Miguel Alvelo

Photo by Raven Geary

Miguel Alvelo, a community organizer, marches through a Chicago neighborhood for "Unemployment Day" on October 3, 2020.

'Tax the Rich! Feed the Poor!': Activists in Chicago Are Raising a Voice for the Unemployed

On the city’s first ‘Unemployment Day,’ the streets tell a tale of a city divided.

by

Brunch in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood was interrupted by a Puerto Rican worker-inspired march on Saturday, October 3. Diners sipped margaritas while joining in chants of “Tax the rich! Feed the poor!” 

But the dividing line between server and those being served was as stark as ever. 

“The idea is to expose the contradiction of having a Labor Day—a day that supposedly celebrates labor—in a society and a country that obviously does not care for its workers, and is not able to tend to their basic needs,” said Miguel Alvelo, a community organizer. 

Alvelo and other organizers were inspired by the Puerto Rican “Unemployment Day,” an unofficial holiday celebrated on September 7, the nation’s official Labor Day. 

Last month, the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (Socialist Workers Movement) held demonstrations in San Juan to call attention to Puerto Rico’s drastically high levels of poverty and inequality. The island nation’s economic woes, spawned by colonization, have only been exacerbated further by the coronavirus pandemic, as activists in Puerto Rico say hundreds of thousands of unemployment aid claims have been either ignored or filed with mistakes. Many Puerto Ricans, much like workers in the Midwest, have turned to the gig economy to make ends meet this year. 

Decades before the Puerto Rican holiday emerged, jobless workers and members of the Communist Party coordinated an “International Unemployment Day” in response to the devastation of the Great Depression. On March 6, 1930, riots erupted in multiple cities across the globe; in Chicago, where workers faced ten days of police repression and arrests at their demonstrations, one march was reportedly attended by fifty thousand. 

Alvelo, co-chair of Chicago Boricua Resistance, lost his own job as an indirect result of the COVID-19 pandemic, when funding for the community engagement program he worked for fell by the wayside. Now, like millions of others, Alvelo faces a job hunt that feels like searching for water in the desert. 

In Chicago’s Union Park, a municipal park just steps away from the police union headquarters, activists organized mutual aid stations before the rally. Defunding the police and re-routing that funding to social support services was a leading message of the protest. 

Working class mutual aid networks have always existed informally, especially in intergenerational households. Since the onset of the pandemic, however, Chicagoans have noticed a dire need for more organized forms of assistance in their neighborhoods, as they have been left to fend for themselves with little relief from the state.

In Black and brown communities, sharing food, rides, and financial support among friends and neighbors has long been a fundamental way of life, with a history dating back to the Underground Railroad. 

A recent study by the Aspen Institute found that thirty to forty million Americans are currently at risk of eviction, and that 80 percent of them are Black or Latinx. 

In Chicago, community groups have begun coordinating eviction defense trainings as the financial pressure on renters mounts. Last week, according to Chicago Tenants Movement organizers, a training session was interrupted by the very thing they are mobilizing against—an illegal eviction. 

On September 16, lllinois Governor J. B. Pritzker announced yet another extension on evictions, this time prolonging the statewide ban until October 22. Chicagoans who have faced job loss or pay cuts as a result of the coronavirus pandemic have been promised an additional two months of protection by the City Council, but rumors of evictions proceeding anyway have left many fearing they may be left out in the cold this winter. 

Stories of evictions and layoffs were all too common at the rally. 

Jamey Arnold suddenly lost her job at a large health care nonprofit in June. 

“The only reason I had a heads up that I might be part of it is because another co-worker heard some things they weren’t supposed to hear,” Arnold said. Her family and friends have struggled with layoffs and underemployment as well. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my team.”

Arnold is a member of Social Service Workers United. She said of the collective, “We don’t want to be the shield between the poor and the rich that social services is often positioned as. We want to align ourselves with working class poor folks, Black and brown communities, LGBTQ communities, and other oppressed communities.”

While the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the American economy, demonstrators highlighted how low wages and an utterly broken social safety net predate the pandemic. 

Since the 1970s, the labor share of income in the United States—a figure that measures the portion of our GDP paid out in the form of wages, salaries and benefits—has been in a state of freefall. The factors leading to this decline are complex and multifaceted, but one study found that technological displacement of labor and an instability in real estate markets are both implicated. Activists point to the structural flaws of capitalism as a primary cause, flaws that can only be rectified by reenvisioning a society with robust, functioning social programs, including Medicare for All and free higher education. 

“The root of the problem is we live in a capitalist society whose only motivation is creating profit on top of profit,” Alvelo said. “And that is not possible without exploitation, destruction, and death. We want death to be over.”