About 100 volunteers training to help with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami carefully listened to the rules: Dress in guayaberas, black pants and comfortable shoes. Be courteous, make visual contact with the 220 mayors and always smile.
Ernesto Hernández, a 44-year-old engineer studying law, and his girlfriend, Christine Preston, offered to be on the welcome committee Thursday at Miami International Airport.
''This will give us the opportunity to make this city shine,'' he said Monday at the meeting.
Five miles away, a group of volunteers from the Miami Workers Center in Liberty City were painting seven giant cardboard skulls they will use in a march outside the Hotel Inter-Continental, where the mayors will meet this weekend. A trio of teens was printing ''Racial Justice'' on sashes.
Yeshi Milner, an 18-year-old Wynwood resident, offered to register people for a simultaneous summit of community groups from across the country that will counteract the official conference.
''This gives us the opportunity to express what our community needs,'' she said.
The opposing views of the two groups of volunteers clearly reflect the social divisions we face.
Although the mayors will discuss and draft recommendations for Congress and a new president on issues such as gun violence, school drop-outs and housing, many residents feel that they have been left out of the dialogue and that their interests are not represented.
At night, Manny Díaz, the hosting mayor, will toast his guests to the best Miami has to offer: a visit to Vizcaya; the ''Guayabera Night'' festival of Cuban food and music on Calle Ocho; a dinner and musical at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts with an after-party at Bongo's; and a South Beach-style farewell party to cap it off.
Apart from a short visit to a homeless assistance center, the busy agenda does not include stops at the Sweetwater mobile-home parks, the Opa-locka schools, Overtown's huge vacant lots, the demolished public housing of Liberty City, nor Jackson Memorial Hospital's emergency room.
''Our experiences and knowledge of the reality can help shape their decisions of what they have to do to improve conditions of the cities in crisis,'' noted Denise Perry, director of the Power U Center for Social Change, an Overtown advocacy agency.
Tom Cochran, the executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, explained that the convention is a business meeting and not a political rally. He added that the mayors visit their own city's poor neighborhoods. ''This is not a tour of Miami,'' said Cochran. ``[But] we want to see the interesting things that Mayor Diaz is doing.''
That doesn't convince Regla González, of Little Abner, a mobile-home park of 900 units located at NW 112th Ave. and NW Third Terrace where neighbors have created a cooperative to purchase the land they live on and avoid the evictions that occurred last year at the next-door Blue Lakes mobile-home park.
González, a 60-year-old, school-bus driver, plans to participate in the protest as a representative of the 90,000 families in Miami-Dade's mobile homes.
''We want them to respect us,'' she said. ``Then someone will have to hear us, and the mayors will hear us, even if it be through the TV cameras.''