A Day Without Immigrants

On Monday May, 1, immigration protests loosely organized as “A Day Without Immigrants” of hundreds of thousands of people occurred on streets of cities across the United States. This was the big news of the day, taking up much of the national news television programs and many local ones. Importantly, an immigration protest of this magnitude has never occurred in US history. Immigrants historically have been slow to publicly voice their political views. The Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437), which passed the House of Representatives last December, brought immigrants — both legal and undocumented — and their citizen supporters to the streets. Here are a few samples of the news reports:

CNN

Kids skipped school. Men and women walked off their jobs. Others didn’t bother going to work. Businesses shut down for lack of patrons or employees. Throngs of immigrants and advocates took to the streets of many U.S. cities Monday to protest proposed immigration laws, and the sites represented a veritable where’s where of American metropolises. Among them: New York; Washington; Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; Phoenix, Arizona; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Organizers of the nationwide event, dubbed “A Day Without Immigrants,” asked those opposing tighter restrictions on immigration — namely immigrants themselves — to flex their economic muscle by boycotting all aspects of commerce, including going to work and school. Chicago was home to one of the largest protests, with about 300,000 demonstrators marching downtown, according to the city’s emergency management center. Predominantly Latino schools in the city saw a 10 to 33 percent drop in attendance.

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Los Angeles Times

Feeling power in their numbers, hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully, even joyously, through the streets of Los Angeles on Monday as part of a nationwide demonstration of economic and political clout by immigrants — legal and illegal. Thousands of businesses were shuttered on the “Day Without Immigrants” as workers and their families, most of them from Mexico, participated in a boycott of work and commerce, rallying to demonstrate their importance to the U.S. economy and to demand changes in immigration law that would give illegal migrants a path to citizenship. A crowd estimated by Los Angeles police at 250,000 marched to City Hall in the morning, after which many determined demonstrators made their way, on foot or by subway, to MacArthur Park for a larger march along Wilshire Boulevard. Police estimated that crowd at 400,000 and reported few problems.

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NY Times

In Queens, N.Y., thousands of immigrants and their supporters filled the sidewalks and streets. The demonstrations did not bring the nation to a halt as planned by some organizers, though they did cause some disruptions and conveyed in peaceful but sometimes boisterous ways the resolve of those who favor loosening the country’s laws on immigration. Originally billed as a nationwide economic boycott under the banner “Day Without an Immigrant,” the day evolved into a sweeping round of protests intended to influence the debate in Congress over granting legal status to all or most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

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And here are some pictures from the mailroom from Union Square south into Greenwich Village.

Lou Dobbs

Not to be overshadowed, Lou Dobbs played the “red card.”

“But only one newspaper, to its credit, reported that illegal aliens and their supporters’ boycott of the national economy on the First of May is clear evidence that radical elements have seized control of the movement. The Washington Post, alone among national papers, reported that ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has become an active promoter of the national boycott.”

Click here for the Dobbs rant.

AP

Companies affected by Monday’s demonstrations include:

Tyson Foods Inc. –

closed a dozen of 100 plants, reduced staff at others

Perdue Farms

– closed 8 of 14 chicken plants

Goya Foods

– suspended delivery everywhere except Florida

Gold Kist –

closed two poultry facilities, reduced staff at two others

Cargill Meat Solutions –

closed plants in six states

McDonald’s Corp. –

some restaurants operated with limited crews

National Public Radio

More than 1 million mostly Hispanic immigrants and their supporters skipped work and took to the streets Monday, flexing their economic muscle in a nationwide boycott that succeeded in slowing or shutting many farms, factories, markets and restaurants.  From Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston to Miami, the “Day Without Immigrants” attracted widespread participation despite divisions among activists over whether a boycott would send the right message to Washington lawmakers considering sweeping immigration reform.

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KJ