National

A ‘day without immigrants’ planned for Thursday. Up next, a day without women.

By Brian Murphy

bmurphy@mcclatchy.com

February 15, 2017 06:43 PM

The protest march, a rejoinder to the inauguration of President Donald Trump, was the largest D.C. rally in years. Oliver Contreras For The Washington Post

Immigrant organizers are planning a general strike Thursday.

A “Day Without Immigrants” protests are planned across the United States, in response to Trump’s promises to build a wall across the country’s Southern border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Some schools and restaurants are planning to close Thursday to allow the students and workers to participate.

Celebrity chef Jose Andres plans to close his five restaurants, he told NPR.

“It was an easy decision,” said Andres, who emigrated to the United States in 1991 from Spain and is now a citizen. “It seems immigrants, especially Latinos, it seems we are under attack.”

Now, perhaps taking their cue from a “Day Without Immigrants,” organizers of the Women’s March have set March 8th for their next national event – General Strike: “A Day Without A Woman.”

March 8 is International Women’s Day.

February 14, 2017
">

The post indicates the strike is “in the spirit of women and their allies coming together for love and liberation.”

Millions of people participated in marches across the country and world on Jan. 21, one day after President Donald Trump took office. The march in Washington, D.C., was the largest, attracting hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.

The protesters did not have specific demands, though many objected to Trump, who was accused of sexual assault and/or harassment by nearly a dozen women who alleged the encounters occurred years before. Trump bragged about being able to kiss and touch women without their consent on a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that was released weeks before the election.

In an editorial in The Guardian, eight feminist activists wrote about the purpose of a strike.

“The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions. These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.”