David Ayala
Template:TOCnestleft David Ayala was, in 2016, a Field Oganizer with the Pramila Jayapal for Congress campaign.[1] He is originally from El Salvador.
PSARA
Peter Constantini and David Ayala were, in 2016, both Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action members.[2]
Lucky break
After the 15 days of torture, Ayala was finally brought to the public jail. “It was very nice when I came to jail. There was a bunch of union members.”
His release occurred because of a legal mistake. The day before going to court, interrogators were supposed to type up the accusations against the defendant into a document. Then a picture would be taken of the accused signing it. The coerced confession would be presented to the judge in court.
When Ayala’s turn came, they dressed him up and brought him into the room to sign. But the document wasn’t ready. “And the guy who wanted to take the picture was afraid that if it was late, he would be killed,” Ayala says. So the photographer got permission to take the picture of Ayala signing what was actually a blank page.
Afterwards, though, they forgot that he hadn’t signed the actual document. “So when I got to the court, the woman read the charges and asked, ‘Do you agree with those charges?’ “So I say, ‘Have I signed the document?’ “‘Of course you signed the document,'” she replied. “‘Everybody signs the document.'” Ayala persisted. “Have I signed the document?”The woman looked at the blank piece of paper with a signature. “No, you haven’t.”Ayala grinned ruefully. “So there was no proof against me.”
Even after that break, his attorney had to go all the way up to the Salvadoran attorney general to finally resolve his case.
Organizing El Norte
From his job in the pension institute Ayala had saved enough money to rapidly get a Mexican visa and a flight to Tijuana. When he got there, a coyote was waiting to help him get across the border to the United States.
Evening, he recalls, brought “an incredible moment, seeing thousands of people just waiting for the sun to go away and then moving in” toward the fence while helicopters hovered overhead. “I come from a war,” he thought at the time. “I’m a survivor. I have some skills here. But I was the first one arrested that night. In the first wave. The first one they brought to the corralón,” or holding pen. “I was so ashamed of myself.”
The U.S. authorities sent him back to Mexico. But a friend in the U.S. paid to connect him with a Mexican group that put him in a safe house. He made it across on his next try.
His group walked across the border through a sewer a few blocks from the main highway crossing. Then they brought him to another house in Los Angeles guarded by “a guy with an AK-47.” When Ayala arrived in the United States, he found a Reagan administration that was virulently, if less violently, antilabor. So before long, the indefatigable Salvadoran was back organizing again in his new home.
He’s worked in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, with Latino day laborers and immigrant rights groups. The Service Employees International Union hired him for campaigns with low-wage workers. For the past year, he’s bee organizing airport service workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a low-wage labor organization, Working Washington.
Watching the maturing leadership of the workers he’s been organizing, Ayala sees what they called contextura in El Salvador. “It’s like creating a different skin, a stronger skin. I think it was Che Guevara who said that we have to be strong for justice, but at the same time we have to be more tender with the people around us.[3]