May Day Marchers Around The World Celebrate Workers, Immigrants

Monday’s May Day protests targeted a broad range of progressive causes, including income inequality, racism and climate change, but the Chicago businesses that closed so their workers could march were centered in Latino neighborhoods where immigration is top of mind.

From Miami to Washington D.C. and from the USA capital to Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, immigrants and activists rallied on the streets and campuses to denounce stepped-up detentions and deportations of foreign nationals that have been taking place nationwide since Trump took office on January 20.

Police in Portland, Oregon, say the permit obtained for the May Day rally and march there was canceled as some marchers began throwing projectiles at officers.

Early in the day, 500 protesters marched through midtown Manhattan and rallied in front of offices of Wells Fargo WFC.N and JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N .

At the NY rally, Damian Rodriguez, owner of First Class Car and Limo Service in Inwood, said his company had given its 400 drivers the option of staying home, and about 20 percent of them accepted Monday morning, when local elected officials had encouraged drivers to go on strike.

The organizers of May Day Action highlighted this history in their day of events, that, among other actions, included a rally for striking workers and immigrants, and a large-scale march to the White House. Police made 25 arrests, including a 14-year-old who was charged with rioting. And they sparked at least four arrests after creating a human chain to block a county building in Oakland, Calif., where demonstrators demanded that county law enforcement refuse to collaborate with federal immigration agents.

May Day protests and rallies around the world and across the USA are celebrating labor, calling for greater protections and benefits for workers and highlighting the contributions of immigrants.

But the primary impetus cited by civil liberties and labour activists was Trump’s strict new immigration enforcement policy – falling most heavily on undocumented workers who toil in low-paying, non-unionised sectors such as hospitality, childcare and agriculture.

Zalaya offered a simple message for the Republican president: “All of us, we are immigrants”.

Rally goers spoke out against what they call the anti-immigrant policies of President Trump, including calls to signing an executive order on a travel ban from certain countries, which has been blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii, and calls to build a wall on the U.S – Mexico border.

In Chicago, Brenda Burciaga, 28, was among thousands of people who marched through the streets to push back against the new administration.

Prior to the election of Donald Trump, immigrant communities faced heightened levels of immigration enforcement and deportation, including the resurgence of home raids and the detention of mothers and children fleeing gender-based violence.

Ruiz and Martinez both said they want to bring attention to the issues their community is facing, and by working with the Dream Team, they hope to do something about it. “We are not going to idly stand by as a group of people, alt-right or any fascist group, or any individual fascist tries to disrupt it”, he told the Gothamist.

A protester displays a placard against President Donald Trump during a demonstration to mark May Day in New York, May 1, 2017.

In Philadelphia, about 1,000 school teachers picketed at schools around the city. Activists in Phoenix petitioned legislators to support immigrant families. A rally for immigrants took place at Lamont Park in Mt.

May Day unrest flared on Monday in France and Turkey, where demonstrators clashed with police.

Several protesters, like 39-year-old Mario Quintero, outed themselves as being in the country illegally to help make their point.