When Reinaldo Sánchez started to hear rumblings of a general strike to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday, he listened up. For months now, he’s been thinking about the privilege he wields as a Latino who is Puerto Rican, which grants him American citizenship by birth. From San Juan to New Haven, he’s watched ICE raids devastate and terrorize culturally rich immigrant communities, sending people into hiding because they are so afraid.
So when he first spotted a call to disrupt business as usual, he started thinking about it. Then, inspired by another small business just down the road, he adapted the call—and decided to pay it forward.
Sánchez, who with chef Lorivie Alicea runs Via Láctea in New Haven’s Whitney-Audubon Retail District, was one of several small business owners and artists who participated in some version of Friday’s general strike, meant to signal to the Department of Homeland Security and wider federal government that Americans do not want ICE in their communities. As a rally and march unfolded nearby on the New Haven Green, businesses from bookstores to bakeries joined in, some closing for the day as others donated a portion of their proceeds to immigrant rights organizations doing work on both the local and national level.
The strike follows the murders of Renee Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti at the hands of ICE agents in Minneapolis this month, as well as six people who have died in ICE custody since the beginning of this year. That’s in addition to Keith Porter Jr., a father of two who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles.
“This whole targeting by federal agencies hits home really hard,” said Sánchez in a phone call Saturday. “ICE is also a problem in Puerto Rico, where they are targeting immigrant communities. I was debating with Lori, I was telling her, ‘If there’s a strike, we might close.’”
Prior to Friday, Sánchez was one of several business owners having that internal dialogue. Via Láctea is a plant-based ice cream shop, which means that the winter months are already often tight for him. Last week, a snowstorm meant that business was even slower: fewer people are leaving their homes, and those that do still don’t always gravitate towards frozen treats.
As Friday grew closer, some business like Inkberry Artshop, MiniPNG, Elena’s on Orange and Milford’s Mermaid Books announced that they would be closing. Sánchez still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.
Not even a mile away down State Street, East Rock Breads’ Bill Frisch had also spent days mulling the idea over, trying to get a handle on the number of businesses actually participating. As a small food business—East Rock Breads employs five people, and is only open four days a week—a single day of closure translates to tighter margins and lost income for employees.
Frisch, who opened his State Street bakery in January of 2024, said he isn’t yet in a financially secure enough position to close up shop, lose a day of profits, and still make payroll.
“Our team is pretty small, and a day not getting paid and stuff can be kind of impactful,” he said in a phone call Monday. At the same time, “we were like, ‘We gotta do something.’” He ultimately decided to donate 50 percent of sales to the Immigrant Defense Project, a national organization that does everything from advocacy trainings to legal support.
By midday Friday, the shop had completely sold out, from dense, tangy sourdough loaves to croissants with sunshine-colored, gem-like spots of citrus jam bright enough to make a person forget the ice-crusted sidewalks outside. Monday, he said that sales had brought in just over $1,200 for the organization, and inspired him to do similar fundraisers in the future. “I’m just proud of everybody who came to support,” he said. “We want to keep trying to do this.”
Back at Via Láctea, Sánchez saw what East Rock Breads was doing, and realized that staying open and donating half of proceeds to the Immigrant Defense Project was his answer. With Alicea, he announced that the store’s three locations—one in New Haven, and the others in Santurce and Cupey, neighborhoods in San Juan, Puerto Rico—would be joining forces for the strike. By the time the shop closed that evening, he had raised $958.67 across the three stores.
“You know, 50 percent is a very high amount for a small business,” he said Saturday, adding that he was heartened to see that more customers came, and spent more than they might have otherwise, after the shop posted about the donation on social media. He and Frisch are now also talking about a potential collaboration. “It means operating at a loss, but being open and donating to organizations that are fighting the good fight I feel is a stronger message than being closed.”
Across the city and the region, that resonated for several small business owners. On Grand Avenue, The Farm Belly owner Meg Fama only learned about the strike on Friday morning, as she and staff were getting the restaurant ready for opening. Like Frisch, she didn’t want to send staff home without pay, and couldn’t afford to close for a day and still compensate them. So instead, she and employees talked it over, and decided to donate half of the day’s sales to Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS).
In part, the team decided on IRIS because the organization has taken such a drastic hit in the last year, as federal funding for refugees disappears. Within days of President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, the organization had lost $4 million in federal funding, the first in a series of financial blows that resulted in mass layoffs, the loss of IRIS’ Nicoll Street building, and the decision not to resettle new refugees with the federal government.
If making the donation meant operating at a loss, Fama said, so be it. It felt personal to her: as someone who has spent decades in kitchens, she knows firsthand how immigrants literally keep America fed, from large-scale agriculture to the hands that sustain restaurants and bakeries. The Farm Belly, which opened last year, is also in the heart of a thriving immigrant community, in which Grand Avenue has become a self-sustaining business district.
“We live in this amazing city where we really bond together and support each other,” she said, adding that despite a slow Friday, with single-digit temps and snow-caked sidewalks, the restaurant was able to donate roughly $500 to IRIS. “What’s more important, trying to help people or making a profit for the day?”
In Edgewood, the beloved bookstore Possible Futures also straddled that line, open to community members who needed to pick up books but closed to transactions for the day (and without heat until Friday night). In a phone call Monday, bookspace founder Lauren Anderson noted that for federal agencies like ICE—and companies that support it—to feel the impact of a strike or boycott, there has to be a plan for a more sustained, planned-out and long-term grassroots strategy than a notice circulated primarily on social media.
“This Is Every American’s Problem”
Kristen Mascia at Mermaid Books last year. Ruby Szekeres File Photo.
In New Haven and the region, some artists and businesses—including those with the resources to do so—fully stopped business as usual. They ranged from Mermaid Books, a relatively new addition to Milford’s literary landscape, to Julia Masli, an Estonian clown who pulled her Friday night performance of ha ha ha ha ha ha ha on the Yale Rep’s stage.
“I, along with my collaborators Sebastián Hernández, Sarah Chapin, and Kim Noble, made the decision to cancel the show Friday night as part of the nationwide shutdown to abolish ICE,” Masli wrote in a statement to the Yale Daily News after she declined over the weekend to go on the record with the Arts Paper (read the full piece in the YDN here).
Reached for further comment on Monday morning, a Yale Rep spokesperson said that he was “working on” it but did not reply in time for publication of this article.
When asked, Mermaid Books owner Kristen Mascia said that, despite the short-term impact of a single day strike, her hope was that “seeing people be brave makes others brave.” In the end, the decision may have actually helped drum up business, she added: people who saw the post on social media ended up coming by over the weekend to support the work the bookstore was doing.
“ICE is everywhere, and their ranks are growing,” she said in an email to the Arts Paper Monday afternoon. “This is every American's problem. We've got to take whatever measures we can to stand up and say no, this reign of terror is unacceptable and we won't tolerate it.”
She added that, “My thought was, if by striking we inspired a little bravery in our neighbors, emboldened a few people to speak out for the first time, or showed neighbors of ours who are scared that we're behind them and will fight for them, then the decision was well worth making.”