By John Leschak
Tomorrow marks one of the most significant days in working-class history. May 1, or May Day, is a time of international solidarity and struggle for a better world-a world where you don’t need to leave your fundamental rights at the door of the work-place and where everyone has access to the basic means of survival.
Today, these demands for a better world are more relevant than ever. The current economic crisis, which is the result of the greed of American financial leaders, is hitting working people with crushing mortgage debt, foreclosures, utility cutoffs, rising prices for basic necessities, and declining pay. Average take-home pay of workers in the U.S. today, accounting for inflation, is below the level of the mid-1970s. America has not seen such high levels of wealth inequality since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.
May Day began during the Gilded Age as part of the movement for the eight-hour day, the minimum wage and the right to self-organization in the workplace. After the achievement of these goals during the New Deal era, and several decades of rising prosperity, May Day lost some of its impetus and slowly was forgotten.
But May Day was forcefully brought back to America’s attention in 2006, when two million people took to the streets to protest the Sensenbrenner bill, which would have criminalized those assisting undocumented immigrants as “alien smugglers” and turned undocumented status from a civil violation into a federal crime. Many also participated in a general strike by refusing to conduct business, go to work or attend school.
The protest stopped the Sensenbrenner bill dead in its tracks and showed the power of concerted direct action.
Tomorrow, we the people will again mobilize in support of immigrants’ and workers’ rights. At 11 a.m., we will gather at the corner of Front Street and North Franklin. We will then march to Fulton Ave. and Washington St. and rally at the parking lot on the corner of Fulton Ave. from 12:30 to 2 p.m.
The march and rally are being organized by the Workplace Project, which was founded in Hempstead in 1992. The Project’s goal is to end the exploitation of Latino immigrant workers on Long Island and to achieve socio-economic justice.
Immigrants’ struggle is the struggle of the working class. The situation of the undocumented is the same as that of the poor and exploited. Therefore, we will be demanding not only the protection of workers’ rights and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, but also legalization now and immigration reform.
Obama has spoken of immigration reform, but his “reform” would continue many of Bush’s fascist policies, including construction of the border wall and Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. 287(g), which lets local cops enforce federal immigration laws, has been greatly abused by law officials.
These issues hit particularly close to home. I am from Monmouth County, N.J., and our county sheriff, Kim Guadagno, has submitted a 287(g) application. The application is being opposed by a number of local groups, including Casa Freehold, which organizes immigrant laborers to achieve better working and living conditions. “287(g) is costly and counterproductive,” said Rita Dentino, a Casa organizer. “Police should focus on criminals, not undocumented workers.”
Undocumented workers deserve legal status. The value created by their labor and from which their employers profit is never called illegal. Yet they themselves are called “illegal.” This stigma has been used to justify exploitation, as “illegal” workers have been denied many of the union-won benefits accorded to native-born workers. But this tactic has been undermining unions. The advance of the working class now requires common action by native-born and immigrant workers, just like the advance of the working class in the 1960s and ’70s required common action by white and black workers.
The workers’ rights movement is the civil rights movement of our time. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, he was leading a union campaign for sanitation workers. It is time for us to finish Dr. King’s campaign by demanding that all workers should be able to exercise their fundamental human right to organize for a better life. It is time to give legal status to the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
John Leschak is a second-year law student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].
