Hundreds of marchers and demonstrators gathered at Union Park in the West Loop Thursday morning for a rally on May Day, a celebration commemorating the labor movement.
Organized labor and activist groups are calling for protection of immigrants and fair wages and carried signs that said, “Built by immigrant hands, enjoyed by all” and “We are the engine of this country.”
A march to Grant Park is planned for later in the day. City officials warned that motorists should expect rolling street closures along the route of the march and seek an alternate route.
The planned route spans east on West Washington Street to South Morgan Street, south on South Morgan Street to West Jackson Street and east on West Jackson Street and into Butler Field at Grant Park.
This year’s rally and march comes nearly 140 years after the Haymarket Affair and just over 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, a response, organizers said, to a barrage of presidential policies targeting immigrants and workers.
“May Day celebrates what happened here, what happened on these streets,” said Don Villar, the secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, at a gathering of labor leaders at the Haymarket Memorial last week. “We have some old cobblestone bricks back there. If those bricks could talk, they could tell the struggle that took place here 140 years ago. And you know what? That struggle continues.”
Three days before the Haymarket Affair — in which a bomb was thrown during a Chicago labor rally that resulted in the death of eight police officers and at least four civilians — tens of thousands marched on Michigan Avenue in a campaign to reduce the customary 10- to 12-hour workday to eight hours.
Though the U.S. honors workers in September — with Labor Day, which also has Chicago roots — the May 1886 events are commemorated in Chicago by a memorial on Desplaines Street, north of Randolph Street: A bronze statue of a wagon that served as a speakers’ platform during the labor meeting.
“They rounded up all the labor activists, labor leaders, because they blamed them for what happened here. And what’re they doing today? They are rounding people up,” Villar added. “Every day people are disappearing because they’re exercising their free speech rights.”
Organizers have said May Day should signify that “immigrant rights are human rights,” particularly in Chicago where, early into Trump’s second term, some immigrant workers stayed home from their jobs, fearing that federal agents would arrest them if they showed up to work.
“They are even more afraid to speak up,” said Marcos Ceniceros, the executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice, a group that helps workers organize for better working conditions.
