U.S. May Day marchers denounce Trump
immigration policies
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[May 02, 2018]
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Organized labor
activists led May Day rallies in several U.S. cities on Tuesday, though
in smaller numbers than last year, decrying President Donald Trump's
immigration crackdown as an assault on vulnerable workers in some of
America's lowest-paying jobs.
The biggest gathering was in Los Angeles, where a boisterous but
peaceful crowd of several hundred marched through downtown, carrying
pro-union and pro-immigration banners while chanting, "Union power" and
"This is what democracy looks like."
In New York City, several hundred May Day activists marched up Broadway
to Wall Street while police in Seattle arrested a man suspected of
throwing a rock during a rally there.
Organizers sought to combine traditional May Day themes of protecting
workers' rights with a denunciation of Trump's efforts to increase
deportations and a call for voters to show up at the polls for the
upcoming mid-term congressional elections.
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Protesters also took aim at Trump administration policies and rhetoric
they viewed as hostile to the environment, racial and ethnic minorities,
women and to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
community.
Many railed at the administration's decision to end temporary protected
status for thousands of immigrants from several countries hurt by
natural disasters or conflict, including Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador,
Sudan and Nepal.
They also cited the uncertain status of an estimated 700,000 young
immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and now
facing possible deportation after Trump moved to scrap an Obama-era
program protecting them.
Rally leaders sought to emphasize that such policies fell especially
hard on undocumented workers toiling in low-wage, non-unionized sectors
such as fast-food, hospitality, child care and agriculture.
The marches in the United States capped a day of protests elsewhere in
the world. In Paris, hundreds of masked and hooded anarchists smashed
shop windows, torched cars and hurled cobblestones at riot police on
Tuesday, hijacking a May Day rally by labor unions against President
Emmanuel Macron’s economic reforms.
FESTIVE AND DEFIANT
Tuesday's Los Angeles turnout under cloudy skies and a slight drizzle
was considerably diminished from the thousands who took to the streets
of America's second-largest city in 2017, for the first May Day
celebration after Trump took office.
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![](../images/050218pics/news_e11.jpg)
People march in a May Day rally in Los Angeles, California, U.S.,
May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Jenna Schoenefeld
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But the mood was festive and defiant, nevertheless.
"No rain, no clouds, no hate, no division is going to keep workers
from celebrating with immigrants, with refugees ... with the LGBT
community, with the criminal justice reform community, with the
environmental justice community," union leader Laphonza Butler told
the crowd, speaking from a flat-bed truck.
Butler heads the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local
2015, representing some 380,000 long-term healthcare workers
statewide, one of the largest collective bargaining units in the
nation.
But marchers represented a broad cross-section of organized labor
and other constituencies, from the Teamsters union and nurses to
street vendors and a group called the Clean Carwash Campaign.
"May First is a celebration of workers, and a lot of workers in this
city are immigrants," said Karla Cativo, 36, a community organizer
with the Salvadoran American Leadership and Educational Fund, which
provides services to Central American immigrants.
Cativo, a Salvadoran native who entered the United States as an
undocumented immigrant, said she gained U.S. citizenship with "a lot
of work and because of a lot of people fighting for my rights."
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Fellow protester Fabian Barcenas, 55, said he wanted to give voice
to "millions of workers who pay taxes and support their families who
don't have the chance of having legal status here."
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by
Jonathan Allen in New York, John Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and
Omar Younis in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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