Chicago’s immigrant advocates announced their plans for protests, boycotts and work stoppages surrounding this year’s May Day to call for widespread support for the city’s immigrant communities.
“We are calling for a full week of civil disobediences,” Jorge Mujica, a longtime organizer with Arise Chicago, told reporters on the Lower West Side on Wednesday.
“We are demanding that the [Trump] administration stops the attacks on immigrants, stop the raids, stop the detention of working parents, stop the criminalization, mass incarceration and deportation.”
The “week of action” will start with a mega march on Thursday, May 1, from Union Park to Federal Plaza and end the following Monday with a “day without margaritas and guacamole” on Cinco de Mayo, May 5. Work stoppages are also planned for May 2 and 3. The details about which businesses and industries are expected to participate will be announced later.
“We’re going to give the society a Cinco de Mayo without margaritas and without guacamole. It is ridiculous that they want our food and they want to appropriate our culture, but they don’t want us,” Mujica said.
Omar Lopez, a longtime organizer with the Immigrant Defense Resistance Council, also called for an immediate economic boycott of Miller Beer and Goya food products.
“Both companies are getting rich from the immigrant community,” Lopez said. “The money we give them, they donate to racist Republican campaigns. Your participation in this boycott is simple. Do not buy those products until they give us an account and show us that they are ready to invest in our communities.”
Some protests are planned for this week.
Angel Naranjos, a 19-year-old University of Illinois Chicago student and an activist with Students for a Democratic Society at UIC, said the group is organizing a walkout on UIC’s campus at noon Thursday to defend immigrant rights. A similar demonstration is planned for Friday afternoon at Sullivan High School in Rogers Park.
“We’re in this fight,” Naranjos said. “Our parents have given so much for us. A lot of us who are born here and have parents who are immigrants. We recognize the sacrifices that they made for us, and we’re willing to fight for them.”
The first May Day protest was held in Chicago on May 1, 1886. Roughly 35,000 workers marched to protest for an eight-hour workday. The day, designated as International Workers’ Day, is celebrated annually with protests and demonstrations across the country and worldwide.
“We are here to remind our families that we are powerful because we are workers,” Lopez said. “Our power comes from the work we do in the restaurant industry, in agriculture, in construction, in gardening and in other industries. Without us, the economy of this country will collapse. Being a worker is having power.”