Organizers are expecting a massive turnout for International Workers’ Day as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country today. Walkouts, marches, block parties, and other gatherings are planned into the evening. The demand is simple but sweeping: shut down the economy to protest ICE, war, and the concentration of wealth.
On the East Coast, protests were already underway by the early morning. In Manhattan, a group of Amazon workers, Teamsters, and local politicians marched from the New York Public Library’s main branch to Amazon’s nearby corporate offices to demand the corporation cut its contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. In the nation’s capital, protesters with the organization Free DC shut down intersections across the city, holding handmade banners reading “Workers over billionaires” and “Healthcare not warfare.”
By midday, six protesters with the youth-led Sunrise Movement were arrested for blocking a bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Portland, Oregon, Sunrise protesters occupied a Hilton hotel lobby where DHS officials are allegedly staying.
The message is being delivered in actions large and small. The question is whether it will translate into lasting change.
The Movements Converge
May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement. But this year feels different. Multiple active movements are converging around shared demands: no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich.
The May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants’ rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. The coalition is broad. The grievances are specific. The target is the system.
Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city. That protest was a dress rehearsal. Today is the performance.
“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives — as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” one organizer said. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”
Teachers and Students Lead the Way
Teachers’ unions and students are an active part of the fight, a continuation of their months of organizing against ICE. At least 15 school districts in North Carolina have given teachers the day off to join a statewide May Day “Kids Over Corporations” rally for public education funding. In Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union fought and won to have May Day made a “day of civic action.” School is also canceled in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where teachers planned to demonstrate.
“As educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve,” said Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers. “We want to connect people not just to the affordability crisis but the crisis of our institutions being marginalized in this moment and the impact on our young people.”
Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and an organizer with the campus’s Sunrise Movement chapter, is helping coordinate a local walkout for students, teachers, workers, and residents. “We’re taking collective action to send a message to the billionaire class: it’s our labor, our spending, and our participation that keeps the whole system running, and if we don’t work, they don’t have profits,” Kukutla said.
Some labor unions also planned for a strike today. Nurses at University Medical Center New Orleans announced they would begin a five-day strike for a fair contract. That is not a one-day action. It is a sustained withdrawal of labor.
The General Strike Dream
Organizers say the day of action is an effort to build toward a general strike — a coordinated shutdown of the entire economy. The general strike was essentially outlawed through the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act and has not happened in the US since.
As a workaround, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, has called for unions to work toward a general strike on May 1, 2028, by having existing union contracts expire in unison. That is two years away. Today is a step in that direction.
The question is whether today’s protests will be seen as a successful mobilization or a symbolic gesture. Thousands participating is significant. Millions participating would be transformative. The organizers are hoping today builds the muscle for that larger moment.
The Bottom Line
Thousands are expected to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping,” with walkouts, marches, block parties, and other gatherings planned. Protests began early on the East Coast, including an Amazon worker march in Manhattan and intersection shutdowns in Washington, DC. Six protesters were arrested in Minneapolis. Others occupied a Hilton lobby in Portland.
Teachers’ unions and students are leading efforts in North Carolina, Chicago, Madison, and Milwaukee, where schools are canceled. Nurses in New Orleans began a five-day strike. The day of action is part of a broader push toward a general strike, with the United Auto Workers targeting May 1, 2028, for a coordinated contract expiration.
Today, Americans are being asked to shut down the economy for one day. The answer to whether they will is still being written in the streets.
