May Day Marches Around the World

(1)
May Day Marches See Labor Join Immigrants' Struggle for
Rights
by Eduardo Soriano-Castillo
Labor Notes
May 2, 2011

http://www.labornotes.org/print/2011/05/may-day-marches-see-labor-join-immigrants

Wisconsin's May Day marches saw a surge of
participation as immigrants and unions joined to
protest legislative assaults on their rights. Photo:
Karen Hickey, Wisconsin AFL-CIO.

In cities throughout the U.S., tens of thousands
marched on May Day to demand an end to attacks on
workers and immigrants.

Some traditional hotbeds of activity, like Los Angeles,
turned out much smaller crowds than in previous years,
while others, like Madison, saw a surge of
participation as immigrants and unions joined to
protest legislative assaults on their rights.

Egyptian workers celebrated May Day for the first time
since toppling their dictatorial government.

In downtown Los Angeles, about 3,000 car washers,
restaurant workers, and day laborers joined unionized
teachers, service employees, and building trades
members to demand immigration reform, union rights for
all, and a stop to deportations and the separation of
families.

Holding signs that read "No Arizona. No Wisconsin.
We're California," marchers in the annual May Day rally
aimed their protests at Congress and President Barack
Obama. They accused them of allowing what many called a
patchwork of racist laws against the undocumented to
sprout up in states and municipalities.

While the Obama administration is challenging Arizona's
anti-immigrant law, similar legislation has emerged in
Georgia and Utah, and national legislation to legalize
11 million undocumented people has gone nowhere.

Pedro Guzman from Honduras, an 11-year veteran of the
car wash industry, said May Day should "ensure that
decision makers in Washington do not forget the
promises they have failed to deliver."

Guzman is training as an organizer with LA's Community-
Labor-Environmental Action Network, which is pushing to
organize the carwash industry, along with the
Steelworkers.

"We have had all we can take," Guzman said, noting that
Obama's administration deported a record 392,000 people
last year.

Together or Separate?

In Milwaukee 25,000 workers, almost all of them
immigrants, marched from the barrio through downtown,
gathering numbers as they walked. Big immigrants'
rights marches on May Day have been a tradition in the
city since 2006, when massive protests nationwide
turned aside federal legislation that attempted to
criminalize undocumented immigrants.

This year more union members, especially teachers and
public employees, joined in.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka likened Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker to Congressman James
Sensenbrenner-also from Wisconsin. It was
Sensenbrenner's proposed bill that touched off the 2006
protests.

But in Minneapolis, where the state legislature is now
considering an Arizona-style bill, the immigrant
community was on its own.

Several thousand had been mobilized by unions and the
NAACP to turn out April 4, the national day of action
called by the AFL-CIO to protest attacks on workers by
state legislatures and to mark Martin Luther King's
assassination.

But only hundreds came out for May Day in the Twin
Cities, and the state AFL-CIO, the central labor
councils, and most union leaders were absent.

New Beginnings

In Egypt thousands of workers came to Tahrir Square to
demand the dissolution of the government-run union
federation and to celebrate the founding of independent
unions. Banners announcing new unions were hung around
the square.

Reda Noaman of the Real Estate Tax Authority union, the
oldest independent union, said 21 new unions have been
formed since the January 25 revolution.

A smaller protest was held outside the government union
federation, demanding the trial of its former President
Hussein Megawer. Commemorative services were also held
for the more than 850 protesters killed during the
revolution.

A popular tribunal in the square staged mock trials for
Hosni Mubarak and Megawer.

Chris White, an American labor activist on the scene,
wrote, "The interim military government has been
sending mixed messages by recognizing independent
unions on the one hand and threatening to prosecute
strikers on the other."

Universal = Everyone

Vermont activists took the opportunity to fuse their
campaign for universal health care with a defense of
immigrant workers-whom state senators want to exclude
from health coverage.

A colorful, boisterous march of 2,000 converged on the
Statehouse in Montpelier in support of health care as a
human right. The rally came as the legislature is
reconciling House and Senate versions of a universal-
care bill, which the governor is expected to sign
within days.

Nurses in red scrubs, farmworkers, teachers, and IBM
workers chanted, "Our health care is not for profit."

Marchers spoke up for undocumented immigrants because
under the Senate version of the bill, Vermont's 2,000
or so undocumented dairy workers would be excluded.
"Universal = Everyone," read a popular sign.

Victory in Philadelphia

After a four-year struggle, the small but fiery
independent security officers union at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art celebrated May Day by signing a first
contract.

The union became a cause célèbre for Philadelphia
activists as it struggled for years alongside Jobs with
Justice and community, student, faith, and union
activists to win recognition and then a contract from
the three private security firms that provide
subcontracted security services at the museum.

The three-year deal raises wages by 14.5 percent to
$10.88 an hour and gives all 160 guards a grievance
procedure and seniority system.

The union has set a higher standard for all security
officers in the city, said Luis Paria, a union member
and security officer at the Penns Landing waterfront
area.

Most important, members say, the contract offers a
rallying point that Philadelphia security officers have
not had since the early 1990s when Mayor Ed Rendell
privatized security operations at the city-owned
museum.

"Any worker can get organized and improve their lives.
We have proven it," said Sulaiman Kamara, AlliedBarton
security officer and union treasurer.

Jane Slaughter and Jenny Brown contributed to this
piece.


(2)
Millions March for Labor Rights
by Allison Kilkenny
The Nation blog
May 2, 2011

http://www.thenation.com/blog/160319/millions-march-labor-rights

On Sunday, millions of demonstrators around the globe
marched for labor rights (KVAL.com has posted a gallery
of photos from international workers' day
celebrations).

In the US, thousands of protesters turned out in
Wisconsin where the battle over collective bargaining
rights rages on.

Wisconsin demonstrators marched two miles through
downtown Milwaukee, waving US and Mexican flags and
holding signs showing a raised fist in the shape of the
state. Similar scenes played out across the nation and
around the world, as millions of workers from Havana to
Berlin and Istanbul took to the streets.

The rally ended at a park nearby Lake Michigan, where
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka addressed the crowd
about the importance of solidarity between immigrants
and labor.

"It's the same fight," he said. "It's the same people
that are attacking immigrants' rights, workers' rights,
student rights, voting rights."

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founder and executive director
of Voces de la Frontera, accused Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker and other conservatives of "scapegoating
immigrants, union workers, and poor people for rising
unemployment, low wages and lack of benefits."

Thousands of supporters marched through downtown Los
Angeles to demand a path to citizenship for the
millions of undocumented immigrants living in the
country. As the protesters moved through the streets,
they chanted, "Legalization or no re-election!"

The Hispanic community is torn over the best approach
to pressuring President Obama to support a path to
citizenship. Pro-immigration reform leaders have mostly
stopped asking Hispanic citizens to vote against the
president and other Democrats in 2012 because the
Republicans are the ones really blocking reform, says
Javier Rodriguez of the March 25 Coalition.

But not everyone agrees with that approach.

Alfredo Gutierrez, a former Democratic state senator
from Arizona, said Obama could not be counted on to
enact the promised reforms.

"We should deny our votes to Obama, a man who clearly
is not sincere about his intentions," he told AFP.

"We will not get anything from Obama. We just need his
to stop the systematic deportation of children,
students and parents, because it is destroying our
community."

Thousands of protesters turned out in New York and
Connecticut. In Hartford, more than 1,000 union members
and their families gathered near the state Capitol to
protest the growing assault on middle-class workers by
the GOP and corporations.

    "There is a class war going on and it's against the
    middle class-they're trying to exterminate us,"
    said John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-
    CIO.

A couple May Day demonstrators were detained in
Louisville, Kentucky. Two people were cited for
possession of graffiti materials and "desecration of
venerated objects" after downtown Louisville buildings
were graffitied.

Domestic and international protests alike centered on
the same issues: economic inequality, job creation,
better working conditions, higher wages and decent
healthcare.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets
of Istanbul this year. Members of a Turkey LGBT group
joined the celebrations, along with many high school
students. The mood of Istanbul's celebrations was very
different from previous years when protesters and
police clashed violently.

    People carried hundreds of different placards and
    banners and hung pictures of Marx, Engels and Lenin
    on the square. A large picture of a worker with
    chains on his hands was also hung on the Atatürk
    Cultural Center, or AKM-the same image hung on May
    Day 1977, when Taksim became the scene of a bloody
    massacre in which at least 34 people died.

A massive demonstration of 10,000 people took place in
Britain's Trafalgar Square in which labor organizers
and their supporters protested government spending
cuts. During the event, demonstrators called for a
general strike to force the coalition to change its
policies.

In other UK news, four people arrested during an anti-
capitalist May Day protest in Brighton have been
charged by Sussex Police.

Michael Cutting and Madeleine Hayes have been charged
with refusing to remove their face masks when asked to
do so by a police officers (Cutting was also charged
with being in possession of "items used to destroy or
damage property") and Jorge Lagar and Owen Lewis were
charged with assaulting police officers, according to
the BBC.

Demonstrations also took place in France, Greece,
Egypt, Gremany and Iraq, attracting hundreds of
thousands of protesters. The Guardian reports that up
to 120,000 people turned out for France's marches in
200 locations. Protesters voiced their objection to
high unemployment (9.6 percent) and jobs cuts in the
public sector, while showcasing their support for the
popular uprisings in the Arab world.

    In Greece unions said around 12,000 workers took to
    the streets in central Athens. Cuts in public
    sector pay and pensions along with higher taxes
    were the main focus of protests.

    Unemployment in Greece has also climbed to a record
    high of 15.1%. After the rallies there were minor
    scuffles between police and a small group of self-
    proclaimed anarchists in the bohemian district of
    Exarhia in central Athens.

    Meanwhile in Iraq, hundreds of people, many of them
    members of the Iraqi Communist Party, demonstrated
    in the capital Baghdad to press for more jobs and
    equal labour rights for women. Thousands of Iraqis,
    inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab region,
    have taken to the streets in recent months to press
    for better basic services and an end to corruption.

    Demonstrators, many carrying red flags associated
    with Iraq's communist party, marched peacefully in
    Baghdad's central Firdous Square, chanting: "First
    of May is the day for workers."

Moscow's protest brought out 500 nationalists who
rallied to protest against the government's support of
impoverished regions of Russia. Activists wore surgical
facemasks and carried banners that read, "Russia for
Russians!" and "Migrant workers get out!"

____________________________________________

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