WASHINGTON—Workers’ rights and workers’ causes will be the main emphasis, but not the only one, when millions of people take to the streets in more than 3,000 demonstrations nationwide to reclaim May Day as the special holiday for workers. If plans materialize, this could be one of the biggest May Day gatherings ever across the globe.
Here in the U.S., the “No work, no shopping, no school” marches, closures, sit-ins, teach-ins, and more are intended to showcase workers’ economic and political power against the billionaires and corporate oligarchs who run the country, speakers said. To find an event near you, text “Solidarity” to 58910.
Their point is to show workers’ economic clout by literally not working, or going to school, or buying anything from monster corporations. If you must shop, go to mom-and-pop stores.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called May Day “one of the most important and sacred days of the year” for workers, especially as a show of workers’ economic might.
The protesters’ model was Minneapolis-St. Paul. There, at least 70,000 people shut the cities down in –30-degree weather. They did so after Donald Trump’s “army” of ICE and Border Patrol agents murdered VA nurse Alex Pretti, RN, and local activist Renee Michelle Good, two U.S. citizens, during the agents’ violent Operation Metro Surge anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-brown sweep this year.
Dozens of school districts, led by Chicago—the nation’s third-largest system—declared May 1 an off day. So did 21 districts in North Carolina, one activist said. College students will join May Day, too, one activist from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., told the April 29 YouTube call.
“This is a fight against state repression and a fight against placing billionaires over workers,” said Jackson Potter, a history teacher and vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union/AFT Local 1. His union is so militant that right-wing congressional Republicans are investigating it in reprisal.
Added Ash Lee Henderson, who’s chaired the weekly Zoom calls and planning sessions, “If we don’t do it [march], no one will, because no one’s coming to save us. And if we don’t get what we need, we’ll shake, rattle, and roll until we win.”
That includes campaigning beyond the November election and holding politicians accountable for fixing the economic pain workers now suffer, Henderson said. Added a speaker from the Union of Southern Service Workers: “This is not just one day, but movement-building.”
It’s also to remind the nation of organized workers’ economic power, Henderson said.
“By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, cannot make steel, cannot build rockets, and cannot even milk a cow,” she explained. “People—working people—provide these skills. Without them, the ruler cannot rule.”
But for Shuler, and for AFT/Teachers President Randi Weingarten and other organizers on the mass April 29 YouTube conference call, other causes are coming to the fore, too.
For all those causes, “This is the moment when we do what we” in organized labor “do best: Mobilize,” Shuler added. “And we are driven by a sense of crisis,” both economically and politically.
Prime among the other causes: Politics, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling the day of the call, emasculating what’s left of the historic federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The justices destroyed the last standing section of that major achievement of the civil rights era. Their 6-3 party-line vote approved a white nationalist challenge to a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana.
And that in turn opened the way for other states, starting immediately with Florida, and soon to be followed by Alabama and Tennessee, to redraw their congressional district lines to discriminate against voters of color, just as they did at the height of Jim Crow.
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision, said the South had changed in 61 years. Florida’s GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and its gerrymandered GOP-run legislature proved him wrong the same day (see separate Supreme Court story). The other two states may do so, eliminating pro-worker lawmakers, white (in Memphis) and Black.
One speaker estimated the Congressional Black Caucus would lose 19 members, and states would lose 161 local Black elected officials. “MAGA judges invalidated the Voting Rights Act, and that’s another step to enshrine their power over the rest of us,” said Leah Greenberg, co-chair of Indivisible.
That caused animated speakers on the conference call, as did opposition to the oligarchs behind the Donald Trump-led MAGA movement—a movement that is also anti-worker, even though its leader says, falsely, that he’s for workers. He means workers who are white “Christians.”
“This decision is so clearly an attempt to silence us,” Shuler said. “They know how powerful we are when we come together…We can make this thunderous.”
“We want to show workers are standing in the way of Trump and the billionaire class who enrich themselves while trying to silence us,” said Nancy Hagans, RN, president of National Nurses United.
Several speakers also denounced the Trump regime’s war on Iran and war on cities, featuring his vicious and violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The speaker from the Southern Service Workers said the Durham Rising Campaign there “plans to kick ICE out,” and make Durham “a Fourth Amendment city” banning unconstitutional searches and seizures.
Added Hagans: “Billions of dollars are being spent on ICE and on war that should have been spent on health care.” The Pentagon’s comptroller told Congress on April 29 that the war on Iran has cost $25 billion so far. “Every day, people carry the burden of war,” Hagans stated.
Marchers will mobilize in 3,000+ events in every state in the U.S., from Hilo, Hawaii, to Juneau, Alaska, plus San Juan, P.R.
Major mobilization centers will be in Chicago and its suburbs (27 events), metro Los Angeles (26), New York City (13 events, plus eight in northern New Jersey, three in Westchester County, and nine on Long Island), and metro D.C. (18), with the featured march to the Washington Monument.
Other march centers will be Seattle-Tacoma and northwards to Canada (17 events), the Boston area (12), the Twin Cities (8), Denver, Philadelphia, Knoxville, Tenn., Charlotte, Durham, and Asheville,N.C., St. Louis, every city on both shores of Lake Michigan, and all West Coast cities from San Diego north to Bellingham, Wash., opposite Vancouver, B.C.
Speakers noted it’s fitting that Chicago leads the country in May Day mobilizations, because that’s where May Day was born, to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre victims of May 4, 1886.
Even the reddest pro-Donald Trump state, Wyoming, will have an event in Casper and another in western Wyoming near Grand Teton National Park. “Our port unions have voted to shut the port (of Seattle) down,” said Rico Valdez of the Seattle-Martin Luther King County Central Labor Council.
AFT Massachusetts President Jessica Tang said demonstrations there will start at Logan Airport in the morning and run the entire day, culminating with a march to Boston Common. One cause for them: Saving a paraprofessional member, Mariola—no last name was given—from being deported by ICE.
Teachers/AFT President Weingarten, who closed the session as a surprise speaker, also hit both the politics and the economics. The economic hurt that affects voters with spiraling prices and stagnant pay, she said, is even driving Trump voters into the ranks of Trump foes. They’ll join, she predicted.
“People who voted for Donald Trump thought they would get a better life,” said Weingarten, a New York City high school civics and government teacher. “They got higher prices and the defunding of public schools.
“And today they took away the Voting Rights Act,” she said of the Supreme Court’s six-justice GOP-named majority. That bloc includes three justices whom Trump nominated. The justices “are stealing [congressional] seats from people, and they want us to be demoralized.
“So we’ll be out there fighting not just for fairness in our economy but for fairness in our civic” life, she added. But there’s one more “ask” Weingarten had for both her union’s 1.85 million members and for everyone else: Check, now, to see if you’re registered to vote. If not, do so immediately, whatever it takes. Check if your adult children are registered and urge them to register if they’re not.
“We’re voting for our protection. We cannot let this Supreme Court and this administration take our rights away. So get out and vote.”
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