As Gov. J.B. Pritzker calls on Democrats to be more aggressive in their fight against the Trump administration, organizers in Chicago and across the national are planning May Day protest rallies for Thursday. May 1 has come to be known as International Workers’ Day and has strong ties to Chicago, where the first-ever May Day event was held in 1886 with thousands of workers protesting for an eight-hour workday. Three days later, the historic Haymarket Riot, where a bomb went off at a labor demonstration, killed at least seven police officers and four civilians and resulted in hundreds of arrests. More than 1,100 protest events are scheduled in nearly 1,000 cities across the country for May Day this year. These events come on the heels of Monday’s newly signed executive orders targeting sanctuary cities and ramping up immigration crackdowns.
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Jorge Mujica, a May Day organizer with Arise Chicago, is not letting the president’s executive orders stop him from protesting White House policies. “Most executive orders are useless, and many are plainly illegal,” Mujica said. “We defend the Constitution, which gives us legal rights as individuals. Washington is waging a psychological war against immigrants, trying to instill fear, but the response we get from the community is determination to fight back.” Omar Lopez, a May Day organizer with the Immigrant Defense Resistance Council, thinks this year’s event is particularly important. “It’s more important than in the past because we need solidarity across different sectors of society,” Lopez said. “Trump is making it an open season against all immigrants, all people of color.” Chicago’s May Day march begins at 11 a.m. at Union Park and proceeds to Grant Park, where a variety of labor and immigrant advocates will address the crowd. Loreen Targos, a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office, represents about 1,000 local EPA workers as executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704. She’ll be speaking to the May Day crowd at Grant Park. “Last Tuesday, on Earth Day, nearly 300 workers in the EPA’s environmental justice office were given notice that they would be let go,” Targos said. “This may be the first time American federal workers have experienced a crisis like this in our country, but we have the support of our brothers and sisters across the world who have already faced authoritarian governments, and that’s why we know that if we don’t fiercely fight back now, we may not be able to even have a Constitution that protects our human rights for very much longer. We are not going to stand for it, and we call on all workers to remember Mother Jones: ‘Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.’”
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