This Thursday, Feb 16th, is being organized as A Day Without Latinos. Maria Castillo, from Wilmington NC, as reported in the clip WECT linked below, says,
that on Thursday, fellow Hispanics will not go to work, not send their children to school, not to eat out in restaurants or buy items in stores. She hopes Hispanics will stay home and just be invisible, so the nation can see what Hispanics do for your country.
I began to hear about this strike late last week as rumors, from our mostly Hispanic and immigrant staff, began to make its way throughout our organization. Since most of our staff are also women, at first I confused it with another proposed strike The Day Without Women which I heard was “to be announced” and then somehow I got even more confused when Strike4Democracy made February 17th a general strike day against Trump. So today I tried to sort it out. And in case anyone else is confused also, this is what I have figured out so far.
This Thursday is a planned Day Without Latinos strike. While it has not been picked up in the mainstream press, it is all over the Spanish speaking media. I have no idea how nationwide this is, but the clip below is from North Carolina and I live in the San Francisco Bay area so there definitely is some coverage. There may be marches in some places, but workers just may stay home so businesses could find, they don’t have the staffing they thought they were going to have.
As for the February 17th strike. this was just posted on the Strike4Democracy facebook page.
Good afternoon! Strike4Democracy on February 17 kicks off this week’s strike events, by announcing our partnership with WOMEN’s MARCH and INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’s DAY MASS STRIKES on MARCH 8!!! F17 events continue as planned but now we can add the call to build toward even larger and more powerful mass strikes with the March 8 strikes! We officially announce this exciting news in our press release please share with friends and media.
Today several diaries noted the thousands of Latinos, immigrants and their supporters protested in Milwaukee and 12 cities across Wisconsin. This was action was organized by Voces De La Frontera. vdlf.org
for a link to the news cast from WECT ‘Day without Latinos standoff to take place Thursday” www.wect.com/…
for a link to article on Strike4Democracy Feb 17th action Strike4Democracy 100 Strikes Planned Nationwide indypendent.org/...
I had a moment where I was “wishing” that we could have a national central social calendar to schedule protest events , but that is just the part of me that wants to keep things organized. This organic spontaneous movement is evolving on its own at a fast pace. Maybe it will take us someplace we haven’t been before.....in a good way.
