May 1st "illegal" Boycott

Massive protests

Downtown Los Angeles echoes to the chants of mass solidarity on May 1st.

Already at 12:00 downtown LA has hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers displaying mass solidarity in protest against the republican sponsored "Sensenbrenner" bill. There was a lot of talk about possible backlashes against this boycott of work by mainly latin@ workers, with more "mainstream" organisations backing away and claiming that this was too radical.

Los Angeles is an immigrant's city with a vibrant mix of Korean, El Salvadorean, Senegalese, Irish, Vietnamese, Mexican, German, Brazilian, Thai.

Most people here at least know someone that's "illegal", whether that person came here as an adult or was born here.

We know what it means for a human being to be illegal. We know that it means that the guy that we work with or the cute girl at the coffee shop, or the hardworking student, or whoever is suddenly targeted by not just "la migra", but every cop and busy body.

The boycotting organisations have been careful to reach out to African-Americans and other groups potentially economically threatened by unscrupulous employers trying to drive down wages.

It's very weird being in a city which was originally inhabited by small bands of native Americans, then by Mexican Spanish and then by Yankee gringos [*]. As a popular poster puts it "I didn't cross the border ... the border crossed me".

Broadway Ave is now completely closed for blocks and blocks because of the size of the demonstration. Downtown LA is a seedy, decrepit echo of a city that was replete with Streamline Moderne and modernist architecture in the 50s. The upper stories of the buildings still show the original splendour of the architecture, while the bottom is more reminiscent of Moore St. in Dublin, with low-rent shops hawking cheap electronics, jewellery and clothing. There are people hanging out of the upper stories of the buildings, many of which contain sweatshops mainly involved in the garment trade (you can guess which ones by moving around in this district in the evening and seeing the lighs on in the upper stories of otherwise dilapidated buildings.)

* "gringo" which is a sometimes slightly derogatory nickname for "white" people supposedly comes from the English folksong "Green grow the rushes", which first line sounds like "gringo".