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New Orleans Hospitality Workers Demand Protections At May Day Protest

A homemade banner is draped over a van at a May Day rally in Mid City, New Orleans. May 1, 2020.
Travis Lux
/
WWNO
A homemade banner is draped over a van at a May Day rally in Mid City, New Orleans. May 1, 2020.

Hospitality workers took to the streets Friday afternoon calling for free healthcare and expanded unemployment benefits, among other demands.

In observance of May Day, the international workers rights holiday, dozens of socially-distanced protesters lined up in cars and on bikes in a Mid City New Orleans parking lot.

Before rolling into the streets, organizers with the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance outlined their demands. Among them: free healthcare and testing for hospitality workers, hazard pay and access to protective gear, housing as a human right, and unemployment assistance through the end of 2020.

“We are saying workers will not die for capitalist profits,” one organizer said through a megaphone from the roof of a parked car.

Malcolm Suber attends the May Day rally in Mid City from his car, as a social distancing measure. May 1, 2020.
Credit Travis Lux / WWNO
/
WWNO
Malcolm Suber attends the May Day rally in Mid City from his car, as a social distancing measure. May 1, 2020.

The protest comes as business leaders and some elected officials push to reopen the state’s economy.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday he’d hoped to let the statewide stay-at-home order expire and begin the first phase of reopening today but, after examining the data and talking to experts, determined the state was not ready.

Instead, Edwards extended the stay-at-home order until May 15. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s city-wde stay-at-home order expires May 16.

Copyright 2020 WWNO - New Orleans Public Radio

Travis Lux primarily contributes science and health stories to Louisiana's Lab. He studied anthropology and sociology at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, and picked up his first microphone at the Transom Story Workshop in Woods Hole, MA. In his spare time he loves to cook -- especially soups and casseroles.
Travis Lux
Travis is WWNO's coastal reporter.