May Day 2006 was a truly historic day of strikes, walkouts, protests and boycotts throughout the United States. It marked an important step forward for the immigrant rights’ movement. Although many politicians, non-profit groups and churches that previously supported immigrant rights rallies backed out of the immigrants’ May Day protests, millions upon millions still demonstrated throughout the country. Thousands of small businesses shut down, and hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike.

In Boston, the main immigrant rights coalition neglected to call a central demonstration and they did not issue a call for work stoppages or walkouts. The churches, trade union leaders and politicians also tended to take this approach – some arguing that the movement should “wait and see” what the democrats and republicans in Congress chose to do.

Given this, Socialist Alternative (CWI in the US) immediately moved to get a rally permit for the center of Boston, and called for an emergency coalition in solidarity with the national strike. The Boston Mayday Coalition that we participated in called a rally that was endorsed by over 25 immigrant, worker and progressive organizations.

Despite a concerted campaign by the ‘liberals’ to sabotage and censor all mention of our event, our protest was a success. Around two to three thousand rallied on Boston Common, in a spirited demonstration of support for equal rights for all immigrants.

This demonstration was in marked contrast to previous immigrant rights’ rallies in Boston. These were overwhelmed with American flags, and demonstrators were forced to sit through politician after politician talking about the virtues of the “alternative” anti-worker McCain-Kennedy bill on immigrants. But during the May Day rally, the most common image was that of Che Guevara. The May Day rally unapologetically called for amnesty for all undocumented workers. Workers’ struggle was stressed by nearly every speaker and the message of May 1st as International Workers’ day was made very clear.

The main immigrant coalition in Boston said that Socialist Alternative, and others in the Boston May Day coalition, would not be welcomed by immigrant communities. They were wrong. Several thousand immigrant and native-born workers came to the May Day rally. Many thousands participated in strikes, demonstrations and student walkouts. Surrounding cities had rallies and marches of thousands of workers.

Energetic and audacious
Our hard work in the ad-hoc mayday coalition that we helped launch gave us experience in forming alliances with other genuine left-wing forces and it helped us identify and make some new connections with the most radical immigrant and community organizations in the city. We have cultivated a few community connections that we did not have before – particularly among groups of Dominican activists.

A member of Socialist Alternative in Boston organized a strike in his small non-union workplace (two pizza shops), which has both native-born and immigrant workers. Despite threats of firings, the strike shut down both pizza shops.

Dozens of immigrant-owned small businesses posted our rally poster on their windows, and told us they would close their businesses for May Day. When we handed out our flyer in immigrant areas, many workers asked for extra flyers to hand out in their workplaces. Our literature advertising the rally was translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Haitian Creole.

A Socialist Alternative member was an MC (master of ceremonies) at the May Day rally. We also had an additional speaker, who addressed the crowd in both Spanish and English. His speech was frequently interrupted by the crowd’s loud applause. One of our members was also interviewed by several local radio stations and newspapers.

We had 300 copies of our newspaper, Justice, at the rally. We sold all of them. We had two thousand copies of our leaflet for our next meeting on, ‘The way forward for the immigrant rights movement’. We got rid of nearly every one of them – in a crowd of three thousand!

This rally was a breakthrough for Socialist Alternative in Boston. We established some new links with immigrant community activists, and we have raised the banner of the CWI throughout the city, to a greater extent than ever before!