Boston’s Immigrant Community Celebrates May Day Rally Highlights Important Issues

BOSTON/East Boston - Deportations, ongoing labor disputes, raising the minimum wage, health care, student loans, workplace safety, social security, housing foreclosures, bank debt, drivers’ licenses, and community investment were just some of the issues raised on May Day in East Boston.

The traditional workers’ holiday was part protest and part community celebration with many families with young children gathered at Liberty Plaza listening to music and watching an acrobatic performance, but also bearing placards saying “Immigration Reform Now” and “Stop the Attacks on Working Families.”

Gladys Vega, Executive Director of Chelsea Collaborative, explained it is “one of those great days where we’re celebrating the contribution of workers in America, and making sure that workers’ rights [are] protected…we highlight the contributions of all, not only immigrants, but working class families, and we want people to know that we want to invest in our communities and not in corporations.”

Taking shot at the banks, she said, “in terms of investing in families, we always think about student loans, making sure the [foreclosure] crisis stops, and that the banks, rather than continue to exploit their clients, that they invest in helping them....”

A crowd of nearly one thousand people from various community, labor, faith, immigrant rights, and political groups converged on the Plaza following marches that began in several surrounding areas, the largest coming from Chelsea City Hall.

It began with a moment of silence in memory of victims of the Boston marathon bombings as well as those who have died while trying to enter the US.

Many people at the rally were waving flags of South American countries alongside the Stars and Stripes, and from the stage came chants of “Obama, Obama, don’t deport my Mama,” and “Mr. President Get it Right, Immigration is a Human Right.”

One of several workers to address the crowd, Yahya Bajinka, who came to the US in 2010 with his brothers from West Africa, “in search of a better life and a decent job,” told the crowd how he, “needed two jobs to just get by.”

As a security officer, Bajinka earns $14.75 an hour, and has paid sick days and other benefits, but he also works for G2 Secure Staff as an aviation services worker at Logan Airport, which he describes as like a “different world” to his other job.

He says that, “workers are forced into sweatshop conditions,” and “we are paid poverty wages (the minimum wage of $8 an hour), receive no benefits, are given only part-time hours, and only work in unsafe conditions.”
“Contractors at Logan Airport, like G2 where I work, take advantage of the fact that many immigrants are in desperate need of work and they use this to exploit us,” he continued.

A group of workers at G2, including Bajinka, has called on their employer to meet with them to discuss conditions on-the-job, but they have been unsuccessful in their attempts so far.

Vega criticized the minimum wage in Massachusetts, just $8 an hour, saying “that’s not good enough,” because “the cost of living is so high.”

She was also critical of healthcare in the Bay State, and is calling for vigilance over workplace rights, and on social security benefits, particularly for the elderly, which she says are always in question.

Rosa de la Rosa, a housekeeper living in the US for past 14 years and originally from the Dominican Republic, spoke of a labor dispute she’s involved in at Le Meridian Hotel in Cambridge.

She said she has “seen the abuses that the bosses do to the workers, and that’s what I’m fighting for in my workplace, so the workers can make their rights be respected,” and called on those gathered to join weekly pickets outside the hotel.

In April, Open Media Boston reported on a nationwide week of action against the hotel’s owners, HEI Hospitality, which saw workers demanding a fair process to decide on forming a union; Cambridge City Council has previously unanimously supported a boycott of the Le Meridian hotel the report says.

As the future of a federal immigration bill, which attempts to create a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, is still undecided, Vega spoke of the need to stop deportations of people from her community, one of the key issues for those gathered there.

Commenting on the length of time it takes authorities to process immigration papers, she said, “we have a lot of immigrants in our community that are waiting for their papers to be processed and unless immigration reform happens this year they’re going to be in limbo because the US [Citizenship and Immigration Services] hasn’t processed their documents, and they’re here in…stay tuned status, and they don’t have anything that says, hey, I have legal residency, or I’m waiting for legal residence, so we’re extremely afraid of deportations.”

There are currently three bills filed at the State House, which would see incremental raises in the Massachusetts’ minimum wage. There is also a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights that has been referred to the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development at the State House. Open Media Boston reported last week that according to a new report by MassCOSH over 32 workers died on-the-job in 2012, with more than 300 dying of occupational diseases, over 90 of those asbestos-related.

Steve Tolman, President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, addressed the crowd saying he was there, “to fight for a decent, responsible, and accountable immigration reform.

“Too often, too many workers are stuck in the shadows of the workplace, without any justice because of a broken immigration system in America,” he said.

Echoing remarks made recently by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joseph Kennedy III (D-Mass. 4th District), Boston City Councilor At-Large and candidate for Boston City Mayor Felix Arroyo told the crowd gathered that we are a nation of immigrants, and that the vast majority of people in this country can trace their roots to somewhere else.