A Polish pharmacy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (Photo: bondidwhat/flickr)

If you’re looking for the center of community life for Polish immigrants in Brooklyn you should check out the local pharmacy.

Polish pharmacies in Greenpoint, Brooklyn help immigrants negotiate life in their new home while maintaining a connection to Poland.  In this podcast we’re digging into the Feet in Two Worlds archives for an intimate visit to a Polish pharmacy with journalist Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska.  Ewa is a reporter for the Polish Daily News and a frequent contributor to public radio.  This story, produced in 2005, was Ewa’s public radio debut. Listen:

Subscribe to the Fi2W podcast using iTunes or Podbean ¦ Download this episode

Feet in Two Worlds podcasts are supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Fi2W podcasts are also supported in part by WNYC Radio and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

The Polish museum of America in Chicago. (Photo: ChicagoGeek/flickr)

“Jersey Shore” has angered some Italian-Americans who say the show portrays them in an offensive way. “Russian Dolls” upset members of the Russian community for the same reason. Now some Polish Americans fear they will become a laughing stock in an upcoming reality TV show, “Warsaw Chicago.”

The website for the show describes it as a cross between “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives” and is currently calling for video submissions:

“We are looking specifically for a multi generational Chicago Polish family to show their life 24/7 and how the old school of thinking doesn’t always cross over with new school (ie. Dad is old fashioned immigrant ball busting cop or in position of power (ie CEO of company) or successful small business owner, etc.; Mom is traditional old fashioned housewife, daughters are dating someone they shouldn’t, son(s)  on radar of court appearances,  rehab, or sugar mommas, Cougars or MILFS, grandma and grandpa slinging Catholic prayers in Polish, etc, but if you don’t fit these categories exactly, please still send us what you have, who you are that is an interesting Polish Family.”

TV producer Yuri Rutman, working on the project with partners whose credits include “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” and “God or Girl,” said he actually wanted to do a show on the Russian community but Lifetime beat him to it. He started considering other options. “We were thinking: what’s an interesting ethnic group that hasn’t been positively explored in the media?” Rutman said in a phone interview. “And I think there is a lot of stereotypes that exist outside the Polish community about a lot of different things.”

The plans stirred mixed reactions among Poles in Chicago, some of whom expressed their concerns on Polish language websites.

One of the comments reads (in Polish):

“The producer doesn’t intend to show 24 hours from life of an average Polish family. He already has a stereotypical picture of such family and he wants to sell it to a broader audience… multi-generational family with loudly praying grandparents, eating pierogi and drinking vodka straight from the bottle… the show will become a hit and for the next 20 years there will be yet more black marks sticking to us.”

—Charlie_Charlie

But Rutman claims his goal is to break stereotypes. “We want to show a combination of both traditional family values as well as kind of an adventurous or wilder side of the Polish community. It will be a balance,” he said.

“In a lot of reality shows everyone is pretty much disfunctional. You watch some of these people and you think: you know what, these people are hopeless. Do I really want to be like them?“ he continued. “Our show is going to emphasize the positive, like the fact that it’s still OK to have old fashion values and principles and stick to them even if you feel like the world around you and the sky is falling.”

Some fear that the show will poke fun of Poles’ religiousness and the Catholic faith. Rutman strongly denies it: “The show is not about Catholics. If we are going to end up finding a family that is Polish-Jewish or Polish-Muslim we’re gonna hire them. We are looking for a popular aspect, not a religious aspect.”

At the same time he admits it’s impossible to predict the outcome since the casting is still in process. And after all, it’s the entertainment business, and “no one is going to be watching the show if they gonna be seeing mama and papa at the dinner table every night.”

The producers are being flooded with video submissions from aspiring reality TV stars but have not yet picked the “ideal mix.” The chances a chosen family will actually be from Warsaw, as the title implies, are very slim since most of the Polish population in Chicago comes from the southern mountainous area of Poland. But “Warsaw Chicago,” Rutman explained, “sounds sellable and people will understand when they’re flipping channels what this is about.”

The producers plan to film and edit the pilot by early November and then shop it around to TV channels.

Henryk Siwiak, a Polish immigrant, was fatally shot on September 11, 2001

This story originally aired on WNYC Radio on September 7, 2011.

NEW YORK—At around 11:45 p.m., on September 11th, 2001, the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, were nearly empty as most residents were transfixed by TV screens, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the terror attacks that had shaken the city earlier that day.

But Mona Miller who lives at 121 Decatur Street just off Albany Avenue, was taking care of her ailing mother, and she suddenly heard an argument and then a gunshot.

“I heard a couple of men talking, arguing and I heard a shot,” she recalled. “I don’t know if I heard a shot or couple of shots but I didn’t come to the window because I don’t dare come to the window.”

After the police arrived, she peered out the window and saw a man in a military fatigues lying on the sidewalk in front of the building next door: It was Henryk Siwiak, a Polish immigrant, who had been fatally shot in the chest.

It was the only homicide in New York City recorded on September 11, 2001. And it remains unsolved.

Listen to Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska’s radio story about Henryk Siwiak:

Ten years later it’s hard to reconstruct Siwiak’s last day and even harder to find a motive for his killing. Police recovered seven shell casings from across the street, but only one bullet that came from 0.40 caliber handgun hit him.

The 46-year-old father of two was in the midst of looking for a job. Work was the reason he had come to the U.S. 11 months earlier.

In Poland he worked at the railroad, but didn’t earn much and had little prospects of improving his family’s situation.

His sister, Lucyna, had been living in the U.S. for six years. When he made the trip and decided to stay for a while — even though he didn’t have legal documents — he lived with her in Far Rockaway, Queens, and then moved only a few blocks away.

He did all kinds of jobs: construction, cleaning — whatever brought in cash.

Every month he sent a few hundred dollars to his wife Ewa and two children, Gabriela, then 17, and Adam, 10, whom he left in Cracow, his sister said. He was quiet, she said.

“He never drank alcohol and didn’t have many friends,” Lucyna said.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, he went  to Lower Manhattan.

According to his sister says he worked there at a construction site, but after the attack on the World Trade Center his workplace was shut down.

So he walked to Brooklyn and sometime later went to a Polish employment agency. There he was offered a job: to clean a Pathmark supermarket in Flatbush. The pay was around $10 an hour and he would start that same night.

Read the rest of the story at WNYC.

A tribute in light to those lost on 9/11. (Photo: Planet Gordon/flickr)

So much has changed since the attacks of September 11, 2001.  And yet, the striving for a better life by immigrants continues. In this edition of the Feet in Two Worlds podcast three immigrant journalists from New York discuss the changes they have witnessed over the past decade since the 9/11 attacks, including the impact of new security laws and policies, the stalemate over immigration reform, and the stagnant economy.

Listen to Fi2W Executive Producer John Rudolph in conversation with Maibe Ponet, editorial page editor of the Spanish-language daily, El Diario/La Prensa, which has assembled a special website to document the impact of 9/11 on New York’s Latino community; Mohsin Zaheer, founder and editor of the Pakistani Newspaper and editor of Sade-e-Pakistan; and Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, a reporter at Nowy Dziennik – The Polish Daily News.

Listen to the podcast:

Subscribe to the Fi2W podcast on iTunes ¦ or Podbean ¦ Download this episode

Fi2W podcasts are supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundationwith additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Sirus Fund, and are produced in association with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and CUNY-TV.

The customer service area at 26 Federal Plaza, New York USCIS headquarters. (Photo: Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska)

Many foreign-born New Yorkers get butterflies in their stomach when they remember their experiences at immigration offices. Some get flashbacks of the long lines, others wince at the uncomfortable interviews and difficulties accessing basic information about their cases.

But the New York representatives of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) —a branch of the Homeland Security Department, created in 2003 to oversee lawful immigration to the U.S. after the former Immigration and Naturalization Service was disbanded, claim these sentiments are outdated and do not reflect the current situation at the federal agency.

Nowadays customers can make an appointment online using a system called Infopass. Those who come to the USCIS New York headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza are ushered into neat customer service sections with monitors displaying their numbers and flat screen TVs displaying NY1. A showcase with old pictures of immigrants at Ellis Island hangs in the corridor and the wallpaper features images of the American flag and Lady Liberty.

Some who regularly deal with the immigration office have noticed an improvement. “They sped up the processing time a lot,” says Stanislaw Szumigraj, 38, a truck driver from Queens, who came to the U.S. from Poland in 1995 and got his citizenship last year. “And now everything is available online.” That was not the case when he applied for a green card in 1998. “Back then the only way to find out anything about my case was through the lawyer. Moreover, the backlog was (so) big that there was no point in checking anyway,” he said.

But the office makeover hasn’t entirely quelled the anxiety non-citizen immigrants feel towards the federal authorities. Regular raids on immigrant homes and workplaces, and the growing numbers of deportations – even though they are conducted by ICE, a different branch of DHS – have made many people increasingly fearful.

Allaying those fears is part of the reason the New York USCIS recently launched a program to engage local ethnic communities and get them comfortable with the office while simultaneously helping them prepare for the citizenship test. “They are afraid of the test, they are afraid of what we’ll ask them, they are afraid their English isn’t good, that their understanding of history isn’t good enough,” said the USCIS New York District Director Andrea Quarantillo during a recent interview.

The program relies on community groups that teach English and civics for the citizenship test. During presentations, usually held in the evening, USCIS representatives explain the naturalization process and hold a mock interview. The agency is also helping community groups become accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an appellate body that reviews the decisions in various immigrant cases, so that they can represent their clients before the board.

“We rely on those groups and we know they have the expertise, the experience, the knowledge and that they don’t overcharge. And we want to encourage immigrants to use those groups instead of going to the storefront down the street,” stressed Quarantillo, adding that part of her agency’s mission is to warn immigrants about various swindlers who prey on their vulnerability.

The groups already have the community’s trust, so it’s easier for USCIS to get its message across. Currently the New York USCIS has a list of approximately a hundred groups of this kind and wants to expand it so that all the major ethnic communities in the city have access to the program.

“The problem is you have to get groups on that list that have the same language, culture, religious background as the person that is looking for help. So if someone of Polish origin is looking for help, they are not going to HIAS, they’re not going to Hispanic organization, they would probably go to a Catholic organization or group that speaks Polish. But if they don’t see that on that list, they’re not going.” Quarantillo said that’s the case with many Muslims and Middle Easterners. “None of those groups are on those lists,” she said.

New York USCIS District Director Andrea Quarantillo. (Photo: Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska)

Quarantillo’s advice to immigrants? “If you have a problem with immigration or with the criminal justice system, you need to solve it before you file your paperwork so that you don’t end up in immigration court and things like that. Because when you file those papers, then you force us to put on our Homeland Security hat instead of our customer service hat,” she said.

The director said these days the agency is able to process cases faster because FBI background checks no longer cause long backlogs. “We fixed that about 3 years ago,” Quarantillo said. “We get all our results now within 90 days at the very most; most of them within 30. But if the answer is ‘yes’ then it can hold up the case.” Quarantillo says it happens with a very small percentage of the cases, “no more than maybe 500 a year.” She estimates that the three New York district offices handle about 250,000 applications a year, which includes about 85,000 to 100,000 citizenship applications and 35,000 to 50,000 green card cases.

Amid strong anti-immigrant sentiment around the country and lack of political will for national immigration reform, Quarantillo hopes her agency’s outreach efforts will let immigrants breathe a little easier. “We know that people are afraid because the economy is bad and enforcement is strong. But we think this kind of help can lower the anxiety level a little bit,” she said.

Community groups who are interested in working with USCIS should send an e-mail to: nyc.community.relations@dhs.gov.

This article also appeared in Polish in Nowy Dziennik/Polish Daily News.

Fi2W is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Barbara Felska, an immigration services officer at the NY USCIS Stokes unit. (Photo: Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska)

With a lack of options to legalize their status some immigrants take desperate measures and rely on marriage frauds to get their green card. USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service) — a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that’s responsible for processing green card applications — has specific procedures to prevent this illegal practice.

The vast majority of marriage cases that go through USCIS offices are approved.  But each month in New York, some are referred to a special Stokes unit if they are suspected of fraud. Fi2W spoke to Barbara Felska, an immigration services officer at the Stokes unit to learn more about the process to determine the authenticity of a marriage between a citizen and his or her foreign spouse seeking a green card.

Felska interviews each member of a couple separately about their marriage, and then brings them together for a chance to explain any discrepancies. The special unit is named after a 1976 federal court decision (Stokes vs. INS) and the process is supposed to provide extra protection to the couple suspected of fraud (e.g. the interview must be recorded and couples can bring their lawyers).

Felska herself is a naturalized immigrant from Poland. She won a green card through the lottery and came to the US in 1996.

Fi2W: In what cases people are questioned by the Stokes unit?

BF: They could end up there for many reasons after the first interview.  But we give them this chance to prove to us that this is a good marriage. I always tell people: “you have nothing to fear when you’re here and your marriage is real.”

What kind of questions do you ask them?

I ask questions about anything that could validate that this a is married couple. And I know that if I would ask my husband about small household issues, he would get lost.  You have to understand personalities and human nature. Not knowing or not caring is not the reason that we deny those cases.  If they don’t know about the finances, I can understand it because sometimes they just don’t run those things.

Sometimes husbands get frightened because I ask them how often their wife does their laundry and they don’t know. And I say: “That’s okay sir. I just want to know your opinion.” And then I ask a wife the same question and she says for example that she does laundry every Saturday and sometimes on Wednesdays. And she adds: “but he is not going to know it, officer, he never cares about laundry.” So I see that they have this consistency for some things like laundry and I will know, “okay, I understand how this household works.” So the questions that we ask are really to give people the chance to show us how they work as a married couple.

People think that if we’ll ask like 60 questions and we’ll have correct answers to 40, they’re approved because it’s the majority of the questions. And I always say: “it’s not a math test, it’s a personal interview.” We look at what is significant to this couple.  Not knowing some details, if people explain it in the right manner, is not a problem. But if you don’t know something as substantial as your spouse’s medical condition, religion, financial assets, family members, and you don’t even know what you do together, then of course, you’re not going to be approved.

What would raise your suspicions?

How would you know that somebody is lying to you? Because the person was inconsistent. Or a person is telling you A, and on paper you have B. I just want stress this: we never deny cases because you make mistakes at the time of Stokes or because you didn’t know something. This goes into the totality of circumstances. We look at your evidence and we look at your answers and sometimes the totality is really showing us that this is not a marriage, that you’re probably friends, neighbors, roommates, maybe you went to college together, or you’re from the same country and you want to help each other… I never judge people and I don’t have the whole scenario sometimes. I only know what I see before my desk. But I will inform them that unfortunately I cannot adjudicate this application as a provable case.

How often does it happen?

It depends on the day. For some officers maybe 50-50. Each officer is different but we try to have a consistent policy (for) how we deal with those cases and consistent procedures.

Can you give an example of an interview that went badly?

Let’s say there is Mr. B and Mrs. B. So I may ask him during a separate interview: “Sir, how many tattoos on her entire body does your wife have?” And he says she doesn’t have any. Then I’m calling Mrs. B. “Could you tell me how many tattoos you have?” and Mrs. B will tell me: “I have 7 tattoos.” I say: “Mrs. B could you tell me where?” and she is telling me where does she have them and what … they represent. She would say, “Oh, I have cross, I have cherries, horseshoe… and they she would say: “Oh, officer, because of the birth of my child a tattoo artist put an image of my child’s feet onto my arm, he put the date of birth of my child and the child’s name.” And I’m almost crying how cute it is… but unfortunately Mr. B failed to describe it or lacks … knowledge of it. Then when we bring them together and I say: “Mr. B, at the separated interview your wife told me that she has 7 tattoos. She told me where are they and what … they represent. At this time I’m going to give you a chance to explain why you did not mention all seven tattoos of your wife.”

[…]We cannot fall for it. We know it’s not a bona fide marriage. I may have sympathy for them but I have to do my job. I am the immigration services officer and if you are good I’ll put this approval stamp with pleasure. But if I have to deny you, by all means I will do it. After all I do represent (the) government, this is Department of Homeland Security, and if you want to sleep safely in your home we have to make sure that every officer in this building is doing their job that we were hired to do.

As part of verifying the evidence, do you go to a couple’s residence?

We could but we would have to give an advanced notice, and then what’s the point? So we don’t do that but we review other evidence: pictures, proof of life experiences. My favorite line is that “by the end of this interview speaking to you for 40 minutes I should never know more about you sir, than your wife knows about you after being married to you for a year. If I do, then it doesn’t look good.”

The most memorable case?

We also witness some arguments, real marital arguments. I remember one about jewelry. There was this beneficiary and she had a bracelet that I really loved. And when I commented on it she said, “oh, my husband gave it to me,” and she was very elaborate on this. So I’m asking the husband about the bracelet and he said “I never gave her this bracelet.” And they had a huge argument in front of me about it.

[...] We don’t only look at the paper. Stories are very different. You may have a man who is 65 and he is married to a 25-years old woman and vice versa.  This is New York, and regardless of your own upbringing as an officer you have to know this stuff happens. Love doesn’t know skin color, age, religion. And if you’re really married you have nothing to fear. In most cases we approve applications without those long interviews at the Stokes. But a few bad cases can make all the good work disappear.

Send us your marriage visa stories!

This story will be published in Polish in Nowy Dziennik/Polish Daily News.

Fi2W is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Mural at the offices of Nowy Dziennik. (Photo: Jocelyn Gonzales)

New York City has hundreds of newspapers that serve immigrant and ethnic readers. But in the conversation about the sweeping changes that are reshaping the media, these newspapers are often ignored.   This is the second article in FI2W’s series on how New York’s ethnic newspapers are adapting to new economic realities and the revolution in news gathering and distribution.

Jan Latus, 50, ushered me into his fourth floor office in Midtown Manhattan. Nothing unusual about going up four flights of stairs. But on a daily basis when Latus, the editor-in-chief of the Polish news daily Nowy Dziennik, needs to speak to reporters in his newsroom, he has to go down to the second floor.  Should he need to check out layout with the ad department, he needs to trek up to the third floor.

While the recession’s financial woes prompted the decision to put the Nowy Dziennik building up for sale, there could also be other reasons, said Latus, flashing an Aaron Eckhart smile: “It’s not very convenient to work with people climbing the stairs all the time.”

The daily, which turns 40 this year, is one of more than 350 ethnic newspapers (weeklies and dailies) serving New York City’s diverse communities. It claims to be the most widely distributed and read Polish – language publication in North America. The city’s Polish population is approximately 66,000, and is served by two other papers besides Nowy Dziennik.  There is Super Express, which gets most of its news from Poland, and Gazeta Polska, whose distribution is concentrated in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, the heart of New York’s Polish community .

While traditional mainstream newspapers are filing for bankruptcy or simply folding, the ethnic media stubbornly persist in publishing issue after issue, selling copies to break even or just giving them away.

“They have a loyal audience,” Ernest Sotomayor, assistant dean at Columbia Journalism School, said, sharing his thoughts on the resilience of the ethnic press. “It’s how they view the communities; how they understand the issues, know the people dealing with these issues, the bodega owners, the small business owners, the housewives. There’s a connection.”

It’s this “connection” that’s enabled many ethnic papers to keep going. As long as the readers are there, the immigration lawyers, insurance companies and phone card providers will continue to advertise, and the newspapers will continue to sell.

But the time-tested business model that Nowy Dziennik and other ethnic papers have relied on has been shaken by the recession. Production costs are up, readers are flocking to the Internet, and advertising budgets are being cut. Some Polish immigrants are even going home as jobs become scarce in the U.S., causing readership to slide.

Listen to Nowy Dziennik‘s editor Jan Latus discuss the state of his newspaper:

[Visit post to listen to audio]

Jan Latus, editor-in-chief of Nowy Dziennik. (Photo: Cristina DC Pastor)

“All these [factors] affected Polish businesses in America,” said Latus, sitting in the Nowy Dziennik building, which also houses a Polish bookstore and art gallery, and is considered a landmark, a source of national prestige for the paper.

Now they are looking to rent an office that is more sprawling than vertical, where employees walk, rather than scale, as they move from one department to another. There’s been a standing offer for $4.3 million, he said, but the consensus appears to be to “wait for a better offer.”

That the paper now has enough leverage to pick and choose the best offer demonstrates its impressive turnaround over the past year.

But that turnaround came at a considerable cost.

During the 2007 to 2009 recession, the paper faced a new economic reality. While immigrant Poles in the U.S. were losing jobs and income, Poland was experiencing a mild boom in its economy.  Due to Poland’s admission into the E.U., its itinerant population now has the opportunity to work throughout western Europe.  Latus said his native country is “no longer in a desperate situation,” and Poles are coming to the U.S. in “small numbers.”

The drop in Polish immigration has led to reduced readership for Nowy Dziennik and simultaneously means fewer customers for businesses that once advertised heavily in the paper. The paper lost about 20 percent of its advertisers, but some big companies—such as the Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union and Lot Polish Airlines—stayed put.

Without an influx of new Polish readers, the paper faces a perilous future relying on an aging immigrant population.  Second generation Polish immigrants consider it “staid, formal, the paper of their parents,” said Latus. He’s made efforts to pull in new readers, but balancing the needs of its stalwart readership while trying to make changes to attract youth have been complicated, to say the least.

One experiment with a bilingual edition angered older immigrants. A photograph of a provocatively dressed Lady Gaga further incensed the entrenched readership who groused against “pornography.”

In the end, Latus went back to a Polish-only paper and decided to focus on his core set of readers rather than chase after young, assimilated Polish Americans. “They’re more into show business than political analysis. They’re into Time Out and New York Post. This is a lost generation for us,” Latus said.

“We try to keep our elder readers and at the same time try not to become too stale or old-fashioned,” he explained.

Nowy Dziennik, a paper serving the Polish immigrant community of New York City. (Photo: Jocelyn Gonzales)

Nowy Dziennik’s circulation, like its advertising, has dropped “15 percent to 20 percent,” said Latus. Circulation is now about 10,000 a day on weekdays and 30,000 on weekends. It’s sold for 75 cents and $1.50, respectively, in newsstands across the New York Tri-State area, with concentrations in the Polish neighborhoods of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Ridgewood and Maspeth in Queens. The paper is slightly slimmer than it used to be, and the number of pages has dropped —from 24 down to 20 pages on weekdays and from 16 to eight on weekends.

The paper was also forced to trim its salaried staff to 28, from 40 employees in what Latus called the “glory days” before the recession. They laid off two reporters, bringing down the pool of writers to 10. Reporters’ salaries are competitive by ethnic media standards, ranging anywhere from $30K and $50k, and employees are entitled to a package of benefits that includes medical insurance, vacation leave, and a 401(k).

When the crisis deepened, the paper had to cut salaries by 10 percent across the board—including the editor’s. “We didn’t want to fire another person,” Latus said.

The process of becoming leaner was painful, but the paper pulled through. Latus is now focused on reorienting the streamlined paper as an international and national news source for the Polish diaspora.

The paper’s website, dziennik.com, gets about 160,000 hits a month. Although Latus said they “have been unable to get any significant money from the Internet,” he is confident of its long-term potential. Nowy Dziennik has hired a consultant in Canada to turn the website into another revenue stream. Second generation Polish immigrants might not be interested, but Latus believes that Polish people scattered around the globe want to know about the lives of thousands of Polish immigrants in the U.S. and to read news about New York in Polish.

“We want to address our website to Polish people all over the world,” he said. “We hope we will be widely read by Polish people all over the world seeking independent news, independent from any political party, independent from any big media organization.”

Like the building it occupies, Nowy Dziennik is an institution and a cultural unifier in the Polish community. Major change is ahead, but Latus maintains the future of Nowy Dziennik, like a change in office space, looks promising. “We’re not in the red,” he said. “Now we are in the black already.”

Cristina Pastor is a Feet in Two Worlds business and economics reporting fellow.  Her work, and the work of other Fi2W fellows, is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Anna Dziubek rings the doorbell while canvassing for State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo in Maspeth, Queens. (Photo: Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska)

NEW YORK–Europa Hair Design is just one of dozens of small businesses on busy Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. But it was the center of attention last Saturday when a crowd gathered in front to rally for Democratic State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo, who is running for reelection in the 15th District. He boasted about his dedication to the neighborhood’s entrepreneurs and says he now counts on their votes.

Addabbo also welcomed the support of labor unions, including 32BJ, a branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents around 70,000 building service workers in the city. Two of the union’s members and political organizers, Donna Klimas, 53, and Anna Dziubek, 32, were standing right behind him during the event. “We could certainly use your help,” Addabbo told them as they were chit chatting and posing for a photo. “It’s for us as well. It’s not only for you,” Anna responded laughing. “I hear you, I hear you,” the state senator nodded.

Labor unions, whose main focus is to obtain fair wages, health benefits and decent working conditions for their members, are also heavily involved in politics. With their membership estimated in New York State to be around 2 million workers, unions are able to apply pressure on politicians and elected officials on issues important to them. Hector Figueroa, the secretary-treasurer of 32BJ, divides union political involvement into three areas:

“We deliver votes for the candidates that we support, we deliver activism and grass roots get-out-the-vote operations so we can put the message in our communities of who are the candidates that stand for working families, and (…) we are very active on policy and what kind of legislation candidates that we support should be in favor of.”

In New York, just as certain job sectors are dominated by immigrants, so are the unions representing them, like the Asbestos, Lead & Hazardous Waste Laborers Local 78, which is primarily Latino and Polish, and 1199SEIU, a diverse health care workers union with many Filipino and Polish members.  A full two-thirds of the membership of 32BJ was born outside of the U.S., they come from 60 different countries and speak 24 different languages. For this reason many unions support immigrant rights and the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.

After the rally, Anna and Donna – both Polish immigrants and office cleaners in Manhattan buildings – were to go canvassing for Addabbo in the nearby Polish neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens. They had some doughnuts and hot coffee at the senator’s campaign office, and then they picked up brochures and the map of their turf and hit the road.

Watch a video of Anna and Donna canvassing in the Polish neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens:

Many of the volunteers doing political canvassing for 32BJ are foreign born, and that’s not a coincidence. “The immigrant members are more likely to volunteer and vote – those that became citizens – because they’ve just gone through the process of citizenship education,” said Norman Adler, a faculty member at the New School and a consultant to several labor unions, including 32BJ.

This time Anna and Donna volunteered directly for Addabbo and were campaigning among “regular” voters. On other occasions they’ve campaigned specifically within the union membership. As part of their involvement in campaigns, union members willing to volunteer are also phone-banking and mailing out information about candidates the unions have endorsed. Union locals often rely on their immigrant members to spread messages through their tightly-knit communities, which can require language and cultural sensitivity.

Union political activity tends to focus on bread and butter issues, like creating jobs and fighting for living wages, rather than social issues, like gay marriage, or international ones, like the war in Afghanistan. In their endorsement process unions have been presenting candidates with their platform and seeing how they respond, screening officials’ records and eventually throwing their support behind those who share similar goals.

In New York, unions also encourage voters to check Row E, which is the Working Families party line.  According to Ademola Oyefeso, political director of RWDSU, a union representing employees of retail, wholesale and department stores, “It sends a message to every elected official that “yes, you won, but the people in your area want you to be a little more progressive.”

This year most New York labor unions endorsed Democratic candidates in state-wide races, Andrew Cuomo for governor, Eric Schneiderman for attorney general, and Tom DiNapoli for state comptroller. They’ve also endorsed numerous assemblymen and state senators like Joe Addabbo. It’s no secret that labor unions have fund raising power, and candidates often court them for support. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always on the same page – Cuomo in particular, has made a point of saying he won’t be bullied by labor unions, even though he accepted their endorsements.

]]> http://news.feetintwoworlds.org/2010/10/28/immigrants-a-key-force-behind-union-electoral-power/feed/ 0 http://news.feetintwoworlds.org/2010/10/15/what-it-means-to-cover-the-polish-immigrant-community/ http://news.feetintwoworlds.org/2010/10/15/what-it-means-to-cover-the-polish-immigrant-community/#comments Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:10:30 +0000 Feet in Two Worlds http://news.feetintwoworlds.org/?p=16832

Polish Flag. (Photo: Roman G./Flickr)

Where We Live, a daily news and talk show on Connecticut’s WNPR, took on the subject of modern-day Poland this week.  Fi2W’s Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, a reporter for Now Dziennik/Polish Daily News joined the conversation to speak about how and what she reports on in the Polish community in New York.

[Visit post to listen to audio]

AG candidate Dan Donovan (right) with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, candidate for governor Andrew Cuomo (center) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (left) at the Pulaski Parade in New York City. (Photo: Marcin Zurawicz/Nowy Dziennik)

NEW YORK–Dan Donovan, 53, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general, may have an Irish last name, but according to his 84-year-old mother he looks Polish and his gray eyes and pale complexion are a proof of his ancestry. Mrs. Donovan’s maiden name is ‘Bolewicz’ and she is the third generation in a Polish-American family that settled on Staten Island. Today there is a growing Polish-American community in the borough and Donovan hopes for its support in November.

“I think the Polish community would be proud to have a person in the attorney general’s office who has common blood with them,” said Donovan during a sit down interview with the Polish Daily News last week. But that’s not the only reason, he said.

“I don’t think people should vote for me just because I’m Polish. I think…people from all over ought to vote for me because of my experience and background and independence.”

In the 2000 Census, 18,405 Staten Island residents claimed Polish ancestry. In all of New York State there were almost 1 million.  On the campaign trail Donovan has met with representatives of the Polish community in the Buffalo area and recently attended the Pulaski Parade, an annual Polish event held on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue.

Donovan has been reaching out to local immigrant communities since 2004 when he became district attorney of Richmond County (Staten Island). Soon after taking over that office he hired staff members who spoke several languages and made a pledge not to ask immigrants about their immigration status if they were victims of a crime or witnessed one, a promise he intends to keep if elected AG in November.

“No one should be exploited, no one should be a victim of a crime, regardless of their status in the United States,” Donovan stressed.

He also declared himself a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He is an opponent of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070,  and vowed to prosecute those responsible for a series of recent attacks on Mexican immigrants on Staten Island.

On all of these issues his position is virtually identical to that of his opponent, Democratic State Senator Eric Schneiderman who has a progressive record and labor support. Schneiderman has promised to protect immigrant rights and has been campaigning in various ethnic communities. He has also, “reached out to the Polish community and proudly marched in the Dyngus Day parade in Buffalo earlier this year,”  said his campaign spokesman, James Freedland in a written statement. “When he becomes attorney general, Eric will make it a top priority to ensure that every community is represented.”

Donovan hopes to create a more personal connection with Poles. He may not remember how to spell his mother’s maiden name off the top of his head, but he brings up childhood stories that evoke his Polish roots.

Daniel Donovan, the New York Republican candidate for Attorney General. (Photo: Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska)

Like when the family used to travel to Bayonne, New Jersey to buy Polish food or how family pictures decorating the entire house almost disappeared in 1978 when they were replaced by photos of the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II.

Donovan jokes that to his mother, a devoted Catholic, the pope’s election was far more important than, say, his graduation day.  “We have another pope now but Benedict is not up in our house. It’s still John Paul.”

Brought up in a Catholic environment, Donovan is pro-life, which has become an election issue between him and Schneiderman, who is a vocal pro-choice activist. However, the Republican candidate strongly stated that his personal convictions would not affect the way he would run the AG’s office, and he would enforce any current or future law in this regard.

Donovan can be disarmingly candid. He laughs that he is an only child because his father was one of 13 children and his mother one of 8. “I always say that my mom and dad, after growing up, really wanted to get a chance to use the bathroom, so they figured if they only had one kid it will be a lot easier”.

Single, and with no children, Donovan says it makes it easier to dedicate his life to public service.

He is the first in his family to graduate from college (his father was a longshoreman, his mother worked in a uniform factory). Having to pay for his education at Fordham Law School by working while he studied,  Donovan claims to understand the hardships of immigrant and working families.

On the other hand he is supported by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire, and seems to have many friends on Wall Street. “I think I have the support from people who want to see a New York attorney general  who (…) will root out corruption wherever that is, whether it’s in our Medicaid system, whether it’s in Albany or whether it’s on Wall Street (…) without destroying entire industry,” he said when asked whether he thought support from the financial sector may hurt his chances among “Main Street voters”.

Regardless of the election outcome, Donovan jokes that his dedication to the public service is irreversible and was determined on the day he was born: Nov 6, 1956, since it was Election Day. “My mother said she went to the voting booth and voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower during his second term as president and then went to the hospital and had me.”

Till this day he is relieved that his mother didn’t name him Dwight D., but Daniel, after his father.

Feet in Two Worlds New York Election coverage is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.