Friends,
Workers World Party‘s Los Angeles May Day General Strike Support Committee is asking people and organizations to lend their names to the following Open Letter/Petition addressed to Mayor Garcetti and the L.A. City Council. Please send an email to socialjusticecenterla@gmail.com with your name and if you’re signing for your organization, please include the organization’s name. After a period of gathering support a press conference will be held to put the Mayor and City Council on notice that we expect them to protect the right of people to join this important May Day event without fear of reprisal.
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As the Trump administration tries to find ways to sharpen it’s bigoted, horrible and illegal attacks against immigrants and Muslims and tries to defeat all the hard-fought gains won through decades of struggle by organized labor, tries to put down the Black Lives Matter movement, tries to gut all of the gains by women and the LGBTQ community, and has opposed the thousands of indigenous activists protecting our water at Standing Rock, Mayday of 2017 takes on added importance.
Mayday marches have exploded in size in recent years due to the energy and passion of immigrant workers and families and their supporters responding to attacks against them even before bigoted billionaire Trump took the White House. This year’s call for a Mayday General Strike and demonstration will show the Trump administration and any who dare support it that working class solidarity has been strengthened by their bigotry, and we won’t be pushed backwards.
Any protest may be subject to police harassment, and no doubt, some who participate on May 1 will actually do so at risk of deportation.
We, the undersigned, demand that Mayor Garcetti and the Los Angeles City Council make immediate and unequivocal statements of solidarity with participants in the Los Angeles Mayday events, and in particular, make it clear that there will be no attacks or reprisal of any kind against Mayday demonstrators by ICE, by LAPD, or by employers against workers who take time off to march on Mayday.
