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Protest Planned Against Anti-Day Laborer Ordinance in Oyster Bay

Posted December 7, 2009 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Nassau

*UPDATED 12/8/09*
Back in October, we blogged about an anti-solicitation ordinance that had been approved in the Town of Oyster Bay.
Guest blogger Samantha Fredrickson, of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote about how the ordinance—which was unabashedly targeted toward Latino day laborers—would give Nassau County police and Oyster Bay code enforcers the power to fine residents $250 for waving their arms while standing on the sidewalk.
In October, Fredrickson wrote that the ordinance “criminalizes an extremely broad range of activity, including ‘waving arms, making hand signals, shouting to someone in a vehicle, jumping up and down and waving signs soliciting employment.’”
Now, Fredrickson and the NYCLU are planning a protest against the ordinance on Tuesday, December 15, at 10:30am. The protesters will meet at the Centro Cultural office (61 E. Main Street, in Oyster Bay) and will then march down to town hall. Long Island Wins will be co-sponsoring the protest, along with The Workplace Project, Farmingdale Citizens for Viable Solutions, Centro Cultural Hispano de Oyster Bay, the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and Long Island Jobs with Justice.
“This law discriminates against immigrants and is a blatant violation of the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech,” Fredrickson said in an email. “By joining forces with immigrants’ rights and civil rights groups in Nassau County to rally against this law, we are sending the message to Oyster Bay officials that they cannot silence us. We must remind them that that our constitutional rights do not stop at the town line.”
In my original post about the ordinance, I noted that the town didn’t bother to consult any statistics as to whether such an ordinance would actually make pedestrians and motorists any safer. I also noted that there was no plan to accommodate displaced day laborers by providing a hiring site.
The town hasn’t begun enforcing the ordinance—they’re currently passing out literature in Spanish and English explaining what it means—but Nassau police and town code enforcers already have the power to issue fines. Metal signs have been posted related to solicitation (see the photo below).

Phyllis Barry, a spokesperson for Town Supervisor John Venditto, said that the supervisor is aware of the protest.
When I told Barry that the NYCLU had criticized the ordinance for being too vague, and for the unlikelihood of equal enforcement, she called the claim “ridiculous” and said that “someone waving at a passerby is one type of wave and some waving to flag down a vehicle is very different, and anyone enforcing the law will know the difference.”
As in past conversations, I asked Barry if she knew of any other groups of people besides day laborers who might be fined because of the ordinance, and she said that she couldn’t name any offhand.
Click here for a copy of the actual ordinance. To give you some perspective on the breadth of this ordinance, this photo shows the size of the Town of Oyster Bay, not to be confused with the much smaller hamlet of Oyster Bay. The town of Oyster Bay is composed of 18 villages and 18 hamlets, and has a population of 293,925 (as of the 2000 census).