Thousands of union members and community allies across the Pacific Northwest and around the country came together over the Labor Day weekend to celebrate worker power and to rally against attacks on working families. Many of these actions were part of a growing movement called ‘Workers over Billionaires’ that seeks to challenge the greed and power that billionaires are amassing at the expense of working people.
In Seattle, PROTEC17 members (pictured on the cover) rallied with hundreds of their union siblings outside the offices of Palantir – the tech company co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel whose surveillance technology is being used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to further the federal administration’s campaign to detain and deport working people, many unjustly held without cause or due process.
At the Seattle rally, IATSE Local 15 member and beloved theater teacher Fernando Rocha spoke about his experience of being detained by ICE at the NW Detention Center in Tacoma. He spoke of the dehumanizing and humiliating experience, showing the ankle monitor he has been forced to wear as a condition of release while he awaits a hearing in his asylum case. Rocha shared the stories of the men he was detained with, immigrants who have spent years in the U.S., raising families, paying taxes, and yet now are treated as criminals.
“These were no criminals,” said Rocha. “They were workers, fathers, providers, men whose only ‘crime’ was the pursuit of survival. Most came from construction sites, farms, kitchens, and saloons. Some had once held degrees and titles in their countries — the doctor from India, now driving a taxi. The engineer from the Middle East, now sweeping floors. They had traded their dreams for jobs most Americans wouldn’t touch, not because they lacked ambition or education, but because they were chasing something more urgent: dignity, safety, a future.”
PROTEC17 members attended many other Labor Day events throughout Washington and Oregon, including the annual picnic in Spokane, the Ralph Chaplin memorial in Tacoma, and the family-friendly celebration at Oaks Amusement Park in Portland.