Eugenio's Blog!

Okay, so I have been bribed to add a posting to my blog. I have been offered five shots of Three Wise Men. Great, so I will post and puke -- my favorite P's. This blogging experience better be as rewarding and self-fulfilling as my friends claim.

I have received hate speech from my friends complaining that visitors to their sites often click on a link to my site and are utterly disappointed with the one "testing" posting. I have told them just to erase the link. However, they have referred to many court cases emphasizing the Time/Place/Manner Rule in hate speech regulation. You win.

There is no point in trying to catch up on the last 22 years of my life, so I will just fast forward to June 1, 2004 -- the day I started working in Fremont, Ohio 43420.

The drive to Fremont on May 30 [I know this is before June 1, but just stay with me] was quite the treat. I woke up at 4:15 AM CDT to shower, eat, and load the car to leave at 5:30 AM CDT. I needed to meet with the landlady promptly at 12:30 PM EDT, so I figured I would allot extra driving time just so I wouldn't be freaking out. I arrived about an hour early.

I knew I was running ahead of schedule going through the great state of Indiana, so I decided to stop and just chill at the travel plazas off Interstate 90/80. There were two in Indiana and one in Ohio. The one in Ohio had a sign at the entrance that said No Guns Permitted, and it went into the law code and that even if the gun is unloaded, you still cannot bring it into the travel plaza. It scared me in two ways: (1) Is Ohio so gun-friendly that it has to tell its residents that certain areas of gun possession are prohibited? (2) The guy in Indiana that asked me “Is that a gun in your pocket?” could have been literally serious.

My office in Fremont has a posting with similar sign.

I don't like guns.

So, let's discuss why I'm in Fremont. We all know the importance and significance of the 2L summer [See, A's June 5 posting]. But I think the 1L summer is just important to obtain exposure into some legal field. Plus, I might be in Chicago my whole life, and I'll be in Iowa in August. This would be my last opportunity to go somewhere completely random for 11 weeks. Fremont, Ohio -- what could be more random?

Advocates for Basic Legal Equality and Legal Aid of Western Ohio are sister organizations that fund and maintain the Migrant Farmworker Program I am working with for the summer. We deal with mainly labor and immigration laws, buoccasionallyly there are education and domestic violence issues that occur as well. Approximately 70% of migrant farmworkers are undocumented / no tienen papeles. Typical clients complaints include:

1. The farm owner isn't paying me the minimum wage.
2. I need legal papers / identification.
3. I am being exposed to harmful pesticides and rodents.
4. My housing situation is not safe.
5. There is unclean drinking water at the camps.
6. My husband hits me.
7. My child has been denied admittance into primary or secondary school.

Pretty interesting, huh? I think so . . .

Okay, enough for one day.

"Okay, but if your ears do fall off, I get your Walkman®." Michelle Tanner.