While day workers have been finding labor in the United States for over a hundred years, day worker centers, in the modern sense, have only recently begun to emerge as a solution for towns dealing with an influx of day laborers. Because of this, information on day worker centers is limited, especially on the internet. Below is an assessment of various websites, or types of websites, and how they figure into the worker center scene.

Academic:
    Political scientist Janice Fine, is an especially knowledgeable source on worker centers in academia. While the subject has only recently coming to affect the American population at large, she has already conducted research and published a book and numerous papers on the subject. As far as information available on the internet, Fine has some of her work available through institute such as the Economic Policy Institute.
    
    The Economic Policy Institute website, however, is extremely different from what I hope mine will be. For example, both Fine's books and The Economic Policy Institute site are difficult to navigate, and have so much information strewn together. The writing is done in large paragraphs that is not easy to skim. Also, the audience is assumed to be of a high intelligence level. At no point are community members of towns with large immigrant day workers mentioned of targeted.


Go-to-Sources:
    As far as go-to sources for Americans, Wikipedia is number one quick overviews. The Wikipedia page for Worker Centers presents information in a clear and concise manner than nearly anyone can understand. It explains a definition of worker centers, and also provides information on the different networks of worker centers.

    Yet, this website is of little use to my target audience. It has a little over 300 words, and once again, does nothing for community members in particular. The information is once again written in paragraph form, and while it is split up into topics, the topics are so broad that they are once again difficult to navigate.

Interactive:
    Blogs are forums where people can post thoughts or chat on the internet, usually about a given subject. Blogs on Day Worker Centers, are commonly simply websites about day workers. These blogs target everyday people, especially community members who live in the same town or interact with day-workers.  Most chatting mechanisms appear after internet articles, as part of the message board feature.

    Blogs and message boards also provide little information for people seeking to understand the issues enveloping their community. These sources are often laden with internet goers that have xenophobic attitudes and know little to nothing about day laborers and worker centers. While the conversations and posts are compelling and catch the eye, they offer no real information.

Newspaper Articles:
    Newspaper articles often do one of two things: report on a change in immigration law that affects worker centers, or profile worker centers for a feature piece. Both reach thousands of people, especially in my target audience. The former type of story presents information, while the latter tugs at heart strings in order to gain empathy from community members concerning day workers. Both these stories can appear anywhere from local newspapers, to major venues such as The New York Times.

    While both information and an understanding of perspective are my goals in reading this site, newspaper articles do not accomplish this in the way I hope to. For starters, informative pieces deal mostly with immigrant legislation, and touch only briefly on worker centers. These articles focus more on the problems and less on the solutions. Feature pieces also offer little help to community members. While they do open up a new perspective, often times the stories they tell are overly dramatic, or extreme cases, in order to hook interest. While I hope to do small exposés on a few day laborers, this is only one aspect of my site. 

Worker Center Sites:
    Worker Center sites, such as the one for Casa de Maryland, provide a large amount of information on worker centers. They explain the purpose of the center, the history, and its services. These sites also provide information on how employers can hire workers, as well as places to make donations to the center.

    Worker Center sites are perhaps my biggest competition, but their they differ substantially from my website because they are privately owned by specific centers. Community members who want to learn more about worker centers may be unwilling to get information from a center itself, as the information is more likely to be biased. Also, these sites focus on just one particular center, rather than centers in general. A specific center may offer, or not offer, services that most other sites do. While the Casa de Maryland site has a large of information, most individual day worker sites are not as well kept and organized.
 
last edit: 06/05/08
Samantha Penabad

A Farmingville, Long Island resident makes a statement against
the creation of a worker center. Xenophobic attitudes, and incorrect
informations -- such as all worker are "illegal aliens" -- plague blogs
and interactive sites. 

A scene from Casa de Maryland, a well-attended day worker center. Workers are lining up in the morning to add their name to the day's list.