they are looking for jobs, but I can’t understand them bothering the little girls.”
Residents also complain that they feel unsafe for their children when the workers are milling about Hart Park.”We don’t mind them staying in Woodside, but not on the playground,” said another resident who wished to be unnamed. “They [the soup kitchen] are welcome to stay in Woodside,” she said, “Just move three or four blocks in either direction.”
A request that Sister Kathy Byrnes of St. John’s Bread and Life says, is untenable. “Some neighborhoods want immigrants to disappear,” she said, “We came here because the workers gather here, it’s not the other way around. We try to serve those most in need.” She said that since the soup kitchen clarified park rules, workers have been notified not to enter Hart Park, as it is against the rules to enter the park without children. “Now, they don’t go into the park, but they can use the bathrooms,” she specified, much to the chagrin of the residents.
As the soup kitchen and the residents battle it out, workers like Jose and his friends admit to a few bad apples in their crowd. “Sometimes, some workers drink in the park in summer,” Jose said, “we tell them not to, but they still do it,” he added. He said the workers were warned by the local precinct to behave and added that it was a shame that some workers didn’t play by the rules. “This is where we have to meet everyday,” he said, referring to the pick up point. “If they [residents] kick us out from here, where will we go?” he asked, as he finished his breakfast and started another long wait in the biting cold – hoping to be picked up for work.
This piece first appeared in Queens Chronicle
