Going on 170 years ago, “Know-Nothing” mobs rampaged through German and Irish Catholic immigrant neighborhoods in Louisville on election day, killing, burning, and looting virtually at will.
None of the Aug. 6, 1855, “Bloody Monday” terrorists were punished. Nor was any immigrant compensated for thousands of dollars in property losses.
Based on his general ignorance of history, Donald Trump probably knows nothing about the Know-Nothings, officially the American Party. But he has resurrected the party’s nativist, hate, and fear-mongering legacy.
Trump and the old Know-Nothings would have been aghast at the rally in Louisville on April 5 when an estimated 2,000 people — many of them union members — gathered in solidarity with about 200 immigrant workers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who are slated for deportation by the Trump administration. They belong to Local 83761 of the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America, located at GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park.
The workers “have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation – hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement,” wrote Luis Feliz Leon in Labor Notes. “They’re in the U.S. on ‘humanitarian parole,’ that the government until now has used to provide visas to people fleeing war or political instability in certain countries.”
Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Dustin Reinstedler of Louisville was at the rally, which was part of a series of nationwide “Hands Off!” protests against the Trump administration. He said government spending on programs that help immigrants is miniscule compared to the enormous corporate welfare and subsidies Uncle Sam lavishes on big business.
“We all know what the Statue of Liberty says and what that statue stands for,” Reinstedler added. “We all know what the Bible says about taking care of the sick and the needy and loving your neighbors.”
According to media reports, it was a peaceful Saturday, not a “Bloody Monday.”
“Bloody Monday” was one of the most notorious incidents of election day violence in U.S. history. A Kentucky historical highway marker on West Main Street tells about the riot. In the 1850s, the Know Nothings dominated state government; Know-Nothings ran city hall in Louisville.
The Know-Nothings claimed immigrants were enemies “to the very principles we embody in our laws,” endangered “all we hold most dear” and were “the chief source of crime in this country.” Trump, the neo-Know-Nothing, spews the same nativist line, though he singles out immigrants of color.
Party members were dubbed “Know-Nothings” because they were supposed to reply — like Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes — “I know nothing” to any suspicious enquiry about the party. The Know-Nothings especially hated German and Irish Catholics, thousands of whom came to the country in the 1840s, many settling in Louisville. Party members promised “Eternal hostility to Foreign and Roman Catholic influence!”
Reinstedler’s German and Irish ancestors arrived in the early 20th century.
A union bricklayer by trade, he knows about the rampant bigotry that immigrants, especially from Ireland, suffered when they came to America. Reinstedler doesn’t pull punches about neo-Know Nothings who make up a big chunk of the MAGA GOP base.
“When I see someone of Irish heritage on Facebook supporting Trump’s actions, it really sickens me,” he said. “We’re all immigrants from somewhere.”
He said “the real enemy” isn’t immigrants who came to America seeking a better life for themselves and their families. “The real enemy is the capitalists who draw the lines and create the policies which make one man believe that another man is somehow inferior because of which side of that line he comes from.”
In Kentucky and nationwide, organized labor is in the front ranks of Americans championing immigrant rights.
Reinstedler issued an official statement in support of the Louisville immigrant workers:
The AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with the nearly 200 workers who received termination notices regarding their humanitarian status, forcing them to leave the country by April 24, 2025. These individuals are our coworkers, neighbors, and community members who have contributed to our workplaces and local economies. The abrupt nature of these notices has left families in distress, facing impossible choices with little time to prepare.
While immigration policy is a matter of law, the way this information was delivered — through mailed notices with little to no direct assistance — has left families in distress, with no clear next steps. These are human beings, not just case numbers, and they deserve dignity and transparency.
This decision specifically targets workers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, singling out individuals based on nationality in a way that is unjust. These are human beings with families and kids who have built lives here, and they deserve dignity, compassion, and due process.
We urge our community to come together in support of those affected. No matter one’s position on immigration policy, we can all recognize that these workers deserve fairness and assistance during this difficult time. Local organizations, places of worship, and advocacy groups must step up to provide resources, and we encourage anyone in a position to help to do so.
If you or anyone needs legal guidance, visit https://ailalawyer.com/ for support.
Rick Hernandez, president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement-Kentucky delivered a statement similar to Reinstedler’s:
The Kentucky chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement stands in strong solidarity with the nearly 200 workers at GE Appliances and their families who are facing uncertainty due to the recent termination of humanitarian parole programs for certain nationalities.
These workers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have done everything by the book. They entered the U.S. through legal channels, contributing to our economy and our communities with hard work, dedication, and respect for the law. The abrupt change in policy is deeply concerning as it disproportionately affects individuals from these specific backgrounds, creating fear and uncertainty for people who have done nothing but work hard to build better lives for themselves and their families.
The GE Appliance plant is home to a vibrant, diverse workforce, where many languages are spoken, and cultures are celebrated. This diversity is a strength, not a weakness, enriching both the work environment and the community as a whole. Immigrant workers play a vital role in our economy, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, just like all workers.
To those affected: you are not alone. We encourage you to reach out for legal guidance if needed. Visit https://ailalawyer.com to find a qualified immigration lawyer near you.
Says an AFL-CIO statement from last December:
Immigrants are vital members of our workforce and our unions. One in five workers in our country wasn’t born here. Immigrants work in every sector of our economy, and every part of the nation. Mass deportation plans would not only cost billions in taxpayer money, but would have a devastating economic impact. The resulting labor shortage would cause a massive drop in GDP and cripple key industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor, such as construction, hospitality, agriculture, and food processing. Rather than benefitting the remaining workforce, mass deportations amidst an already tight labor market will shutter businesses, which will disrupt supply chains, increase prices, and put jobs at risk.
Without immigrants, our workforce is shrinking. Current demographic trends illustrate that without immigration, the size of our nation’s workforce will decline, causing serious economic and social consequences. A shrinking workforce is bad for the economy, resulting in lower productivity, slower economic growth, decreased tax revenue, and higher inflation. Deporting millions of workers will accelerate these negative trends and drive up costs for food, housing, and many basic services, because there will be an insufficient supply of workers in these industries to produce sufficient supply of goods and services to meet demand.
Immigrants pay taxes on which federal, state, and local budgets rely. In addition to expanding the workforce, immigrants promote economic growth through their consumer spending and tax revenues. Immigrant households contribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local taxes annually and hold a tremendous amount of spending power. In 2021, immigrants paid $524.7 billion in taxes. Losing contributions of this magnitude would devastate the budgets needed to fund our public schools, hospitals, emergency response services, highways, and other essential services.
Immigrants support our social safety net. Despite political attempts to portray them as a drain on resources, undocumented immigrants are taxpayers who also make substantial contributions to our social safety net, with estimates that they paid $22.6 billion into the Social Security fund in 2016 and $5.7 billion to Medicare. Notably, many immigrant workers are unable to access the very benefits they help keep afloat.
The cost of mass deportation drains resources from key labor priorities. Our government already spends an astonishing 12 times more to arrest immigrants than it does to enforce the laws meant to protect more than 150 million workers at more than 10 million jobsites around the country. This has created an environment in which too many employers feel like they can violate worker rights with impunity, and further ramping up immigration enforcement will make employer threats of immigration-based retaliation even more potent.
A climate of fear makes our workplaces and communities less safe. Mass deportation policies threaten civil liberties, encourage racial profiling, separate families, and cause massive economic and emotional hardship for millions of working people across the country. The terror instilled by raids and targeting means that fewer people report crimes, visit a doctor, or send their kids to school – all of which undermines the health, wellbeing and safety of our communities.
The real threat workers face is corporate greed, not immigrants. President-elect Trump wants working people to focus on the border and immigration so we’ll be too distracted to notice as they roll out massive corporate tax cuts, slash our benefits, starve our public schools, and trample on our labor and voting rights. It is a classic political maneuver meant to keep us divided and poor, and we see right through it.
While the current Republican president has reprised Know-Nothing nativism, the first Republican president roundly condemned the Know-Nothings. Eighteen days after “Bloody Monday,” Abraham Lincoln wrote his friend Joshua Fry Speed in Louisville (“Farmington,” the Speed family estate, is preserved as a museum): “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ Lincoln concluded, “When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].”
A footnote: While Trump is also one of the most anti-labor presidents in history, Lincoln, in his first message to Congress, said, “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
But that Grand Old Party of “Lincoln and Liberty” is long gone.
--30--
