Thousands of people attended May Day protests across the country Thursday in response to the Trump administration’s controversial moves against immigrants and federal workers over its first 100 days.
Scores of people filled the streets in cities including Los Angeles, New York City, Denver, Chicago and Washington, DC, for May Day – or International Workers’ Day – to protest what they call an assault on immigrants, workers and students exercising their right to free speech.
The protests are organized under the banner of the “50501” movement – short for 50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement – which states it supports “the fight to uphold the Constitution and end executive overreach.”
“Trump and his billionaire profiteers are trying to create a race to the bottom – on wages, on benefits, on dignity itself,” the movement’s website says. “This May Day we are fighting back. We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes – public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, prosperity over free market politics.”
Causes come together in united protests
New York City’s first May Day protest on Thursday brought together several causes, with chants of “Free Palestine,” signs calling for the freedom of detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil and worker’s rights signs reading, “Trump: Hands Off Our Unions.”
“Trump has poor and working-class people forgetting who our enemies are,” an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation said to the large crowd gathered in New York City’s Union Square. “Our enemies are not international students that organize on their campus. Our enemies are not undocumented workers that contribute to their communities, that pay taxes and can’t get services. Our enemies are not workers that work for corporations.”
“No – this racist, sexist, anti-worker, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic system is our enemy,” the organizer said as the crowd cheered in response.
A group of roughly 150 people marched a little over 20 blocks from Union Square to the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, where the rallies continued on its front entrance steps.
Source: CNN
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
