As I walk up the stairs into Groppi’s Italian Grocery, I spy the historic site of the Iron Rolling Mill. Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood used to be a simple company town. Everything about the neighborhood’s layout, including Groppi’s, is built based on where the Iron Mill once stood. Like the German and Polish immigrants who worked its smelting ovens, Italians came to Bay View for work and brought with them their food.
Doc, Groppi’s butcher, greets me. It is morning so he doesn’t have to ask, “What can I get you?” He knows to start weighing out breakfast sausages. “Peggy was in here yesterday,” he says. “We talked politics and May Day.” Peggy is Margret Rozga, a local champion for fair housing in Milwaukee.
Doc and I both know Peggy’s story. She is a living legend. She was born and raised on Milwaukee’s South Side. It wasn’t until she started studying at Alverno College that she understood that her neighbors’ rights were being violated. Peggy had no recourse but to act. “It wasn’t a question of why I would get involved, It was a question of why wouldn’t I get involved.”
By April 11, 1968, Peggy’s fight had led to the Fair Housing Act. Now, 58 years later, Peggy isn’t on the picket line but she still shops at Groppi’s. Like me, she talks politics with Doc at the butcher counter. “It might be time for us to pick up the march,” Doc says, handing me my package of breakfast sausages. “I think it’s our turn.”
Emerging from brutal winter in Minneapolis, buds of hope
There has been an awakening this spring. Both Doc and I can feel it. It is not just the buds on the flowering pear trees, it’s political. Springing up in my neighbors’ front yards is the promise of democracy reborn. Yard signs share a message of resistance to a would-be monarch: ICE Out MKE. No Kings!
The winter was brutal and bitter. We stood in stark solidarity with the brave people of Minneapolis. We made whistle packets and signs. We learned songs of resistance and practiced holding a picket line. We prepared ourselves physically and spiritually for a federal invasion and then … a victory?
We dare not call it that. It would be better to touch wood and throw a pinch of rock salt over our collective shoulders. And still the winter has thawed and May Day approaches. A righteous rebuke of the mad king comes in the form of another win on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Walking home from Groppi’s, I go out of my way to pass the pear trees where the Iron Rolling Mill once stood. The trees were planted to remind us of the German and Polish immigrants that gathered in front of the factory on May Day, 1886.
Working conditions were terrible. Iron puddlers worked 12 hour shifts alongside ovens that reached 160 degrees. The puddlers’ demands now seem modest. Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will. These immigrants inspired all subsequent May Days, including this year’s. These were the immigrants that started the march.
‘Day Without Immigrants’ a reminder in Spanish
On May Day 2006, the cry for justice and for decent living conditions changed from German to Spanish. The language changed but the message remained the same. Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo. “Only the people save the people.” This was the first Day without Immigrants. The march endured.
I teach English as a Second Language with members of my church. We meet on Thursdays. There are about 10 church members who tutor. There are about 30 people who are learning to speak English. No one wants to go home at the end of class. We all linger in the classroom, students and tutors alike. Pictures of dogs and grandchildren are shared. We see hometowns and villages where people grew up. We have been meeting all winter and now it is April. We talk politics and make plans. May Day is soon.
The ghosts of patriots past swirl around us. They whisper into the ear of my butcher. They are the immigrants of 1886. They march with the patriots of Milwaukee’s fair housing movement, the Day without Immigrants, and today’s Common Council’s ICE Out legislation.
The call is for a democracy re-born. It is a democracy that recognizes that our welfare is inextricably linked to our neighbors. Our ability to create a better government, to form a more perfect union, is tenuous but it is blossoming. None of us can do it alone. We must act together. On May 1st, the march resumes. Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.
Michael Pointer Mace is a proud Milwaukeean, a member of the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee and Voces de la Frontera’s New American Program.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘Day Without Immigrants’ has deeper meaning in Trump era | Opinion
Reporting by Michael Pointer Mace, Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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