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Weekdays at the Walgreens parking lot in Fruitvale have grown eerily quiet.
On a typical morning months ago, upwards of 60 men in work boots and dark hoodies would have been gathered around light poles and pop-up food stands in the large lot, chatting and drinking coffee out of paper cups. But on a recent gloomy Friday, only about a dozen day laborers milled about, hoping to find work.
“I think people are starting to feel it. I’m scared,” a man in a black hooded sweatshirt, leaning against the Oakland drugstore building, said in Spanish. “It’s not like last year. Right now, I’m just scared. You can’t trust anyone anymore.”…