CHICAGO—With early voting already underway and the Trump administration escalating its attack on voting rights, the May Day Strong coalition sent letters Tuesday to the offices of JPMorgan Chase, Amazon/Whole Foods, Target, Palantir, and other corporate giants demanding they use their political influence to protect free and democratic elections. The letters are part of an Oct. 3-11 election protection week of action.
The May Day Strong coalition, which organized more than 5,000 events on May 1—including gaining the backing of the AFL-CIO—and includes over 600 labor and community organizations, is targeting corporations it says both profit from MAGA policies and possess the influence to push back against further voter suppression from the Trump administration.
The letters ask the companies to sign the Businesses for Democracy Pledge. The pledge demands that these companies tell their workers how, and where, they can vote; publicly oppose the blocking of eligible voters from exercising their constitutional right; and refuse to stay quiet if ballots go uncounted or winners go unseated.
“The corporations that make billions off our work and our communities finally must take a stand against attempts to keep us from voting,” said Lauren Jacobs, executive director of PowerSwitch Action.
“Corporations will continue to choose to stay silent while our democracy is dismantled around them unless we take action that makes cowardice a bigger problem for them than speaking up would be.”
The Trump-run Justice Department has already sued 30 states, and Washington, D.C., for refusing to hand over their voter rolls. Last week, the Supreme Court allowed the Department of Homeland Security to restart a federal citizenship database that Texas had already used to wrongly flag hundreds of citizens as alleged “non-citizens.”
In June, FBI agents raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a progressive voting rights organization.
Earlier this month, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said immigration agents could enter voting locations to “serve warrants”—an excuse critics say is really intimidation aimed at discouraging people from voting. In response, unions and civil rights organizations filed two lawsuits to ban ICE and other armed federal agents from polling places.
Palantir is one of the big businesses targeted by the May Day Strong coalition, and its role in enabling ICE raids is well documented. Palantir developed and operates ELITE, the application ICE agents use to locate alleged “non-citizens” for deportation, and it has even expanded its footprint into hospital systems across the country.
National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nurses’ union and a coalition partner of May Day Strong, led a popular campaign in August all over the country to demand hospitals, and the rest of society, cut ties with the big tech firm.
Labor and voting rights activists pointed out that these corporations have intervened before when they were compelled by mass, collective action to do so. As an example, in Minnesota earlier this year, the heads of 60 companies sent Trump a letter calling for “de-escalation” during the “Operation Metro Surge” federal occupation of Minneapolis and subsequent political strike by workers all over the Twin Cities.
The Republican Party, beholden to its billionaire backers, is clearly attempting to restructure the entire machinery of voting to guarantee its own minority rule. The coalition says it will continue to publicly pressure the corporations that don’t respond to the letters as November approaches.
How they plan to do so remains to be determined. What is clear is that the 2026 midterms will be a critical test for the labor and people’s movements.
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