Comments at the source link.

~~~

Posted on Fri, May. 01, 2009
May Day marchers seek workers' rights, immigration reform
BY JOSE PAGLIERY


Hundreds of protesters marched in the shadows of downtown Miami's high-rises Friday evening, celebrating May Day with a push for workers rights and immigration reform.
Labor organizations from across the state, including the Florida Immigration Coalition and several labor unions, met in front of the InterContinental Hotel and marched down Biscayne Boulevard.

Marchers pushed for improving wages, providing amnesty for undocumented workers and a cessation of bank bailouts. But their sweeping message, echoing other marches in cities across the country, was that America needs an economic overhaul.

For 24-year-old Jimmy Duncan, who traveled south from St. Petersburg, the problem lies with the executives and financiers.

''They're parasites,'' Duncan said, pointing at the high-rises above him as he marched. ``I see the poor sowing and the rich reaping.''

Those sentiments are as old as May Day itself, which originated on May 1, 1886, when workers went on strike and eventually succeeded in establishing the eight-hour workday.

Deborah Liatos, a sewing machine operator at a Hialeah clothing factory, had dozens of pro-worker books stacked on a fold-out table at Chopin Plaza. As protesters behind her chanted Si se puede -- roughly translated to ''Yes we can'' -- she likened the effect of the current recession to the strains felt by workers during the Great Depression.

''They're bailing out banks and the rich,'' she said. ``But there are no programs at all to relieve the pressures that workers feel from the deepening economic crisis.''

Others in the crowd of several hundred made Friday more of an immigration-centric issue. Pablo Cerrato, a 68-year-old Honduran, had his national flag wrapped around his neck like a cape, the blue and white streaks fluttering in the wind.

''I'm here to support my people. They need documentation to work . . . and not giving them documentation hasn't fixed anything,'' he said.

Several protesters noted that immigration reform lies at the heart of the workers rights movement: hiring undocumented migrants pushes down wages, and keeping them undocumented keeps the government from a potential source of tax revenue.

However, critics of immigration amnesty, such as U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, say that undocumented workers take jobs from Americans.

''This should be the day Americans demand their rights of citizenship and demand the administration enforces the law,'' King said in a statement released Friday in Washington. ``Enforcing our immigration laws would also solve about 70 percent of the unemployment problem in America.''

Rev. Bruce Wright, a St. Petersburg pastor who also traveled to Miami this week, believes amnesty is the answer -- ``to stand up for the dispossessed, disenfranchised and the poor.''

www.miamiherald.com