The Chicago Tribune
Friday 02 May 2008
May Day rally helps link workers from both groups.
The speeches were over, and some people were singing labor's anthem, "Solidarity Forever," as Oscar William Neebe lingered Thursday morning at the Haymarket Square memorial in Chicago's West Loop.
The May Day ceremony held beside the blood-red-colored sculpture that marks the infamous labor riot 122 years ago had personal meaning for 85-year-old Neebe, a dapper, silver-haired artist.
His namesake and grandfather, Oscar Neebe, was one of eight labor activists convicted for inciting the May 4, 1886, riot that later stirred workers around the world to declare May 1 as their day to commemorate workers' rights. But it had another meaning for him too.
As of crowds of immigrants and supporters were forming across Chicago for a May Day rally downtown, Beebe took it as a compliment to his ancestor's memory that immigrants "have taken this day as their day."
Indeed, the overlap between labor and immigrant issues was clearly on the minds of the Latino community activists, union leaders and a handful of workers at the rally beside the nearly 4-year-old monument on Des Plaines Avenue between Lake and Randolph Streets.
Jorge Mujica, an electricians union organizer and a Latino community activist involved in planning the march, talked about organized labor's growing willingness to link with immigrant workers.
"Labor unions have opened their eyes and said let's work together," said Mujica, moments after giving an impassioned speech about the bonds between unions and immigrants. "[Unions] have put out fliers and called on people to march, and they haven't just called on immigrants to march."
For Ramon Becerra, 38, the Chicago-area head of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, which is organized labor's bridge to the Latino community, unions have come a long way in recognizing that "immigrants workers are workers."
Unions now realize how "employers love undocumented workers because they can exploit them," said Becerra, who has climbed the ranks of area union activists in the last dozen years after losing his job with the closing of a suburban electronic plant.
"Unions represent workers, some of whom happen to be undocumented," Becerra said. "We represent workers, period."
Jose Guzman, 52, a landscaper for the Village of Libertyville, came with Becerra and lamented not belonging to a union.
"Without a union, you are nothing," he said. "They can throw you out for any reason. But with a union, you feel comfortable."
For Larry Spivack, president of the Illinois Labor History Society, the group that lobbied for years for the construction of a monument on the spot where workers had rallied, the connection between the 1886 riot and problems facing immigrant workers today was clear.
The riot took place a day after two workers were killed while protesting outside a strike and just after 80,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue, calling for an eight-hour workday.
Seven of the eight labor activists convicted for the riot were immigrants, Spivack said. So, too, he would like to see the U.S. join the rest of the world in marking May 1 as a day for workers.
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1 comment:
There appears to be a typo in this entry. Ar one point you refer to Oscar Neebe as Beebe.
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