General Strike May 1! Article and Partial List of NYC Actions

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images  

This May Day, Don’t Go to Work, Take to the Streets and Strike

A migrant-led insurrection is daring, but hardly shocking…. More surprising, perhaps, is the groundswell of protest from more mainstream unions and even some employers…

By Michelle Chen, Working In These Times

April 26, 2017

From the Muslim ban to the border wall, President Donald Trump’s first 100 days have unleashed a blitzkrieg of terror. But on May 1, the communities he thought he’d backed into a corner will put him on the defensive with equal and opposite force.

Maria Fernanda Cabello, a leader of the grassroots organizing network Movimiento Cosecha, issued a call to action at an April rally in Washington, D.C., announcing planned actions in more than 80 cities, potentially involving hundreds of thousands of people.

“We think that we can win by using the biggest powers in the immigrant community: our commerce and our labor … We work every day and we buy every week,” she said. Legal or not, “We're in every major industry in this country, and without us, it wouldn't run.”[…]

Read the full article:

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/20083/this_may_day_dont_go_to_work_take_to_the_streets_and_strike

New York City Actions for May 1, 2017 (Partial List)

7:15 am – 8:30 am: Rise Up, NY! Take on Corporate Backers of Hate #MayDay2017

Creative rally and direct action anchored by Make the Road New York before work. Immigrant family members under threat or torn from their loved ones by Trump’s deportation machine take a stand with the rest of our community standing shoulder to shoulder with them. We take our demands directly to a prominent corporation with close ties to Trump and his agenda.

Where: Meet at sidewalk outside library steps, 5th Avenue & 41st Street at the edge of Bryant Park) – we march from there to a site nearby

Participant(s): Make the Road New York

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/276706456112125/, http://www.backersofhate.org/

9:30 am – 12 pm: Stand Up for Workers' Rights at B&H Photo!

UPDATE 7 am, May 1: The workers are going on strike; this will be a support rally.
Special picket for May 1. More than 300 warehouse workers employed by B&H Photo voted in 2015 to form a union to protect their rights on the job. Now, in the midst of negotiations for a first contract, management is threatening to shut down the Brooklyn warehouses where they work and relocate 75 miles away in NJ. NYC DSA has been picketing the B&H store at 34th Street and 9th Ave twice a week—every Friday and Sunday—throughout the spring.

Where: 34th Street and 9th Avenue

Participant(s): NYC DSA, Laundry Workers Center

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1933460510218834/?ti=icl

12 pm – 6 pm: May Day Strike to Defend Migrants, Refugees & All Workers!

Stop the Raids! Stop the Deportations! Stop Killing Black & Brown People! Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad! Resist Trump and the 1%!

Where: Union Square

Participant(s): NYC Shut It Down: The Grand Central Crew, Peoples Power Assemblies, International League of Peoples' Struggle - ILPS US, Cosecha NYC, Workers World Party

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/246734485788270/

12:30 pm – 5:00 pm: 6th Annual Immigrant Worker Justice Tour

Rally and march organized by local workers’ centers, immigrant rights groups, and social justice

organizations to support ongoing struggles against exploitation, criminalization, incarceration, and deportation. The tour has mobilized supporters each May 1 since 2012.

Where: Gather at Washington Square Park (at Fifth Avenue, Waverly Place, West 4th and MacDougal Streets); march route to be announced.

Participant(s): Immigrant Worker Justice, ICE-Free NYC, International Women's Strike, Coalition to End Broken Windows, Brandworkers, IWW - GDC, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Stardust Workers United, IWW - NYC GMB, New York Network of Worker Cooperatives, Food Chain Workers Alliance, Enlace Intl., Laundry Workers Center, New York Worker Center Federation, Families for Freedom, Retail Action Project, Million Hoodies

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/278179889261251/

4:30 pm – 7:30 pm: May Day with DSA! El Dia Internacional de los Trabajadores

This year’s International Worker’s Day, the Democratic Socialists of America stand in solidarity with Movimiento Cosecha, a nonviolent movement fighting for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the  millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Where: DSA will meet at 4pm in front of Barnes and Noble on Union Square, 33 E 17th St, New York, NY 10003.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/2364662270426011

5 pm – 7:30 pm: Rise Up New York! Immigrant Rights and Worker Rights

Events will be happening in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn throughout the day. At 5 pm New Yorkers from across the city will converge in Manhattan to stand together and resist the policies of the Trump Administration. Join us as we hear from musical performers who represent the diverse communities of New York City and directly from people impacted by Trump’s bigoted and anti-worker policies.

Where:  Foley Square, 111 Worth St, New York

Participant(s): 78 LIUNA, 79 LIUNA, African Communities Together, ALIGN, Arab American Association of New York, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Building Trades, Central Labor Council, Chhaya CDC, Citizen Action of New York, Community Voices Heard, Council on American-Islamic Relations - New York, CWA Local 1180, DC37, Faith in New York, Food & Water Watch, Greater NY Labor-Religion Coalition, Hispanic Federation, Interfaith center of NY, Ironworkers Local 46, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Lab/Shul, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Laundry, Distribution Food Service JB, Local 802 AFM, Make the Road New York, Mason Tenders, MinKwon Community Action, Muslim Community Network, NICE, NY Communities, New York Civil Liberties Union, New York Immigration Coalition, New York Professional Nurses Union, New York State Association for Bilingual Education, New York State Nurses Association, Progressive Cities, PSC, Rural & Migrant Ministries, RWDSU, SEIU 1199, SEIU 32BJ, State AFL, Teamsters, Syria Solidarity NYC, TWU, UFT, U.S. Labor Against The War - NYC Chapter, WITNESS, Workers United, Workers United New York, Workmen's Circle, Writers Guild of America, East, and Yemeni American Merchants Association, Yemeni Bodega Strike Organizers. (list in formation)

More information: http://www.maydayny.org, https://www.facebook.com/events/1804989066488877/

Book Excerpt: How Much Would Trump’s Wall Really Cost?

As of April 25 President Trump seems to have backed off from his threat to demand that the April government spending bill include funding for his border wall. But there’s still plenty of controversy over the cost of the proposed wall. Trump himself has given all sorts of estimates for the construction, ranging from $4 billion to $12 billion. A leaked Department of Homeland Security put the number at $21.6 billion, while a group of Democratic staffers in the Senate have come up with a $66.9 billion price tag. All these estimates seem to overlook the factor Robert Frost pointed out 98 years ago: walls require maintenance. So how much would it cost to maintain the Great Wall of Trump?

Here’s what we say in The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, Chapter 9, “Enforcement: Is It a Solution?”

In November 2005 DHS launched the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), claiming it would “secure America’s borders and reduce illegal migration” by extending the existing fences to a total of 661 miles, about one-third of the southwestern border’s 1,951 miles. The work was basically completed in February 2012.

The 651 miles of new fencing cost an average of $3.7 million a mile to build, suggesting that the expense of erecting similar fencing along the entire border would be about $7.4 billion. But this leaves out the money required for maintenance. An outside contractor estimated that the total cost of building and maintaining the current 651 miles of fence would be $6.5 billion over twenty years — so the bill to taxpayers for a fence along the entire border for twenty years would be $19.5 billion.

Even this may be too low. The costs are expected to be much higher in rugged terrain or in areas where the government needs to buy more of the land; much of the current fencing is on land the government already owns. Moreover, the current fence isn’t the sort of expensive double-wall barrier many politicians call for. Back in 1999 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that maintaining a double-wall fence would cost from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile over a 25-year period, with $32.8 billion to $140 billion in maintenance alone for this type of fence along the entire border.

[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the new edition of our book which seem relevant to the current situation. The updated and expanded edition is due out on May 22. You can pre-order here or from your favorite bookseller.]

Pew Research: Unauthorized Population Still Declining as of 2015

The Pew Research Center provides lots of useful information in two recent reports. One of these, released on April 25, shows that the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. remains around the level it hit during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s—in fact, it was actually declining in 2015. So much for the repeated  warnings from anti-immigrant forces that Obama administration policies like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) would set off a new wave of unauthorized immigration.

Another report, one issued in March, analyzes the share of immigrants in various industries and jobs. There’s no industry where immigrants make up the majority of the workforce, although it’s true that in some jobs (manicurist, for example) more than 50 percent of the workers are immigrants. But we should note that even in these jobs, undocumented immigrants are still a minority. Some advocates feel they’re helping immigrant rights by claiming that “immigrants just take the jobs we don’t want,” but this is untrue and isn’t going to convince the many citizens who work alongside immigrants. A far better argument is that immigrants are  our coworkers and we should support their rights.—TPOI editor.

As Mexican share declined, U.S. unauthorized immigrant population fell in 2015 below recession level

By Jeffrey S. Passel and D’vera Cohn, Pew Research Center

April 25, 2017

The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2015 fell below the total at the end of the Great Recession for the first time, with Mexicans continuing to represent a declining share of this population, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data.

There were 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2015, a small but statistically significant decline from the Center’s estimate of 11.3 million for 2009, the last year of the Great Recession.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/25/as-mexican-share-declined-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-fell-in-2015-below-recession-level/

Immigrants don’t make up a majority of workers in any U.S. industry

By Drew Desilver, Pew Research Center

March 16, 2017

Immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born workers to be employed in a number of specific jobs, including sewing machine operators, plasterers, stucco masons and manicurists. But there are no major U.S. industries in which immigrants outnumber the U.S. born, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

All told, immigrants made up 17.1% of the total U.S. workforce in 2014, or about 27.6 million workers out of 161.4 million. About 19.6 million workers, or 12.1% of the total workforce, were in the U.S. legally; about 8 million, or 5%, entered the country without legal permission or overstayed their visas. (Roughly 10% of unauthorized immigrants have been granted temporary protection from deportation and eligibility to work under two federal programs, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status.)[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/16/immigrants-dont-make-up-a-majority-of-workers-in-any-u-s-industry/

Fire and ICE: The Return of Workplace Immigration Raids

Undocumented workers face a new level of insecurity under the Trump administration.

By David Bacon, The American Prospect

April 27, 2017

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. The American Prospect is co-publishing this piece.

At the end of February immigration agents descended on a handful of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, and in nearby Meridian. Fifty-five immigrant cooks, dishwashers, servers and bussers were loaded into vans and taken to a detention center about 160 miles away in Jena, Louisiana.

Their arrests and subsequent treatment did more than provoke outrage among Jackson's immigrant rights activists. Labor advocates in California also took note of the incident, fearing that it marked the beginning of a new wave of immigrant raids and enforcement actions in workplaces. In response, California legislators have written a bill providing legal protections for workers, to keep the Mississippi experience from being duplicated in the Golden State.

Once the Mississippi restaurant workers had been arrested, they essentially fell off the radar screen for several days.[...]

Read the full article:

http://prospect.org/article/fire-and-ice-return-workplace-immigration-raids

Tom Cat Bakery workers. Photo: Erik McGregor/Sipa via AP Images

New Hunger Strike at West Coast’s Largest Detention Center

Protesters support striking detainees. Photo: Tacoma Action Collective

Largely ignored by the mainstream media, hunger strikes are continuing among immigrant detainees at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. Outside support for the detainees is being coordinated by a local group, NWDC Resistance/Resistencia al NWDC .

Hunger strike resumes at immigration detention center

By Keith Eldridge, KOMO News

April 25th 2017

TACOMA, Wash. -- A hunger strike has resumed with immigration detainees claiming the conditions inside remain deplorable. This comes as demonstrators take their actions to Tacoma City Hall to fight against any possible expansion of the facility.

The hunger strike resumed at noon Tuesday inside the walls of the Northwest Detention Center. The NWDC Resistance group says 40 detainees are refusing to eat to protest what they call a deterioration of the food and health care inside.

About 750 people ended their hunger strike recently after what they considered successful negotiations with GEO, the private company that runs the prison for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But Resistance members said the company went back on its word. NWDC Resistance member, Wendy Pantoja, said "Because they say GEO is lying about the conditions, the food is worse."[…]

Read the full article:

http://komonews.com/news/local/hunger-strike-resumes-at-immigration-detention-center

Press Release from NWDC Resistance/Resistencia al NWDC

For Immediate Release:

April 25, 2017

Contact:

Maru Mora Villalpando, 206-251-6658

Wendy Pantoja, 253-468-5822

Detainees Begin Third Week on Hunger Strike because GEO Lied in Negotiations, Call on City of Tacoma to Address Worsening Conditions

What: Rally and testimony Calling for Revocation of GEO’s license to run NWDC

When: 4 pm Rally, 5:15 City Council Public Hearing

Where: Tacoma Municipal Building; City Council Chambers; 747 Market Street, First Floor; Tacoma, WA 98402

Tacoma, WA – People detained at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) have been hunger striking since April 10 to call attention to worsening nutrition and sanitation conditions. Their unmet demands included properly cleaned laundry, adequate medical care, reasonable commissary prices, raising the $1 per day prison wage, more nutritional cafeteria food, and contact visits "so parents can hug their children." The NWDC, which is located on a Superfund site, is the largest immigrant detention center on the West Coast, caging over 1,500 immigrants while awaiting civil deportation proceedings. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts with The GEO Group, a multinational private prison corporation, to run the facility. The abysmal conditions point to the ongoing danger the NWDC to the public health, safety and welfare of the individuals involved, as well as the community as a whole.

GEO Group representatives promised to improve food to meet basic nutritional standards after the first week on strike. Instead, the food has gotten worse and GEO has retaliated against hunger strikers. They believe that GEO and ICE retaliated against hunger strikers by transferring at least four hunger strikers to NORCOR corrections facility in Oregon. They announce that 40 men will go on hunger strike today, calling on GEO and ICE keep their promises.[...]

Read the full press release:

https://www.facebook.com/NWDCResistance/posts/1427123614015181

Trump’s Attacks on Immigrants Are a Gift for Bad Bosses

Protecting the rights of the most vulnerable workers is about to get significantly harder—and that’s bad for all workers.

By Terri Gerstein, The Nation

April 24, 2017

Alexander Acosta seems well on his way to confirmation as secretary of labor, with a Senate vote likely to occur in the coming weeks. Although he’s less cartoonishly ill-suited for the position than many of Trump’s cabinet picks, it’s nearly inconceivable that Acosta will emerge as a strong advocate for working people, given his history and confirmation hearing testimony. He showed little discomfort with Trump’s pro-business, antiregulatory agenda, dodged a number of key questions, and stated, “We all work for the president and we all will ultimately follow his direction.” 

Frances Perkins, he’s not.  

With flaccid and ineffectual enforcement at the federal level, it will fall increasingly to state and city agencies to be the primary enforcers of the labor laws. Filling the federal vacuum will be difficult enough, but the Trump administration has not merely exited the stage. Instead, Trump’s actions in what may seem to be another arena—specifically, his attacks on immigrants—have made it infinitely harder for states and localities to protect workers’ rights.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-has-given-a-blank-check-to-bosses-who-underpay-their-workers/

Photo: Nicolas Enriquez/New York Daily News

The Trump Era Tests the True Power of Sanctuary Cities

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker  

April 18, 2017
Ever since Donald Trump became President, mayors and city council members in “sanctuary cities”—places where local law-enforcement officials limit their coöperation with immigration agents—have promised to resist the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants. The new Administration has responded with threats (to cut sanctuary cities’ funding), reprisals (like launching more raids in specific jurisdictions), and accusations (that these cities are making the country less safe). City leaders have, in turn, criticized immigration raids, and raised money to pay for the legal bills of residents who’ve been arrested. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) answers to the federal government, not to local officeholders, and as it continues to expand the scope and reach of its activity, the limits of city power are becoming increasingly clear.

Consider New York City, whose leaders, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, are vocally pro-immigrant and anti-Trump. Lately, ice agents have been showing up at locations where the city is powerless to stop them: the courts. Since January, there have been seventeen reports of ice agents making arrests at courthouses in the city, compared to nineteen such reports made in the previous two years combined, according to the Immigrant Defense Project, a nonprofit legal-advocacy organization. In March, ice agents made an arrest at Kings County Family Court, something that advocates say had never happened before.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-trump-era-tests-the-true-power-of-sanctuary-cities