The other side of May 1 - Day without immigrants in SFO

I was lucky enough to remember that yesterday was Wednesday and to call my friend Marilyn in San Francisco. We always chat on her day off about anything and everything. So I mentioned the demonstrations from Monday.

Yes, she replied, that was my store on TV Monday night on NBC as the throngs went strolling through downtown near City Hall. She mentioned that her store would have been closed if all the immigrant workers there had taken the day off. In her department, about 75% of the employees are immigrants -- from Singapore, the Philippines, Macao, China and Hong Kong.

Fortunately to her amusement, many of the marchers forgot the boycott part (Organizers asked participants not to buy anything anywhere, too, that day). Her store was swamped with all sorts of folks picking up the latest goodies on sale. A few of the regulars (mainly homeless customers) got picked up for shoplifting. They thought it was an opportunity (with all the excess people running around the store) to do a little splurge shopping.