May Day March 2026
Workers Over Billionaires! MAY DAY. Together We Stand.
March for workers’ rights!
Stand up against ICE!
Friday, May 1, 4-6pm
Gather at Public Square (southwest quadrant in front of Terminal Tower)
Organizer: May Day Coalition-Cleveland. https://maydaycoalitionproject.substack.com/about
Link to the event here: https://www.mobilize.us/mayday/event/921516/
See the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/share/17N3UFGmDv/
For more than four decades, IRTF has welcomed dozens of interns who have helped carry forward our mission of promoting peace, human rights and systemic transformation across the Americas. Each year, our interns enter the living legacy of IRTF: never-ending advocacy, organizing, and accompaniment. Their experiences, like those of Lucia and Maddie, remind us of the importance of this work and of forming the next generation of justice seekers.
Maddie: As a small organization and a tight-knit community, IRTF’s support is direct. This summer, we accompanied migrants to their immigration hearings, speaking with them in a mix of broken English and Spanish, learning their stories and offering them support and companionship. We connected with other community groups to learn how we could best inform local migrant and refugee families through Know Your Rights training. We challenged our own comfort and security by attempting to take on the fear and uncertainty faced by the migrant community.
Lucia: IRTF has been an indispensable part of discerning the world I want to live in, the role I will have in that, and the way I hope to go about it. This haven of social justice, activism, and human-centered civic engagement has become the foundation on which I hope to build a lifetime of advocacy and purposeful action.
Please read more from the reflections of student interns Maddie and Lucia.
We’re excited to announce that Equal Exchange will be donating a portion of their sales to IRTF when you shop their online store during 2026.
To shop Equal Exchange click here. Find organic and fairly traded coffees, teas, chocolate, cocoa, nuts, dried fruits, and even olive oil—all from small farmer co-ops, available by the case for stocking up.
Promo code: IRTFDonate . Enter this code when you check out and Equal Exchange will donate 10% of your purchase back to IRTF!
Equal Exchange was founded as a solidarity organization in 1986 to support small farmers in Nicaragua by importing their coffee despite the US embargo. Forty years later, this worker-owned co-op continues to prove that a more democratic food system is possible.
To shop Equal Exchange click here
IRTF is grateful to our volunteers who staff our tables to educate the public about crucial human rights issues facing communities in Central America and Colombia and sell artisan fair trade handiworks to raise vital income for their families!
Volunteers can sign up for a shift here https://signup.com/go/AMNsFch or email volunteer@irtfcleveland.org.
The public is invited to attend this annual Fair Trade Festival at Church of the Gesu.
When Donald Trump returned to office on 20 January last year, he began rolling out a draconian migration policy that has effectively ended access to asylum at the US-Mexico border and shaken up migration dynamics throughout Latin America.
One of the first moves the Trump administration made was to shut down a pathway to seek asylum in the US for people in Mexico using a cellphone application called CBP One. In a matter of minutes, about 300,000 people in the app’s pipeline, including Mario Torres, found themselves stranded.
Mario left South America in September 2024. He traversed the Darién Gap – the lawless and dangerous stretch of jungle connecting Colombia and Panama. In Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, his money ran low and travelling wore him down. In Veracruz, Mexico, he was shot by men who wanted to rob or kidnap him. Mario eventually made it to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey in January 2025, but by then it was already too late.
The New Humanitarian has spent much of the past 15 months reporting throughout Latin America, trying to piece together an answer to one pressing question: what happened to the 300,000 people who saw their dreams of a better life suddenly rebuffed when Trump returned to office?
The picture that emerged is of a situation very much still in flux: some people have returned home, others have run out of resources and have ended up stranded in various countries, while many are still searching for a place where they can find stability.
Since September 2025, the U.S. armed forces have killed more than 175 people aboard small boats in operations that the Trump administration characterizes as attacks against “narco-terrorists.” The newly formed Shield of the Americas coalition brings together 17 states, including Argentina, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, in a U.S.-led effort to coordinate military pressure against the cartels — a move that critics fear will further institutionalize these extrajudicial killings.
A new international outcry—a global coalition of 125 organizations issuing an urgent public appeal to all states to immediately cease all forms of support for US extrajudicial killings—underscores a shift from directly condemning U.S. actions to also holding third-party countries accountable for their role in these deadly attacks.
IRTF initiated our annual Social Justice Teach-In (aka Liberation Lab) in 1999. This spring we feel a great need to call together justice-minded folks who are committed to human rights, liberation, and respect and dignity for all people.
Every year for the past 26 years, this event has been an informative and inter-generational day of community building and education for high school and college students and other community members seeking ways to take positive action for social justice.
To buy tickets or become a sponsor, click here. To sign up for a volunteer shift, click here.
The Trump administration’s FY2027 budget combines a major defense buildup with sharp cuts to foreign aid, including a $12 billion reduction in diplomacy and assistance spending and a stronger focus on migration control and strategic leverage. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it shifts away from democracy and human-rights programming toward drug-war, anti-migration, and executive-controlled funding priorities.
The American immigration Council reports on ICE conractors' use of artifficial intelligence to track down immigrants.
This Austin Kocher report examines the unseen casualties of ICE's detention network, explaining how bureaucratic violence achieves to evade accountability for preventable death.
