When Luis Cruz marches through downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday for May Day, it will be personal.
The Mexican-born Cruz is currently protected from deportation as a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program but his mother and older brother are not. And even Cruz’s future under DACA – with its fate still in limbo – is unclear.
“These are times of uncertainty, definitely in my household where only a fraction of us are protected and the other fraction has to go through our daily lives being worried about deportation,” Cruz, 25, a Koreatown resident said.
But Cruz, who works for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights – part of the Los Angeles Angeles May Day Coalition – says after more than a year of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ sentiment at the government’s highest levels, “it’s time to fight back.”
Their fight for comprehensive immigration reform and an end to deportations won’t end on May 1, Cruz said. They are pushing for it to be taken to the polls during the upcoming elections.
“That’s the way we’ll make a difference,” he said.
Organizers will also be calling for respecting worker’s rights.
May Day festivities Tuesday in Los Angeles will include an 11 a.m. gathering at the corner of W. 6th and S. Olive streets near Pershing Square, with their march starting at noon. The march will culminate at 255 E. Temple Street in front of the “Molecule Man” sculpture at 2:30 p.m.
Another May Day event – this one organized by Centro Community Service Organization – will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday in Boyle Heights at N. Mathews Street and E. Cesar Chavez Avenue.
International Workers’ Day has been celebrated as an immigrant rights effort in Los Angeles for more than a decade.