LONG LIVE MAY DAY

Immigrant, worker unity can combat layoffs, cutbacks and racism

By Teresa Gutierrez

Once more, just as every year since 2006, there will be May Day demonstrations around the United States on May 1.

May Day actions, large and small, already signal an enormous political and social development. Large ones will have more impact, but no matter the size of the actions, these yearly marches have revived May Day in the U.S. They reflect two significant developments:

•  The movement for immigrant rights, despite many difficulties and great odds, has not gone away. It audaciously remains sustained and alive.

•  These demonstrations have a thoroughly class-conscious character. Because of the dire worldwide economic crisis facing the working class, this is perhaps what is most important about May Day.

Immigrants are organizing as workers. And they are appealing to other workers to join them. Immigrants are declaring that they are under attack as workers and they are calling on other workers to join them in the fight for the rights of all workers.

This is a great development. This appeal could lay the basis for a massive working class struggle that becomes generalized, where those with documents join those without, where workers from every race, age, gender, and sexual orientation come together in common interest against their oppressors. With this solidarity, bourgeois divisions and bourgeois thinking among workers will decrease and stop holding back the movement.

This kind of movement is desperately needed. Mass anger exists against the bailout of the rich and the corporations. That anger must be seen in the streets.

As we watch the nightly news broadcasts and see yet another dreary statistic on the economy or hear that a flu epidemic could become a crisis of unprecedented proportions, workers should be reminded that the only thing that can stay the hand of attacks against the people is a movement of the workers and the oppressed.

This is the potential of the May Day demonstrations in the U.S. today.

May Day’s history of struggle

In his book, “May Day: A Short History of the International Workers’ Holiday,” Philip Foner quoted an 1887 report from the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics: “The year 1886 has witnessed a more profound and far more extended agitation among the members of organized labor than any previous year in the history of our country. ... The year 1886 will be forever remembered as one of the greatest importance in the battle between capital and labor in the United States.”

Foner continued, “The year 1886 will also be ‘forever remembered’ as the year that May Day was born as a day of workers’ celebration and agitation.”

In the spring of 2006, immigrant workers, primarily Latinos and Latinas, poured into the streets not just once but several times. That was exactly 120 years after the birth of May Day.

In 1886 Chicago workers, almost all immigrants, had waged an enormous class battle.

The workers in Chicago lived and worked in some of the worst conditions. They too faced a dire economic crisis. There were massive layoffs and cuts in workers’ pay and benefits. Then too there were constant media scares about “terrorism.”

Then came a series of strikes and demonstrations that culminated on May 1, 1886. The demonstration shut the city down in a show of strength by workers not seen in the U.S. before. They demanded an eight-hour workday.

The state responded with heavy repression. Chicago police attacked a peaceful rally in Haymarket Square, where a provocateur tossed a bomb. Eight of the most visible leaders of this working class struggle were charged with conspiracy to murder. That was solely based on their fiery and class-conscious speeches.

Eventually four of these heroic leaders would die on the gallows.

We should never forget their names: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fisher and George Engel.

May Day 2009: Conditions behind the actions

The driving forces for the demonstrations today are as brutal and inhumane as in 1886.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Latinas and Latinos in the South are “under siege and living in fear—fear of the police, fear of the government and fear of criminals who prey on immigrants.”

The report found that 68 percent of the Latinas and Latinos interviewed suffered racism in their daily life and 41 percent had not been paid for their work. In New Orleans that number becomes a whopping 80 percent.

Thirty-two percent reported on-the-job injuries. The rate of deaths for Mexican workers in the South was 1 in 6,200, more than double the national average. Some 77 percent of Latina women were sexually harassed on the job and 47 percent of respondents knew someone victimized by the police.

Muslim and South Asian people also continue to live in fear as the anti-immigrant climate leads to racist stereotypes of this besieged community.

May 12 marks the one-year anniversary of the largest U.S. anti-immigrant raid in history. Postville, Iowa, was also the scene of the first large raid where immigrants were charged with “identify theft.” This charge is a felony and more serious than the lesser charges of immigration violations.

The meat processing plant Agriprocessors recruited Somali immigrants to fill the jobs. These immigrants and their advocates currently report brutal conditions. Workers were promised a bonus and a free month’s rent if they moved to Postville. They never received them.

Reports like this from immigrants can be found about every town and city across the country. Day laborers organized in the group Jornaleros Unidos de Queens report that police harassment has risen tenfold. And the economic crisis is driving not just immigrants but unemployed workers born here to join day laborers waiting on corners for jobs. Where before there were 50 or 100 workers, day-laborer groups are now reporting that hundreds of workers show up each day.

Solidarity needed

A glimpse of the many leaflets for May Day 2009 shows an impressive call for class unity. The demonstrations are calling on President Barack Obama to pass a just and humane comprehensive immigration reform that must lead to documenting the undocumented.

But from Rochester, N.Y., to San Antonio,  from New York City to Los Angeles and everywhere in between, the demands for May Day 2009 also reflect issues for all the working class.

Some of these demands are “Pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” “Workers’ rights are immigrant rights” and “Jobs for all at union wages.”

Imagine what a victory for these demands could do for many of the most oppressed groups in the U.S. For example, Black youth suffer an extremely high rate of unemployment due to unbridled racism. Like many others sectors of the working class, Black youth would benefit enormously with the passage of a jobs program.

The International Monetary Fund reported on April 21 that the “global recession will be deeper and the recovery slower” than had been previously reported.

During difficult economic times, tensions and divisions among workers can develop and intensify. An anti-immigrant demagogue like Tom Tancredo may blame immigrants for the crisis. But the bailout of the bankers shows who is really to be blamed. All workers’ anger should be directed at the ruling class, not at other sectors of the working class.

The May Day demonstrations are seen as immigrant rights events. And they are. But they are much more than that. They have the potential of widening and deepening into a class-wide struggle for all workers and oppressed.

In 2006, when workers stayed away from work on May Day in record numbers throughout the country, they showed the mighty strength of the concept raised then: “A day without a Mexican.”

Can May Day 2010 reflect this concept: “A day without a worker?” How frightening that would be to Wall Street.

Gutierrez is coordinator of the May 1 Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights in NYC.

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