Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-05-01 Friday

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Democracy Now! Friday, May 1, 2026

Austin and Chicago, this is Democracy Now. We are calling for, and we can't let these billionaires ruin our lives. We deserve more. Come out and show us. No school, no work, no shopping. That's the rallying cry of workers around the United States today, marking May Day, International Workers Day. Organizers with the May Day Strong Coalition say over 3,000 protests and events are scheduled. We'll go to Chicago and Los Angeles for the latest. And there are protests

around the world. We'll speak with investigative journalist Nehald Jickshit. She's author of the many lives of Sayeda X, a people's history of Invisible India. We'll talk to her about labor conditions and unrest in the world's most populous country. Our salaries should be increased to $214 a month. We should at least get this much. Only then can we sustain ourselves. Otherwise, this protest will continue. But first, will the Supreme Court back the Trump administration,

The administration's push to strip temporary protected status from Haitians and Syrians. The decision could ultimately impact over a million TPS holders' oral arguments were held on Wednesday. True reason for the termination is the president's racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular. Days after falsely accusing them of, quote, eating the dogs and eating the cats of Americans, he vowed that he would terminate Haiti's TPS. and that is exactly what happened. We'll be joined by one of the humaheatian plaintiffs from Springfield, Ohio. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman. Senate Republicans have blocked another effort to stop President Trump's war against Iran. On Thursday, senators voted 47 to 50 to reject a war powers resolution that would have reigned in Trump's ability to strike Iran until Congress authorizes further military action. The vote came ahead of today's deadline under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives the President 60 days to carry out military strikes in response to an imminent threat if Congress has not voted to authorize a war. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef told to Senate, committee, he believes the 60-day deadline, quote, pauses or stops in a ceasefire, unquote. Meanwhile,

Iranian President Massoud Peschian condemned the U.S. Naval Baklade of Iran's ports as an intolerable extension, an intolerable extension of military operations and said it's doomed to fail. At the White House, President Trump on Thursday claimed Iran wanted to negotiate Iran wanted to negotiate. a deal so badly, adding, quote, nobody knows what the talks are except myself and a couple of other people, unquote. Lebanon's national news agency reports, Israeli attacks have killed more than 30 people in a single day in further violations of the U.S. brokered ceasefire signed by Israel and Lebanon last month. Two children were among those killed in the attack. on southern Lebanon. They came as a Hezbollah drone injured 12 Israeli soldiers in northern Israel.

On Thursday, Israel issued new forced evacuation orders for villages north of a strip of occupied territory along the border. Israel is calling a yellow line. More than a million people have been displaced from their homes by Israel's attacks about a fifth of Lebanon's population. Israel's militaries issued new maps of the Gaza Strip, showing it controls significantly more territory beyond what it agreed to in the U.S. brokered ceasefire last October. Reuters reports the restricted area marked on the maps with an orange line makes up some 11% of Gaza's territory beyond a so-called yellow line, meaning Israel now claims control over two-thirds of Gaza. This comes as Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least three Palestinians and wounded 10 others Thursday and Friday in Israel's latest violations of the ceasefire. The Pulitzer Prize winning Palestinian poet Masab Abu Toha said he was heartbroken after Israel shot his 30-year-old aunt in the chest while she was sitting with her three young children in a school shelter in the Jabba. your refugee cab. Abutoha says the bullet pierced her chest and exited through her back,

devastating her lungs and spleen, leaving her in critical condition. He writes, quote, at the moment she was hit, she was holding her one-year-old son. He fell from her lap as she collapsed and was found bleeding from one of his ears, unquote. Musab Abu Toha and his wife Maram have lost over a hundred relatives to Israeli attacks since October 2023, including 31 members of his family killed in a single air strike. On Thursday, the group physicians for human rights Israel petition the Israeli Supreme Court demanding the release of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza who've been detained without charge for more than a year. Among them, Dr. Husam Abu Safia, the detained head of Gaza's Kamal-Adwan Hospital, who's reportedly been tortured and denied adequate food and

medicine despite his deteriorating health. Joining the call for the doctor's release is Mohamed Abou Salmiah, the director of Gaza's El Shifa Hospital, who is imprisoned by Israel without charge for seven months after his arrest in November, 2023. I was brutally arrested. I was brutally arrested. I was handcuffed behind my back, blindfolded and stripped naked. I was subject to a humiliating search, and then the field interrogation began in the Nazarium area. This involves beatings, insults, with sand thrown on my head, putting dirt into my mouth and severe beatings. Palestinian journalist Ali al-Samudi has been freed after a year in Israeli prisons. He'd been held without charge under Israel's so-called administrative detention policy. After he was arrested

at his home in Janine in the occupied West Bank in April of 2025. Upon his release, Al-Samudi showed signs of torture and severe malnutrition and says he lost half his body weight due to systematic starvation. In 2022, Ali al-Samudi was shot in the shoulder by the Israeli sniper that killed Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abouacla in Janine. Here in New York, students and alumni of Columbia University, held a demonstration honoring the two-year anniversary of campus protests demanding administrators divest from companies linked to Israel. The protests saw students take over a Columbia building and rename it Hens Hall in honor of Hinderjab,

a six-year-old girl murdered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. This is Mariam Awan, an alumna of Colombia, arrested two years ago in the police raid that ended the student occupation. We wanted to do it on the anniversary of the occupation of Hens Hall in order to show that the movement persists and that we retain the institutional memory of the violence that happened that day of the way that the student body came together to demand divestment at that time. It still echoes today. Even though there has been repression,

there has been a massive crackdown on freedom of speech at Columbia. We are here to show that we won't be silenced and that we still remember everything that happened. House lawmakers Thursday voted to reopen most of the Homeland Security Department ending a record 76-day partial shutdown in the agency's longest in U.S. history. The approved budget bill signed into law by Trump excludes funding for immigration and customs enforcement ICE, but reopens key parts of DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA. In Texas, Minubatra, a long-time court interpreter and the only licensed Punjabi-Hindian erdu interpreter in the state has been released from an ICE jail after nearly two months in detention. A judge's order mandating Bacher's release stated that Trump administration failed to explain why she'd been jailed in the first place and denied her due process. Bacher has lived in the United States for over 35 years after leaving India.

President Trump has withdrawn his nomination for Casey Means to become the next U.S. Surgeon General. Means is a wellness influencer, author, entrepreneur, and anti-vaccine activists who, along with her brother, Callie Means, is a key figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement, that's Maha, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In her place, President Trump has nominated Nicole Sapphire to become Surgeon General. She's a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New Jersey and a frequent contributor to Fox News. Maine Governor Janet Mills has officially suspended her campaign for the U.S. Senate. Mills have been competing for the Democratic nomination in June's primary with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats. But Governor Mills quit Thursday as a Senate candidate after several polls projected she was losing badly to Graham Platner, a progressive populist who's backed by labor unions and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The winner of the Democratic primary will challenge incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in November's election, which will determine the balance of power in the Senate.

This is Grant Plattner speaking with MSNAL Thursday. I also think, and I'll just be up front. I don't believe a single U.S. Democratic senator should vote for a nominee out of the Trump administration moving forward. I think we need to use all of the power we have around funding and the power of the purse to stop paying for these kinds of stupid wars, stop paying for agencies like ICE, stop paying for the things that the Trump administration is doing that are materially hurting our democracy and hurting working people. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has unveiled its new affordability agenda to fight the skyrocketing cost of living crisis facing millions of people in the United States. The legislative package proposes policies for cheaper prescription medication, groceries, housing, utility bills, gas, and child care. It would also ban companies from using personal data and AI to set prices, guarantee full-time workers paid vacation time,

increase overtime wages and abolish super PACs. This is Congressmember Greg Kasar of Texas, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Donald Trump calls affordability a hoax, says surging gas prices are, quote, a small price to pay, and says we don't have the money for health care and child care because he needs it for war. Every single day, Republicans in the building behind us make their rich friends richer and richer by making it harder for working people to get by. And today we say with one voice, we do not have to live like this.

A new investigation by ProPublica has found the Trump administration's advancing a proposed rule change to SSI, the Supplemental Security Income program that could slash or terminate benefits for an estimated 400,000 disabled adults, including people with Down syndrome and dementia. The proposal specifically targets people with disabilities living with their parents or family members who receive food assistance through SNAP.

That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The efforts were initiated last year by top White House officials and the so-called and now defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, led by billionaire Elon Musk. Here in New York, Mayor Zoran Mamdani refused to meet privately with King Charles on Wednesday as he joined the British monarch at a reef-laying ceremony honoring 9-11 victims. Mamdani was asked by reporters what it would take for him to agree to a private meeting with the king. If I was to speak to the king separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Coenor Diamond. The 105-carat diamond was taken by the British from India. in the 19th century is currently housed in the Tower of London, placed on the crown made for Queen Mother Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the White House posted a photo of President Trump and King Charles with the caption, Two Kings, during the monarch's visit this week. Since Trump's return to office protests have erupted nationwide under the slogan, No Kings. And the anti-war and solidarity activist John Miller has died at the time. the age of 70 from heart failure. In 1991, John co-founded the East Timor Action Network, E-Tan, which worked to support self-determination for East Timor and an end to U.S. support for Indonesia's occupation. On Thursday, the government of Timor Lechde, that's East Timor,

released a statement calling John Miller a longtime friend of the Timorese people, stating that his voice in defense of the Timorese people as well as his warm friendship and continue, support in their struggle will never be forgotten. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

We turn now to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the justices heard oral arguments, and President Trump's push to strip temporary protected status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians living in the United States. The TPS program grants protection from deportation and work authorization to immigrants whose home countries are deemed unsafe to return to, most often because of war or natural disaster. Last year, then Secretary of DHS, Christy Noem, said recent extensions of TPS for Haitians and Syrians were not justified or necessary. In separate lawsuits, the TPS holders charged that the government did not follow proper procedure in making that decision and that their home countries are still unsafe. The cases were combined to be heard before the court Wednesday. The Haitian lawsuit also accuses the Trump administration of being motivated by racism. in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.

District Court Judge Ana Reyes agreed, ruling the decision was likely made because of hostility to non-white immigrants, unquote. This is Jeffrey Pipelli, a lawyer representing the Haitian plaintiffs. The true reason for the termination is the president's racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular. The president has disparaged Haitian TPS holders specifically as undesirables from a, quote, hit whole country and days after falsely accusing them of, quote, eating the dogs and eating the cats of Americans, he vowed that he would terminate Haiti's TPS. And that is exactly what happened. All three liberal justices press the administration on this question. this is an exchange between Justice Sotomayor and D. John Sauer, the U.S. Solicitor General.

Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a, quote, filthy, dirty and disgusting as a whole country. I'm quoting him. And where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries instead of people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark, where he declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example of the Arlington example at work and showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision. All the statements that they cite, as to the secretarian as to the president, obviously there's an issue there about which one you're going to weigh more heavily.

None of them, not a single one of them, mentions race or relates to race. That was Solicitor General D. John Sauer being questioned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The court's six conservative justices signaled skepticism over the lower court's rulings. and in May had permitted the Trump administration to revoke TPS for Venezuelans in an unsigned shadow docket opinion. This case could ultimately have ramifications for more than a million TPS holders from over a dozen countries. For more, we go to Springtown, Ohio, Springfield, Ohio, where we're joined by Villas Dorsenville. He is a TPS holder and a plaintiff in the case. He's also co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center and Sports Center in

Springfield, Ohio. President Trump targeted the Haitian community in Springfield, falsely saying Haitian residents were eating pet dogs and cats. Thank you so much for being with us. Villis Dorsenville, if you can start off by laying out what happened in this case, why you brought it and where you think the Supreme Court is going. I think that since after Thank you for having me. I think that's just after 2024, we've been scapegoated as a community. And we've been accused of eating pets and the community. And even though the local authority rejected that claim.

And we felt the urgency of being the plaintiff in the case, not only in the case of me versus Trump, but in the case of the area in Northern California as well, just to bring that our story before the court because we are here on

the TPS and it means a lot to us. And I think that being a plaintiff would mean that we already to stand with our people. We are ready to normally let the judicial system or the judicial branch know that

we are at a risk of deportation. We are, there could be family and separation. There could be normally the economic and community disruption. So when we know how much is a stake if TPS is ended, we agreed to normal liberty appellantive on that case. And Villisdorsanville, what has been the impact

on the Haitian community of Springfield since President Trump began his vile and racist statements targeting your community during the 2024 campaign? I think it has been impacted. the community and so many areas. The first thing is that, you know, the leader of, Trump is normally a leader saying things that maybe he should not say.

And because of that, other people who are following him would normally use those conspiracy theory to target us in the community. And the second thing, the impact is because in our community, because of that, folks are afraid because they believe that would escalate to mass violence against them. And the community has been disrupted since then. We are still living with the consequence of those comments.

So you would see that folks in the community who understand that would rally with us and state and solidity with us because they know that first thing, that we are people with ethic and moral and all that we've been looking for is a safe haven and a place to work and continue to sit our kids to school. But we've been the victims of a leader that should normally focus on protecting a vulnerable group of people or protecting the communities,

but ended up being the person who put some type of labels on people in the community. So it has been a very difficult thing. So unsettling thing for us just to live with. And up to now, we are still normally living with it. You are a recipient of temporary protected status. Could you tell us your story, why you had to leave Haiti? And what do you say to those Americans who say temporary projected status is supposed to be just that temporary, not permanent? I left Haiti because I was a pastor assigned back to Haiti from Jamaica in 2018.

And in 2020, I became a target because the hoodlums started asking me money that I didn't have. and my mother suggested that I live to come to a safer place. And this is why I left Haiti just to come here. And when I came here, I started working with the community. And TPS would mean a lot to me by the fact that it allows me to stay here and to work and to continue to prove up for myself and prove up for my family. And I believe that it is the same for other members in our community. They are under TPS, their TPS holders, because at this point in time,

the country in Haiti is still in bad shape and they cannot return there. So you can imagine now the uncertainty that they live with on a daily basis by the fact that they know if TPS ain't there is possibility for them to be detained and to be deported. And you can't imagine that they feel that they're not safe even though they came here to be safe. And this is all that is at risk in this particular case. We're going to end with UCLA law professor Arilantham, who is the lead counsel for the Syrian plaintiffs in Mullen v. Doe, which centers Trump's attempts to terminate TPS for Syria. She is here in an exchange with Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It's not the Assad regime anymore, though. I mean, the whole thing was the Assad regime after 53 years of complete oppression.

and brutal treatment is gone. So do you agree the Assad regime change is a significant change in the history of that country in the Middle East more broadly? I mean, of course, anybody would agree with that, Your Honor? Okay, well, that's an important marker then because that's a big shift in both Syria, but also the posture of other countries towards Syria, at least as I don't pretend to be an expert, but that's my understanding of what's the backdrop here.

The State Department's own reports believe, of course Assad, they recognize Assad has ended, but they say active violence in every part of the country, the daycare that Leila Doe's daughter went to got bombed. That building next to it has been bombed again in southern Syria. That's not the same conflict. It's the Israeli incursion. There's a war between Turkey and Kurdistan.

Kurds going on in the north. There's still lots of conflict, according to the State Department's accounts and the CRS report about this. Yes, UCLA law professor Al-Nanthan during Wednesday's oral arguments responding to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Villis Dorsenville, we thank you so much for being with us, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, a TPS holder and plaintiff in the Supreme Court case. Coming up, no school, no work, no shopping, the rallying cry of workers around the United States today marking May Day. International Workers Day organizers with the May Day strong coalition say over 3,000 protests and events are scheduled.

We'll go to Los Angeles and Chicago. Stay with us. There is power in a factory. Power in the land. Power in the hand of the worker. amounts to nothing if together we don't stand There is power in a union Now the lessons of the past war all learned with workers' blood The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud

War has always been the bosses wiser Down with the black lookers unite with our brothers and our sisters. Together we will stand. There is power in a... There's power in a union by Billy Bragg, performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Boston. Juan Gonzalez is in Chicago.

Workers around the world are rallying today to Mark Mayday, International Workers' Day in the Philippines, thousands of activists rallied earlier today in Manila calling for higher wages and then to the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. At first, you might think there's no connection. But as we saw when the war in the Middle East broke out, crude oil and gasoline prices shoot up. There's a domino effect. Prices increase across the board. Gasoline prices rose by more than 100 percent, leaving our Jeepney driver colleagues with

very little income. Many of them no longer want to go out and drive because they can't earn enough. In Argentina, thousands of workers rallying Buenos Aires Thursday ahead of May Day to condemn the economic and labor policies of Argentina's far-right president, Javier Milley. Unfortunately, today in Argentina, the economic situation and the economic plan being carried out by Javier Millet's government are seriously affecting the situation of all workers. which deteriorates more year after year. People are very angry, very dissatisfied, and they will make that demand felt

by taking to the streets of Buenos Aires and the rest of the cities across all Argentine provinces. In our last segment, we're going to talk with an investigative reporter about her work in India, on a people's history of invisible India. But here in the United States, organizers with the May Day Strong Coalition,

say 3,000 protests and events are scheduled for today with organizers calling for no school, no work, no shopping. On Thursday, Democracy Now spoke with Ned dey Dominguez, founding executive director of organized power and numbers and organizer with the May Day Strong Coalition. And so we're standing up to say that in this country, really the billioners are the only ones that are profiting and benefiting from our harm. and tomorrow, May 1st, to celebrate International Workers Day and sending up for all workers in the country, we're calling for taxing the rich, so our families, not their fortunes, come first. We're calling for no ice, no war, and no private armies to serve an authoritarian government and power, and to expand their democracy, not a corporate rule.

We're joined now by two guests in Los Angeles, Pedro Trujillo, the organizing director at the Coalition for Human. main immigrant rights and the coordinator of the L.A. May Day Coalition. And in Chicago, where one is also, Stacey Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. We're going to begin with Pedro in the streets of Los Angeles. If you can talk about the organizing that's going on in Los Angeles last July, immigration agents in SWAT gear and armored vehicles descended on MacArthur Park. where the largest planned rally is happening today. Can you talk about the scale of ice activity now

and the particularly targeting of workers as we discuss this on International Workers Day? Good morning, all. And we were just a few hours away from our major demonstration here in MacArthur Park. And as you said, we are standing on the ground that was utilized as a space to intimidate the community just over six months ago, a close to a year ago, here in MacArthur Park, where Bovino and

company descended on MacArthur Park while kids were out here in the park playing, and we have not seen the scale or operations that we were seeing in the summertime and up until the end of last year, but they're still operating in our communities on the day-to-day basis. We're still hearing stories of family separation, of cruelty. and a lot of cruelty in the detention center still. And so that's why we're bringing our group together. That's why we see such a strong coalition coming together, over 120 organizations and unions here in Los Angeles endorsing this March.

We haven't seen this level of support of engagement in a very long time. So I'm really hopeful that we are able to advance our demands, which is that we want no wars. We want education, health care, funded instead of wars. We want citizenship for all, and we want that people's dignity and that their lives are actually valued, right? That they're not being taken as ways of making money off of people's bodies and their lives. I'd like to bring into the conversation, Stacey Davis-Gaids, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and of the Chicago Teachers Union. you're speaking here from Chicago, the birthplace of May Day back in May 1st, 1886, thousands of workers in Chicago

protested and went on strike demanding an eight-hour day. Could you talk about the efforts of your union to get the public schools to basically shut down so that students and parents and teachers could participate in May Day protests? Thank you for that. Listen, in Chicago, our union is very important. by high school history teachers. And so we thought it was necessary to wrap ourselves in the history of this great city and its interconnectedness to the workers' rights movement.

Four years after the Haymarket Affair, our union was born. In order to make this holiday mean something to the families of this city, you have to speak to the young people and their parents. And so we were able to negotiate an agreement, a memorandum of understanding with the Chicago Public Schools to engage all of our children and teaching the truth about May Day and creating academic freedom for all of us to understand where our empowerment comes from. It comes from community. How do we practice it with solidarity? And these are the most patriotic and American lessons that we can learn, especially on. the 250 anniversary of this American story.

And Pedro, I'd like to ask you, it's been 20 years now since the massive immigration rights protests of 2006. You took part in those marches. You were just 17 at the time. Can you talk about the relationship, how those marches really began to represent the rebirth of May Day in the United States? Yes, that was a time when immigrants all over the country were under attack by a national legislation that Congress was moving forward, the Sensenburner bill. And people rose up against it. The community rose up against it because they saw it as a huge threat to the way of lives of many across the nation. And we saw the activation again of unions and community groups coming together.

We saw church and faith leaders coming together, asking people to turn out, show up and demonstrate their people power in the streets. And so the city of LA is not known for shutting it down the streets because of marches, more for traffic that we have here. But on that day, my family and I witnessed just the gridlock that we had of people, blocks on end, hundreds of thousands of people that took to the streets. that was the case in other major cities. And people in small cities were also demonstrating. And so this is a time, once again, where that level of engagement is needed, where people need to join their local group and participate in their local march to shut it down once more. Otherwise, this government will think that they can trample us and to get away with what they're doing.

And Stacey Davis Gates, as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union. In Chicago, several local labor unions and community groups jointly called for an economic blockout for Chicago today. If you can talk about how you decided to partner with what, SEIU, Healthcare, Illinois, and Indiana, Indivisible Chicago, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and what an economic blackout means? Well, what it means is that we are creating a coalition to resist the tyranny of billionaires in this moment. Let's be very clear. Billionaires put a president in place to dismantle democracy, a right-wing Congress to watch it, and a right-wing Supreme Court to block us from doing anything about it. It is coalition

in this moment that will provide the pathway forward. We know that when working people are allied within their community, showing solidarity with other workers across industry and allied and community groups that we not only sustain and secure the democracy that we have, but oftentimes we expand the opportunity for it for others. And Stacey Davis-Ga's, I'd like to ask you about another question on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana must redraw a congressional map that was designed to create a second majority black district in the state where African Americans have long-faced racial segregation and barriers to voting. The decision effectively guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

I'm wondering your reaction to what the impact of this will be on the voting rights of African-Americans across the country. Well, it's going to challenge this democracy for everyone. Black Americans are your only reliable voting block for democracy in America. If you check exit polls for almost every election throughout this country, it is the black voter, and in particular, the black female voter who holds America down ten toes. And so what I would say is that this type of coalition is going to be even more necessary. And I would employ my siblings, my brothers and sisters in this struggle to listen to Listen to black women when we tell you what danger looks like because for us, it looks like Donald Trump.

The protest in Los Angeles come in the wake of all of the ice raids across the country. Do you expect that you're going to be able to get the same kind of turnout given the enormous repression that the immigrant community especially is facing throughout the country? Yes, the city is not just an immigrant town. It's just that we have, our families are from all kinds of statuses. So maybe the undocumented person doesn't feel comfortable going out to protest today. And so they'll send on their behalf their U.S. citizen child or their legal parent resident spouse to join this march. It's just the city is just so intertwined between immigrant and not immigrant. we don't really distinguish that just because of our makeup of our city.

It's such a cultural melting pot that we have here in Los Angeles, that that's not how we operate. And so when we see, I see in our communities racially profiling people, it's because the makeup of the city, it's just so intertwined that even U.S. citizens are cut up in the racial profile, right? And so for us, as organizers, we think of the risks.

We prepare for the risk, the potential risk, as we always do in our demonstrations, but we always give people the agency to choose where they want to fight for their liberation, knowing the risk and giving the information so they're able to show up. The only thing I'll say about the courts and this last question is that the courts are not going to save us.

We as community members need to show up and show our strength, either by showing in these public spaces, organizing our dollars, where we spend it, who we boycott, especially these companies that are profiting off of immigrants being in detention. And that's what it will take. Us really taking our power back and reminding those in power that we are the ones that make this country run. Pedro Trujillo, we want to thank you so much for being with us, organizing director at the Coalition for Humane and Immigrant Rights, coordinator of the L.A. Mayday Coalition,

speaking to us from the streets of L.A., and Stacey Davis-Gates, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union, speaking to us from Chicago. Coming up, we continue our May Day coverage. There are thousands of protests and events not only across the United States, but around the world. We'll speak with an Indian investigative journalist, author of The Many Lives of Saida X,

people's history of invisible India. We'll talk to her about labor conditions and unrest in the world's most populous country. Stay with us. Flame in my heart by Cool Whip featuring our very own archivist, Brendan Allen. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Boston. Juan Gonzalez is in Chicago. We continue our May Day coverage with a look now at the state of worker rights and freedoms

in the world's most populous country, India. Pressure on fuel supplies from the war in Iran has deepened the cost of living crisis across India, and labor unrest is on the rise. Last month, the industrial hubs around the capital city of New Delhi saw some of the anger boil over. In mid-April, tens of thousands of workers from dozens of factories blocked roads

to demand a fair wage and better working conditions. Some of the protests turned violent were met with a brutal police crackdown on protesters and labor leaders. Most of the workers who struck were non-unized contract workers in small factories producing electronics, garments, auto parts. Many are migrant workers who live in cramp quarters on the edge of the city and work 12-hour days, seven days a week for about $120 a month, wages that have gone unchanged for years. Here are the voices of two workers from the protest just outside Delhi last month.

Our salary should be increased to $214 a month. We should at least get this much. Only then can we sustain ourselves. Otherwise, this protest will continue. We are here protesting just for a salary hike. All the workers were protesting here peacefully. However, the police personnel charged on us. Now, if that happens, you have to do something to protect and defend yourself, right?

More than 90% of India's workers are employed in the informal sector. according to the International Labor Organization, income inequality is extremely high. The richest 1% of Indians hold 40% of the country's wealth, while the bottom half of the country's population own only 6.4% of its wealth. For more on the state of labor and rights in India, we're joined by Neha Dixit,

an award-winning investigative journalist, author based in New Delhi, recipient of the 2019 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Her book is titled The Many Lives of Sayeda X, a people's history of Invisible India, joining us from Shrewsbury, just outside Boston, a stop on her U.S. book tour. Thanks so much for being with us, Neha. If you can start off by laying out your people's history of Invisible India and talk about who

Sayada X is. Thank you so much, Amy, and I'm really happy that democracy now is covering Mayday and labor unrest because increasingly all over the world, journalists like me struggle with putting stories around labor in the mainstream media. My book The Many Lives of Saida X is about a migrant working class woman in Delhi who was displaced by sectarian violence, and in the last 30 years, she's done 50 jobs, never managing to make more than one fifth of the daily wage. And I do want to say that Saida is the person right now who shells all the California almonds, who makes garments for a lot of U.S. global corporations.

She's also the one who's making exam blue books that are making a return in various universities. These are the people who are from the most socioeconomically marginalized classes in India. Most of them are from the indigenous communities, which are adivasis or Dalits or Muslims. And what has happened over the years is global corporations when they started moving and outsourcing manufacturing to countries like India. A huge cheap female labor economy came up where workers like Saida are paid per piece and they're called home-based workers instead of getting a time-based wage which could be around 12 for every eight hours of work. So people like Saida work for 12 to 16 hours make it. all these things for global corporations, but never getting paid. And Neha, I wanted to ask you about the impact on the Indian working class,

especially of the current war, the war in Iran, the global disruption and fuel supply, what that's doing to the Indian masses as well? I want to say that I've spent the last few weeks in the U.S., and I was looking at how life is not so much disturbed for people, the US, there is a moon mission, and meanwhile, there are also drones being sent to Iran. And how it is affecting people in India is because increasingly there is a shortage of cooking gas, which is LPG. What it has done is it has affected workers across sectors. So textile sector is ceramics, automobile, electronic parts. All these sectors are affected.

That is also meant that migrant workers who cannot access cooking gas, and most of them, are not in, do not have the documents to access cooking gas from the formal places. So they have to rely on the black market and which is why that is leading to a lot of starvation people not being able to cook. And that some estimates tell us that almost more than three million workers will be pushed into acute poverty by this crisis. And what has also happened is this has led to reverse migration. Almost 50, 60 million workers, Workers in India are migrant workers, and this is an old figure from 2011 because we still don't have the new ones from the government. And what it means is that if they do not have access to this cooking gas, they're all forced to go back to their villages.

That has also led to a number of strikes. In the recent past, we saw in 10 days back there was a strike in one of the outskirts suburbs of Delhi, which is Noida, where the workers were demanding $300 per month, a raise from $200 that led to arrests of almost 300 workers on the same day. I also want to remind that this is a state, Noida, which is part of Uttar Pradesh, the most popular state in India, which has the size of the population of Brazil. And this is also the state that suspended labor laws during COVID for all for three years saying that it's going to boost economy. So I want to say this because these are times where constantly various governments in India and the central government have been trying to dilute labor laws. They have tried to introduce new labor codes that restrict strikes, that promote hire and fire policy, that promote entrenchment of workers without any notice. and there have been constant protests and strikes against this.

Could you talk as well about the comparisons in terms of leadership in both countries in India and the United States, both led by authoritarian right-wing leaders and the growing income inequality in India? I want to remind that we had a recent report in India with said that only top, only 10% of Indians can buy non-essential items. So this is the kind of disparity we are looking at. Inequality is at a historic high. We have a prime minister. I was laughing and I was saying that every once in a while,

at least your president holds a press conference and then you can debate about what he says. Our prime minister has not held a press conference in the last 12 years since he has been in power. In fact, Taliban came to India and held a press conference, but our prime minister refused to speak. And this is also a time where there is a certain valorization of very hyper-masculine politics, where aggression, where abuse, where hate crimes, where

bigotry have been normalized and become part of the popular parlance. Our Prime Minister, every once in a while keeps talking about, is chest size and how it's 56 inches and how it's going to save everyone, and how in the same context, there is a kind of oppressive and exploitative language that has been used by various ministers and various people in power without ever. ever taking into account, what is it that people who are from the socio-echnopal margins, what are they facing? If you can talk more, Neha, about the inequality and repression in India, which you say is at a historic high. I want to give an example of Saida and how it is also related to California.

Let me explain that increasingly, like you spoke about, 90% of the workers are in the unorganized. sector, most of the women, and there are various intersections here as well, which is the intersections of class, class and gender for migrant workers, which is very important to take into account the moment we start talking about labor in India. So what is happening is, for example, Saida is a person who shells California almonds. So California produces 80% of the world's almonds. What happens is that you can't automate the shelling of these almonds because the seed is going to break. So what happens is there is a transnational supply. The California almonds go to the suppliers, contractors, subcontractors, and then to peace rate workers like Saida. So for a 23 KG bag,

they are paid half a dollar. And then expert workers like Saida, if they work for 12 to 16 hours, they get $1. And that same two bags generate a profit of $100 for the suppliers. And I have written that there's a joke amongst almond women workers who shell California almonds in India is that they learn to eat with spoons. And we were talking about it in the context of recently when the Mamdani campaign happened and he was lampoon for eating with his hands. Why women in India are learning to eat with spoons because of these global corporations is because when they have to shell the almonds, they have to soak it in chemicals and acid

and while peeling it, their fingertips corrode. and which is why they cannot eat with their bare hands, and so they have to eat with spoons. Why I'm giving you this example is because more and more work is shifting towards peace rate work, towards gig work, and we have no actual attempt or political will to fix this. Our governments are constantly, like I said, diluting labour laws, not taking into account these practices, and the fact that it is also constantly disenfranchising people from social,

socioeconomically marginalized communities. So there are various intersections that put people in this acute poverty situation without ever having any structural support from the government to rise above their situations. And you mentioned marginalized community. I'm wondering if you could comment on the situation of Muslims within India. Some 9 million people of Muslims in recent state elections have been. been disenfranchised? Yes.

So if I just tell you, when I talk about socioeconomically marginalized communities, every third adivasi person and every second Muslim and every second Dalit person in India up were. What has happened is that the government has introduced a special

intensive which is called SIR. What they have actually done is that they've started checking electoral roles to disenfranchise people who do not have documents. And most of the people, so if I use the recent example of West Bengal, where 9 million people have been put out of electoral lists

by saying that they have not met the qualification to vote in these elections. What they have done is, for example, they have said that people who had parents who were 16-year-old and had more than five children, which was very common in the earlier past. They are not part of this electoral list. They've also called it a logical discrepancy. A lot of

Muslim majority constituencies are affected. Almost half of the voters have been deleted in these constituencies because of this process. They have also said that, you know, pre critics have said that it's unconstitutional. Yeah.

So I do want to say it is very systemic, systemic in the way people have been put out of electoral roles and stripped of their citizenship rights. Neha Dixit, award-winning investigative journalist based in New Delhi, author of The Many Lives of Side X, a People's History of Invisible India, and she's on a book tour throughout the United States speaking to us from Massachusetts today. That does it for today's show. I'll be at AFI Silver and Silver Spring, Maryland tonight at 645 at a screening of the documentary about democracy now called Steal the Story, please.

It have benefit for W.HU.T. Howard University, PBS, with filmmaker Tia Lesson and Ryan Grimm. I'll be back there on Saturday at noon for a screening to benefit Pacifica Radio WPFW. Then at the Charles Theater in Baltimore at 7 p.m. Saturday night at a screening with Morgan State Radio, W.EAA. And Sunday at Philadelphia's Film Society, Bors Theater, for a matinee screening to benefit Philadelphia's public access TV. station, Philly Camp. For all information, go to DemocracyNow.org. Hope to see everyone in one of these places in that area. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.