“As May Day commemorations go, Monday’s turnout was extraordinary,” notes the New York Times:
In major cities and dozens of smaller communities, protesters marched for immigrants, for workers, for women and for others, grafting their myriad pleas onto a day traditionally reserved for the cause of laborers around the world.
Many surrendered a shift’s pay. Labor and immigrants’ rights activists, criticizing Mr. Trump’s detention and deportation agenda, had called for a general strike on May 1, also known as May Day, to emphasize the overlap between the concerns of unauthorized immigrants — on whom farms, restaurants, construction projects and other industries depend — and those of workers.
“Trump has pitted the U.S. working class against migrant workers and refugees, and so we must strive to create bridges, not bans or walls, to connect our struggles together,” representatives of the International Migrants Alliance wrote in its call to assemble.
In Los Angeles, an estimated 15,000 people marched from MacArthur Park to Los Angeles City Hall, with one organizer estimating that attendance was five times larger than last year’s May Day. "We will stand with this movement,” Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told the crowd. “We will stand with you for civil rights, for educational justice and this movement is the most important movement in the United States and the teachers are with you.”
In Seattle, thousands of demonstrators—many holding signs reading “No One Is Illegal” and “Ni Una Mas,” or, “Not One More”—rallied and proclaimed “nothing happens without immigrants. Nothing happens without workers.” Manuel Brito, a demonstrator with immigrant rights group One America, is an Air Force veteran and was at one point and undocumented immigrant himself. “This is an opportunity for me to help those people who are here, undocumented,” he said, “and teach them that they have rights, too.”
In Chicago, an estimated 20,000 rallied, including Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, both fierce immigration advocates in Congress. "We are passing a budget bill which says there will be no wall,” Sen. Durbin said, “and expressly says not one penny for a wall, no expansion of the enforcement force for ICE and others, and no penalty for sanctuary cities like Chicago and sanctuary counties like Cook County.”
"Today is a day for unified resistance. Across the country, people have taken this day to march, organize, and display their opposition to the divisive and immoral agenda of the Trump Administration,” said Rep. Schakowsky. “I will continue to echo their demand for action in the halls of Congress and will join my Democratic colleagues from the House and Senate tonight at an event to demonstrate our commitment to the resistance movement and their values.”
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio told a riled-up crowd that “everything Donald Trump wants to do, I have a simple message: No, you can’t! No se puede!”
“This is a purposeful attempt to demonize immigrants,” de Blasio continued. “It is an attempt to demonize people of color, to suggest that somehow immigrants are a danger to this nation—which makes no sense in the ultimate nation of immigrants.”
In Washington, D.C., thousands marched to the White House, demanding “Donald Trump has got to go!” It was just latest mass demonstration, following the Women’s March, the Climate March, and the March for Science, to taunt the notoriously vain popular vote loser.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an estimated 4,000 people turned out, “twice the number of people who sat out jobs and school days in Grand Rapids on February’s nationwide “Day Without Immigrants,” according to the New York Times. In Las Vegas, thousands organized by Culinary Workers and other groups rallied down the strip. In downtown San Francisco, dozens of demonstrators shut down an ICE office, later joining the many thousands who marched down Market Street. And in Texas, dozens staged a ten hour sit-in at Gov. Greg Abbott’s office over an anti-immigrant, “show me your papers” law recently approved by the Texas House.
This is a frightening time for immigrant families and immigrant communities, with many opting to not participate yesterday out of fear of Donald Trump’s deportation force. It makes it more imperative than ever for allies and those with privilege to be loud and forceful in this fight to finally win dignity, respect, and justice for America’s immigrant families.