Mapping America: Every City, Every Block

[wetibbe]

A couple of years ago the mayor of that slum ghetto personally went to a notorious day laborer hangout and hired a bunch of 10 or so to clean out a building in the project area, on main street, that had been condemned and taken by eminent domain. It was a furniture store with a basement containing dirty black water. The Village public works employees wouldn't go in there without some environmental hazard investigation. Some of the day laborers refused to go down as well. But they did remove the furniture to someplace.

An alert newspaper reporter caught the mayor and printed a lengthy article. ICE did absolutely nothing. The New York State Department of Labor got wind of the event and ordered that prevailing wages be paid to the day laborers *( In New York State, state or Federally funded projects require a DOL wage scale be paid to everyone. It is essentially union wages. Non-union contractors are bound by law to pay it too ).

The Village Board argued the case and tried to hold the mayor personally responsible for the extra payments since he operated independently and outside of the councils sight. He also violated the Public Employees Service Union contract by hiring not only non-union help but paid them $10 per hour which is about 1/2 of the laborer prevailing wage scale.

So the whole upshot of it all was that the day laborers got their pockets filled more with tax payers money and the mayor was voted out of office. The new mayor is a female, Haitian immigrant, the first Haitian mayor in New York state. That Village, incidentally, has a vast number of Haitian immigrant boat people. So the census about blacks isn't all African Americans it is significantly Caribbean blacks who jabber Creole and French. Many signs on main street are in French and the taxis all have French names on the doors.