Immigrants find they can fight City Hall

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, March 30, 2006 | 6:33 a.m.

Dozens of immigrants living in a Las Vegas neighborhood recently learned a civics lesson when they looked to City Hall for help.

They asked for a sidewalk to give their children a safe way to school, expecting to get shot down.

They weren't.

City workers began laying down the $600,000 sidewalk along East Ogden Avenue last week, stopping only to let dozens of children from nearby Howard E. Hollingsworth Elementary School pass by with their parents on the way to class or home.

The project is unusual in at least two ways. First, the federal government is footing the bill, even though city codes say property owners should pay for sidewalks. Only one other such project has been completed in the last three years, according to city officials.

Second, the project resulted from what was the first experience with government for many of the people, mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants, who met with city officials for months on the issue.

Ramona Uranda, a resident of the neighborhood near Fremont Street and Maryland Parkway for 12 years, is one of those people. When she and 107 other people last year formed an East Las Vegas chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), she thought at first, "they'll never pay attention to us."

Then she was surprised to find herself among dozens of neighbors anxious to tell Ward 3 Las Vegas Councilman Gary Reese that they needed sidewalks along the street that runs east of the school, as well as speed bumps and less crime. A petition for the sidewalk with about 150 signatures followed.

"In Mexico you can't even get close to a politician," said Uranda, recalling the politics in her native country.

Uranda has three children at Hollingsworth; in kindergarten, third and fourth grades. She has grown used to leading them through the street in two of the three blocks between her house and school.

As she walked the same route with her children in tow on a recent weekday afternoon, workers took a break along the road, and she recalled her first foray into political activism.

"You better believe I was nervous," she said about the first time she spoke at a meeting with police and City Hall officials. The ACORN chapter she joined was the second of three the national organization has formed since its late 2004 arrival in the Las Vegas Valley.

More than one naysayer at the first meetings said that asking police for help with crime or asking politicians for help with sidewalks would just bring more problems.

"We thought the police would deport the ones who are illegal ... or maybe the politicians would decide to get rid of us," she recalled.

When the neighborhood brought up the need for a sidewalk, "at first they said there was no money, and that we should pay for it."

Uranda is a stay-at-home mom and her husband works in construction.

Reese said he didn't think there would be funds for the project at first. "Then I went to staff and talked about the school and the mothers with strollers walking in the street," he said.

Reese said he was able to find federal money known as block grant development funds.

Along East Ogden Avenue the other day, several construction workers recently off work were hanging out in a yard straddling the corner of Ogden - where the sidewalk is being put in - and 18th Street - where there also is no sidewalk, and no plans of putting one in soon.

German Del Real, who lives a few houses down 18th, said he hopes his street gets the same attention Ogden did - although he understands the importance of starting with a main thoroughfare.

Reese noted that the project only covers the south side of Ogden, and that he would be talking to residents in the coming weeks to determine what neighborhood consensus is on where to continue putting in sidewalks, or if they are needed at all.

He also noted that those residents didn't have to go through joining an organization to get as far as they have.

"They don't have to pay $10 a month to get this kind of service," he said, referring to ACORN's monthly dues.

"You don't have to have a group come from Des Moines, Iowa, to tell you, 'You have a problem.' "

But Will Ward, head organizer of the organization, said that many everyday people get little or no results with such requests, and see a different outcome with group meetings, petitions and protests.

Neither he nor the organization is from Des Moines, he added.

Uranda, meanwhile, said she had learned something from the whole experience.

"Alone, you're nothing, but together, you can get it done," she said.