Press Release
For Immediate Release
April 21, 2006
Contact: Chris Mahin 773 / 726 - 1284 cmahin (at) unitemidwest.org
Monday, April 24 at 1 pm @ Haymarket Square (Randolph & Desplaines

Organized Labor to Announce its Support for Immigrant Workers Rights March and to Speak Against the Recent Raids by Homeland Security

Chicago labor leaders will hold a press conference at a famous labor landmark on Monday, April 24 at 1:00 p.m. to declare their wholehearted support for what is expected to be a massive, historic rally/march on May 1 calling for legal status and human rights for all immigrants presently in Chicago and throughout the United States.

The Haymarket Square press conference will include remarks by Lynn Talbott (International Vice President, UNITE HERE), Dennis Gannon (President of the Chicago Federation of Labor), Ron Powell (President, UFCW, Local 881), John T. Coli (President, Teamsters Joint Council 25), Henry Tamarin (President, UNITE HERE Local 1), and Tom Balanoff (President, SEIU, Local 1).

Near the intersection of Randolph and Des Plaines Avenues - one block east of the Kennedy Expressway - stands the impressive Haymarket Monument, a memorial to organized labor which commemorates what is known throughout the world as "The Haymarket Tragedy."

At 8:30 p.m. on May 4, 1886, a peaceful labor rally of some 2,500 people was held at the site to protest police brutality against striking workers of the old McCormick Reaper Plant. At approximately 10:30 p.m., the crowd that had by then dwindled to about 200 people was attacked by 176 armed policemen. Suddenly, a dynamite bomb was thrown near the police corps by someone who has never been identified, killing one man and seriously injuring dozens of others. The police responded by shooting into the crowd, killing four people and wounding many others.

The resulting hysteria, which led to brutal attacks, imprisonment and even judicial murder of innocent people - many of them labor leaders and immigrants - led to the worldwide observance of May 1 as May Day: International Labor Day.

Lynn Talbott, one of several labor leaders scheduled to speak at the Haymarket Square press conference stated, "As an International Vice-President of UNITE/HERE and manager of my union's Midwest Joint Board, I want to affirm our union's full support for the May 1 demonstration and our definitive opposition to proposals that would deny legal status and human rights to immigrants in the United States."

"Immigrant workers have shown themselves to be an integral part of the American work force and, by extension, the labor movement. Any attack on immigrant workers is an attack against all of us."

In the event of inclement weather, the press conference will be moved to UNITE HERE's Midwest Regional Office at 333 South Ashland Avenue.

Jessica Aranda
Executive Director,
Latino Union of Chicago
1619 W. 19th Street
Chicago, IL 60608
312-491-9044 office
312-491-9046 fax

Latino Union collaborates with low-income, immigrant workers to provide the tools to collectively improve economic and social conditions. We work with Chicagoland's corner day laborers, striving to provide alternatives to the labor, civil, and immigrants rights abuses these workers face on a daily basis.