Second of two parts
The one person doing something substantial about listless, restless youth — poor, minority, sometimes in trouble with the law — in our city is an organizer of farm workers, who, though he lives here, is away from Toledo much of the time.
“We are in our fourth class of seven to 12 students,” Baldemar Velasquez says of his homies union. “And each class reaches out to three to four times that many youth in the schools or in the streets.”
He writes:
“The jobs issue is emerging. Not counting the first summer when we got the first ‘homies’ (about 20 of them) jobs in the summer employment program, we have leveraged around $110,000 in these kids’ pockets ... Well over $10,000 of this was leveraged through Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s supporters and donors — for kids who don’t qualify under the JFS guidelines because their parents are just over the ‘poverty’ income levels …
“We have started a ‘cleaning co-op’ (job bank) where I’m personally getting folks I know to give jobs to undocumented members to clean their homes or businesses for $15 an hour. ... I have approached ProMedica as to who will be cleaning their new buildings downtown ... and hope to cut a deal … to hire some of our south end/east side folks that are within walking distance ... and we will insist that they not be minimum-wage jobs.
“I am talking with the construction unions to provide them with additional workers they will need for the building efforts downtown ... Some folks think I’m dreaming but so what! I think it’s possible.”
After breaking bread with Mr. Velasquez and walking away, as I always do, with a sense of awe at his clarity of purpose and his steadfastness, I wondered: What is the core idea behind the homies union?
I think it is Christian charity rather than toxic charity. Or, love instead of bureaucracy.
He writes: “My version of organizing the poor is time consuming and can only be done one by one. This might be considered ineffective and too slow to achieve many grandiose plans and ideas with metrics showing progress. I’ve learned not to be hasty and take the time to measure people’s hearts, help them define their true obstacles, and find what gives them hope.”
The significance of Baldemar Velasquez’s youth or “homies” initiative to me is:
● He’s doing something about unemployment, gangs, and young men in our city with no future, not just talking.
● His program constitutes a model — an approach that can be expanded and replicated.
Next week: How Mr. Velasquez’s life and work point us toward a new approach to what Lyndon Johnson termed “the war on poverty.”
Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade. Contact him at: kburris@theblade.com or 419-724-6266.
First Published March 4, 2016, 5:15 a.m.
