PITTSBURGH, PA. - On Monday, February 3rd, "Day Without Immigrants" strikes were held in at least 120 cities, 40 states, and Puerto Rico, according to strike tracking analysis by Payday Report. This analysis was done by Payday Report's Strike Tracker using local news articles found on the internet.
While the number of exact workplaces closed by the strikes is unknown because many newspapers didn't cover them, there were several cities where hundreds of workplaces closed and thousands of workers went on strike.
While dozens of local news outlets, particularly Latino outlets, covered the massive "Day Without Immigrant” strikes on Monday, neither The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC, or CBS covered the strikes.
On the national level, just the Associated Press and USA Today ran brief articles about the actions. The Associated Press predicted that the strikes would likely have a low turnout, as many in the mainstream press expected.
With low turnout expectations, the national media decided to largely ignore the "Day Without Immigrants." The exclusive analysis by Payday Report shows that the mainstream media missed the largest walkouts recorded by our Strike Tracker since the 2020 Black Lives Matter-inspired walkouts following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police in 2020.
Daniel Hernandez, owner of Colonial Market, told CBS Minnesota that he predicted that 350-400 immigrant-sympathetic businesses would close in Minneapolis and St. Paul alone on Monday, easing the worries of immigrant workers, who were debating walking off the job.
In California, Carlos Solorzano-Cuadra, CEO of the Hispanic Chambers of Commerce of San Francisco, estimated that 65% of 11,000 immigrant-owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area were closed in solidarity with Monday's "Days Without Immigrants" strike. He predicted that the number of strikes would grow as they prepare for a massive nationwide strike on International Workers Day on May 1st.
"Preparing for the big march in May!" Solorzano-Cuadra told the Redwood City Pulse, a local non-profit publication in the Bay Area.
Monday's "Day Without Immigrants" strikes were organized through a loosely connected group of immigrant networks. The organizing was done mainly by local groups and online. Few unions got involved in backing them on the national level.
In Pittsburgh, immigrant rights organizers from Casa San Jose and the Pittsburgh Hispanic Development Corporation decided to take up the grassroots call. They began organizing a "Day Without Immigrants" action only 3 days beforehand.
Still, over 60 employers in Pittsburgh closed on just 3 days notice.
"They're the ones that actually caught wind of this, and they said we want to participate," Monica Ruiz of Casa San Jose told Payday Report. "And I think the beauty of this is it wasn't only Latino owned businesses, it was other immigrant groups. Our American allies that were in solidarity closed as well."
The strikers had an impact not just in big cities like Pittsburgh, but also in small towns.
In Oak Ridge, North Carolina, population 3,000, Stokeridge Tavern and Grille owner Kevin Champion decided to close his bar for the day after several Latino workers told him they wanted to take the day off.
Champion said it likely cost him several thousand dollars to close the restaurant but thought it was right.
"They know that I've got their back," Champion told WGHP, "If speaking out means I take some heat then so be it, but my guys know I'm loyal, and they return that loyalty every single day."
Many immigrants took considerable risks to walk out in small towns like Mayfield, a town of 9,000 in rural Western Kentucky. Organizers there told WKMS that while they danced and played maracas at a major intersection, several big rigs pulled up right alongside immigrants and let the exhaust go directly into the faces of immigrants.
"A lot of people walk [by] saying, 'Go Trump.' People just kind of being negative," organizer Antonio Aragonez told college reporter Zacharie Lamb of WKMS. "But we're definitely just trying to…not reciprocate that anger, to just show that love."
In more immigrant-rich communities like Wenatchee, located in rural central Washington State, the decision by some fruit-picking workers to refuse to show up to work put a lot of pressure on local employers to close in solidarity with them.
"Right now, there's a fear that if we stay open, people will think we're against the movement," Azucena Hernandez, owner of La Mexicana Super Market, told Wenatchee World. "In many cases, businesses have faced backlash, with people posting on social media and speaking negatively about them.
Unlike traditional strikes, these strikes are not organized along the lines of American labor law, They often happen with the support of sympathetic small business owners in immigrant communities. The support from these small business owners was crucial in creating pressure on reluctant employers to close, releasing workers to march in the streets, and swelling community support for "Day Without Immigrants" strikes.
During the pandemic, workers used non-traditional strikes to change workplace diversity practices and gain pay raises at a time when employers were experiencing a labor shortage and willing to raise wages to find workers.
These mass walkouts in 2020, inspired heavily by Black Lives Matter, were also initiated by viral calls to action, independent of unions.
In the past, these "Day Without Immigrants" strikes have proven effective. In 2006, over 1 million immigrant rights activists walked out of work on May 1st. The walkouts killed momentum for the Bush Administration's attempts at draconian immigration legislation.
Now, many in the corporate media (and even some in the heavily white left media) aren't paying enough attention to the game-changing potential of these strikes because they don't resemble traditional strikes in the United States. (For more on how the 2020 strike wave began, check out "How Black & Brown Workers Are Redefining Strikes in the Digital COVID Age.")
Now, Payday Report analysis indicates that another massive, non-traditional strike wave may start with "Day Without Immigrants" mass strikes in more than 120 cities in 40 states and Puerto Rico.
While the nation's major media outlets may have missed this week's big "Day Without Immigrants" strikes, they will likely have plenty of opportunities to cover future strikes. In Philadelphia on Super Bowl Sunday, some immigrant workers have called for a general strike as the city prepares to cheer on the Eagles.
Activists hope that as more "Day Without Immigrants" strikes occur, more media attention will help get more workers on the streets.
"We came up with this in like two or three days," Monica Ruiz told Payday on Monday when over 60 employers closed down in Pittsburgh. "So it was really a short time. But, had we had a lot more time, I think we could have engaged a larger community of people."
View Payday's map of "Day Without Immigrants" strikes in over 120 cities in 40 states here.
Please send tips on more "Day Without Immigrants" strikes to melk@paydayreport.com
News organizations that wish to use Payday’s “Day Without Immigrants” Strike Tracker and reprint this article via Creative Commons policies. We ask that publications that use it link to our originals.
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