Activists took to the streets in Milwaukee Wednesday for May Day. It’s an international day of action for labor and immigrant rights.
They chanted “Si, se puede!” In English, it means “yes! It can be done!” It’s the motto of the United Farm Workers union, co-founded by American labor leaders and civil rights activists, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
This year’s march was focused on the upcoming presidential election. Activists walked from Milwaukee’s near south side to Fiserv Forum, where the Republican Party will host its national convention in July.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz is executive director of Voces De La Frontera. It organized the event in conjunction with the Coalition to March on the RNC. Neumann Ortiz says as a swing state, the growing Latinx vote in Wisconsin was key to defeating Trump in 2020.
A Latinx coalition in Wisconsin says it needs more
At the heart of that effort to vote out Trump, says Neumann-Ortiz, was Voces De La Frontera Action and Voceros Por el Voto. It is a statewide network, she says, made up of undocumented workers and mixed immigration status families who have been here for decades. "[They've organized] their US citizen family, friends, co-workers and supporters to go to the polls in solidarity,” she says.
Neumann-Ortiz says the network, built on relational organizing, currently includes about 28,000 people. Yet, Neumann-Ortiz says the failure to pass immigration reform “has left a bitter taste in the mouths of those supporters.”
She says that base of pro-immigrant Latinx voters and youth voters “need to see and feel actionable change in their lives, and not more empty promises.”
“To defeat [former President Donald] Trump in 2024," says Neumann-Ortiz, "we call on President [Joe] Biden to use his executive authority to grant work permits immediately to undocumented workers and their families who have been in this country for many years. They are essential workers who risked their lives on the front lines of the pandemic. They maintain the economy afloat and could help even more if they could fix their immigration status.”
Activists also eye Wisconsin State Legislative races
Neumann-Ortiz also highlighted that in November, there is the possibility for change in Wisconsin’s State Legislature. All 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly are on the ballot, along with 16 out of 33 seats (the even-numbered districts) in the state Senate.
She says it's a chance to vote in legislators who will support "driver's licenses for all." The Latinx/immigrant rights movement in Wisconsin has been working for years to push for the state to reinstate this.
Before 2008, you could be undocumented and still get a driver’s license in Wisconsin. A federal act changed that, and when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed to reinstate access in his biennial budgets, the Republican-led Legislature didn’t pass those proposals.
Neumann-Ortiz wants her coalition to support legislators who are in favor of driver's license access for people who are undocumented.
Local progressive movements fold in Palestinian rights
At a pre-march rally on Wednesday, Mexican cumbia and corrido music filled the air, as people hoisted up signs and unfurled banners painted with butterflies, a symbol for migrants and the freedom of movement.
Some demonstrators waved Mexican flags, while others were also draped in keffiyahs, traditional Arab headdress, and raising Palestinian flags. The march occurs as students around the country protest the war in Gaza — with encampments on campuses, including at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee.
A diverging attitude towards Biden and Trump
Dr. Roa Qato is a gynecologist in the Milwaukee Area who co-leads the Milwaukee Chapter of Healthcare Workers for Palestine. She spoke ahead of the event, noting her opposition to the war in Gaza. She said on that issue and others, like immigration enforcement, Trump and Biden were two sides of the same coin.
“Friends, we cannot be fooled and think that Biden is the lesser of two evils. Trump, you are evil. Biden, you are evil, as you are both the sick poison from a different fruit. In fact, the Democratic Party is worse because it masquerades as a party for the working people, yet it reinforces policies that sanctify corporate interests and desecrate people's rights,” she said.
But Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces De La Frontera, had a different approach. She argued that Trump posed a greater threat. “Under the Trump administration, we already have seen that it is more than rhetoric and hate mongering. This is someone who tried to legally and through violent action, undermine a democratic election," Neumann-Ortiz says. "And this is someone who will follow through with their threats on mass military deportation, in some ways, the pandemic actually put the brakes on that policy when he was under control. And [he] does really represent a very serious threat.”
She says her organization’s goal right now is to be “very clear with President Biden and his advisors that we can do what we can do. But if you are not listening, and you don't take seriously the opposition, that is coming from, you know, the Palestinian rights movement, from the immigrant rights movement, and you ignore here in Wisconsin, the largest network that was rooted on mixed immigration status family that turned out the Latino vote that delivered in every statewide election since 2018," she says. "You're going to lose. You're going to lose if you don't listen to them.”
She says her coalition wants meaningful change before November.
