NOTES AND TESTIMONIOS FROM THE MAY DAY WORKERS MARCH
YAKIMA, WASHINGTON, 2025: A REPORT
May Day, 2025
I.
This is Miller’s Park. It is May Day
and these are my people.
It has been May Day for a long time.
These are the Signs of the times, OK.
Here it’s all prayers and dancing.
The hours before the March.
These are my people.
This is my community.
Our stories are documented
and we are a people of great faith.
We are inclusive.
Aquí es mi testimonio.
II.
After making my sign, driving to the park,
asking myself, Why change parks?--
Why not Henry Beauchamp Park like always?
Learning later from Lucero Méndez,
LatinX co-chair, Cesar Chavez stopped
here in 86, Miller Park. Memory animates
us. I’m early to walk through tables,
see and record. First sign Beckoning:
¡CUANDO LUCHAMOS,
GANAMOS!
WHEN WE FIGHT,
WE WIN!
UFCW3000.
Necesitas Una Unión? Need a Union?
206.414.9601. Blue, Yellow, White,
Colors of Ukraine stopping my breath.
United Food and Commercial Workers International.
Beckoning. Drawn in like that.
My good neighbor’s good dog, Beckon.
Good dog, Beckon. Good dog.
May my sign, too, speak to what’s loyal.
Sube a nacer conmigo, Hermano.
Neruda with me on cardboard,
Brown oil ink Sharpies, black outline,
Iqualdad, Dignidad, Justicia,
luminating blue oil. 2025.
May Day! May Day!
Turtle Island in turquoise,
may there be natural boundaries
for all of us. Gary Snyder
bows before Don Pablo
ascending Machhu Pichhu,
signing my sign, saying my name.
The back side of this sign
from last week’s march:
Se hace camino al andar--
Antonio Machado backing Neruda.
Walking you make the road.
Caminantes somos,
y en el camino, andamos--
refrane learned from a taxi
decades ago in Nayarit.
Surrounded by angels on cardboard I pray
will surround us on the street.
III.
Other signs, other tables.
Las alturas de Macchu Pichhu.
Between the ridges in Yakima Valley.
I’m with YIRN.
Yakima
Immigration Response Network.
A reporter with a notebook. A citizen.
Are those credentials?
I’m with YIRN,
but this is a park with many tables.
If there’s no dignity for workers,
what’s left for me?
Larry, the militant, here
with a table full of books.
His newspaper in two languages:
El Militante. Turn it over and around,
and it’s The Militant. For five bucks
I get twelve issues sent to my door.
Dulce Gutierrez, former council
woman, calls for amnesty for all.
Libros para la lucha obrera.
How did you get here?
By accident. I’m one of 15 children.
●
Here’s a sign, and here.
Black background, Green cutout
letters, sans serif, like my teacher
used to make for bulletin boards,
HANDS OFF. Five cutout hands
in white, purple paper pasted
on palms, hand-lettering,
single word on each hand,
Schools, Libraries, Democracy,
Voting Rights, Judges, Constitution.
Sign on a stick. Woman in her fifties
standing behind it, both hands
crossed over each other, back
from the crowd, in hat.
String pulled taut under chin,
eyes open, listening maybe?
Here’s another: Green flag
draped over a man’s back.
Territorio de derechos:
No te Metas. Raíz,
side by side with Planned
Parenthood, Lettering
made from white garden
flowers in sunlight.
●
A mother with a baby stroller.
The child with an American flag
in each hand, waving. This,
Immigrant Rights are Human Rights.
Citizenship Ambassador. Save Our
Social Security and Medicare:
We paid for it. Speak up
while you still can—with photos
of family members taking turns.
Respect the Rule of Law.
Put ICE in coolers
Not on the street.
Keep families together.
(Over and Over in 10,000 ways.)
A busload of Seattle Postal Workers.
One America with justice for all.
Those soft cotton tshirts.
Marching for Immigrant Equal Rights--
It Began in the Delano Grape Fields
A photo of Larry Itliong: 1913-1977.
A history lesson in the Park!
MayDay! International Worker’s Day.
Another photo from 1965,
Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong together
beginning UFW-CIO uniting.
Woman in white tshirt with a YIRN button
(More on YIRN in a minute),
Free the...covered up by sign,
sun glasses, purple brim, red lipstick,
fiercely beautiful. This hand-written
acrostic, Donald John Trump left side
in black letters—middle aged daughter
giving her mother’s testimony: Mom wins
these sign painting contests!
Devilishly Demonic
Obviously Odious
Notoriously Narcissistic
All Around Asshole
Lewdly Lame Loud Mouth Lier!
Disgustingly Distrustful.
Do you want his middle name?
OK, a couple.
Obstinately Obdurate
Nauseously Nefarious
And Trump, terrifyingly terroristic
Repulsively Republican
Unlawfully UnAmerican
Menacingly Maniacal
Petrifyingly Putin-like
RESIST on the right in red.
Dump the Dog
Oh, this beautiful woman
holding the yellow cardboard
with graphic illustrations coming out
of hand-drawn words: To Learn
(her L is a magestic Saguaro Cactus)
who rules over you
find out who you are not
allowed to criticize,
citing Voltaire. With great smiling
dimples. Health Care for all workers.
We Are in a constitutional crisis now.
Prison without Due Process is a concentration camp.
The retired Air Force man
in the blue and yellow baseball cap
drove from Seattle, too. We swap
medevac stories from Vietnam.
He’s wearing the Woodstock 69 tshirt.
●
Yakima Immigration Response Network
(YIRN) has its own table. These are the people
who bring me along, lift me, and so many others,
up front, OK this disclaimer? Yearn,
the German word,
Sensucht, from C. S. Lewis
around the time I came home
from the army. I never
got over the word, can you
feel its presence in the poem?
--For Danielle Surkatty
AT THE YIRN TABLE
(Yakima Immigration Response Network)
Buttons, and people coming
to the table. A woman
with complicated signs,
her signs, too, calling for attention.
Protect your immigrant work force
and their rights, illustrated book
open to the field workers cutting
asparagus, rows leading back
all the way to Mt. St. Helens.
Post cards come with a tutorial.
Pick your issue. They’re printed.
Due Process for All, Stand Up
for Community, Immigrants
make America Great. I choose
five cards. And who do you
want to send them to? The Yirn
volunteer asks. She has printed
address labels all filled out,
from Representative Dan Newhouse
to Senators Murray and Cantwell.
County Commissioners, Which one?
Including City Council. Here are your stamps.
You can write your cards on the table.
Our leader, tenacious, she led us
through three years of ICE flights
at the airport, counting bodies,
tracking their safety from departure point
to destination. Concerned for well-
being, I always felt honored to be
in her presence, never as vigil,
but a body. On this table, piles
of the Red Cards, ready for distribution
to immigrants, Usted tiene derechos
constitucionales: White lettering, bulleted,
NO ABRA LA PUERTA NINGUNA PREGUNTA
si un agente de nmigración está tocando la puerta.
Usted tiene el derecho a guardar silencio.
Like that. In two languages. Cards available
to citizens and noncitizens alike.
Take as many as you need. Practice
again and again. It will help you
when the knock on the door arrives.
Show the card through the window,
or pass it underneath the door.
IV. A BECK AND A HINT
Almost a nod. This, too, a sign.
Call to attention. Non-verbal nature of beckon.
An indication—readiness to receive the divine.
Beck and hint. Beckon.
When words are insufficient—the urgency.
When Peter is freed from prison
he can’t believe it either.
Las cadenas cayeron de las manos.
The angel said, Get dressed,
calzate las sandalias. They went crazy
when he knocked on the door,
and he motions to them with his hands
to be quiet. Quedaron pasmados.
When the fish filled the nets
of the disciples, they signaled
to the others to come.
Any attack on the poor is a summons.
That good good dog, Beckon.
To be at your beck and call.
This is the sign, not of subservience.
Not of servile.
This is the invitation of the eyes
to fill your boat, to harvest the fish.
V. TWO PRIESTS WALK INTO THE PARK,
wearing collars, dressed in black.
It’s warm and maybe they’ve wandered over from St. Joe’s.
No. I’m wrong. This is my small faith reporting.
Vamos caminar juntos como hermanos
en el camino del Señor.
Why am I not listening to the song?
Padre Jesus Mariscal and Bishop Joseph Tyson.
They are here to bless the workers. Bendiciones.
Gracias por el don inmigrantes.
Todos aquí pueden discutir los dones de trabajadores y campesinos.
It is our workers, documented and undocumented alike
that make America great.
People are nervous and afraid. Staying home.
Obispo Tyson tells us his grandfather was a baker
in Yakima Valley. His grandfather formed a union.
I listen to the woman sitting beside me. I know her
from La Casa Hogar. She is a family friend.
Now they want you to self deport.
Now they’ll pay you a thousand dollars to leave.
Other times we came we had open doors.
Now we have to lock our offices.
There will be a misa tonight, A mass.
It will be the misa de soda pop.
There will be a pachanga, too, in the church.
But the dance will be after the mass.
My friend says the priests have ears for the people.
VI. HERE WE ARE BETWEEN THE RIDGES
Between the Ridges is another force.
Between the Ridges is a display of the land.
Between the Ridges
Between the Ridges says it best.
The nonprofit mirroring Yirn.
The Valley entire.
Native people, Anglican priest.
Lower Valley roots to Campbell Farm.
Describing the Valley. From the edge
of eastern Cascades, with the series
of ridges dividing, and the Yakima River
running through it, traditional lands
of Yakima nation, including
borders and barriers that separate.
Forming communities with open eyes.
A listening community
with ears for the people.
Third ear listening. A learning community
for the common good, saying this:
We won’t save places we don’t love.
Saying this: We don’t know places
we haven’t learned. With Yirn:
Defending immigrant and refugees.
Hope is our resistance. Our fabric.
VII. THE AZTEC DANCERS
Ceatl Atonalli,
Mexica culture, Aztec
who established Tenochtitlan
entering the park
circling in a circle
blessing the four directions
holding me within their feathers by chance
Huehuétl and teponaztle drums
carved in sound
Ayoyote rattles, sea shells,
Ayoyote on their ankles
Vibrations in the grass
There is a why
We carry a why in the dancing
A carried why within
VIII. THE MARCH THROUGH DOWNTOWN
--The word advocate has Latin origins, derived from advocatus. One called
to aid, coming in turn from advocare, to summons or invite. The noun advocate
entered English through Middle French as avocat, and advocate followed later, around 1640s.
How many of you like to walk fast,
like speed walkers, raise your hands.
Good. You guys will be in the back,
because this march is going slow
through downtown Yakima.
How we start
and starting with our Why
All of us blessed carrying our why
within, our beating hearts are signs
and our signs all of them
a kind of why within
and seen for who we dancing are
Jim Bodeen
Storypath/Cuentocamino
May Day—8 May 2025
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