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'This Is A New Day': Hundreds March In May Day Rally For Immigrant Rights

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Roughly a half-dozen May Day protests converged on City Hall on Monday as part of a collective effort to rally for immigrant rights, low wage workers and much more.

Hundreds of peaceful demonstrators held signs that read "Dismantle ICE," "No Wall," "End Racism and "Black Lives Matter." The diverse group of protesters from all areas in the city included teachers, restaurant workers, undocumented workers, ex-offenders and more.

"None of us will win, unless we are unified together," said Erika Almironm who runs Juntos, an immigrants rights group that helped organized the mass protests. She says immigrant businesses shut down, people brought children and took off work to be part of the rally.

"This is one of the first times that I've seen people come together on the issue of criminalization, over incarceration, deportation standing side by side and realizing that our fights are one," she said.

Shani Akilah of Black and Brown Workers Collective says people of color are uniting with the immigrant community.

"We will not allow ICE, we will not allow Trump, we will not allow a system bent on Genocide to take our comrades," Akilah told the crowd. "This is a new day."

Undocumented immigrants told stories of raids and deportation. LGBTQ spoke of discrimination and low-wage workers spoke of hardships. Barbara-- an airport workers-- took the day off to march.

"People need to know what's going on at the airport and what's going on in the whole city with all these workers and all these immigrants," she said. "They are not getting treated fairly."

Philadelphia police had a strong presence, but said the protests were without incident.

Organizers say the next step is a Get Out The Vote effort for Election Day.

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