Purple Cactus Donated 100% Revenues Thursday to ACLU, LULAC for Day Without Immigrants

In honor of the national protest movement A Day Without Immigrants, Jamaica Plain restaurant Purple Cactus donated all of Thursday's sales revenues to the local branches of the ACLU and LULAC.

Purple Cactus remained open on Feb. 16, 2017, and donated 100 percent of sales revenues to the Massachusetts ACLU and LULAC Boston in honor of A Day Without Immigrants.

Purple Cactus announced its support of A Day Without Immigrants through its Facebook page and also posted signs in its front window and at the register. Several staff members said they were excited when they saw the sign at the register, as were customers as they flowed into the Centre Street business Thursday afternoon.

"I was going to consider closing," Marie O'Shea, the owner of Purple Cactus, told Jamaica Plain News. "There wasn't interest [among employees] in not coming to work. So I felt that we could honor them by doing this. The [Massachusetts] ACLU is great. And I wanted to do something local, too, so I asked our employees if they had any favorite [organizations that help immigrants]. They recommended LULAC Boston."

LULAC stands for the League of United Latin American Citizens; half of Thursday's sales revenues will go to the Boston branch, O'Shea said. The other half will go to the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Other businesses around the Boston area and country did not open for business Thursday or gave workers the option of not coming to work without retribution; some workers chose to strike as well. These A Day Without Immigrants actions are intended to demonstrate the contributions of the immigrant community to the U.S.