Home > Our Blog > The Farmingville Crucible: From Resistance to Violence Part II

Blog Post

The Farmingville Crucible: From Resistance to Violence Part II

Posted February 19, 2008 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

In Part I of this series, Jim Claffey described the demographic changes which set the scene for tragedy in Farmingville. Here is the next installment. -Pat Young

The Listening Project
In February 1999 several agencies working with immigrants formed an ad hoc consortium to achieve a deeper understanding of public sentiment on the ground in the town. I had recently finished two years as director of immigrant services for Catholic Charities of Long Island and had collaborated with those agencies, which included the Long Island Community Foundation, the Central American Refugee Center, the Workplace Project, as well as Catholic Charities. This consortium hired me for a task we called The Listening Project. From February to May 1999, I conducted more than 225 individual interviews with residents, business owners, contractors, and workers on this issue. I was in Farmingville practically daily during those months, often at six in the morning in order to observe the hiring process and count the number of workers.

At the end of that time, I presented findings and recommendations to the consortium:

1. SQL complained loudly and bitterly about the hundreds of men on the corner, but at no time during those four months did I ever count more than 120 men on any given morning.
2. SQL claimed to be the voice of Farmingville, but my research found that the group did not represent the majority of residents; in fact, many shunned the group as extremist. Most residents, though concerned, are fair minded people.
3. There were real issues that needed attention: overcrowded housing, sanitary issues (the town uses septic tanks) and traffic concerns on the pick-up corners. In short, 120 men on a corner does seem overwhelming in some ways for one small town.
4. SQL raised other alleged grave concerns: property values will decline, crime will rise, women will be endangered. I found no evidence to back up any of these claims: real estate agents indicated steady property values, and the police chief told the Suffolk County Legislature that there was no appreciable crime increase in the area, including no rise in attacks on women.
5. For every alleged incident of worker misconduct, such as whistling at women, or urinating by the side of a building, there were two or three proven cases of criminal abuse of laborers in the workplace. These included under- and nonpayment of wages, failure to provide workplace safety and equipment, and uncompensated workplace injuries.

My principal recommendation was to establish a formal shape-up site in Farmingville, along the lines of the one successfully functioning in Glen Cove, Long Island. Indeed, all experience since that time has led Long Island immigrant advocates, the consortium members, and other groups, such as La Fuerza Unida of Glen Cove, to a firm conviction: an essential step toward easing tension would be a formal site to get the hiring process off the streets, organized, and under control, and furthermore to offer auxiliary services such as ESL. At no time have advocates thought this the perfect solution, but rather they see it as an important step toward a peaceful resolution, ushering in some order to mitigate the existing chaos.

Those calling for mass deportation of the workers charged that Long Island immigrant advocates believed in open borders. The advocates in question provide legal counseling, refugee resettlement, advocacy assistance, and classes on cultural questions for the newly arrived in this country. The truth is that advocates have always recognized the real problems mentioned above, and support the establishment of a fair, orderly, and generous immigration policy, as well as user-friendly procedures in the legalization process. Open borders are not the answer; neither is mass deportation.

The Shape Up Site
Tensions grew. Rhetoric left reason behind. Immigrant advocates were deemed traitors by SQL, with reminders that traitors are executed. Opponents called for military occupation of the town. The presence of Mexican laborers was now touted as proof of the Reconquista, or the Mexican invasion to take back land lost to the USA. Frustrated that mass deportation did not seem likely, SQL split, reorganized, and radicalized yet more, especially when FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), a national anti-immigrant organization based in Washington, DC, sent an organizer to assist them. Later, SQL also contacted American Patrol, another national nativist group, associated with vigilante anti-immigrant activities on the southern border of the United States. Widespread attention now focuses on the Farmingville drama, a national issue playing out locally.

Tensions, long simmering, threatened to boil over. Interestingly, SQL and even some of the county legislators would routinely deride the opinions of anyone not a resident of Suffolk County, where Farmingville is located, yet saw no contradiction in the participation of these anti-immigrant advisors from other parts of the country. Suddenly this local issue had become ground zero for the national immigration debate.

Immigrant advocates prepared a shape-up site proposal and secured private funding but also believed that public support was strategically essential. During this period, the county executive, the chief adminstrator of county government, anxious to appear to be addressing this explosive issue, established a round-table discussion. This initiative, though promising in appearance, was little more than a diversion and accomplished nothing. At one of its sessions, I warned the executive, based on my daily experience of Farmingville, of a growing atmosphere of caustic rhetoric and the feeling that more serious violence could occur at any moment. That warning fell on deaf ears.

Efforts to establish a shape-up site initially prevailed and then quickly failed. Even SQL was originally in favor, but that support was erased as national anti-immigrant groups, most notably FAIR, began to advise them. Their argument became If we build it, they will come, and fear spread based on this false assumption. Work availability and market pressures drive shape-up sites, not vice versa. Advocates managed to convince the Suffolk County Legislature to pass the proposal for an official shape-up site, only to have the proposal vetoed by the county executive. An attempt was made to override the veto, but sufficient votes could not be mustered as local politicians feared the wrath of SQL and its allies. Both the county executive and the majority of the legislators feared losing voters more than they feared the ongoing and dangerous chaos on the corners. This missed opportunity created the current stalemate and a victory for anti-immigrant sentiment while doing absolutely nothing to improve the situation. Sadly, the legislature has never proposed any solution of its own.

Attempted Murder
On September 17, 2000, two young men (one a resident of Queens) picked up two Mexican workers at one of the corners in Farmingville, ostensibly for work repairing a floor. At an abandoned building in Selden, a nearby town, they brutally attacked them with shovels and a knife. Picked up a few days later, one of the perpetrators was found to have Nazi and white-supremacy tattoos. As became clear during the trial, they were out to get some Mexicans, clearly a hate crime. They are currently serving twenty-five years for attempted murder.

Is Sachem Quality of Life, or any of its spin-off groups, responsible for this crime? Not directly. Their rhetoric, however, and their continued harassment and verbal abuse of all those with a differing view, Mexicans and citizens alike, created a generalized atmosphere of tension, rejection, and even hate. This in turn infected young people with the idea that the workers were not worthy of the same respect and civil protections of the rest of the population, and that even violence toward them was somehow acceptable. At this writing, there still has been little indication that SQL members accept even minimal responsibility for this tragic event that has shamed all of Long Island.

In July 2003, in the dead of night, five white teenagers, residents of Farmingville, fire-bombed the house of a Mexican family of four in town. Thanks to an alert neighbor, the family escaped, but the incident revealed that hateful reactions continued to brim over.

Part III: A Spur to Coalition Building

Tags : day laborers, farmingville, hate crimes, hate watch, sachem quality of life

Permalink Comments