Protests To The Left Of Me, Protests To The Right Of Me

May 1 has been designated as official protest day, and there are two big ones I am keeping an eye on.

First one is in Puerto Rico, where 45 government agencies shut down today due to lack of funds to bankroll them for the last 2 months of the fiscal year. That means that, officially, as of this morning, my mother, a teacher of 14 years, is unemployed and will not get paid her next four checks. That is the case of an estimated 95,000 public employees, of which 40,000 constitute the entire Dept. of Education.

See those people below? They're teachers awaiting their last paycheck along with a letter stating they are unemployed with which they will be able to apply for Unemployment and possibly Food Stamps.

The whole government body--Governor, Senators and Representants--should hang their head in shame for allowing this travesty. They are all equally at fault here, and now the people are paying the price. Shame on you (trust me, I want to say stronger stuff, but I'll keep it PG).

The other protests (cause they're more than one) are those going on in support of the immigrants in the US and against the proposed immigration reforms. I'm going to save my opinion on the whole immigration bru-ha-ha for a later time, though I will say this: I think that everyone in this country of ours should remember and keep very much in mind what is written on the sign below: The USA was founded by immigrants. I feel a large number of people in the US conveniently forget about that.