In more than 30 years of working fast food jobs, Terrence Wise, his fiancée and his three daughters have known homelessness and hunger.
“We slept in our purple minivan in the parking lot of my job,” he said. “I will never forget watching my three little girls try to fall asleep in the back in the middle of winter.”
He works three gig jobs, and his fiancée is a home health care worker. He said there are days his freezer is bare. They won’t go to work on May 1. Nor will they go to school. The family won’t spend any money.
Instead, Wise, 46, of Kansas City, a leader with the Missouri Workers Center, and his family are among hundreds of thousands of Americans expected to walk out of work or school on May 1. They will participate in more than 3,000 events nationwide known as “May Day Strong“ or “Workers Over Billionaires.”
May Day protests often focus on worker rights, economic justice, immigrant rights, income inequality, labor rights and government policy. Organizers and participants say turning out this year is more important than ever, as prices for everything from rent to food to gas are increasing while wages are not
“If you want to see real change, you’ve got to be a part of the solution. Because if you’re not out organizing and you’re not out in the streets and you’re not talking to your neighbors, you’re part of the problem,” Wise said.
May Day began in Chicago in 1886 as a protest demanding an eight–hour workday and is celebrated across the world as International Workers’ Day.
Hundreds of groups organized the “May Day Strong“ events. There were about 1,300 similar events on the first May Day of President Donald Trump’s second presidency, said Hunter Dunn, a national spokesperson for the protest group 50501.
Like the No Kings mobilizations and other mass protests that have drawn millions to the streets since the start of Trump’s second term, organizers have a few centralized events in large cities and thousands of smaller ones in smaller communities. Many are led by labor, left-leaning advocacy groups and teachers unions.
“People have figured out who’s rigging the game and are taking action,” People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias said. “What we expect is people to come out and deliver a clear message… They understand that they’re seeing broken promises by an administration that promised to make things more affordable. And yet none of that has happened for everyday people who are still struggling.”
Workers in America’s heartland are the foundation of the Make America Great Again movement that propelled Trump to the White House, said White House spokesman Kush Desai.
“The Trump administration has never wavered from standing up for American workers, from renegotiating broken trade deals to securing trillions in manufacturing investments to slashing taxes on overtime to securing our border. President Trump will always have the backs of American workers,” Desai said.
Education
Scheduled school walkouts and a high number of teachers taking personal days have led school districts in Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin to close for May Day.
In North Carolina, nearly 20 school districts have canceled classes ahead of the protests because so many teachers took personal days to participate in May Day events statewide, said North Carolina Association of Educators Vice President Bryan Proffitt.
He expects thousands to gather at the state Capitol in Raleigh for the “Kids over Corporations” rally and march.
“You’re seeing the accumulated dissatisfaction of people who work in public schools across the state. And this year things reached kind of a breaking point,” he said.
Following the march, there will be “open-air mass meetings” where people can gather by region to discuss next steps and build connections, Proffitt said.
“We know that our demands are not going to be met that day,” he said.
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said 70,000 students have pledged to walk out from hundreds of campuses across the country. Sunrise Movement is a youth-led advocacy group focused on climate change.
“May Day marks a new moment, a moment when people are realizing that it isn’t just protest that we need, but non-cooperation,” she said.
Economic protest
Economic boycotts have been part of American protest since the Boston Tea Party and include actions like the Civil Rights Movement’s Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 and the United Farm Workers grape boycott of 1965–1970.
May Day Strong comes 20 years after one of the largest single days of economic protest in recent American history, the May 1, 2006, Great American Boycott/A Day Without an Immigrant, which brought an estimated 2 million participants to the streets nationwide in response to proposed federal legislation that would have criminalized undocumented immigration and made it a felony to assist undocumented immigrants.
Multiple groups have embraced the idea of economic boycotts since Trump regained office. They have boycotted companies that supported his campaign, helped fund his inauguration or capitulated to his demands to drop diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The number of proposed one-day blackouts has also increased, but their economic impact has long been difficult to pin down.
Then on Jan. 23, an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people participated in the “Day of Truth and Freedom,” a coordinated statewide action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s crackdown in the Minneapolis area that included a march and an economic boycott. Hundreds of businesses closed for the day in solidarity.
Dunn said it’s important for the movement to expand to include economic shutdowns.
“We need to build up this protest muscle fast so we can credibly protect our democracy,” he told USA TODAY.
Indivisible cofounder Ezra Levin said it’s a “tactical escalation” to move from asking people to turn out on a Saturday for a No Kings protest to attending an event on a workday. The progressive grassroots organizing group has been a lead organizer of the No Kings protests and is playing a supporting role in the May Day events.
“You need folks who are either able or willing to take on the pain of having to spend a Friday, not just a weekend day, but a Friday showing up with their community against the regime,” he said.
He said American protest groups are watching to see what works and what doesn’t on May Day. They expect to need economic protests if the administration tries to interfere in the November midterm elections.
“You want to learn a lot about where you’re strong and where you need to grow before you need to actually execute this fully on the national stage. And we fear that we will have to do that come November because Trump is openly menacing the election infrastructure,” Levin said. “It will be insufficient to merely bring out another No Kings on a Saturday, even if it’s the biggest No Kings ever.”
Strike
In Minneapolis, David McCann, 41, will strike outside Hotel Ivy along with housekeepers and engineers who are members of UNITE HERE Local 17, a Minnesota hospitality union. Seeking a $3-raise and sick days, they’ve tried to negotiate a new contract since July.
They chose to hold the one-day strike on May Day, McCann said, in solidarity with other workers and immigrants. Other local unions nationwide also have strikes planned on May 1.
“We all work two jobs, three jobs, and [are] just completely exhausted when we get home from work. So we’re trying to make it… where we can live off of and have a decent life from one job, which I think is a pretty reasonable request,” McCann, who works at the front desk, said.
