Tens of thousands across the country peacefully chanted, picketed and protested Monday against President Donald Trump’s immigration and labor policies on May Day, despite a small pocket of violent unrest in the Pacific Northwest.

Peaceful protesters flocked to the streets in Chicago. At the White House gates, they demanded “Donald Trump has got to go!”

 

But police shut down a protest in Portland, Oregon, that they said had become a riot, after marchers began throwing smoke bombs and other items at officers. Police said they made more than two dozen arrests as a group of anarchists wearing black bandanas and ski masks grew unruly, reportedly breaking windows at businesses, setting fires on downtown streets and damaging a police car.

 

Five people in Seattle were arrested, one for hurling a rock as pro- and anti-Trump demonstrators faced off.

 

In the Washington state capital of Olympia, police ordered protesters to disperse, calling them “members of a mob” as some threw bottles, used pepper spray and fired marbles from slingshots at officers. Objects struck nine officers and nine people were arrested, according to Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts.

 

In Oakland, California, at least four were arrested after creating a human chain to block a county building where demonstrators demanded that county law enforcement refuse to collaborate with federal immigration agents.

 

Despite the West Coast clashes, most nationwide protests were peaceful as immigrants, union members and their allies staged a series of strikes, boycotts and marches to highlight the contributions of immigrants in the United States.

 

“It is sad to see that now being an immigrant is equivalent to almost being a criminal,” said Mary Quezada, a 58-year-old North Carolina woman who joined those marching on Washington.

 

She offered a pointed message to Trump: “Stop bullying immigrants.”

 

May 1 is International Workers’ Day and protesters from the Philippines to Paris celebrated by demanding better working conditions. But the widespread protests in the United States were aimed directly at the new president.

 

Trump, in his first 100 days, has intensified immigration enforcement, including executive orders for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and a ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries.

 

In Chicago, 28-year-old Brenda Burciaga was among thousands of people who marched through the streets to push back against the new administration.

 

“Everyone deserves dignity,” said Burciaga, whose mother is set to be deported after living in the U.S. for about 20 years. “I hope at least they listen. We are hardworking people.”

 

In cities large and small, the protests intensified throughout the day.

 

Teachers working without contracts opened the day by picketing outside schools in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Activists in Phoenix petitioned state legislators to support immigrant families.

 

Thousands of union members and activists marched in the shadow of some of the biggest resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, including a hotel that bears the president’s name.

 

In a Los Angeles park, several thousand people waved American flags and signs reading “love not hate.”

 

Selvin Martinez, an immigrant from Honduras with an American flag draped around his shoulders, took the day off from his job waxing casino floors to protest. “We hope to get to be respected as people, because we are not animals, we are human beings,” said Martinez, who moved to Los Angeles 14 years ago fleeing violence in his country.

 

The White House did not respond to requests for a response to the May Day demonstrations.

 

Several protesters, like 39-year-old Mario Quintero, outed themselves as being in the country illegally to help make their point.

 

“I’m an undocumented imigrant, so I suffer in my own experience with my family,” said Quintero at a Lansing, Michigan, rally. “That’s why I am here, to support not only myself but my entire community.”

 

In Miami, Alberto and Maribel Resendiz closed their juice bar, losing an estimated revenue of $3,000, to join a rally.

 

“This is the day where people can see how much we contribute,” said Alberto Resendiz, who previously worked as a migrant worker in fields as far away as Michigan. “This country will crumble down without us.”

 

He added, “We deserve a better treatment.”

 

In Providence, Rhode Island, about the same number of people gathered at Burnside Park before a two-hour protest that touched on deportation, profiling and wage theft.

 

In Oakland at a later march, more than 1,000 people marched peacefully representing labor groups along with Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino and other immigrants.

 

While union members traditionally march on May 1 for workers’ rights around the world, the day has become a rallying point for immigrants in the U.S. since massive demonstrations were held on the date in 2006 against a proposed immigration enforcement bill.

 

In recent years, immigrant rights protests shrank as groups diverged and shifted their focus on voter registration and lobbying. Larger crowds returned this year, prompted by Trump’s ascension to the presidency. 
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Oystermen, pirates and police clashed violently more than a century ago over who could collect the Chesapeake Bay’s tasty and lucrative oysters. As the shellfish makes a comeback, a modern-day oyster war is brewing, this time between wealthy waterfront property owners and working-class fishermen.

Over the past five years, oyster production has doubled on the East Coast, driven by new farming methods, cleaner water and Americans’ growing taste for orders on the half shell. The resurgence has led to unprecedented resistance from coastal Virginians who want to maintain picturesque views from their waterfront homes and has fueled a debate over access to public waterways.

“These people can’t have it all,” said Chris Ludford, an oysterman in Virginia Beach who sells to nearby farm-to-table restaurants.  

 

Ludford said he faces fierce pushback along a Chesapeake Bay tributary from people with “a $2,000 painting in their house of some old bearded oysterman tonging oysters.

 

“But they don’t want to look out their window and see the real thing,” he said.

Views spoiled, privacy lost

 Homeowners say the growing number of oystermen — dressed in waders and often tending cages of shellfish — spoil their views and invade their privacy. Residents also worry about less access to the water and the safety of boaters and swimmers.

 

Low tides often expose oyster cages, usually accompanied by markers or warning signs that protrude from the surface. In some places, cages float.

 

“All of sudden you have people working in your backyard like it was some industrial area,” said John Korte, a retired NASA aerospace engineer in Virginia Beach who’s among residents concerned about oyster farming’s proliferation. “They may be a hundred feet away from someone’s yard.”

 

Ben Stagg, chief engineer at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said the state is poised to break its record of leased acreage for oyster growing. But nearly 30 percent of more than 400 new lease applications face opposition, an unprecedented number that’s led to a backlog of leases awaiting approval.

 

 “Occasionally I can resolve those by having the parties get together and adjust the area further offshore,” Stagg said. “But oftentimes, I can’t.”

Oysters make a comeback

There hasn’t been this much interest in oysters in Virginia since the early 1960s. Since then, disease and overfishing took hold and growers started to disappear.

 

Over the last few decades, breeding programs have produced more disease-resistant and faster-growing oysters. The water’s cleaner. American palettes have evolved, increasing demand.  

 

Farming techniques also changed. Traditionally, oysters are grown on the bottom of a calm and salty river or bay, then harvested with tongs or dredges that pull them onto boats.  

 

Now, fishermen are increasingly using cages to grow oysters over a two-to-three year period. The equipment keeps predators away and produces oysters with a more uniform shape and size, which restaurants prefer.

 

 But the cages are often placed in shallower water closer to shore — and people’s homes.  

 

Virginia Beach is perhaps ground zero for today’s oyster war. The state’s largest city sits at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And oysters thrive in the city’s Lynnhaven River, a network of bays and creeks flowing past expensive homes. Lynnhaven oysters are well-known for their salty taste and size.

Solution is not easy to find

A state task force was formed to find compromise. It recommended giving residents more power to block nearby oyster leases. But the idea was rejected by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, with the majority of commissioners saying state lawmakers should step in.  

 

Proposals in the Statehouse have included raising the cost of an oyster farming lease from $1.50 an acre annually to $5,000. But legislators haven’t found a solution.  

 

Conflicts also have flared up along Maryland’s Patuxent River, the coastal lagoons of Rhode Island and on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.  

 

In Delaware, a group of people who mostly own vacation homes successfully blocked potential oyster farming along their part of an inland bay.

 

“Oftentimes, affluent and new members of the community have the point of view that they own the water in front of them, which is really not true,” said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association. “We need to win back our social license to farm.”

 

Rheault said he’s seen these battles “up and down the East Coast” — even before the crop began to double five years ago.

 

 “The industry was there before the waterfront mansions were built,” Rheault added. “But it hasn’t been there for this generation.”

 

Ludford, who also works as a Virginia Beach firefighter, is relatively new to the business. He and other relatives started growing oysters in 2010 after leaving the crab industry.

Is zoning the answer?

On a recent morning, Ludford sorted through cages as he stood in the Lynnhaven River, hundreds of yards from the nearest home.  

 

He dragged cages into view as grass shrimp wriggled on the shells. He and two helpers retrieved more than 500 oysters, which he sold at 75 cents apiece to three restaurants — totaling about $375.

“Really, people haven’t seen an oysterman behind their houses in 50 to 60 years,” Ludford said.

 

Steven Corneliussen, who owns a waterfront home in Poquoson, Virginia, said he’s among a group that successfully protested new leases along his corner of the Chesapeake. He said waterways should be subject to zoning, like land.     

 

“That water out in front of me doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “But it doesn’t belong to them, either.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump, after weeks of assailing North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions, said Monday he would be “honored” to meet with Pyongyang’s leader, Kim Jong Un, “under the right circumstances” to discuss the issue.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Trump declared, “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it. If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”

Trump added, “Most political people would never say that, but I’m telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news.”

Later, however, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said there is no Trump-Kim meeting in the offing, and it won’t occur unless North Korea ends its “provocative” behavior in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“I don’t see this happening anytime soon,” Spicer said of any meeting with Trump. “Those circumstances do not exist right now.”

Reclusive North Korea and its effort to build missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead and strike the U.S. mainland 9,000 kilometers away has become the biggest national security threat for the U.S. in the first months of Trump’s presidency.

The U.S. leader has dispatched a naval strike group to the waters off the Korean peninsula as a warning signal to North Korea against its nuclear program. A Japanese destroyer left port Monday to join the U.S. ships, as Tokyo takes a more active military role in the region.

Kim has never met with a foreign leader since assuming power after his father’s death in 2011 and hasn’t left his isolated country, not even to visit neighboring China, its prime economic benefactor. North Korea has condemned U.S. military drills in the region as acts of “intimidation and blackmail” and threatened to attack the lead U.S. ship off its shores, the USS Carl Vinson.

North Korea, in violation of United Nations sanctions, has continued to test ballistic missiles, the latest a failed launch last weekend. Pyongyang has also conducted five nuclear tests.

Trump, who has met numerous world leaders in Washington and at his oceanfront retreat in Florida during his three-plus months in office, has also yet to travel abroad as president. His willingness to meet with Kim came as U.S. Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo was in Seoul talking about the North Korean threat with South Korean intelligence officials and high-level presidential aides.

CIA chief in South Korea

Pompeo, traveling with his wife Susan, arrived in the South Korean capital over the weekend and met with the head of the National Intelligence Service.

Their meetings occurred hours before Pyongyang declared Monday that in the face of new U.S. pressure for U.N. sanctions against North Korea it would “speed up” its nuclear deterrence “at the maximum pace.”

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday it would adhere to its agreement with South Korea to shoulder the cost of a new missile defense system that is being installed in the face of the North Korean threat. But McMaster said the U.S. is also looking for Seoul to share the cost in the future.

In Australia, Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull issued a new warning against North Korea, saying his government and the U.S. are “taking a strong message to North Korea that we will not tolerate reckless, dangerous threats to the peace and stability of our region.” Turnbull and Trump are meeting for the first time Thursday in New York.

In an interview broadcast Sunday, Trump said he “would not be happy” if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, which would be its sixth.

“I can tell you also, I don’t believe that the president of China, who is a very respected man, will be happy either,” Trump said of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Asked if “not happy” with another Pyongyang nuclear test meant he would undertake “military action” against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump said, “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll see. It is a chess game. I just don’t want people to know what my thinking is.”

Trump, in a Twitter comment, said the Pyongyang’s latest missile test, even though it failed, “disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President…. Bad!” But in the interview on the CBS network, Trump said North Korea eventually “will have a better delivery system.”

The U.S. leader described North Korea’s Kim as “obviously … a pretty smart cookie,” but said the U.S. cannot allow North Korea to develop a nuclear weapon, and blamed prior American presidential administrations for not dealing with the Pyongyang’s military ambitions.
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President Donald Trump got decidedly mixed reviews on his first 100 days in office.  But he wasted little time in urging his supporters to expect some accomplishments in the months ahead.

To mark his first 100 days in office, Trump held a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, among the supporters who have stuck with him in good times and bad.  Trump told the boisterous crowd it was time to “reflect on an incredible journey together and to get ready for the great, great battles to come, and that we will win in every case, OK?  We will win.”

The first 100 days has been a traditional point of assessment for a new president since Franklin Roosevelt moved swiftly to counter the Great Depression in the early weeks of his presidency back in 1933.  While some previous presidents had a more productive start than Trump, early victories or failures are not always an indicator of president’s eventual success.

In his first 100 days in office, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders that pleased his core supporters but has struggled to get some important agenda items through Congress, most notably health care reform.  Trump cites a major victory in Senate confirmation for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who now holds the seat held for decades by conservative judicial icon Antonin Scalia.

Partisan view from Congress

Despite the congressional setbacks, Republicans remain generally supportive of the president, including Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.  “I like the strike in Syria.  I like the bunker-buster bomb in Afghanistan.  I like the more assertive foreign policy.  As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not a big fan of the president’s tweeting habits,” McConnell recently told reporters at the Capitol.

For Democrats, Trump has been a source of protest and resistance, and that will likely continue.  “The president’s ‘My way or the highway’ approach is one of the main reasons he has little to show on health care and show little for his first 100 days in office,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

The standard for the most active first 100 days was set by Franklin Roosevelt, who came to power at the height of the Great Depression in 1933 and famously proclaimed in his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and Democrats John Kennedy and Bill Clinton all overcame early presidential stumbles to build a record of achievement.

Hounded by weak polls

Trump may need some victories soon to turn around his low approval ratings, which have fluctuated between the mid-40’s and mid-30’s, historic lows for a new president.

“Success breeds success and failure breeds failure,” said Brookings Institution scholar William Galston.  “Because once you have demonstrated weakness, your enemies may be more eager to stand up to you and your friends may be less secure about allying themselves with you.”

Trump has focused primarily on pleasing his political base so far, said Brookings analyst Sarah Binder.  “In a period of polarization, I think it is very hard for presidents to move to the center in a real, real way.  In part, because there really is not anybody in the center and it becomes a little lonely there.  I think they get much greater company and a boost from turning to their base.”

Time is of the essence

Historically, presidents have the most political leverage early in their term, and their ability to move public support and get Congress to act can fade over time, said historian Richard Norton Smith.

“The greatest single danger that the modern presidency confronts is the risk of overexposure.  Not because of anything particularly the president does or doesn’t do.  But it’s simply the incredible saturation coverage that any White House generates these days.”

In an op-ed in the Washington Post summing up his first 100 days in office, Trump wrote that so far he has “kept his promise” to transfer power from Washington, D.C., and give it “back to the people.”

Trump supporters largely seem to agree.  One recent University of Virginia poll found Trump’s approval rating among those who voted for him at 93 percent.

But the first 100 days have also shown that Trump will need to broaden his public support to get his agenda through Congress.

Successful presidents like Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan were able to broaden their public appeal over time, and that now looms as perhaps the greatest challenge facing Donald Trump.
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Protesters in the United States and around the world have marked International Workers Day, May Day, with rallies and demonstrations that, from France to Turkey, turned violent Monday. VOA Europe Correspondent Luis Ramirez reports.
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