by Greg King

MAY DAY did not start off auspiciously for me.  I was sick to my stomach.  Couldn't keep anything down.  But a friend called me up  and wanted my company at a March for Immigrant Workers' Rights from East Boston to Chelsea.  I felt a little better by the early afternoon, so I told my friend I was game for it.  We got to LoPresti Park in a steady rain.  A good two hundred mostly Latino people had gathered already.  After some spirited speeches and chants, pointing out the common interests of working people throughout the Western Hemisphere, we formed up and started marching along Meridian Street in the general direction of Chelsea.  The familiar chant, "El Pueblo, Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!"  ("The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!") had cries for "Justicia!" often following it.   My friend and I ran into several activist friends along the way.  We appreciated the humor of "Hey,Obama! Don't Deport My Mama!"

Yes, that was humorous, but it was dead serious at the same time.  There have been no end of instances in which immigrant parents have been deported, leaving their US-born children, who are citizens here, behind.  Forcibly splitting up families is one of the grossest violations of human rights.  The Latino,Haitian, Greek, Chinese, Somali,  Irish and other workers driven here by what neoliberalism and austerity have done to their homelands are simply trying to make better lives for themselves and their families.

For some of us, our grandparents or great grandparents came here, most of them legally, to escape poverty and oppression and seize the opportunities this country provided.  The "Golden Door" was open wider then.  These days, people have to wait too long for visas, even longer for citizenship, and the fees La Migra charges are prohibitive.  If your children were suffering from malnutrition, because there simply was no work in your homeland, would you stay put?  If your family had to dodge bombs and bullets nearly every day in Palestine or Pakistan, wouldn't you want to go somewhere safer?  You can't wait for the proper papers while your loved ones face privation or danger.

This country was built by immigrant working people.  It was they who gave the greatest boost to the union movement.  It will be today's and tomorrow's new arrivals who rebuild labor as a force capable of winning better wages, benefits and conditions, of defending pensions and pushing Medicare for All through a more progressive Congress, which we bring about through our work.

Sisters and brothers, welcome the newly arrived working people into the bays, the stations, the cubicles next to yours.  Join them on the picket line and in demonstrations like May Day's in East Boston.  El Pueblo, Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!" As the old song goes, "Together, we stand.  Divided, we fall." Let's all of us make our stand for an America where our cherished values of fairness and opportunity become real again.