May Day rallies across US target Trump’s immigration policy
NEW YORK/ LOS ANGELES: Labour unions and civil rights groups staged May Day rallies in several US cities on Monday to denounce President Donald Trump’s get-tough policy on immigration, a crackdown they said preys on vulnerable workers in some of America’s lowestpaying jobs.
Protests and marches challenging Trump’s efforts at stepping up the deportation of illegal immigrants drew crowds by the thousands to the streets of New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with smaller gatherings popping up across the country.
A broad coalition of groups behind the events also took aim at various other Trump policies they saw as discriminatory or xenophobic, including his bid, so far blocked by the courts, to ban travellers from several Muslim countries and temporarily turn away all refugees.
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 fast-food, hospitality, child care and agriculture.
A May Day gathering grew unruly in Portland, Oregon, where a group of black- clad protesters roamed downtown streets in the late afternoon, setting fi res, breaking storefront windows, throwing projectiles and vandalising a police cruiser.
Police, referring to the perpetrators as ‘anarchists’, said they made more than two dozen arrests.
Nine people were also arrested in Olympia, the state capital in Washington, where protesters threw rocks, bottles and pepperspray at police officers and broke the windows of downtown businesses, according to a Fox affiliate.
Rallies elsewhere across the country were boisterous but mostly orderly, even festive.
In some cities, immigrant-run convenience stores and other businesses closed their doors in solidarity with the May Day rallies, and many protesters themselves gave up a day’s wages to make their voices heard.
“Money will come back later, but not this opportunity, not this day,” said David Anaya, 44, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who chose to forfeit the US$ 300 he would have otherwise earned at his job as a welder.
He was one of thousands who gathered at MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles for what organisers called a show of ‘resistance, unity and defiance’, then set off on an animated but peaceful march across town to City Hall.
A crowd of several thousand also assembled in Washington’s Dupont Circle for a rally ahead of a planned procession to Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. Earlier in the day, 500 protesters marched through midtown Manhattan and rallied in front of offices of Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase Co.
Twelve were arrested, according to a spokesman for Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group that claims 20,000 members.
The two banks were targeted because of their dealings with private companies that have built or manage some immigrant detention centres for the government, according to Jose Lopez, Make the Road New York’s co- director of organising.
“The messaging for today was to stop financing immigrant detention facilities,” Lopez said. — Reuters