At a May Day Strong Coalition rally on Thursday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) spoke about the importance of labor.
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00:01Thank you so much everybody! Happy May Day! This is our day of solidarity to say
00:11that immigrant rights are workers rights and workers rights are immigrant
00:17rights. And when immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do? When workers
00:26rights are under attack, what do we do? I want to thank CASA, all of the
00:32organizations, the unions that have been part of today, and I especially want to
00:36thank Jennifer Vasquez, I want to thank Carmen Luna for your strength, for your
00:43resilience, for everything that you are doing to show us what it looks like to
00:48stand up and fight back in the most terrible of circumstances. And I want you
00:53to know, I just spoke to Jennifer about this as well, next week as ranking member
00:57of the Immigration Subcommittee. We don't get to have official hearings, but we are
01:01having our own shadow hearing to make sure that we bring back Kilmar Abrego
01:09Garcia to the United States! And that will be next week, and I hope anyone that is
01:17here can come and show solidarity and insist that all of us stand up and do
01:22everything we can. We are here because we say not on our watch to Trump's
01:29kidnapping and deporting of immigrants, to going after immigrant workers who are
01:36union organizers like what happened in my home state of Washington, to deporting U.S.
01:42citizen children in the middle of cancer treatments, to rounding up legal permanent
01:52residents and people with legal visa status simply because you disagree with what they
01:58say in a country that is supposed to have free speech for everybody. We say not on our watch
02:08to killing industries that are powered by immigrants or terrorizing thousands of foreign students
02:14by revoking our visas. Not on our watch. We are here to say not on our watch to the wholesale
02:24war that Trump is waging on immigrants of every legal status and on workers and the right to
02:32collectively bargain. Brothers, sisters and siblings, these two things are tied together. They are tied
02:39together because when workers have power, that means we can take on those big corporations. And when
02:45immigrant workers are vulnerable, it means that they are trying to divide us so they can give
02:51themselves a four and a half trillion dollar tax break on our backs. We say not in our name.
02:57We've seen this before. They think that attacking immigrants as they tank the economy and destroy
03:06programs that meet our basic economic needs is going to distract us from that four and a half trillion
03:12dollar tax break that they want to give to billionaires like Elon Musk and his department of greed and ego.
03:19Are you distracted? Are we going to be divided? Look, this has been an age old story. The rich bosses
03:30want to get richer instead of paying workers a living wage when the rent is too damn high. Instead of
03:38paying their fair share of taxes so workers can have universal health care and child care and affordable
03:45housing. Well, on May Day, we are here to say you are going to distract us and you aren't going to divide
03:53us. Not on our watch. We know that it's not immigrants who are raising the cost of your rent. It's billionaires.
04:06It's not workers raising the cost of your groceries. It's billionaires. It's not immigrants
04:14raiding your social security. It's billionaires. It's not workers profiting from you being sick. It's
04:20billionaires. It's not workers or immigrants taking away your education. It is billionaires.
04:29In the workplace, whether you're an immigrant, whether you're native born, you're doing the work.
04:35You're doing the work, building homes, caring for our elders, teaching our kids,
04:39doing exactly what our communities need. And so we will fight like hell.
04:46For what we deserve. We will fight like hell to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home.
04:55We will fight like hell for workers like Miguel Luna, who urgently need safe workplaces and rights
05:02on the job. We will fight like hell for our union organizers, immigrant and native born who are
05:10being detained across the country, who's rights are being violated just because they're fighting for us to
05:18have collective power. We will fight like hell for all of us because immigrant rights are workers' rights.
05:29Workers' rights are an immigrant and workers' rights are human rights. Thank you all so much
05:37so much to solidarity, to justice. Let's fight forward and let's win.