Labor, immigrant communities join for May Day rally

LYNN – An unusual alliance is forming between Lynn’s labor and immigrant community as the two joined together in a city-wide rally and march Wednesday to celebrate International Labor Day.”It brings together the best traditions of Lynn,” said Jeff Crosby, the president of the North Shore Labor Council and one of the key organizers of the march.View photos from the marchHundreds of people affiliated with nine local organizations and nonprofits marched from North Shore Community College to the Lynn Common on Wednesday, calling for issues such as immigration reform and workers’ rights, on a day traditionally marked to celebrate the labor movement.On the Lynn Common, speakers like Vivian DeLeon rallied local immigrants and union members for Congress to create a path for citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.”I want everybody to know that we need immigration reform now,” said the 19-year-old, who is in the country illegally and who works with the nonprofit Student Immigrant Movement. “No more families separated.”Other speakers called for an increase in the state’s minimum wage, a rejection of a controversial federal program that collects fingerprints of everyone arrested, and the passage of a bill of rights for all domestic workers.The latter issue weaves together labor rights and immigration, said participant Natalicia Tracy, the executive director of the statewide Brazilian Immigrant Center. Many domestic workers are immigrants who work long hours for low pay and no benefits, often suffering discrimination, harassment and abuse in the process.”We want the state of Massachusetts to recognize domestic workers as a real industry that creates clear status of what this job means,” she said.The labor movement hasn’t always supported immigration reform, as union workers were – and in some places still are – wary of immigrants taking their jobs for lower pay. But that is changing as the labor movement comes to realize the wages and working conditions of all workers are tied together, Crosby said.”You can’t raise the roof if the floor is collapsing,” he said.Crosby said he thinks the two movements can accomplish more together.”It’s the merger of Lynn’s powerful and proud union ? with the energy of the new immigrant movements,” he said. ” ? Together, this is what makes Lynn such an exciting and beautiful place to live.”And Lynn is the perfect location to merge the two during Labor Day, said Maria Carrasco, of the nonprofit New Lynn Coalition, also one of the major organizers of the event.”It’s not just about immigrants, it’s about labor rights, and Lynn always has been fighting for the labor rights movement,” she said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].