Police estimated the crowd at 400,000. Organizers put the figure at 750,000. Tens of thousands waved Mexican and U.S. flags, as well as flags from many Latin American countries, Poland, the Philippines, and more. Mass produced placards saying “We are America” were prevalent. Thousands brought their own signs, including, “We are not criminals,” “Amnesty for all,” and “Stop the raids.”

Many of the protesters were young. Some high schools with large numbers of immigrant students had few in attendance. At Farragut High 85 percent of students were absent, and at Juarez High 83 percent didn’t show up. Elementary schools also reported high absenteeism.

All was quiet in Little Village and Pilsen, two areas with many Latinos. Most of the normally busy restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses there closed in support of the May 1 boycott. Some factories, stores, and restaurants also shut down or cut hours so their employees could attend the march.

At Stampede Meat in Bridgeview, a suburb of Chicago, 300 workers signed a petition asking management for permission to take May 1 off. The bosses refused but felt enough pressure to put out a written notice saying no one would be fired for taking one day off. So many Stampede workers went to the march that management had to close many of the company’s production lines. Those that did run were very slow due to lack of personnel.

At the Hart Schaffner Marx (HSM) garment plant more than 100 signed a petition to get May 1 off. Dozens skipped work that day and others left early to join the march. Part of the plant shut down after five hours. Some of the workers, members of UNITE HERE, joined a contingent of their union. Wearing red shirts and caps and carrying large banners and signs, they walked from the union hall to the demonstration. Berenize Aguirre, a shop steward at HSM, said she was participating to support undocumented workers in order “to get legalization for them and their families.”

Joe Costigan, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago-Midwest Joint Board of UNITE HERE, said, “Our union has been a union of immigrants since its early days.” He opposes a “guest worker” program, like that promoted by President Bush and senators McCain and Kennedy, because it is “another way to exploit workers, to keep them on their knees.”

Many trade unions, however, have backed the McCain/Kennedy bill, being discussed in the Senate, promoting it as a “pro-immigrant” alternative to the Sensenbrenner bill adopted by the House of Representatives, which would criminalize all the undocumented.

Speakers at the rally included Linda Chavez-Thompson, vice-president of the AFL-CIO; Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois; and representatives of UNITE HERE, Service Employees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, Teamsters, and the Chicago Federation of Labor.

Support for the May Day actions, including the boycott, forced a number of companies in the Midwest to shut down plants. Tyson Foods Inc., the country’s largest meatpacking company, closed six of its nine beef processing plants and four of its six pork processing factories, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cargill and Swift also shut several plants each.

Ernest Mailhot is a meat packer at Stampede Meat. Rollande Girard is a garment worker and member of UNITE HERE.
 
 
Related articles:
Immigrant workers revive May Day: Up to 1 million in L.A.
May Day Actions for Immigrant Rights by State and City
Boycott affects many businesses
May Day: a workers’ tradition reborn
Miami: 4,000 rally to back Haitian immigrants
U.S. gov’t interned Japanese from Latin America in WWII  
 
 
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