NEWS

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014 Fund Raiser for Hispanic Day Parade, at Nueva Elegancia, 572 57th St., West New York. For information or to order tickets, including raffle tickets, call Elias at 201-362-3928 (Spanish) or Roni 201-592-1874 (Spanish or English. The parade is OCTOBER 5.

The Hispanic Day Parade is an annual event, organized by Elias Garcia and others.

OCTOBER 18, 2014, CoFiA Fund Raiser “La Fiesta”, at the American Legion Hall in Leonia. Live and recorded music, including a special surprise premiere performance, food, and good conversation. Watch this space for more information.

CoFiA English as a Second Language Classes resume on September 9, 2014, at 7:00 p.m. at the Palisades Park Public Library, 257 Second Street, Palisades Park, with classes for intermediates and beginners. The advanced class starts later in the month. People interested in volunteering as teachers or assistants are welcome.

Contact us at info@communityoffriendsinaction.org for more information. Classes are free; there is a small charge for the textbook.

photo by Peter de Silva for the New York Times. “Guadalupe Salazar, a McDonald’s cashier who says her paychecks were missing overtime wages.”

An article by Steven Greenhouse, “More Workers are claiming ‘wage theft’ (New York Times, August 31, 2014, Business Day Section), states there is a flood of recent cases in California and across the nation that accuse employers of violating minimum wage and overftime laws, erasing work hours, and wrongfully taking employees’ tips.

Some business groups, however, claim that the increase is due to union action and government efforts to score points with the unions–although they don’t deny the incidents occur.

Among the corporations cited in the article are Walmart, Fed Ex., janitorial companies, and many more.

The Director of the Federal Labor Department’s Wage and Hour division, David Weil, said his agency had uncovered nearly $ 1 BILLION in illegally unpaid wages since 2010.

Guadalupe Salazar (see photo) joined a suit against McDonald’s because she was repeatedly cheated of her overtime pay for work that she was forced to do, even though she would have preferred to spend the time with her family.

A familiar dodge of corporations is using sub-contractors rather than hiring workers directly, and trying to hold the sub-contractors responsible for non-payment. Nonetheless, suits have been filed and won against the corporations themselves even when they try this tactic. Another tactic employers use is claiming the employees are “independent contractors” although they are in every sense working for the corporation.

CoFiA’s Wage Theft Committee and the workers we assist struggle with many such cases. Because the cases are often (but not always) against smaller corporations, or because the workers are undocumented, it is usually not possible to file class action suits. So we must resort to “creative tactics” to track down the errant employer and persuade him or her to make good on their obligation.

(Thanks to CoFiA Board Member Rev. Janet Blair for calling our attention to this article.)

The annual CoFiA fundraiser, LA FIESTA, will be held on Saturday, October 18, at the Legion Hall in Leonia. The band, Still Standing, is returning by popular demand, and there will be lots of other music, food, and great conversation–plus a special premier of a new piece written and sung by a CoFiA member.

The event is also a great time to get a head start on holiday or other shopping. Once again Grupo Cajola will offer special handwoven items created by residents of Cajola, Guatemala–providing a unique opportunity to fulfill our commitment to helping Guatemaltecans improve their economic situation, as well as offering our friends and relatives a tactile experience of the culture of Guatemala.

The Presbyterian Church in Leonia organized a mission trip to Guatemala. Twenty-nine people, including 5 members of CoFiA, went on this trip to help build a middle school out of recycled bottles with an organization called Hug it Forward.

The bottles are stuffed tightly with inorganic trash to create what
they call “eco bricks.” The schools Hug it Forward builds are all in San
Martin, Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, where most of the day laborers
CoFiA works with come from. Last year our group worked on schools in the
villages of Xesuj and Chisunuc while this year we worked in the village of
Chidonjuan. We were welcomed into this remote village in the Guatemalan
mountains untouched by tourism, and were able to interact with the children and adults there as they worked and played with us.

Many of the people in Chidonjuan survive as subsistence farmers, which means
they are barely able to grow enough food to feed their family each day, with
nothing left over. We heard from a survivor of the Guatemalan Civil War who
told us that the current generation of adults in the countryside has very little education, because for over 30 years their families were caught in a long civil war. Many were killed during this war, and the rest hid in the mountains to survive. Now that the fighting has stopped, they are determined to provide something better for their children.

We visited what they called a “humble home.” It consisted of an open-air
kitchen with a fire for cooking and a faucet for running water, plus a small
room with a light bulb on the ceiling, and a bedroom which slept two adults and nine children in two small beds. The walls were made of corn stalks, which had to be replaced every few years. The tinroof was rusty and had tiny holes in it. In the bedroom a plastic sheet hung over the bed,to catch any rat urine that might drip through the roof as they slept at night.

We were told that half the men in that village had worked in the United States
long enough to send back money to build a better home. Some houses with sturdy roofs, concrete floors are finally being built. We heard a talk given by Guatemalan man who had spent 5 years working in the U.S. who told us that the best form of foreign aid is immigrants who work in thie U.S. and send money back home. Whether they are documented or not, the money is well-earned, and is not wasted on corrupt politicians. It goes directly to people who put it to good use.

We also spent one day of our trip touring some Mayan ruins. The Mayans had a
sophisticated civilization dating back thousands of years before Christ. But it was almost entirely wiped out in the 1500s by Spanish conquistadors, who took over the area, killing most of the Mayan people and enslaving the rest. Our guide told us that the conquerors banned the Mayan language and imposed their own culture on the people. But the Spanish did not educate the Mayan women or pay much attention to them, so the women were able to keep the language and some of the Mayan customs alive at home, secretly passing them on to their children and their children’s children.

Today there is an interest in reviving Mayan culture and scholars are piecing together information from found documents and the folk traditions that have survived.

This trip was a transforming experience and we are thankful to have been able to spend the time with our Guatemalan sisters and brothers.

-Debra Given and Suzanne Broffman

CoFiA Chair Carolyn Sobering invites all CoFiA friends and members to our first general meeting of the season on Thursday, September 4, 2014, at 7:30 p.m., at the Presbyterian Church in Leonia, 181 Fort Lee Road, Leonia, NJ 07605.

We will have updates on wage theft cases, workers’ link placements over the summer, the recent trip of a number of CoFiA members to Guatemala to help build a school, the current situation of unaccompanied child migrants, and plans for our fall fundraiser, “La Fiesta,” on Saturday, October 18. And more!

This year’s Hispanic Day Parade will be on October 5. On September 12, there will be a dance, at Nueva Eleganica, 572 57th St., West New York, to raise money for the parade. Our own Elias Garcia is organizing both. To order tickets for the dance, or to purchase a raffle ticket ($5) call him at 201-362-3928 (Spanish) or Roni Coloma (201-592-1874) (Spanish or English).

CoFiA has once again been invited to have our banner displayed on the float.

The CoFiA Workers Link program has had several calls for masons this summer, to repair damages caused by our bitter winter. Here are photos of a job recently completed. Both the workers and the homeowner are very happy! To request a worker call Angelica at 201-598-2253 or just send an email to this web site (info@communityoffriendsinaction.org)

Twice a year the Guatemalan Consulate provides a mobile unit that travels to New Jersey to make it easier for people to renew passports and consular cards (“cedulas”). Both are very important because they provide some identification and make living here a little easier.

This summer the mobile consulate will be at St. John’s Church in Fairview on Sunday, August 10. People who need passports need to bring a current cedula, a birth certificate issued by the Guatemalan National Registry for Persons, or a DPI. People who need the consular card/cedula need only submit a passport.

The address is St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, 239 Anderson Ave., Fairview, NJ 07022.

As usual, members of CoFiA’s affiliate organization G.U.D. are helping to organize the event. Any Spanish-speaking members of CoFiA who are free that day are urged to go to Fairview and lend a hand.

Members of Grupo Folklorico Tikal, the traditional Guatemalan dance group that has performed for CoFiA several times, recently purchased a small marimba. In the photo some of the group are beginning to learn how to play it, from marimbist Marina Diaz. Unfortunately, Marina has left the area and the group has no teacher.

We are looking for a teacher and for small contributions to help pay for instruction. The marimba, as you know, is an important component of Guatemalan culture and the group is eager to learn how to play it.

For more information contact Elias or just send a note to us at www.cofia-nj.org.