by Chris Garaffa, ANSWER CT
1,400 people took to the streets for the annual May Day march in New Haven. The march proceeded from Quinnipiac Park down Grand Avenue in Fair Haven. Marchers were loud, spirited and energetic, chanting “¡Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha!” (Obama, listen, we are in the fight!) and “Full rights now!” as people from the neighborhood joined the demonstration.
A number of groups organized for the march, and people came from New Haven and the surrounding area, and as far away as Stamford and Danbury.
As the march ended, it fed into the Federal Plaza downtown for a rally. Speakers denounced the lack of progress on real and meaningful immigration reform in Congress, Arizona’s racist SB 1070 and the terror of ICE across the country. Speakers also condemned racist police tactics in New Haven and neighboring East Haven, where recent community action and an investigation into racial profiling caused Police Chief Leonard Gallo to be placed on administrative leave in April.
This year’s May Day marches were called as a follow-up to the March 21 march in Washington, DC, which drew a crowd of 250,000. Those in New Haven joined hundreds of thousands of others in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Austin, TX, Seattle, WA and across the country.
