May Day has long been a day for celebrating labor organizing, ever since the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square riots, during which workers demanded an 8-hour workday.
Since 2006, it's also been recognized as a day to advocate for immigrants, with “A Day Without Immigrants.” That year, millions of people rallied nationally to protest proposed legislation that would have included making it a felony offense to be an undocumented immigrant.
The movements for immigrants' and workers' rights have converged in the past 20 years. Since that historic mobilization in 2006, people began to skip work, school and shopping on May 1, to emphasize the indispensable role that immigrants play in society.
This year, marchers in Milwaukee were rallying around some central demands. At the state level, they’d like to stop local law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under section 287(g). They say they want ICE out of courts, schools and communities. And they’d like an ICE facility to be closed at 11924 West Lake Park Drive on Milwaukee’s Northwest side.
On the national level, organizers and marchers would like to abolish ICE, citizenship for all and “an economy for all.”
As people coalesced at the new headquarters for immigrants’ and workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera on Mitchell Street in Milwaukee’s south side, and ahead of a trek to the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, WUWM spoke with activists about what changes they are seeking.
Melanie Leyva and Ian Fournier are with YES, Youth Empowered in the Struggle. It is the youth arm of Voces de la Frontera, and Leyva is the statewide college organizer.
"The main takeaway with all of our state demands is unity," says Leyva. "At these times where the country is so divided, it's International Labor Day, so it's a beautiful day to come together and find some common ground with all our demands."
"I think it's important to have representation," says Fournier. "People are getting affected, obviously families and individuals, and I think they need people to help bring their voice, you know? They're getting shut down, they're getting imprisoned, they're getting moved to other states, outside the U.S. So I think being a support for those people is something incredibly important and something that's — it should be alive still."
Jorge Torres is from the city of Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico. He says he is marching "more than anything, to recognize that we are part of a movement and that we need for our rights to be respected in this country." He is motivated to march because "the persecution of all the undocumented people has become much more radicalized." He says the Trump administration is racist and "has promoted a lot of discrimination."
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of Voces, says the big message for May Day today across the country "is that we have power, that we economic power, but that is a peaceful way to leverage our political demands, that we're not going to be divided as working people, and that we stand in solidarity and we're calling for an end to the abuse. And for resources not to go to persecution of immigrants and separation of families, or to make billionaires wealthier, but to go to working people. And that's the biggest takeaway."
This midterm election year, Voces' relational organizing program, known as Voceros por el Voto, is now up to 41,000 people statewide.
"The Latino community is present in just about every county in this state as a whole," says Neumann-Ortiz. "It has a power that has made a difference, but it isn't even asserting full power. And in a swing state, we know that [the Latino vote is] decisive. So I think it's a time of consciousness-raising and for people to understand that this is also another way not just to defend themselves but to defend their community and their neighborhoods and their future, and that we all have a shared fate."
Back in 2016, Hiram Rabadan-Torres' daughter told him she was not going to go to school, she was going to protest in Milwaukee. That inspired the small business owner from Fond du Lac to join her and start protesting.
"We most of all are essential workers," says Rabadan-Torres, who owns an auto repair facility. "We were blessed back in the day when we have COVID. We were one of the few workforce who stay up, because we were essential. And, but the same way, not just in my case though, it was many others: the cleaning industry, dairy farm industry, the actual construction, most of us. We are essential...And I'm just here to support that...We need to be treated as a human beings, not as a kind of disposable things, so that's why I'm trying to bring awareness."
