Other workers in the Long Island town of Farmingville, where the victims of the attack had been picked up by Slavin and an accomplice posing as contractors, celebrated the August 16 verdict.

Slavin, 29, was convicted on two counts of attempted murder, two counts of aggravated harassment, and one count each of first-degree and second-degree assault. He faces up to 50 years in prison, and is due to be sentenced September 13.

On the last day of the trial in Suffolk County court, two dozen immigrant workers and supporters of immigrant rights came from Farmingville, Hempstead, Farmingdale, and other nearby towns to show solidarity and demand justice for Ismael Pérez, 20, and Madgaleno Estrada Escamilla, 28, the workers who were assaulted.

Jacobo Herrera Zenteno, who works as a day laborer in Farmingdale and is originally from Puebla, Mexico, said, "I came because the beating was unjust, and our presence can help bring about justice. I am Mexican and what happened to them could happen to me."

Farmingville has been at the center of a sharply polarized conflict around immigration. It is one of many towns in the New York area where workers, particularly those without papers, gather at street corners in the mornings awaiting offers of work, mainly from construction contractors and landscapers.

The Sept. 17, 2000, attack on the two workers occurred in the midst of a campaign by rightist forces and local capitalist politicians demanding the deportation of "illegal aliens." The rightists organized regular pickets to harass the workers on Saturdays at a corner where they gathered. Their scapegoating campaign blames immigrant workers for crime, overcrowded housing, unemployment, and other social ills.

The anti-immigrant campaign has met with protests by the workers and supporters of their rights. Many of them turned out at a hearing a few weeks before the attack to encourage the defeat of a proposal by county legislator Joseph Caracappa to sue the Immigration and Naturalization Service for allegedly failing to do its job of arresting and deporting workers.

At the trial, Israel Pérez identified Slavin, and testified that he had attacked Magdaleno Estrada with a posthole digger, hitting him in the head and knocking him out in the basement of a deserted site in the nearby town of Shirley.

Before driving the two workers to this site, Slavin and Ryan Wagner, who will soon face trial, asked the workers if they were Mexican. Pérez suffered severe cuts after Wagner attacked him with a knife. Estrada recovered consciousness after hearing Perez's screams for help, and the two workers were able to fight off the attackers and flee to the Long Island Expressway where they flagged down help.

Over objections from Slavin's lawyer, jurors were presented with photos and an explanation of the array of racist tattoos covering Slavin's body, including a swastika, a white power fist, and a crude caricature of a Jew. Witnesses testified that Slavin and one of his housemates are followers of Christian Identity, a movement that considers Blacks, Latinos, and Asians to be subhuman and Jews to be descended from Satan.

After the verdict, Wagner's lawyer said he would seek a change of venue, arguing that it would be hard to get a fair hearing in Suffolk County. He cited signs that said "Stop the Hate" that workers who attended the trial had carried outside the courthouse.

Wagner, 20, turned himself in a few weeks after the attack and admitted participating in the assault. He claimed it was not motivated by racism, but rather was the result of a drinking and drug binge. Echoing this line, his lawyer has asserted that Wagner has a problem with "anger management."  
 
Ultrarightist meeting
As the trial was under way, a fascist-minded group that has spearheaded the anti-immigrant campaign in the area, Sachem Quality of Life Organization, sponsored a national conference against immigration. The speakers included Ezola Foster, the Reform Party's vice-presidential candidate last November, who ran with Patrick Buchanan; Barbara Coe of the California Citizens for Immigration Reform; and Glenn Spencer of the Los Angeles-based American Patrol.

Spencer's group puts forward the view that Mexicans are trying to "invade" the United States, in what rightist groups call a planned "reconquista" (reconquest).

Meredith Burke, touted as an environmentalist, blamed immigrants for threatening the U.S. environment by aggravating "our excessive use of energy."

"Do we want to turn America into another China, India, or Mexico, countries many of our ancestors have left?" said Yeh Ling-Ling, a Chinese-American lawyer from the rightist Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America.

Some of the arguments presented appealed to resentment of the "elite" by middle-class and some working-class layers. Virginia Abernethy of the Council of Conservative Citizens argued that "lower and middle classes bear the costs of immigration, whereas the 'power elite' receives the benefits," according to a column by Spencer published in the August 8 issue of Newsday.

Spencer himself added, "We are becoming a land of haves and have-nots, headed for serious social conflict," arguing that large-scale immigration threatens the "have-nots."  
 
Rightists outmaneuver liberal forces
An editorial in Newsday, a liberal Long Island daily, decried the rightist speakers for warning of an immigrant "invasion," but echoed their demagogic arguments. "There was little discussion about overcrowding, safety and other problems now facing the Suffolk County community of Farming-ville," the editorial declared.

Several organizations opposing the anti-immigration event, including a group called Brookhaven Citizens for Peaceful Solutions, held a press conference the day before the rightist event, while deliberately avoiding a counterprotest during the ultrarightist meeting. Leaders of Sachem Quality of Life, however, crashed the press conference, aggressively competing for the television cameras.

The rightists have been aided by the actions of mainstream capitalist politicians who have joined the anti-immigrant campaign. In April, when immigrant rights activists and others pushed to get a proposal passed by the Suffolk County legislature for a center to be built in Farmingville to serve as a hiring hall for the day laborers, County Executive Robert Gaffney vetoed it, a move that put wind in the sails of the rightists.

County legislator Caracappa is now proposing a bill targeting contractors who hire undocumented workers. The legislation would subject employers to losing their county licenses for five years after three violations.  
 
Immigrant rights protests planned
Workers waiting on street corners to be offered day jobs face continual harassment by the police. Jacobo Herrera Zenteno told the Militant, "You can come to the main street in town [in Farmingdale] any morning and they will be there. They give tickets to anyone who stops." In nearby Farming-ville they are also hassled by the police, as well as by the weekly rightist pickets.

Meanwhile, workers are organizing to protect their rights. Elizar, a Mexican-born worker in Farmingville, is a member of the Unión de Jornaleros de Long Island (Union of Day Laborers of Long Island). "The work of UJLI is to keep pressuring the contractors to pay for the wages owed to the workers," he said. Contractors often attempt to pay workers less than promised or not at all.

A coalition of groups is planning an event in defense of immigrant rights around the anniversary of the September 17 attack. There are also plans to participate in a September 25 march on Washington to demand an amnesty for all undocumented workers.

Gerardo Sánchez contributed to this article.  
 
 
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