San Jose takes to the streets in honor of May Day

By Sebastian Salinas and Philip Nguyen

San Jose, CA – On May 1, over 1500 people gathered in San Jose for the annual International Workers Day march and rally. The event, organized by the San Jose May Day Coalition, called for a “Day Without an Immigrant” in response to recent attacks on workers and immigrants under the Trump administration.

The march and rally began at Story and King – a location significant for its role in the 2006 Mega Marches and the original Day Without an Immigrant – and ended at San Jose City Hall. Participants demanded protections for workers and an end to deportations and attacks on immigrants and the Chicano, Mexicano, and Centro Americano communities.

During the rally at Story and King, local grassroots immigrants and worker rights groups from the San Jose May Day Coalition spoke in regards to the Trump administration’s recent escalation.

Uriel Magdaleno of the Silicon Valley Immigration Committee said to the crowd, “Trump has promised a campaign of mass deportations threatening deportations of entire families including U.S. citizens.” Magadeleno continued, “ICE attacks on Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota and San José.” A recent example is Ulises Pena Lopez, a husband and father from the San Jose area who was recently detained and brutalized by ICE.

Repression of immigrants is not a new development in the U.S. Tess Brillante, organizer with the Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants (PAWIS) said, “Particularly for a migrant woman like me, we also face exploitation and harm due to society looking down on women, especially if you are a woman migrant worker with brown skin.”

Tarentz Charite, a transgender organizer with Students for a Democratic Society at San Jose State University, addressed the crowd, saying, “Trans organizers have long advanced the political battles for our right to exist and the rights of working class people. Without the work of trans activists, millions more poor, Black, and Latine men would have died from HIV/AIDS in the wake of an epidemic ignored by our government.”

Charite continued, “We cannot afford to lose our best fighters in the movement for a more powerful working class, and we must all unite and fight back against Trump’s transphobic agenda.”

Allie Chen, organizer with San Jose Against War, also spoke in the program, saying, “The billionaires rob us of our well-being by denying us affordable healthcare, education, housing, transportation and daycare – all to enrich the war profiteers and the military industrial complex.”

Chen continued, saying that the billionaires created “a world that prioritizes profits over people – that values warfare over welfare and our wellbeing. It’s engineered a culture of fear, so that the American people are distracted by potential enemies, foreign and domestic, instead of the true enemy of the working class: the ruling class.”

Fadi Saba, a Palestinian American teacher and union member, spoke about attacks on education, saying, “Right wing isn’t just a label for Republicans. When it comes to ethnic studies, a group of Californian legislators don’t want students to learn about certain struggles against colonialism — namely, the Palestinian struggle for liberation.”

After the speaker program, the march began and the people filled the streets. All along the three-mile march, chants such as, “Si se puede,, “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido,” “Stand up, fight back!” and more could be heard. Workers and oppressed people from San Jose and beyond are uniting to fight for the justice and rights that the working people deserve.

#SanJoseCA #CA #Labor #ImmigrantRights #MayDay #SJAW #SDS #SVIC