Fil-Am leader, labor rights advocates join May Day rallies
Jessica Caloza (left) and labor rights advocates from the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) join the May Day rallies. Image: Jessica Caloza/Facebook
LOS ANGELES – A Filipino American community leader and labor rights advocates from the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) were among the thousands of people who joined rallies and marches yesterday to celebrate International Workers Day, also known as May Day, continuing a tradition dating back to the 19th century.
“Happy International Workers Day! Proud to march with my labor family on May Day,” said Jessica Caloza in her Instagram post.
Emerging as the leading candidate in the March 5 primary election for the state’s Assembly District 52, Caloza is poised to make history as the first Filipina to serve in the California Assembly.
Caloza has been endorsed by the largest and most powerful unions in California, including the California Nurses Association, the California Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – one of the leading forces behind the May Day rallies.
Fighting for working families
In campaign events, Caloza acknowledged her working-class Filipino parents who have inspired her “to fight for working families.”
Participants from the Pilipino Workers Center said they were fighting for better wages, the right to strike, affordable housing, a path to citizenship, ceasefire in Gaza and an end to all wars.
Early Wednesday afternoon, Caloza and the PWC activists joined workers, union members and their supporters who gathered for a rally at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and North Gower Street, then marched through Hollywood converging at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.
“Are we ready to march for our freedom?” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, asked the crowd prior to the march. “Are we ready to march for our rights as workers? Are we ready to march for housing for all? Are we ready to march for citizenship for all?”
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‘Solidarity is Power’
Salas said Hollywood was the appropriate setting for this year’s march, given the success of last summer’s writers and actors strikes that brought production to a halt but resulted in major labor gains for union members.
“We are here in Hollywood, California, because right here – because of our labor brothers and sisters – we saw the power of unions as they rose up and created `hot labor summer’ and fought for their rights as workers,” she said.
She later added, “Every year that we march … we plant a seed of justice with our feet, with our voices, with our fists. We plant the seeds of justice. So together we’re going to see the seeds of justice bloom.”
The theme of the march was “Solidarity is Power: The People United.”
The umbrella organization behind the event, the Los Angeles May Day Coalition, included the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, United Teachers Los Angeles, SEIU, IATSE Local 839, the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.
Labor groups have conducted rallies and protests on May 1 since 1890, originally commemorating the anniversary of the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, when what began as a peaceful rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in support of workers striking for an eight-hour workday ended with an unknown person throwing a dynamite bomb at police as they acted to disperse the meeting.
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