By Donna Westfall January 29, 2017 – Trump signed orders Friday, January 27th, that suspends all refugee entries into the United States for the next 120 days, indefinitely blocks all Syrian refugees, and bars entry for 90 days to all immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Dozens of protesters inside Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) including the members from the Service Employees International Union, (SEIU) held signs and chanted “Hay hay. Ho ho. White Supremacy has got to go.”. One sign read, “Mexicans for Muslims.” More blocked Century Boulevard, the main thoroughfare to the airport.
The event was organized by the SEIU, and Los Angeles-area legislators Jimmy Gomez, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Cristina Garcia and Miguel Santiago were expected to join. “The SEIU in California is among the organizations leading a defiant resistance to Trump’s racist, sexist, and xenophobic agenda,” a news release announcing the event read. “Protests in support of immigrants around the nation demonstrate Trump’s immoral executive orders are serving only to unite Americans against his hateful and unpatriotic agenda.”
The SEIU in Del Norte County recently rejected a 6% increase when the SEIU wanted 9%.
In a statement read by President Trump, “Establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United Staes of America. We don’t want them here. We want to insure we are not admitting into our country the very threat our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people.”
The order also directs the secretary of Homeland Security to conduct a 30-day review to determine which countries do not provide “adequate information” for its citizens to be issued visas to enter the US.
Even though our California legislature approved a $15/hour minimum wage within a few years, on Tuesday, January 31st, there’s another scheduled labor demonstration as part of a nationwide call for higher wages for hourly workers. Rallies by members of the Service Employees International Union 721, Janitors for Justice and Fight for $15 will likely create gridlock and headaches for travelers at LAX and more than a dozen other major airports. Also, McDonalds workers near downtown LA walked off their job to bring attention to their grievances.
The shift from protests about refugees to protests by minimum wage workers is going to affect travelers at LAX.
