This May Day, barely four months into Trump’s second term, hundreds of thousands marched in towns and cities around the country. The MayDayStrong website mapped events in 800 cities and towns in all 50 states, in what it called “the most May Day events in U.S. history.” They were reviving the tradition of the radical workers’ day. They also drew inspiration from the post-2006 tradition of immigrant marches, A Day Without Immigrants, which had seen millions taking to the streets.
This May Day was in the context of the escalated attacks on working people under Trump and was important as a step in consciously mobilizing workers. Trump’s second term was not met by the huge coordinated marches of his first. Yet, protests were growing: from the scattered demonstrations against Trump’s attempted ban on gender affirming care for young people, to the larger demonstrations against his immigrant raids.The largest national mobilizations, from Presidents’ Day “No Kings” protest to the “Hands Off” brought together more people and issues.
These protests were mostly formed by groups like Indivisible, 50501 and others, oriented toward the Democratic Party who had no concept of creating an ongoing campaign or inviting participation in planning mass activity. The presence of organized labor was minimal, while Post Office employees and the federal workers held their own smaller rallies. May Day 2025 was different as the unions took on a much larger role in organizing and shaping the protests and union participation moved beyond a token presence.
Preparations for May Day
In mid-March, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) convened a national meeting of trade unionists, with some community groups representing key issues such as immigrant and racial justice, drawing more than 200 attendees. They worked to coordinate regional actions for May 1, but also to build networks and coalitions that would continue to organize through May 1, 2028. This is a date at which United Auto Workers International president Shawn Fain called for a “general strike” (which we examine below). It also follows Association of Flight Attendants’ president Sara Nelson’s threat of a general strike at an internal January 2019 AFL-CIO meeting, which helped stop a government shutdown during the first Trump Administration.
It is not a coincidence that the Chicago Teachers Union, a local of the American Federation of Teachers, has become a central figure in this organizing. In 2010 CORE, a militant rank and file based reformist caucus with socialists at its center, won leadership of the union. Since, CTU has had several strikes, and forged community coalitions through “social justice unionism.”
At the Chicago meeting, most of the speakers, including Fain, told the assembly that the Democratic Party has not and will not be protecting us from attacks. CTU held weekly calls, produced outreach materials decrying the “billionaire takeover”, and launched a website (maydaystrong.org) for cities and towns across the country to list their May Day events and for organizers to download a toolkit and branded flyers, messaging and social media posts. Over 2,000 activists from all 50 states attended weekly organizing calls.
There were some problems on the way. The UAW was initially a main collaborator in the national May Day Strong organizing, but pulled a lot of resources away. This comes as Fain has praised some of Trump’s imposed tariffs. But many UAW locals took part in local actions nonetheless, notably those of academic workers. Organizers in San Diego report that the San Diego Labor Council pulled out of a united local action there because of demands to abolish ICE; a member union had plans to organize ICE officers. But this did not scupper over all plans.
The president of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, Carl Rosen, who lives in Chicago and attended the CTU convening, noted that in this year’s rallies, “the attempt to coordinate across cities, the attempt to consciously get other people to form them, these mass calls” were all different than previous May Days. “What CTU did here was brilliant and extremely well played. It shows what you can do when you elect really good leadership in even just one local – a local with some resources, obviously – that has class consciousness, that has a certain level of fearlessness, willingness to lead by example. So when they issue a call, there’s a lot of folks who answer.”
May Day 2025
More than 1,000 rallies and events were held across the country this May Day. In Chicago, the birthplace of May Day, there was a weeklong series of events and protests. On the day itself, Students and workers rallied in area colleges, and hundreds of Chicago school students joined a morning discussion at CTU headquarters, before all joining the rally in Union Park. At the rally, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates told the crowd, “you want to know how you resist a bully? You create a coalition, and you pick a fight!” and concluded by talking about fighting “together, in coalition and solidarity and with all power.”
Thousands of people from labor unions, immigrant organizations, and others opposed to Trump’s attacks then marched through rainstorms the three and a half miles to Grant Park in downtown Chicago. More joined in solidarity with several foreign students at the University of Chicago and Northwestern who had had their student visas suspended. Pro Palestine chants were joined with “Get Up, Get Down, Chicago is a Union Town” from SEIU and “No Justice, No Peace!” from community members. Although there was not a visible turn out from the established civil rights movement, the worker’s center Warehouse Workers for Justice was able to bring out Latinx and Black workers. Union officials and community organizers again addressed the crowd from the stage at the end of the march, along with local politicians.
May Day in the US became intertwined with the immigrant justice movement after the massive protests in 2006. However, this year, immigrants were much less visible because of the ferocious attacks, kidnappings and deportations they are experiencing. Nonetheless, immigrant workers are a vital component of all workers’ fight and have often been at the very front of struggles
The sheer breadth and extent of Trump’s attacks have perforce broadened the resistance to include diverse coalitions involved in organizing the rallies. The recognition that we are all now in Trump’s sights is helping to bring together single-issue groups.
This year, Baltimore commemorated the ten year anniversary of the murder of Freddie Gray by police, the one year anniversary of six Latino construction workers killed during a bridge collapse, and the release of a report detailing the death of a sanitation worker laboring in 109 degree temperatures with no water or bathroom breaks. This resulted in a visible knitting together of the issues at the May Day rally. Seven feeder marches, for Palestine, education, families and children, immigrant justice and labor, converged at the busiest intersection in the city.
Los Angeles saw three events on May Day, all of which had immigrant rights front and center. A union-sponsored march of 15-20,000, marched under the slogan: “One Struggle, One Fight: Workers Unite.” Striking AFSCME workers in the University of California system helped swell the numbers on the inspiring march, although it was not as large as the Bernie/AOC rally, and not as large as the biggest recent immigrant marches.
In San Francisco, a fractured left also produced several rallies early in the day, but demonstrators came together for the MayDayStrong endorsed rally. They were joined by sizable contingents of SEIU members and education workers, and thousands snared afternoon rush hour traffic marching to protest the ICE field office.
In New York City, at least 10,000 marched, with major union contingents joining climate, Palestine, immigrant groups and the socialist left, along with unaffiliated anti-Trump individuals, in the largest New York May Day since at least Occupy in 2012. Veronica Salama, the ACLU defense attorney for Mahmoud Khalil, told the crowd before the march “This is about all of us in the face of escalating repression… We recognize the interconnectedness of our struggles.”
Many in the rally seemed visibly excited as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was announced as the last speaker. She railed against Trump, and warned that Republicans were aiming for Medicaid and called it a class war. However, her “assignment” for the crowd was to make sure that those Representatives who might vote for the cuts would be “voted out next year.” This seemed a minor ask of thousands of mobilized trade unionists.
The Philadelphia May Day Rally ended with Bernie Sanders’ stump speech. But the culmination was when hundreds of unionized hotel, food service and casino workers joined in marching to the freeway, where protesters blocked traffic for half an hour, until cleared by police, who arrested 70. “We’re tired of our prices going up,” said Shafeek Anderson, a hotel worker and member of Unite Here Local 274, “We’re tired of the inequality in life and everything else.”
Unions whose members had already been activated by strikes took more radical action on May Day. In California, AFSCME 3299 (UC service and patient care workers) had been involved in a series of actions, and were on a two-day strike on May 1, affecting close to 40,000 workers, with pickets at all ten campuses. Their colleagues in UPTE-CWA local 9119 joined the strike on May Day.
Similarly, Hundreds of National Nurses United members in a New Orleans hospital had already struck during negotiations, and made a point of striking on May Day. At Lockheed Martin in Orlando Florida and Denver Colorado, 900 UAW workers also walked out on strike May 1, after a 99.3% authorization vote. Many non-striking IBEW workers at the Orlando site walked out in sympathy.
In his interview posted previously by Marx21, Rosen said that for this May 1st “there was a coalition that came together to plan for it,” aiming to sustain it beyond 2025. The coalition included “various working class organizations, and the better section of the labor movement pulling along some even not great sections of the labor movement.” Adding to labor participation, immigrant rights groups and other NGO type groups that have actual roots in other communities joined making it “the start of a working class fightback.”
For that fightback to continue that coalition needs to continue, in an open and transparent fashion. The MayDayStrong website is promoting upcoming trainings, a “workers over billionaires” organizing drive, and the No Kings Day demonstrations for June 14th, but in many cities the cooperations of radicals, community groups and union locals seen on the marches has not led to ongoing spaces for organizing. While it has not alwayse been easy for new people to get more involved, the MayDayStrong coalition has promised a national summit this summer.
General Strike 2028?
The national organizing for this May Day was also seen as the start of organizing over the next three years for 2028. UAW’s Shawn Fain’s “general strike” call was based on unions aligning contract expirations for May 1, 2028, with the aim of a mass strike on that May Day. CTU has already aligned its contract expiration to May 1, 2028, matching UAW’s big three auto contracts. Members of the United Federation of Teachers have already passed a resolution for the union to back the call and “encourage” locals to “consider” the tactic.
A mass, coordinated strike would be an exciting development. It would help raise class politics needed to cut through the politics of division, while pointing to working class power. Yet it is not clear how much of this radical rhetoric may manifest in action.
Some militants involved have noted that if they are serious, the UAW and AFT should be hiring organizers around the county now to help prepare for 2028.
Other questions arise. Sympathy strikes are illegal in the US under Section 8(b)(4). Even if concurrent strikes are created through alignment, will they settle individually, leaving others isolated? And how would Federal workers, who have laws against their striking, fit in? To really reverse the decline in unionization and win fundamental victory, such a “general strike” would need to be organized and confident enough to break anti-union laws, and hopefully defeat them.
2028 will also be an election year. A May 2028 strike will be under tremendous pressure not to do anything that would threaten votes for the Democrats, and could easily follow many previous union mobilizations that were designed to lead people to the ballot box, not a disruptive victory.
Rosen is right when he notes:
“How do we make sure that what we’re doing here doesn’t just result in electing any old Dems in 2026, because if it does, and that continues into 2028, we’ll end up with even worse Republicans down the road. We need to be fighting in the streets and in the workplaces for an agenda for working class folks… strikes need to be for issues that make sense to the workers, otherwise they aren’t going to strike.
“There’s no way you’re going to be able to get people to go on strike to elect a Democrat in November. In fact, if it seems that this is anti-Trump, you’re guaranteeing a section of the workforce will refuse to strike. What we have to do is to pick some issues that the bosses can’t resolve – things like actual real retirement security and healthcare. We’re going to have to have a solution that goes well beyond Obamacare and moves us toward Medicare for all. We need a lot more of that. And I think that comes with finding some issues to strike over that will make a real difference for the working class and that will force a change in the political debate in the country.”
Rank and file involvement in ongoing organizing is crucial so there isn’t simply a radical-sounding call for “general strike” from above. And, as seen in the “Day Without an Immigrant” actions of 2006, union and non-union immigrant workers can be a vanguard in bringing back the idea of political mass strike.
Trump has already torn up the contracts for 47,000 workers at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and signed an executive order attempting to take away the union rights of another 1 million federal workers. Ronald Reagan’s infamous 1981 attack on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization and lockout of 11,000 members was small potatoes in comparison. These attacks on working class living standards will not be reversed by switching between Republicans and Democrats. In order just to defend what they have, US workers are going to have to fight. That fight will raise the class politics that helps undercut Trump’s politics of division. Out of those struggles we can all learn how to fight for more, and build the size confidence, and politics that can win.
This report was compiled by Eric F. in NYC and Virginia R. in Baltimore, with input from others in various cities.
Marx21 US 