Today's May Day rally and march on the south side of Tucson was inspiring.
The opening rally was emceed by Isabel Garcia of Coalición de Derechos Humanos who was featured earlier this week on Democracy Now! and who did an excellent job of introducing speakers and speaking herself, seamlessly switching between English and Spanish. In her opening comments Isabel Garcia spoke about the history of May Day as a holiday of workers' struggles internationally, with its origins here in the U.S., and which has been intentionally purged from America's historical memory by capitalists and their state agents. She rightly noted that we have immigrant workers to thank for bring us back our May Day holiday.
Rally speeches, signs, and demands included union organization efforts at Food City, a just pro-immigrant pro-worker immigration reform, stopping the fascistic and repressive tactics of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (or as they say Arpayaso/clown), passing the Employee Free Choice Act, demanding and end to state budget cuts in education, and other issues and demands.
The crowd was dominated by young enthusiastic Mexicano, Chicano, and other Latino youth who kept the march chants very lively. I think there is good reason to put allot of hope in the future of these young activists who are part of both a civil-rights and labor movement.
A high school group, named Movimiento and M.E.CH.A. passed around a Zine Ollin with short commentary and poetry. As they explained,
"Who We Are: We are young people from Tucson, organizing to create a positive environment free from injustices and oppression. We work to strengthen the power that our community has so that together we can declare ENOUGH of the attacks on our families."
All in all it was a pretty good turnout, and it raised my spirits in reminding me that there are always people fighting back for justice. La Lucha Sigue!
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