Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Stamford Talk Likes the Day Laborer Clinic

Ha! Ha! Ha! YES!
I beat the crazy people to a post about immigrants!!!!

There was a post- I mean, an article- in the Advocate today about a legal clinic for day laborers in Stamford. Workers can go there to get help in suing employers who have not paid them. I actually knew about this clinic a good six months ago because I randomly ran into an old friend from Virginia who happened to be on her way to volunteer there.

Every post that mentions immigrants in the Advocate generates the most annoying, asinine, xenophobic, stupid, lowest level comments you can imagine. To my delight, I was the first one to comment on the day laborer clinic article. I couldn't resist throwing some dirt in the face of the crazy Advocate commenters. Here is what I wrote:

Before a crazy xenophobe rants about how immigrants should go home, I want to say two things: 1. A friend of mine who I've known since high school is a lawyer in Greenwich and does this program. I'm really proud of her for giving her time and skills for this program even though she lives in Brooklyn. The program is obviously needed if they collected that much money. 2. This program could actually be seen as something to decrease use of day laborers. If a scummy contractor knows he can't cheat people out of hard-earned wages, maybe he will hire someone who is in the country legally. Great article, Stephen P. Clark!

And of course, the commment after mine was a generic "Why should illegals even be here" comment. Why do people say the same dull stuff over and over?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why? Because it is the sad, sad misfortune of the universe that it is not populated with more people like you. Were it so populated, everything I read would make sense, and restaurants would never go out of business.

JT said...

Topix (the service that handles Advocates comments) is a cesspool with very few exceptions.

Jeff said...

And I love how people assume that any time you're talking about day laborers, you're talking about illegal immigrants.

I guess we've never read our Steinbeck.

Unknown said...

Of course the lovely HD as been under attack by such other people cause we dared to give aways Flu vaccines (which were never going to be used and go out of date) to the Day laborers. And the mobile medical Van which visits rich and poor alike (but people don't like hearing that it goes to visit the day laborers, but its okay to visit The Stamford museum)

Kevin McKeever said...

Good for you. But I agree with JT, Topix is just a waste of 0s and 1s.

Anonymous said...

I'm all offering the medical and other services to day laborers (or anyone else who can't afford them), but I do have a big beef with the guys who wait by Exit 8 and Elm Street.

The city generously created the No-Hassle pickup zone along the side of the exit, but now the guys waiting there have spread out down Elm Street into the parking lots of Dunkin' Donuts, the convenience store and even the auto body shop! If I owned one of these businesses, I'd be calling the cops every day until the laborers stopped loitering.

I don't care what color they are or where they're from; if it were a bunch of white high school kids, I'd be just as annoyed.

Anonymous said...

I meant "I'm all FOR offering medical services..."