Hundreds of people filled the mall in front of the Oregon State Capitol Building May 1 to serve notice they will not be bullied by the Trump administration’s brute-squad approach to immigration.
“There’s an extra element of fear because of the current administration and the anti-immigrant sentiment, but we’re making sure our community is resilient, and people know their rights,” a rally participant told Street Roots.
He refused to give his name. So did a lot of other people.
Resilient and defiant as people may be, Reyna Lopez told Street Roots, fear is inevitable.
Lopez is the executive director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, and her Woodburn-based farmworkers union has been taking the opportunity of May Day to rally people around the farm labor movement and immigrant rights for more than 30 years.
“I’m not going to lie,” Lopez said. “There’s definitely a fear that’s been out there, but people also want to know what they can do. We know that when we come together and have power in numbers, it really is a lot more difficult to target people.”
PCUN leaders hired uniformed security guards for the rally to soothe concerns about agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, staging a raid.
The Salem youth group Latinos Unidos Siempre also sent trained human rights observers.
Latinos Unidos Siempre’s core mission is to empower youth through leadership development and grassroots organizing while fighting against institutional oppression.
Director Sandra Hernandez told Street Roots the organization’s human rights observers are part of a grassroots effort to help communities understand how to document interactions with police, ICE and hate groups, so they can protect people who are targeted.
“We are also neutral witnesses,” Hernandez said. “We’re like legal observers, but we’re not trained by lawyers. We’re trained at a grassroots level. Our team responds to ICE raids locally. We have a rapid response hotline. People call. We show up. We document ICE interactions and ICE attempting to take community members.”
The rally seemed free of ICE agents. If they did pull any police-state tactics at the rally, they would have done it in front of Gov. Tina Kotek. Not on her watch, she told the crowd.
“As the federal government wages unlawful attacks on our immigrant communities that threaten our values and our right to govern ourselves, I want you to know that I will not back down from the fight,” Kotek told the rally-goers.
“I believe to the depths of my being that our immigrant communities make us stronger,” she said. “Oregon will not be bullied into violating our principles and our laws. Oregon will continue to honor the long history of being a sanctuary state.”
ICE was not the only topic at the rally, but it cast a long shadow over the Capitol mall.
Tiffany Vu of Salem came to promote a boycott of Avelo Airlines, the only airline that operates out of the Salem-Willamette Valley Airport with connections to Eugene, Bend, Redmond and Medford.
Avelo executives announced a contract to start operating deportation flights for ICE this month. CEO Andrew Levy said in an April 30 statement to National Public Radio that he took the contract to save jobs at his company.
“It’s not a great feeling knowing they’re the only airline that serves Salem,” Vu told Street Roots. “Any time we fly with them we support fascism. The boycott effort is to let the city know we won’t stand for that.”
Rallies at the airport are being planned, said Vu. Meanwhile, she urges people to contact their state senators and representatives. Vu added that she learned about the Avelo contract from news reports.
“I was pretty grossed out and thought this is something I can actually effectively oppose because this is something that affects my community,” she said.
The community outreach manager for PCUN, Tomás Bartolo, told Street Roots that while ICE is scary, mass deportations are not the only issue facing Oregon’s farmworkers.
“We’re helping our community members participate in the policy-making process,” Bartolo said. “Collective bargaining rights are still a need, but we understand there are a lot of other ways we can organize through the Legislature. That goes beyond collective bargaining to changing the rules and changing the laws.”
Cynthia Ramirez, a policy associate for the farmworkers union, told Street Roots she has been pressing hard for House Bill 3193 – which would require the Oregon Health Authority to create a permanent farmworker disaster relief program.
The bill was passed 4-1 March 24 (with state Rep. Anna Scharf, R-Dallas, voting against it) out of the House Committee on Labor and Workplace Standards and is now in the hands of the Joint Ways and Means Committee before it can be voted on by the full House.
“Farmworkers often feel forced to decide between working outside in extremely dangerous conditions or missing out on a paycheck while being one of the lowest-paid groups of workers in the country,” Ramirez said.
“In Oregon, the average farmworker makes $34,500 annually and lives paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “We really want to protect the health of farmworkers.”
Other bills this session affecting farmworkers include House Bill 3194 to hold bootleg cannabis growers liable when their land is used for illegal labor camps. House Bill 2548 would create a Farmworker Standards Board to set industry-wide standards for pay, working conditions and training.
“That is our first shot at trying to create a bargaining board for farmworkers,” Lopez said of the latter bill. She added the bill will likely go through a lot of unwelcome changes before it makes its way out of the Capitol.
“We’re hoping we can use other sessions to keep working on it,” she said.
PCUN began in 1985 and focused primarily on creating union contracts for workers. It has since found the political muscle to help pass legislation guaranteeing farmworkers overtime compensation, paid sick days, increased minimum wages and the right to refuse dangerous work.
“These aren’t just laws or policies on pieces of paper,” Kotek said. “They are a recognition that our state’s prosperity should benefit all who contribute to it.”
PCUN flexed its muscles again April 28 when union leaders filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for sending ICE to schools, churches and hospitals.
“We’re saying, ‘Hell no!’” Lopez told the May Day crowd.
Lopez said May Day is a tradition that goes back generations where poor, working-class and exploited people fought for a better future.
“The national slogan today is: ‘One Struggle, One Fight, All Workers Unite!’” she said. “It’s a call to action to ensure justice for every worker, no matter their immigration status.”
Bartolo told Street Roots he understands people’s fear.
“There’s going to be that fear for at least the next four years, but we all have to work together,” he said.
“There’s no other way,” he added. “As a former farmworker who comes from a family of farmworkers, I’m deeply connected to this work. I just believe that if we all work together, we can have a better society.”
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This article appears in May 7, 2025.