Nations move fossil fuel debate from pledges to strategies in Colombia

The world’s first conference on phasing out fossil fuels has ended in Colombia with delegates from 56 countries declaring that the global debate has shifted from whether to stop using oil, gas and coal to how to do it. Debt and financing remain major obstacles.


Issued on: 30/04/2026 - 

An oil refinery in El Dorado, Kansas. Fossil fuels remained at the centre of global climate talks in Colombia as countries debated how to move away from oil, gas and coal. 

© AP - Charlie Riedel


Participants gathered for several days in Santa Marta, a coal port on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, for talks focused directly on winding down fossil fuel production rather than only cutting emissions.

While the meeting produced no binding commitments by the time it wrapped up on Wednesday, it launched working groups on financing and labour transitions, plans for continued cooperation and momentum toward future negotiations.

"Cops are more formal, negotiators have their lines and they will not cross them – it’s so different here," said former Irish president Mary Robinson, now a climate justice advocate, referring to UN climate conferences.

Participants "have felt more human together", she said.

Debt and limited resources were among the biggest barriers for developing countries.

"Many of them are in bad need of debt relief to even begin a transition," Robinson told the conference. Those countries are "trapped in debt".

Colombia conference aims for 'more honest conversation' to speed fossil fuel exit

Who pays?

Financing emerged as the biggest immediate challenge, with developing countries facing high borrowing costs and limited access to money.

"The financing is key, this is an investment issue," said Nick Robins, senior director for finance and private sector at the World Resources Institute.

Debt pressure is also pushing some countries deeper into fossil fuel expansion.

"What we’re hearing is that they would like to stop expanding fossil fuel production, but they’re being forced into new oil and gas and coal projects just to feed their debt," said Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

"This conference is actually the first time in 30 years of climate negotiations where countries are gathering to talk about how to ensure a fossil fuel phase-out."

The financing challenge was also central to talks ahead of last year's Cop30 in Brazil, where fiscal pressures were repeatedly raised as a major obstacle.

"We need for finance ministers to help us on finding solutions on how to deal with the fiscal challenges of transition," Ana Toni, Cop30 chief executive, told the conference.

Roadmaps and bans

France drew attention on the conference’s opening day by publishing what it called a roadmap to eliminate fossil fuel use for energy by 2050, though some participants noted it largely repackaged existing pledges.

A new Scientific Panel for the Global Energy Transition was also launched to help governments, cities and regions design pathways away from fossil fuels.

"It will provide all the solutions – to implement them, and to finance them," Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre told the French news agency AFP.

Colombia banned fossil fuel and mineral extraction in its Amazon region last year "to stop the expansion of the extractive frontier", said Colombia’s Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres.

Tuvalu, one of the countries most threatened by rising sea levels, will host the next conference in 2027 with Ireland as co-host.

"If we are to address the climate change issue, we have to address the root cause, and the root cause is the fossil fuel industry," Tuvalu Climate Minister Maina Talia told the Associated Press.

"We don’t want just a free and flexible outcome. We want something concrete. We want steps, solutions on the table."

(with newswires)

The Minilateralist Incentive: A Climate Change Conference in Colombia

By Binoy Kampmark

April 28, 2026

Source: Counterpunch

Image: Logo for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels – Fair Use

Not much good comes from war.  Qualifying exceptions, however, can be found. The United Nations, tarnished, libelled and mocked for being simultaneously ineffectual and intrusive, was the mediating entity for international relations that grew from the calamities of the Second World War.  Without that somewhat frail body, it is hard to imagine how the patchwork of human rights, however uneven, could have been stitched.  The Iran War, and the consequential choking of the Strait of Hormuz by Tehran and Washington respectively have also had an unintended, meliorating effect.  If the pressing dangers of climate change cannot push fossil fuel exporters and consumers to wean themselves off their diet of extraction and carbon emission, the panic caused by economic shock may well do the trick.

Despite the pageantry that circles around the now familiar Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), progress on limiting the rise of global temperature remains tardy and constipated.  The annual COP talks have become ceremonies of fatigue and inanition, often influenced by petrostates and avid fossil fuel lobbyists.  The COP30 talks held in Brazil last November typified the mood.  The final COP 30 agreement, entitled “Global Mutirão: Uniting humanity in a global mobilization against climate change”, failed to even mention the role of fossil fuels.  (The same can be said of the 2015 Paris Agreement.)  Fossil fuels – that devil in the detail – only debuts in the 2023 COP28 conference, with the call to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

The insipid outcome of COP30 was enough to spur Colombia and the Netherlands to announce their co-hosting of the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, a step as part of the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels.  “This will be,” explained  Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development, “a broad intergovernmental, multisectoral platform complementary to the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] designed to identify legal, economic, and social pathways that are necessary to make the phasing out of fossil fuels.”

The talks that began on April 24 at the coastal town of Santa Marta, Colombia, are the genesis of that promise.  While the list of attendees has conspicuous omissions – the United States, China and India are not among their number – a number of prominent fossil fuel states are.  Such absentees as the US did not trouble Torres.  “We knew they weren’t going to be here.  We weren’t expecting them to be here because their energy policy and their economic policy is to ‘drill, baby, drill.’”  Not only would the conference not be for them, Torres could express her relief that no one would be “boycotting” the endeavour.

Among the 60 states, we find Australia, Canada and Nigeria.  Likewise Brazil, the United Kingdom and the European Union.  Countries heavily dependent on such commodities – Pakistan and the Philippines, for instance – are also on the list of participants.

The format of the conference purposely departs from the clumsy, ungainly model of the COP talks.  The gathering is smaller and winnowed of any potential saboteurs and fossil fuel touters. It  comprises an academic conference, a people’s summit and two days of more formal engagements between government officials.  Individuals from the private sector have also been invited, but only those sympathetic to the conference’s principles and aims.

The eventual report produced by the co-hosts will take into account discussions and deliberations  premised on three pillars.  The first deals with economic dependence on fossil fuels, a particularly critical matter for poorer states unable or challenged in achieving an energy transition.  The second focuses on how best to deal with the supply and demand of fossil fuels, a problem aggravated by the current energy crisis.  The third pillar is built around “international cooperation and climate diplomacy” which can cover such matters as the problematic investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system.  ISDS has offered much security and succour to fossil fuel companies keen to protect their investments against the perceived predations of climate change policies.

Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, explained the importance of the gathering to Politico: “It is hugely important that the Colombians and the Dutch and others have set this up, because we all see how wrecked the COP process is, how vulnerable it is to naysayers and those who want to derail it.”  The unifying theme here was “the need to find an alternative.   And if anything, world events of the last six weeks have proven them right.”

The scientists are sticking, understandably, to the message of environmental danger.   “Breaking through 1.5°C means we enter a far more dangerous world – with more frequent and intense droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves – and we are already approaching critical tipping points in major Earth systems,” says the consistently gloomy Johan Rockströmm, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change.  But the energy supply crisis produced by the Iran War may well reinvigorate what seemed to be an expiring patient.

This article was originally published by Counterpunch; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

Binoy Kampmark

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Brazil’s Cooperatives Show How Local Communities Can Drive the Climate Transition

By Bernard Marszalek

May 3, 2026

Source: Grassroots Economic Organizing

Image Credit: Xuthoria, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. “From the Amazon to the world: End of inequality and environmental racism, climate justice yes!”

The UN declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives. The theme of the year—”Cooperatives Build a Better World”—provided a splendid opportunity for the worldwide cooperative movement to mark its existence as vital to building a better world by limiting the effects of climate change. Unfortunately, that didn’t occur. To be more precise, it didn’t occur with the bureaucrats associated with various top-heavy international organizations that represent the cooperative economic sector on the world stage.

However, the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB) did take a stand to support the UN Climate Summit, COP30, held in Belem, Brazil on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. The OCB issued a Manifesto outlining their many projects that support a truly sustainable society.

The main opposition to the International Fossil Fuel Lobby comes from nations that are the least responsible for the devastation caused by a warming planet. These nations for the most part are powerless to oppose the insanity of that Lobby. What is notable about the cooperative Manifesto is that it comes from Brazil, a country that the World Bank lists as the 10th-largest economy in the world. And not surprisingly, according to 2024 data, Brazil ranks 9th in daily oil production.

More importantly, Brazil ranks 6th among countries emitting GHGs, accounting for 2.5% of total worldwide emissions, right behind Russia, which emits 5%. With a population of nearly 216,000,000, Brazil must be recognized as an economic and political power. Likewise, the cooperative sector in Brazil is a significant force in Brazilian society. The latest figures indicate that there are 6,828 cooperatives in the country with 425,318 worker-members. The majority of co-ops are in the agricultural sector. However, if we include cooperative housing, food co-ops, and over 750 credit unions with 9 million members, the total membership in cooperatives rises to over 14 million.

The OCB’s credit union network and its staff of 45,000 combat the effects of climate change by supporting ecological land initiatives such as agricultural restoration and exploring biofuel ventures; they also promote waste management and alternative energy projects.

As we see, the Brazilian cooperative sector is a major economic force, and its Manifesto advances four radical governing principles. The First Principle: the natural economy of photosynthesis has both social and economic value, most apparent in the tropical belt, where rural communities attempt to protect forests and practice eco-friendly agriculture.

The Second: paradoxically, climate serves as a driver of development by promoting innovation. In Brazil, for example, agricultural waste is used to produce bioenergy in the form of ethanol and biodiesel. Where electrical infrastructure doesn’t exist, biofuels function as an expedient alternative to fossil fuels.

The Third Principle: this principle seems most obvious, but unfortunately, it isn’t—communities need to be the focus for action. Funding must directly reach and support local actions to promote economic incentives. A top-down system of financial allocations won’t motivate participation as much as one based on local control of funds.

Most importantly, Principle Four states unambiguously that cooperatives are the means to achieve climate change goals. Why? Cooperatives have an ethical foundation for social inclusion, democratic social organization, and territorial development in the communities where they operate. As the Manifesto states:

Their widespread presence and the reach of their assistance networks promote funding for local initiatives and the implementation of sustainable practices in agriculture, renewable energy, waste management, and conservation.

The Manifesto explores in depth five main points of the cooperative’s Green Program: food security, technology and low-carbon agriculture; the valorization of communities and climate funding; energy transition and sustainable development; bioeconomy as a driver of development; and adaptation and mitigation of climate risks. To review their significance, these areas will be briefly elaborated below.

1. Food security, technology and low-carbon agriculture

With more than 1 million member producers, 71% of whom are family farmers, cooperatives are key players in supplying more than 53% of the national grain harvest to Brazilians.

OCB supports 9,000 technicians (a role similar to the US County Extension Agent system) working with the cooperatives. One benefit of this assistance is the reduction of the agricultural carbon footprint. The cooperative farms reclaim degraded pastures, adopt sustainable soil management, handle agro-industrial waste in sound ways, conserve environmental assets, and foster bioeconomic initiatives. The Brazilian cooperative model can serve as a benchmark for countries where agriculture is a major sector by demonstrating how to combine productive growth, technological innovation, and respect for the environment.

2. OCB climate funding

Brazil’s credit unions are present in more than half of Brazil’s municipalities, offering financial services to about 1.5 million people. This extensive network provides access to credit for small producers and entrepreneurs who would otherwise find it difficult to acquire financial support.

Furthermore, credit unions are receptive to green projects because they are rooted in their communities, which means they are best positioned to assess the risks of sustainable projects. If a project is viable, they can leverage both public and private funding for otherwise abandoned green endeavors. Credit unions, in this way, recirculate money back into their communities and do not, like private finance, extract local wealth.

3. Energy transition and sustainable development

It is notable that the Manifesto discusses the energy transition as one of the most urgent challenges of global climate governance. In 2023, 736 Brazilian cooperatives generated their own energy, a significant increase compared to 2022, when 582 cooperatives generated part of their energy. The highlight for 2023 was solar installations with 3,523 projects.

During COP30, Brazil’s cooperative sector led the debate on the energy transition in a just, orderly, and equitable manner. It was expected that a UN-sponsored roadmap to a planned transition away from fossil fuels would be finalized. It failed. The delegates succumbed to the fossil fuel lobby. What was agreed upon was a voluntary roadmap endorsed by a majority of the delegations.

4. Bioeconomy as a development driver

The Manifesto promotes regenerative agriculture in Brazil not as a mitigation measure, as we find in much of the US discussion of the topic, but as a driver of the bioeconomy, incorporating biofertilizers and biopesticides.

In the Amazon, a range of products can be grown sustainably, that is, in balance with the environment: acai, Brazil nuts, and rubber. Besides native products like babassu oil, which has properties similar to those of coconut oil, and cupuaçu. The pulp of the cupuaçu fruit is used to make ice creams, snack bars, and other products.

The Manifesto advocates for federal funding to prevent land grabbing, deforestation, and organized crime related to drug processing. More importantly, funding is needed to encourage a cooperative bioeconomy that values the diversity of Brazilian biomes. Funding in this manner strengthens the role of agricultural cooperatives to link up with the rest of the cooperative economy to generate employment and income and prevent illegal activities.

5. Adaptation and mitigation of climate risks

The last section of the Manifesto is devoted to an aspect of the climate catastrophe that is missing in environmental narratives in the developed world—adaptation. 94 percent of Brazilian municipalities have been affected by natural disasters in recent decades, directly affecting millions of people.

In this context, cooperatives are an instrument of sustainability and resilience. With their wide reach and operations in strategic sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure and credit, cooperatives have the potential to develop local, scalable responses to climate change. The capacity of cooperatives to lead climate mitigation and adaptation processes is evident in initiatives aimed at the recovery of infrastructure. Cooperatives have also adopted sustainable production systems and developed innovative techniques to deal with extreme weather events.

The primary importance of the cooperative sector in Brazil and elsewhere, where cooperatives are established, lies in their effective embedding in communities. This inherent decentralization encourages local participation in resilience and adaptation projects. The Brazilian cooperatives have initiated, among other things, watershed restoration, massive tree planting, stockpiles of supplies for crisis situations, and have built ecological corridors for wildlife to encourage the occupation of larger ranges.

Indigenous populations, due to the practice of localism, participate in the cooperative movement. For example, the Foresters and Reforesters Work Cooperative of the Pataxó Boca da Mata Indigenous village (Cooplanjé) in Bahia has reforested 210 hectares of Atlantic Rainforest in the Monte Pascoal-Pau Brasil Ecological Corridor.

While the Manifesto was not an official state document, it nevertheless has the heft of a large oppositional movement to capitalist orthodoxy. And further, it’s a movement that has an established economic presence “on the ground,” as journalists like to say.

The Manifesto deserves world recognition not as a statement of hope, of possibility, but, significantly, of strategy.

Its importance, as far as I can determine, has been ignored by the worldwide bureaucratic, cooperative establishment. In fact, one could say that the Manifesto is an embarrassment to that establishment, which has simply mouthed inanities about “sustainable development” which come directly from corporate press releases.

The question about its importance is derived from several points that are highlighted in the Manifesto. First and foremost, the Brazilian cooperative movement is a “Green Movement” incorporating an established and enduring infrastructure of varied economic institutions from a large agricultural sector to an extensive financial network and a varied complement of technical assistance entities. These institutions work together to achieve eco-friendly goals.

The network of cooperatives makes possible plans to mitigate both man-made and natural impediments to sustainable goals. The collaboration of these networked cooperative institutions provides the means to forge adaptations to an environment devastated by climate change. Agricultural seed research, for instance, works to find crops best suited for drought conditions.

The Brazilian Manifesto may be more relevant to countries in the South, where agriculture is a significant economic driver, than to the overdeveloped economies of the North. In any case, the Brazilian cooperative economy isn’t necessarily a model to be replicated. We should see it as a guide to what is possible when cooperative institutions are present in significant numbers and where they search for a post-capitalist response to environmental degradation and resource depletion.

In the US, with both agricultural cooperatives and co-op utilities covering rural America, there exists an infrastructure that could be mobilized to contend with climate change. Already, in a modest way, co-op utilities supply a grid to farms that support local solar and wind generation. If we add in local credit unions that can provide loans to purchase renewable energy sources, then that already in place network of cooperatives can realize a major advance beyond the use of fossil fuels.

The US, unlike Brazil, has many housing cooperatives, from smaller multi-unit residential buildings of the sort found in many college towns, to huge estates like those in New York City. And as with the farming communities, these buildings could be fitted with solar panels purchased with the help of a local credit union. These endeavors could be expanded to forest restoration of the sort practiced for over ten years in the Northwest by the Hoedads in the 1980s. There is a need to catalyze these eco-friendly projects, and fortunately, we have a model in a two-decade-old Canadian research cooperative, Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG). With a staff of 30, it provides a range of services for governments, communities, and other cooperatives. UK’s Coop News reports:

SSG… helps decision-makers confront the climate crisis by providing services that span greenhouse gas inventories, carbon budgeting, climate mitigation and adaptation planning, scenario modelling and implementation support.

The catalyst in this case, SSG, is a worker cooperative enterprise that could be replicated, as in Brazil’s OCB, with 9,000 technicians to aid farmers. The beauty of a decentralized project is that it relies on cooperative institutions already in place across the country. All we need is to convince the siloed cooperative sectors to collaborate on projects to address the socio-economic-cultural catastrophe we have entered.

This article was originally published by Grassroots Economic Organizing; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

May Day Demonstrations Worldwide Condemn US-Israeli War on Iran, Champion Workers

“Working people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East,” said the European Trade Confederation.


Demonstrators join a demonstration for International Workers’ Day on May 1 2026, in Madrid, Spain.
(Photo by Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
May 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

May Day demonstrations across the world on Friday denounced the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has caused a global energy crisis that is disproportionately harming working-class people.

Among the earliest May Day demonstrations took place in the Philippines, and a video published by The Associated Press shows protesters clashing with police near the US Embassy in the capital city of Manila.

While many demonstrators held signs that referenced local issues, American foreign policy was also a major focus of the protesters, as marchers in Manila carried a large banner that read, “Down With US Imperialism.”

Josua Mata, leader of the SENTRO umbrella group of labor federations, told The Associated Press that the war with Iran was a central focus of protests because of the impact it’s had on energy costs.

“Every Filipino worker now is aware that the situation here is deeply connected to the global crisis,” Mata explained.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto attended a May Day rally held in the capital of Jakarta, where Jakarta Globe reported that he announced a host of worker-friendly policies including plans “to build daycare facilities for workers’ children and accelerate the construction of at least 1 million homes.”

France 24 reported that hundreds of demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey were arrested after attempting to march to the city’s iconic Taksim Square, which police had sealed off.

The Turkish Contemporary Lawyers’ Association (ÇHD) said on Friday afternoon that at least 350 demonstrators in Istanbul have been detained as a result of the protests, with hundreds more potentially in custody.



May Day demonstrations are also taking place across Europe, with many demonstrators blaming US President Donald Trump’s war for the deterioration of workers’ living standards.

The European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 93 trade union organizations in 41 European countries, released a statement declaring that “working people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East,” adding that “today’s rallies show working people will not stand by and see their jobs and living standards destroyed.”

Trump is also facing protests at home, with more than 4,000 “May Day Strong” events planned across the United States.

Daniel Bertossa, general secretary for Public Services International, said this year’s May Day demonstrations are providing a desperately needed backlash to power grabs being made by the global billionaire class.

Bertossa pointed to the US-Israel attack on Iran, as well as Trump’s repeated threats to invade Greenland, as key turning points that have pushed workers to organize and fight back.

“Rising living costs caused by the war are now driving anger among working-class people and producing a rare and powerful moment to connect and educate,” said Bertossa. “Fascists don’t have the answers to the economic pain they exploited to get elected—international affairs impact us all—and international working-class solidarity matters.”

Bertossa added that “May Day is a vivid reminder that working-class politics is not a spectator sport,” and “we have never won by watching, waiting, or relying on great power leaders to gift us our future.”

May Day - International solidarity

Friday 1 May 2026

Oleksandr Kryselov and Leila Al-Shami “Internationalism Is Not a Luxury, but a Survival Mechanism”, practical solidarity “Swedish Dockworkers Against Russia’s and Israel’s Wars”, solidarity from below “Against defeatism disguised as radicalism”. The Palestinians’ long struggle by Roland Rance “Marking the 50th Land Day”, Mohammed Harbi on the Algerian fight for independence ““In Algeria, what is fundamental is the state” ”, Badrul Alam on “The Role of CPB-ML Since August 5, 2024: A Marxist-Leninist Analysis”. Alex De Jong reviews “Searching for international solidarity”, a Filipino Maoist’s memoir.

‘A Moment of Reckoning’: 4,000+ May Day Demonstrations Across US

“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” 

Demonstrators attend a May Day rally marking International Workers' Day in New York, on May 1, 2026.
(Photo by Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

id one organizer.


Stephen Prager
May 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


In thousands of locations across the United States, workers and students are taking off from work and school and swearing off shopping on Friday as part of a national May Day protest.

May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and unions organizing the events, said more than 4,000 actions, from marches to pickets to displays of peaceful civil disobedience, were underway.






It is yet another nationwide display of coordinated resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda, including its war in Iran and its use of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to attack immigrant communities, issues that were at the forefront of March’s “No Kings” protests.

Six young protesters with the Sunrise Movement were taken into custody after blocking a bridge in Minneapolis in what they said was an act of “nonviolent noncooperation” to “stand up to the war in Iran and against ICE terrorizing our neighbors and our cities.”

Dozens more Sunrise protesters in Portland held a sit-in in the lobby of a Hilton hotel that was housing top officials with the Department of Homeland Security, leading to eight arrests.

“It’s May 1st, it’s workers’ day,” one of the protesters was recorded saying while being led away by police. “Don’t forget that you have power.”

In New York, over 100 activists lined up outside every entrance to the New York Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan, banging drums and chanting “No ICE, no war!” where they were met by a flood of cops.



In the spirit of May Day, a global day of solidarity among workers, Sulma Arias, the executive director of the social justice organization People’s Action, said Friday’s “Workers Over Billionaires” protests are just as much about confronting injustices as about building an alternative.

“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” Arias said. “We are for affordable housing for low-income people. We are for free healthcare for all. We are for utility laws that ensure every home stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer at costs that a person on a fixed income can afford. We are for the right to a fair and equal vote for Americans from every race and in every state. May Day is our day to assert and defend our rights.”

“They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”

Despite claims by President Donald Trump that the US is entering an economic “golden age” under his leadership, a Gallup poll released this week found that 55% of Americans said their finances were getting worse, the highest number ever recorded in more than 20 years of polling, and even higher than in the doldrums of the Great Recession.



A coalition of labor unions across several major cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, has coordinated what has been called an “economic blackout,” which includes avoiding buying from private sector retailers.

“When we say ‘workers over billionaires,’ ‘billionaires’ is not just this amorphous figure, right? They’re real people,” said Jana Korn, the chief of staff for the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, in an interview with The Real News Network. “In Philadelphia, we’re kind of a poor city. We don’t have that many billionaires, but we have one. The CEO of Comcast is the only billionaire that lives in the city.”

“So why should we, as a city, accept that they take and take from us? And then with that money, what do they do? They donate to Trump’s ballroom project,” she continued. “People in Philadelphia are struggling... Our transportation system barely works. We’re at risk of having 17 schools close down this year.”

Some labor organizers have described economic boycotts, undertaken as part of prior mass protest movements against the second Trump administration, as an act of building strength for something larger, such as a future general strike.

“I think really for us in the labor movement,” Korn said, “[the boycott is] about how do we build the capacity to really disrupt, to strike when necessary, to shut things down when we have to. And that’s something that we have not been called to do as a labor movement in a very long time.”



Other unions have used May Day to confront their own employers directly. In New Orleans, hundreds of nurses at University Medical Center announced that they were beginning a five-day strike after attempting to negotiate a contract for more than two years.

In New York City, Amazon workers unionized with the Teamsters assembled on the steps of the public library before marching to Amazon’s corporate offices to demand the company cut its contracts with ICE, which has used its cloud computing services to target immigrants, including some Amazon workers and contractors.

Matt Multari, who has worked as an Amazon driver for a year and a half, told Mother Jones that he joined the protest to “demand the one thing that’s worth fighting for in this life: respect.”

Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said, “May Day is a moment of reckoning.”

“Immigrant communities—from farmworkers in our fields to nurses in our hospitals, from refugees fleeing war to families who have built their lives here for generations—are under siege,” she said. “They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”

“Workers and immigrants—documented and undocumented, native-born and newly arrived,” she said, “will stand together in the streets because we know the truth: there is no workers’ rights without immigrant rights, and there is no justice for working people here while our tax dollars fund devastation abroad.”

May Day 2026: What Kind of Nation Will This Be?

This year’s May Day rallies go beyond workers’ rights.


People take part in May Day rally and march in New York City to protest the Trump administration, New York, U.S., May 1, 2025.
(Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Peter Dreier
May 01, 2026

Common Dreams

Unlike the rest of the world’s democracies, the United States doesn’t use the metric system, doesn’t require employers to provide workers with paid vacations, hasn’t abolished the death penalty, and doesn’t celebrate May Day as an official national holiday.

Outside the US, May 1 is international workers’ day, observed with speeches, rallies and demonstrations. This year, millions of workers in Europe, Asia and Latin America will take to the streets to demand higher wages, better benefits and improved working conditions.

Ironically, this celebration of working-class solidarity was started by the US labor movement and soon spread around the world, but it never earned official recognition in this country.

This year, on the heels of the three massive nationwide “No Kings” marches and rallies, millions of Americans will join forces, in thousands of cities and towns, in May Day Strong events.

The May Day Strong organizers hoping to bring Americans together to challenge the billionaires, big corporations, and the Trump administration, who have manipulated the rules to lower living standards, attack immigrants, undermine democracy, and direct tax dollars for wars rather than meeting human needs. It will be a day of rallies, marches, teach-ins, labor actions, and a refusal to participate in business as usual—because, as the organizers say, “when those at the top rig the system, collective action is how we set it right.”

Organizers expect over several thousand nonviolent actions across the country. The broad coalition behind the protests include major unions, civil rights, reproductive justice, environmental, immigrant rights, and faith groups, and tenant and community organizations, as well as Indivisible and Democratic Socialists of America.

The protest is inspired by the large day of action on January 23 that shut down much of Minneapolis by asking people not to work, shop, or attend school that day to challenge ICE’s occupation and its illegal actions (including murder) against immigrants and activists.

But the May Day Strong leaders are not calling for a general strike to shut down the economy. That tactic—allowing unions to strike in solidarity with other unions’ strikes—was banned in 1946 when Congress passed the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act over President Harry Truman’s veto. Even so, organizers view this year’s May Day events as a dress rehearsal something close to a general strike in 2028, in anticipation of the presidential and mid-term elections, but that would require the participation of many large unions who may not believe they and their members are prepared for such a militant action or the possible political backlash by the Trump administration and by voters if employers threaten to fire workers for engaging in an illegal strike. In addition, as Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch noted, “How many people would need to stop shopping to make a noticeable dent in the nearly $3 billion per day Americans spend?”“

But another massive national day of protest this May Day could help inspire voters to oust more Trump Republicans in November, give Democrats a majority of seats in both the House and Senate, and lay the groundwork for a more progressive policy agenda if the Democrats take back the White House in two years.

In doing so, they will be honoring the original May Day, which was born of the movement for an eight-hour workday. After the Civil War, unregulated capitalism ran rampant in America. It was the Gilded Age, a time of merger mania, increasing concentration of wealth and growing political influence by corporate power brokers known as Robber Barons. New technologies made possible new industries, which generated great riches for the fortunate few, but at the expense of workers, many of them immigrants, who worked long hours, under dangerous conditions, for little pay.

As the gap between the rich and other Americans widened dramatically, workers began to resist in a variety of ways. The first major wave of labor unions pushed employers to limit the workday to ten hours and then later down to eight hours. The 1877 strike by tens of thousands of railroad, factory and mine workers—which shut down the nation’s major industries and was brutally suppressed by the corporations and their friends in government—was the first of many mass actions to demand living wages and humane working conditions. By 1884, the campaign had gained enough momentum that the predecessor to the American Federation of Labor adopted a resolution at its annual meeting, “that eight hours shall constitute legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.”

On the appointed date, unions and radical groups orchestrated strikes and large-scale demonstrations in cities across the country. More than 500,000 workers went on strike or marched in solidarity and many more people protested in the streets. In Chicago, a labor stronghold, at least 30,000 workers struck. Rallies and parades across the city more than doubled that number, and the May 1 demonstrations continued for several days. The protests were mostly nonviolent, but they included skirmishes with strikebreakers, company-hired thugs and police.

On May 3, at a rally outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company factory, police fired on the crowd, killing at least two workers. The next day, at a rally at Haymarket Square to protest the shootings, police moved in to clear the crowd. Someone threw a bomb at the police, killing at least one officer. Another seven policemen were killed during the ensuing riot, and police gunfire killed at least four protesters and injured many others.

After a controversial investigation, seven anarchists were sentenced to death for murder, while another was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The anarchists won global notoriety, being seen as martyrs by many radicals and reformers, who viewed the trial and executions as politically motivated.

Within a few years, unions and radical groups around the world had established May Day as an international holiday to commemorate the Haymarket martyrs and continue the struggle for the eight-hour day, workers’ rights, and social justice.

In the United States, however, the burgeoning Knights of Labor, uneasy with May Day’s connection to anarchists and other radicals, adopted another day to celebrate workers’ rights. In 1887, Oregon was the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday, celebrated in September. Other states soon followed. Unions sponsored parades to celebrate Labor Day, but such one-day festivities didn’t make corporations any more willing to grant workers decent conditions. To make their voices heard, workers had to resort to massive strikes, typically put down with brutal violence by government troops.

In 1894, the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company to demand lower rents (Pullman was a company town that owned its employees’ homes) and higher pay following huge layoffs and wage cuts. In solidarity with the Pullman workers, railroad workers across the country boycotted the trains with Pullman cars, paralyzing the nation’s economy as well as its mail service. President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and called out 12,000 soldiers to break the strike. They crushed the walkout and killed at least two protesters. Six days later, Cleveland—facing worker protests for his repression of the Pullman strikers—signed a bill creating Labor Day as an official national holiday in September. He hoped that giving the working class a day off to celebrate one Monday a year might pacify them.

For most of the 20th century, Labor Day was reserved for festive parades, picnics and speeches sponsored by unions in major cities. But contrary to what President Cleveland had hoped, American workers, their families and allies, found other occasions to mobilize for better working conditions and a more humane society. America witnessed massive strike waves throughout the century, including militant general strikes and occupations. These included a general strike in Seattle in 1919, the 1934 San Francisco general strike, led by the longshoremen’s union; a strike of about 400,000 textile workers that same year; militant sit-down strikes in 1937 by autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, women workers at Woolworth’s department stores in New York, aviation workers in Los Angeles, and others, and the largest strike wave in US history in 1946, triggered by pent-up demands following World War Two.

May 1 faded away as a day of protest. From the 1920s through the 1950s, radical groups sought to keep the tradition alive with parades and other events, but the mainstream labor movement and most liberal organizations kept their distance, making May Day an increasingly marginal affair. In 1958, in the midst of the cold war, President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as Loyalty Day. Each subsequent president has issued a similar proclamation, although few Americans know about or celebrate the day.

Since 2001, American unions and immigrant rights activists have resurrected May 1 as a day of protest around both workers’ rights and immigrant rights. That year, millions of people in over 100 cities—including more than a million in Los Angeles, 200,000 in New York and 300,000 in Chicago—participated in May Day demonstrations.

The huge turnout was catalyzed by a bill, sponsored by Representative James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and passed by the House the previous December, that would have classified as a felon anyone who helped undocumented immigrants enter or remain in the United States. Since then, immigrant workers and their allies have adopted May Day as an occasion for protest.

In 2006, organized launched a protest they called “A Day Without Immigrants,” which was also termed the “Great American Boycott.” In many cities, workers refused to go to work, high school students walked out of their classrooms and into the street, while consumers shut down businesses that depended on immigrant workers.

In 2017, activists organized another “Day Without Immigrants” protest to dramatize the importance of immigrants to the American economy and protest Trump’s plans to build a border wall and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The organizers called for immigrants and allies not to go to work, to avoid spending money, and keep children home from school.

“It was mostly immigrants who led the first May Day movement for the eight-hour day. Now a new generation of immigrant workers have revitalized and brought May Day back to life,” observed California State Senator María Elena Durazo, the former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Although the labor movement fell on hard times starting in the 1950s, it nevertheless helped guarantee that more Americans would share in the nation’s post-war prosperity and join the middle class. Moreover, the civil rights, feminist, environmental and gay rights movements, and the more recent immigrant rights movement, drew important lessons from labor movement tactics and built coalitions with organized labor to advance their goals.

America is now in the midst of a new Gilded Age with a new group of corporate Robber Barons, many of them operating on a global scale. The top of the income scale has the biggest concentration of income and wealth since 1928. Several decades of corporate-backed assaults on unions have left only six percent of private sector employees with union cards, down from about one-third of all workers in the 1950s. More than half of America’s 15 million union members now work for government (representing 33 percent of all government employees), so business groups and conservative politicians, including Trump, have targeted public sector unions for destruction.

Despite this, we’ve seen a recent resurgence of activism among rank-and-file workers at fast-food chains, Starbucks, Amazon, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, Volkswagen, Boeing, Trader Joe’s, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Chipotle, Disneyland, Kaiser Permanente, UPS, Uber and LYFT, REI, film companies and TV studios, meatpacking companies, major hospitals and universities, school districts, and other employers. They have waged strikes, walkouts and union recognition campaigns to win better pay and working conditions.

Public opinion in solidly behind these demands. The decline of union membership is not due to Americans’ opposition to unions. A recent Gallup poll found that 68% of Americans support unions. Support is particularly high among Americans between 18 and 34 years old, 72% of whom embrace unions as a vehicle to address economic inequality and workplace problems. About two-thirds (64%) of Americans think the federal minimum wage—which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009—should be increased to $17.

The biggest obstacle to a union resurgence is federal labor law. American workers understand that employers resort to a variety of antiunion tactics—including firing employees illegally—to thwart unionization efforts. And there’s the rub. Americans have far fewer rights at work than employees in other democratic societies. Current federal laws are an impediment to union organizing rather than a protector of workers’ rights. The rules are stacked against workers, making it extremely difficult for even the most talented organizers to win union elections. Under current law, and with Trump stacking the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union members, any employer with a clever attorney can stall union elections, giving management time to scare the living daylights out of potential recruits.

This year’s May Day rallies go beyond workers’ rights. They will focus on issues like stopping the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration, protecting Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on, fully funding public schools, healthcare, and housing for all, and stopping the attacks on communities, including policies that target immigrants and people of color. It will also build momentum for a large-scale voter mobilization effort to elect liberals and progressives in the November mid-terms.

“It isn’t just about immigrant rights. It isn’t just about workers’ rights on the job or even about raising the standard of living for all workers,” said Durazo. “It’s about what kind of country we want to be.”

Peter Dreier
Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He joined the Occidental faculty in January 1993 after serving for nine years as Director of Housing at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012) and an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style" and co-author of "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2022).
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May Day: Day One of a Mass Youth Uprising

This system is not made for everyday working people, and the only way we can change things is if we start disrupting the status quo.

Students at George Washington University and three other schools in Washington, DC walked out on September 9, 2025 to protest the federal takeover of the district and the deployment of National Guard troops.
(Photo by the Sunrise Movement)

Shradha Bista
May 01, 2026

Common Dreams

Today, for May Day, millions of students, educators, and workers are striking for our education, lives, and futures. This isn’t just a rally or march: Whether it’s shutting down corporate offices or leaving classrooms empty, we’re disrupting business as usual. And, young people are taking the lead.

Today isn’t a one-day strike. It’s day one of a mass youth uprising. Throughout history, we’ve seen students and workers on the front lines of anti-authoritarian movements, catalyzing mass societal action.

In the days leading up to May Day, we’ve seen that we’re already having an impact. In Durham, North Carolina, the Durham Public Schools announced last week that school was cancelled on May 1 because over 1,000 students and staff were projected to walk out of school that day. In Madison, Wisconsin, schools shut down after 70% of staff committed to this national day of action. A dozen more school districts have followed suit.

So when pundits ask, “Where are the young people?” The answer is, May Day. Across the country, people are growing increasingly frustrated with political and institutional leadership that are serving billionaires, not us. While the Trump administration commits war crimes in the Middle East, millions are stripped of their healthcare. While billionaires get handouts to build data centers, they claim we can’t solve our housing crisis. While college football coaches are paid million-dollar salaries, tuition to attend school continues to rise.

This May 1, we will strike in hundreds of thousands. In every corner of this country, you will see students walking out of class and workers striking from their jobs.

It’s extremely clear to young people like me: This system is not made for everyday working people, and the only way we can change things is if we start disrupting the status quo. If we’ve learned anything over the past few months, it’s that when people come together in masses, we are more powerful than the people in power, and we win. Specifically, when people practice mass noncooperation in their schools and cities, they win.

Mass noncooperation is the act of not giving in to their “business as usual.” We hold the power because we make the system run, and we have the power to make it crumble. It means recognizing that the system only functions because of us, and choosing to withdraw that labor, that time, that participation is power we hold. It is not enough to protest on our days off, or repost a social media post. We need workers to stop going to work so billionaires lose money. We need students and educators to stop attending classes to show the power of those empty seats. We need to stop working for a system that is failing us, to show them that we can turn it all around if they keep ignoring our needs.

We’ve seen mass noncooperation work in the past. Earlier this year, after tens of thousands of people went on strike in Minneapolis following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) commander in the city was removed from his role, and he himself said that the level of noncooperation from Minnesotans was stopping ICE from carrying out its goals. Now, we’re taking that action nationwide.

This May 1, we will strike in hundreds of thousands. In every corner of this country, you will see students walking out of class and workers striking from their jobs. You’ll hear chants and cheers for one another; you’ll feel hope and resilience. And when we do, we’ll show President Donald Trump and his billionaire friends that if they keep going with their agenda, we will stop their regime from operating. If they keep abducting our neighbors, if they keep choosing Wall Street over working people, if they keep starting wars instead of giving us healthcare—the kind of disruption they are seeing today will be a drop in the bucket.

We’re also sending a message to people across this country: We, working people, have the power. We run the economy, we fill the classrooms. If we stop cooperating, the billionaires can’t profit, and the oligarchs can’t rule. We have the power to win what we deserve: a world where we earn a livable wage, breathe clean air, and can afford necessities like education.

Today, on May 1, we say: No work. No school. No spending.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Shradha Bista
Shradha Bista is a first-year honors student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been a student organizer since high school and organizes with her campus’ Sunrise Movement hub, winning demands like UNC-CH rejecting the Trump Loyalty Oath Compact last fall. Shradha studies Public Policy and Peace, War, and Defense on campus, and she’s excited to see the success of students and workers this May Day and beyond!
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‘May Day Strong’ Shows How Trumpism Changed the Game of Political Action

Action isn’t only about pressuring institutions anymore. It’s increasingly about jamming the system, slowing it down, or breaking its rhythm. In plain terms, we’ve shifted from representative politics toward something more like direct pressure.


Protesters hold signs during the Nationwide May Day Strong Rally, “Workers Stand Up to Billionaires,” on May 1, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for May Day Strong)

Brian Hudson
May 01, 2026

Common Dreams


For decades, American politics rested on one big, mostly unquestioned idea: Real change happens through the system. You vote, you lobby, you go to court, you work the parties. Even the biggest protest movements eventually tried to plug themselves back into those official channels. But lately—especially since Donald Trump burst onto the scene—that old assumption has been crumbling fast.

What we’re seeing now, in things like the “May Day Strong” actions, isn’t just more people protesting. It’s a deeper change in how politics actually works. Action isn’t only about pressuring institutions anymore. It’s increasingly about jamming the system, slowing it down, or breaking its rhythm. In plain terms, we’ve shifted from representative politics toward something more like direct pressure.

The key driver here is the collapse of trust in institutions. One of the most striking things about Trumpism isn’t any single policy—it’s the relentless way it attacked the legitimacy of the middlemen: the media as “the enemy of the people,” judges as biased, elections as rigged. These weren’t just throwaway lines. Over time, they sank in and reshaped how a lot of people view the system’s ability to actually deliver.

When folks stop believing the formal channels can handle their grievances, they start looking for other levers. That’s when direct action, civil disobedience, and economic disruption stop looking fringe and start feeling logical.

“May Day Strong” feels like a live experiment. It’s testing how well networked groups can mobilize and whether hitting the economy where it hurts can deliver lasting political leverage. The answers will matter a lot for where democracy goes next.

“May Day Strong” sits right at that crossroads. The call for “No Work, No Shopping” isn’t subtle. It says: If real power flows through the economy, then choking those flows becomes a form of politics. On the surface it seems straightforward, but it quietly rewrites the textbook definition of power.

In the old model, power lived in government buildings and political offices. You tried to influence them. In the emerging one, power is scattered across economic networks and social connections. So the game moves from representation to targeted disruption—from institutional politics to what you might call infrastructural politics.

This isn’t purely ideological. It also grows out of how people actually experience daily life now: gig work, shaky jobs, disappearing benefits, and costs that keep climbing. When the ground under your feet feels unstable, waiting for institutions to fix things starts to feel naive.

So where does Trumpism fit? It didn’t invent this distrust, but it poured gasoline on it. By hammering institutional norms, torching media credibility, and sharpening polarization, it helped create an environment where formal mechanisms look increasingly broken. In that kind of atmosphere, taking it to the streets—or to the supply chains—doesn’t feel radical. It feels like common sense.

Still, there’s real tension. Disrupting people’s everyday lives is a double-edged sword. If folks see it as standing up for justice, it can build wide support. If it just looks like chaos that hurts regular people trying to get by, it can spark a strong backlash.

That tension defines politics in this post-trust era. Legitimacy no longer comes neatly from institutions. It gets fought over in public opinion—and more and more, the street has become the arena where that fight happens.

In that light, “May Day Strong” feels like a live experiment. It’s testing how well networked groups can mobilize and whether hitting the economy where it hurts can deliver lasting political leverage. The answers will matter a lot for where democracy goes next.

If direct disruption keeps replacing traditional institutional routes, the line between protest and actual governance starts to blur. Suddenly, the power to halt things becomes its own kind of authority. That opens doors for groups that felt shut out—but it also raises the odds of deeper instability.

At the end of the day, this isn’t simply politics getting more extreme. It’s politics changing its fundamental shape. It’s no longer just a contest to control the institutions. It’s becoming a struggle to control the flows—of information, money, goods, and attention.

Trumpism didn’t create this shift, but it accelerated it. By eroding trust and heating up divisions, it helped make direct action feel less like an outlier and more like a normal part of how politics gets done.

The big question now isn’t how institutions can manage protest. It’s whether institutions can hold onto their central role at all.


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Brian Hudson
Brian Hudson is a political science graduate from Bates College with a keen interest in international relations and global affairs. As a freelance commentator, he provides analysis on geopolitics, international security, and counter-terrorism. His work has been featured on news analysis platforms such as Modern Diplomacy, Eurasia Review, and others.
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Why I’m Answering the May Day Call to Action By Running for Congress

The workers of Uptown and The Bronx have been making the demand for a better life for over a century but Washington has ignored their demands for too long. I’m running to make sure it finally has an answer.


Bronx VA Medical Center nurses hold a demonstration and join other nationwide May Day actions demanding increased Covid-19 protections for nurses and health care workers on May 01, 2020 in New York City.
IPhoto by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Darializa Avila Chevalier
May 01, 2026

Common Dreams

Uptown wakes up before the rest of New York even opens its eyes. Walk Broadway from 125th to 168th, up through Dyckman, as I have, and you’ll see it: The bodega coffee grabbed on the run, the crosstown bus packed before dawn, people clocking into work while downtown is still asleep. These are the people who built our city. Not the CEOs, real estate developers, or the politicians who show up every two to four years with fliers and false promises. The movement fighting for their dignity has always lived here—on these buses and these street corners.

Every May 1, we honor them. May Day, or International Workers’ Day, was created from needless state violence. In 1884, American workers went on strike to win an eight-hour workday. As the deadline approached, a protest in Chicago turned deadly, with police firing into the crowd and arresting seven workers who, after a sham trial, were executed. The bosses thought that would be the end of it. They were wrong. Workers fought for and won the right to an eight-hour workday.

Here in Harlem, Washington Heights, and Kingsbridge, May Day isn’t an abstract history lesson, it’s a mirror. This is a day to honor the transit workers, nurses, teachers, laborers, and caregivers who have always refused to accept less than they deserve and risked everything to fight for a better future for the next generation. They show us what’s possible when working people come together, across generations, race, gender, and culture, and demand a dignified life.

May Day reminds us of something simple and profound: Uptown is a union town. It always has been.

I want to build power for the people on that crosstown bus before dawn who never get thanked for keeping our city running and are told to be grateful for what little they have.

New York, and Uptown especially, has become a stronghold of union power. It was in Harlem, during the Harlem Renaissance, that A. Philip Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters—the first Black-led labor union in American history. It was in Washington Heights and Spanish Harlem where Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrant women transformed the garment industry, becoming so essential to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union that by the 1950s, the union published its paper, Justicia, entirely in Spanish. And it was in the Bronx that Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke exposed the Bronx Slave Market, where domestic workers, most of them Black women, were paid as little as 15 cents an hour and subjected to workplace harassment and abuse. Their conditions were so appalling that it sparked city-wide organizing to protect domestic workers. This is my community’s inheritance.

That tradition is still alive in our streets today. In January 2026, 70 years after 1199 Service Employees International Union's historic 46-day strike at Uptown hospitals, hundreds of unionized NY State Nurses Association (NYSNA) nurses walked off the job at NewYork-Presbyterian on 168th Street and at hospitals across our community. They stood on their picket lines from dawn to dusk, through a brutally cold January, fighting starvation wages and conditions so unsafe that patients were being put at risk. After 41 days of striking and organizing, they won. That’s the Uptown way.

From the factory floor to the hospital room to the living room, Uptown is still at the center of the labor movement. I think about this legacy when people ask me why I’m running for Congress. The honest answer is: I’m not sure I had a choice.

When you grow up as the daughter of Dominican immigrants and watch your parents work multiple jobs and come home exhausted, see your neighbors get pushed out, watch politicians blame the vulnerable instead of the corporations robbing them blind, all while sending their tax dollars to drop bombs on babies, you organize and fight back. And eventually, the question stops being why run and starts being how could I not?

Congress was not built for us. It was built to manage us. It was built to keep our labor, our rent checks, and our votes flowing to people who have never had to choose between rent and groceries, all while allowing the people who are the foundation of our city to fall through the cracks. But here’s what the establishment never understood about Uptown and The Bronx: We don’t wait for permission.

That’s the legacy I am fighting to protect in Congress. I am a proud card-carrying United Auto Workers member. I’ve picketed alongside NYSNA nurses on 168th Street and Mount Sinai Morningside. I’ve fought with Student Workers of Columbia to protect their peers from harassment by the university and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In Congress, I will fight to pass the PRO Act so every worker can organize without fear. I will push to fund public housing, cancel medical debt, and end the forever wars that drain our communities to pad the pockets of defense contractors. I want to build power for the people on that crosstown bus before dawn who never get thanked for keeping our city running and are told to be grateful for what little they have. They built New York and deserve everything it has to offer.

May Day is a call to action. The workers of Uptown and The Bronx have been making the demand for a better life for over a century but Washington has ignored their demands for too long. I’m running to make sure it finally has an answer.


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Darializa Avila Chevalier
Darializa Avila Chevalier is a working-class Afro-Latina organizer raised by Dominican immigrant parents. She has spent her life organizing for the people politicians leave behind: she fought to free Abdikadir Mohamed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention during Trump's Muslim ban, organized Columbia's encampment in solidarity with Palestinians, and stood up for Mahmoud Khalil when ICE abducted him from his apartment. She is a card-carrying member of UAW and a public defense investigator. She doesn't just talk about the movement—she’s helped build it.
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