Workers in cities from coast to coast took the day off Monday to hit the streets and protest the Donald Trump administration for what organizers hoped would be the largest May Day demonstration in the U.S. in years.
The mass protest ― coordinated by labor, immigration and other progressive groups ― served as another early test of the grassroots momentum against the new White House and its right-wing policies. It came on the heels of a climate march that drew tens of thousands to Washington on Saturday.
Backers of the May Day protests saw the day as an ideal opportunity to challenge the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown. The president has promised to ramp up deportations of undocumented workers, strip federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Zeferina Perez, a 59-year-old who came from Mexico two decades ago, said she wanted to show that American businesses cannot function without immigrant labor. She said it stung to see her community vilified on the national stage when immigrants were working hard for meager wages and often exploited to begin with.
“We need to demonstrate to everyone that immigrants are important to this country,” said Perez, who was passing out protest leaflets in D.C. ahead of Monday. “We’re willing to take any job that they give us. We only want to work and take care of our families.”
Los Angeles protesters began gathering before daylight Monday ahead of several marches taking place across the city.
In Philadelphia, teachers took sick days and protested over their lack of a contract, blocking traffic as they marched down North Broad St. Students joined them,
In downtown Denver, around 60 people gathered to protest Trump and fight for better working conditions for all people, immigrants included. Eva Martinez, representing Service Employees International Union local chapter 105, told HuffPost in Spanish she’s here to send a “message to Trump that we are together and we are strong and we’re going to fight.”
In New York City, workers picketed outside B&H Photo after the company announced earlier this year it would shut down its two warehouses in the city, cutting more than 300 jobs.
Several businesses in different cities closed their doors to show their support for the May Day protests and immigrants’ rights.
The May Day holiday has radical roots in the American fight for an eight-hour workday, and it serves as an annual working-class celebration of labor in many foreign countries, including Mexico. The largest May Day demonstration in recent U.S. history occurred in 2006, when hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers went on strike to rally for immigrant rights.
As they laid the groundwork for this May Day, organizers had that massive protest in mind ― echoing other recent, anti-Trump demonstrations, like the massive women’s march that followed Inauguration Day.
“I think May 1 is the start of something, just as Jan. 21, with the women’s march, was the start of something,” said David Huerta, president of United Service Workers West, which is part of the Service Employees International Union. “We have to continue to voice our grievances with this administration and let them know there’s a resistance building. This isn’t just about immigrants or women. It’s about all of us who are being targeted.”
Although large-scale U.S. strikes are at a historic low in modern times, Trump’s election has kindled hopes on the left of a massive general strike to shut things down. February’s “day without immigrants” managed to shut down restaurants and other businesses in certain cities. March’s “day without a woman” brought thousands to Trump’s doors in Washington mid-week, many of them forgoing work for a Wednesday.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said it remained to be seen whether the strikes have a legacy.
“We may be entering an era of political strikes, in which unions and other groups set a date and an agenda, but in which lots of unaffiliated people join in,” Lichtenstein said. “The question is: Can these strikes be given any sort of institutional backbone, any impact other than a one-time event that needs to be recreated from start each time?”
Unions like Huerta’s played a major role in May Day planning, advising workers on their rights if they wanted to strike and pressuring companies not to retaliate against anyone who takes part. Tech companies like Google and Facebook have agreed not to punish employees who are out for the day, and they’ve encouraged their contractors who employ low-wage janitors and food service workers ― many of them Latino immigrants ― to do the same.
In Washington, a local immigrant rights group called Many Languages One Voice was canvassing the downtown business area asking employers to close for the day. If they were unwilling to do that, the group wanted them to commit to allowing employees to miss work without reprisal. The group handed managers pledge sheets to sign, and doled out information about the protests to workers, telling them not to work or shop on Monday.
“We want folks to see that there’s a group on the ground that’s concerned about retaliation,” said Hannah Kane, an organizer with the immigrant rights group. Kane said more than two dozen restaurants, hair salons and other mostly independent businesses had agreed to shutter for the day. Her group planned to accompany workers back to work on Tuesday if they were concerned about being punished.
There have been several short-lived protest strikes since Trump took office, including a temporary work stoppage by taxi drivers at JFK International Airport. That strike was a direct response to an executive order issued by Trump barring refugees from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The “day without immigrants” in February closed restaurants and some schools in cities like Washington.
Perez said she hoped that May Day would one day become the working-class celebration in the U.S. that it is in her native Mexico.
“May Day is the worker’s day,” she said. “Here they don’t honor the work that immigrants do. We want people to respect us and our rights.”
Kate Abbey-Lambertz and Ryan Grenoble contributed to this report.
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