Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

The geographic spread, size, and proletarian composition of these actions—despite concerted efforts by capitalist politicians, media, religious leaders, and other ruling-class forces to undercut them—were a measure of how the working class has gained in strength and has been politicized through the integration of millions of immigrants into its ranks, especially those from Mexico and Central America.

These working-class demonstrations drew on the political impact of May Day 2006, when 2 million people mobilized to press for the legalization of all immigrants, with many skipping work that day—the first nationwide political strike in U.S. history.

The big-business media, however, chose to downplay this year’s marches and rallies. Typical headlines were “Immigration rights rallies smaller than last year” and “Raid fears kept many home.”

But what was really newsworthy about May Day 2007? For the second year in a row, workers took to the streets in substantial numbers nationwide. As the Militant reports on page 7, actions took place in 101 cities and towns in 30 states plus Washington, D.C., and there were certainly more. The largest were those of 150,000 in Chicago, 60,000 in Milwaukee, 35,000 in Los Angeles, and 15,000 in Phoenix and Detroit. Ten thousand rallied in Yakima, a city of 71,000 in the agricultural region of central Washington.

A job action by thousands of truck drivers, most of them Mexican or Central American, cut traffic in half at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles—the nation’s largest container port complex. Thousands of other workers across the country took the day off.

The big-business media and rally organizers claimed the actions were smaller than last year because the “fear of raids kept many illegal immigrants from coming out,” as an Associated Press report asserted.

Protests against the stepped-up raids and deportations, however, were a major focus of this year’s demonstrations. In some instances, the factory sweeps and raids in working-class communities made workers even angrier.

In Chicago, for example, an April 25 raid by heavily armed FBI and ICE agents in the predominantly Mexican neighborhood of Little Village, also known as La Villita, sparked widespread outrage among workers. As a result, working people turned out for the May Day rally in higher numbers than had been projected by organizers and the media.

Over the past months, some of the factory sweeps have been met with immediate protests. When ICE agents raided six Swift meatpacking plants across the country December 12, arresting nearly 1,300 workers, they were met by hundreds of protesting relatives and others in towns such as Greeley, Colorado, and Marshalltown, Iowa. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, a March 6 raid and mass arrests of foreign-born workers at a leather factory sparked a protest rally of 700.

The high-profile raids certainly did intimidate some immigrants—that was their purpose. ICE reports that in fiscal year 2006 it deported more than 186,000 people, a 10 percent increase over the year before.

But fear over the raids was not the main reason the May Day rallies brought out 400,000 people compared to 2 million in 2006.

Last year the scope of the massive working-class outpouring caught the U.S. capitalist rulers by surprise. Since then, they have been working hard to push back the increased confidence and combativity of foreign-born workers. They have been working overtime to get protesters off the streets and into relying on capitalist politicians and institutions.

In May 2006, Democratic Party politicians and their supporters were unable to prevent a massive immigrant rights mobilization, precipitated by widespread anger at the House passage of the Sensenbrenner bill, which would have made it a felony to live in the United States without proper papers. Instead, these liberal forces jumped on the bandwagon and took part in the May 1 actions, seeking to tone down their militancy and diffuse their purpose.

This time liberals sought to demobilize the struggle by arguing that the situation had changed since last year. The movement has “matured” and must shift from street actions to the Congressional arena. Now we must look to the new Democratic majority in Congress to deliver favorable legislation, they insisted. Don’t march on May 1—lobby your congressman, workers were told by priests, politicians, and other “friends.”

Major forces in the various immigrant rights organizations followed this pro-Democratic line. They refused to organize demonstrations or scaled back plans for public actions. Some argued that the priority must be to approve the bipartisan Flake-Gutiérrez “immigration reform” bill, falsely presenting it as progress toward the legalization of undocumented workers. As a result, as an AP article noted, this led to “a concerted effort by many groups to focus on citizenship and voter registration drives instead of street mobilizations.”

Despite these efforts, large numbers of workers did turn out on May Day. That is because of the deep-going impact that the influx of millions from abroad has on the working class, helping break down divisions within the class, reinforcing solidarity, and widening the cultural scope of working people as a whole. The resistance by the foreign-born has had an impact on the political consciousness of native-born workers, while many immigrants themselves have broadened their political experiences as part of the U.S. working class.

Immigrant workers have helped reconquer May Day as a labor celebration in the United States. The long-term strengthening of the working class will be registered at future May Day actions and in the ongoing struggles to oppose deportations and demand legal status for all workers.

The exemplary actions by these fighters in the front ranks of the working class are the biggest obstacle to the ability of the U.S. ruling class to pursue its plunder of land and labor worldwide. For the trade unions, whose membership continues to decline, this struggle is a life-and-death question. Joining these working-class battles provides the best chance for revitalizing the U.S. labor movement.
 
 
Related articles:
Outrage spreads over L.A. cop riot
Protest called in Los Angeles May 17
Brutal attack on May Day rally backfires
Third Swift worker in Iowa convicted for 'identity theft'
Chicago bus driver won't drive cops, joins May 1 march
'We're workers, not criminals! Legalization, not deportation!'
Roundup of May Day actions in U.S.
Jail L.A. cops for brutal attack
 
 
 
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