As I drive Dayton Street north to take my kids to school the city boundaries are so zig-zagged that I may be in Denver one block and in Aurora the next, never really quite knowing which city I am in from the moment I turn onto the street until I turn off of it in the Central Park neighborhood of Denver.
My house borders Dayton in southeast Denver, so I start the drive there, but I am quickly surrounded by the western edge of Aurora, the city that Trump claims has been taken over by a Venezuelan gang. I even drive within one block of the Edge at Lowry apartments, which made national headlines in the late summer/early fall when a ring doorbell camera recorded armed gang members knocking on an apartment door. Further north I drive by Vintage Theater, a staple among theater venues in the greater Denver area.
When Dayton approaches and crosses Colfax is when things get interesting. Colfax is bustling any time of day, but in the morning it’s full of pedestrians and bus riders going to and from school and work. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to how pedestrians cross the street here or how drivers navigate the madness.
Once north of Colfax, Dayton is lined with day laborers who have congregated there for over two decades. They line the sidewalks with their lunches (if they are lucky enough to have them) and wave at any car that drives by, hoping the driver is looking to hire them for a project. When they wave at me, I don’t wave back, out of not wanting to give them some false hope. When a car does pull over though, it is surrounded and overwhelmed by people willing to work on just about any project I imagine. Regardless of the weather or time of year, Dayton Street from Colfax to 16th Ave is lined with those willing to work. I have seen a hundred workers on this block of Dayton.
Naturally, I have been interested in how Trump’s policies would affect this block of Dayton, especially since it is in Aurora and Trump stated that immigration raids would start in this city. Well, he’s a bit late, so he lied again, but they did start yesterday. Even prior to the raids, the number of day laborers drastically decreased. This morning, I counted five of them on the street, still friendly, still waving, still eager to do the work no one else is going to do.
Where have the rest gone? Well, that is a good question and I think in the days, weeks, and months ahead we might get answers or we might not, but for starters here is a fact (remember those?): based on the promised mass deportation, “Gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 1.4 percent in the first year, and cumulative GDP would be reduced by $4.7 trillion over 10 years.” It is not a stretch to conclude either that day laborers who used to get regular work by lining the sidewalks of Dayton have been forced into a cat and mouse game with ICE agents, in which the immigrants might become more and more desperate to make a living here in Aurora or Denver. Surely, that will be the case for some immigrants. Where do they look for work now? Pushing them off the streets into the dark recesses of an Aurora apartment complex for the entire day can’t be good. They are looking for decent pay and constructive work in the daytime. When forced onto the streets at nighttime, the same might not be said. This would be a very unfortunate result of ICE raids here in Denver and elsewhere, but do keep in mind this is a population that respects the rule of law here in the US more than US-born Americans. So, they have that going for them, even though the strongest and most capable government in the world is not willing to help them anymore.
month after that Kate spent her spring break in London with me. She fell in love too, and I fell more in love with her as we explored London and a little of Paris, savoring the moments that I knew we would never be able to replicate because we were young, free, and unfettered from worries and responsibilities we had back home, across an ocean.
the FoCo dad 