RUTHFULLY YOURS

There were loud, violent, disruptive protests across America yesterday for International Workers’ Day, but American workers’ issues were barely discussed as they took a back seat to the Left’s current mania for illegal aliens and open borders.

This May Day comes after R. Alexander Acosta, 48, was sworn in as the 27^th Secretary of Labor by Vice President Mike Pence last week. Acosta, whose nomination was endorsed by the Laborers’ International Union of North America and other unions, was a U.S. Attorney and dean of Florida International University College of Law. He was easily confirmed by the Senate on April 27 by a vote of 60 to 38.

In America, May Day is typically a violent observance. Its purpose is to serve as a rallying point for communists and socialists. Despite that, it hasn’t been that difficult to take the focus off the plight of American workers on May 1 over the years. Perhaps this is because America has never been a left-of-center country perpetually boiling over with class resentment. Americans don’t care much about labor issues or the labor movement because it hasn’t done anything for them.

Like every president since Dwight Eisenhower, President Trump declared May 1 Loyalty Day. In his proclamation, Trump said Loyalty Day is meant “to express our country’s loyalty to individual liberties, to limited government, and to the inherent dignity of every human being.” Last year President Obama used his Loyalty Day proclamation to blather on about “our diversity” and about the importance of delivering a “fairer Nation to the next generation.”

In the late 19^th century, the Left hijacked May Day, a perfectly good ancient celebration of spring and fertility in the British Isles and elsewhere. It used to be a day of dancing around the maypole, singing, and eating cake.

May Day was celebrated in early America but today it is largely forgotten in this country. And so it was easy for the Left to fill this cultural vacuum and co-opt May Day for its own anti-American purposes.

And with Democrats and the rest of the Left in disarray after Hillary Clinton’s surprise defeat in November, radical immigration activists were seemingly able to wrest May Day away from organized labor this year.

This year’s May Day observances ranged from indifferent to conspicuously hostile to American workers as organizers used May 1 to largely ignore the plight of native workers pushed out of their jobs by cheaper illegal alien labor. The so-called rights of illegal alien workers took center stage yesterday.

On “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson mocked leftist campaigners for sounding like agents of the pro-open borders, pro-immigration amnesty U.S. Chamber of Commerce and for refusing to condemn illegal alien workers for driving wages down and leaving legally present workers unemployed or underemployed.

Steven Choi, executive director of the George Soros-funded New York Immigration Coalition, wasted a valuable prime time spot on Carlson’s Fox News Channel show ducking questions about how immigrants put downward pressure on wages.

“Immigrants are part of the solution,” said Choi as he spat out platitudes and pro-open borders talking points. Immigrants come in and help to stabilize neighborhoods, he added.

In Chicago, all six locations of the El Guero supermarket chain and all nine locations of Carnicerias Jimenez closed out of solidarity with illegal aliens. “We oppose the criminalization of immigrants! We all have rights that we are going to exercise!” said a Spanish-language post on El Guero’s Facebook page, the Chicago Tribune reports.

New York’s communist mayor, Bill de Blasio, spent the day trying to infect others with Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Everything Donald Trump wants to do, I have a simple message: No, you can’t! No se puede!” he said at a rally.

Leftists rioted in Portland, Ore., throwing “lead balls, smoke bombs, paint, glass bottles and full cans of Pepsi” at police, according to reports. Police said “anarchists” committed acts of violence and property damage and one police car was destroyed by rioters. Rioters also set fires and threw fireworks and Molotov cocktails.

In Austin, Texas illegal alien advocates staged a sit-in at the office of Gov. Greg Abbott (R) over legislation that cracks down on sanctuary cities in that state that harbor illegal aliens.

Outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Francisco, protesters blocked an intersection and a driveway. In Los Angeles, thousands reportedly marched bearing signs reading “No human is illegal!” and “Sanctuary now!” near City Hall.

Radicals have been galvanized in recent weeks by the rhetoric of President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions about deporting illegal aliens and punishing local jurisdictions that shield illegals from ICE or obstruct immigration enforcement efforts.

The International Migrants Alliance found the time to issue a nonsensical denunciation of the president, claiming his bid to enforce immigration laws is somehow pitting “the U.S. working class against migrant workers and refugees,” a move that necessitates “creat[ing] bridges, not bans or walls, to connect our struggles together.”

But radicals and the illegals themselves have little reason to be anxious: President Trump is fighting an uphill battle against Republican squishes in Congress like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

The newly agreed upon $1 trillion-plus spending package that will keep the federal government operating through the Sept. 30 fiscal year-end contains no funding for Trump’s promised border wall with Mexico or for a crackdown on lawless sanctuary cities that let criminals like MS-13 gang members run wild.

If – and only if – President Trump manages to get Congress onboard with his program, then the radical leftists and illegal alien defenders will have good reason to panic.