It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
RAW STORY Taylor Farms products are displayed for sale, amid reports of slumping consumer confidence in lettuce and other fresh produce during the current cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened thousands across the U.S., at a grocery store in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 24, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/File Photo
Legal expert and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance issued a bleak warning Saturday that the recent uptick in foodborne illness in the United States – a trend she blamed directly on the Trump administration – was only the beginning.
“In March 2025, shortly after his return to power, Donald Trump’s administration postponed the compliance deadline for the FDA’s Food Traceability Rule by 30 months,” Vance wrote in an analysis published Saturday night on her Substack. “That moved it back from January 20, 2026, to July 20, 2028. We are now paying the price.”
A multistate Salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeños has sickened 345 people across 27 states, and a separate outbreak tied to sprouts has sickened 55, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A cyclospora outbreak tied to lettuce produced by Taylor Farms has proven deadlier – Michigan officials confirmed two deaths in early August, the first U.S. deaths linked to the outbreak, PBS reported.
The recent outbreaks, Vance argued, were easy to trace directly to policies and decisions instituted by the Trump administration.
“Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money,” Vance wrote. “Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.”
As a legal expert, Vance noted how the Justice Department had a near-infinite number of tools at its disposal to compel compliance from U.S. food producers, but appeared to be “asleep at the wheel.” As such, she warned, future foodborne illness outbreaks were almost certain to occur.
Corporate Consolidation Spree That Enabled ‘Massive Reach’ of Taylor Farms Blamed for Cyclospora Outbreak
“Taylor Farms’ repeated connection to major outbreaks and recalls warrants a closer look at whether these are unrelated incidents or signs of recurring weaknesses.”
Lettuce are displayed on the shelf of a Manhattan grocery store on August 13, 2026,
in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
An agricultural industry watchdog on Tuesday released a report examining how corporate consolidation enabled this summer’s widespread outbreak of Cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea. The report, published by Farm Action, argues that the wide reach of produce giant Taylor Farms, which is the source of the outbreak, spread food contaminated by the Cyclospora parasite far and wide before an issue was detected.
One problem with Taylor Farms’ reach, the report states, is that it is often hidden, leaving people unaware of the source of certain products.
“Taylor Farms produces 40% of the salad kits sold in the country and grows about one-quarter of its own vegetables, sourcing the rest through partner farms,” the report says. “That makes it a major link between farms and some of the nation’s largest food buyers.”
The company’s produce is used at popular fast-food chains such as Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Chipotle, and is sold at big-name grocery stories including Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, and Costco.
Beyond that, its produce is bought by foodservice distribution giants Sysco and US Foods, who send it to assorted schools, hospitals, and hotels.
The report says that the consolidation of the produce production industry was itself enabled by the industry consolidation of grocery stores, restaurant chains, and foodservice distributors, which found it more efficient to buy from conglomerates such as Taylor Farms, which the report categorizes as “grower-shipper-packers (GSPs).”
“Like other large GSPs, Taylor Farms sources produce through regional and international networks rather than relying primarily on nearby farms,” writes Farm Action. “That helps explain why investigators traced lettuce implicated in the 2026 Cyclospora outbreak to Mexico, even in the middle of summer when much of the US is capable of growing lettuce.”
Because Taylor distributes its produce to so many places under so many different brands, the report continues, consumers have a hard time avoiding them even if they are actively trying.
What’s more, the 2026 Cyclospora outbreak isn’t the first time Taylor has been linked to a food safety event, as Farm Action found that it was connected to “the 2026 Salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeño products, previous Cyclospora outbreaks, the 2024 E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s onions, the 2021 E. coli cluster involving romaine lettuce, and numerous recalls for allergens, labeling errors, contamination risks, and processing defects.”
“These incidents do not by themselves prove a pattern of systemic problems,” the report adds. “But Taylor Farms’ repeated connection to major outbreaks and recalls warrants a closer look at whether these are unrelated incidents or signs of recurring weaknesses.”
The report concludes by recommending stronger enforcement of US antitrust laws to break up big distributors, as well as stronger food safety and traceability policies.
Sarah Carden, senior director of research and policy at Farm Action, said the report on Taylor Farms should be a wakeup call to food safety regulators about the dangers of corporate centralization.
“Taylor Farms has extraordinary reach across the produce supply chain, a history of connections to major food safety events, significant political spending and access, and a workplace record that raises serious questions,” said Carden. “Its growth also shows how consolidation has left farmers with fewer buyers and made our food supply increasingly dependent on a small number of powerful companies.”
Critics link Trump to glass in fruit bars U.S. President Donald Trump salutes, during the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
President Donald J. Trump's massive government spending cuts have been linked to a number of public health crises, from an ebola outbreak in Africa to a measles outbreak in the United States. Particular attention has been paid to his cuts to the FDA, however, as the Food and Drug Administration's main purpose is to protect Americans from dangers in the products they consume.
Now those FDA cuts are being attacked by a group of Trump's fellow Republicans, who allege a link between the financial cuts and potentially literal cuts Americans could get from eating fruit bars... which have glass in them.
"Five flavors of Outshine Fruit Bars have been recalled because they may contain glass, according to parent company Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream," reported CBS News' Aimee Picchi on Tuesday. "The recalled products, which were sold nationwide, are the 2.5-ounce strawberry, watermelon, grape, tangerine and black cherry flavors, packaged in six-count boxes, according to the Aug. 16 statement from the company."
In July, the Trump administration was similarly blamed for an outbreak of explosive diarrhea linked to contaminated lettuce from a company that did not receive adequate inspections on its produce after Trump's FDA cuts.
“The FDA believes that the biggest outbreak this season, the one affecting nine states so far, came to us aboard contaminated iceberg lettuce from Mexico,” CBS News' David Pogue reported at the time. “That lettuce was shipped nationwide by Taylor Farms, a huge distributor that supplies thousands of groceries and restaurants.”
Experts said that it was an unprecedented outbreak, both in terms of its scale and the fact that it would have been easily prevented with sufficient inspections.
Public health advocates argue these back-to-back contamination events are the predictable result of hollowed-out regulatory agencies. Without robust funding for routine factory walkthroughs and border import testing, the frontline defenses protecting the American dinner table have effectively collapsed. While the administration maintains that corporate responsibility should dictate consumer safety, critics point out that self-regulation has failed to keep dangerous foreign materials and toxic parasites out of supply chains. As anger mounts among both Democrats and a fracturing Republican coalition, demands are growing for an immediate independent congressional investigation into the full operational impact of the executive budget cuts.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA 💩
It's not just Taco Bell. Taylor Farms supplies many restaurants, stores
Daniel de Visé,
USA TODAY Updated Mon, August 10, 2026
Taylor Farms produces much of the lettuce and many of the jalapeño peppers sold in America's supermarkets and fast-food restaurants.
Right now, many consumers would like to know which ones.
Taylor Farms has been in the news because of a historic outbreak of cyclosporiasis, the "explosive diarrhea" disease. The largest cluster of cases, centered in Michigan, was traced by the Food and Drug Administration to recalled iceberg lettuce grown by the produce giant. But cases have been reported in 47 states in recent weeks, and experts say not all clusters have been linked to the same source
The salmonella recall involves products sold at grocery stores including Walmart, Target and Trader Joe's in 26 states, according to an Aug. 9 FDA notice.
The cyclosporiasis outbreak is much larger: an unprecedented wave of infections since May, resulting in two deaths.
Taylor Farms on July 17 issued a voluntary recall of iceberg lettuce products, though the firm notes that the FDA reported "no confirmed positive sample results for product testing for Cyclospora" through Aug. 5.
Consumers might have a hard time following that directive: It's hard to tell the exact provenance of the lettuce in a restaurant taco, burger or sub.
Here, then, is a primer on Taylor Farms and its global reach.
Taylor Farms has recalled iceberg lettuce sourced from Mexico amid an outbreak of cyclosporiasis.
How big is Taylor Farms?
Taylor Farms is the "leading global producer of salads and healthy fresh foods," according to its website, with facilities in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Europe.
Taylor Farms has $7 billion in revenues and more than 25,000 employees and 30 processing facilities, according to a spring 2026 profile in UC Berkeley Haas Magazine.
"Operating across retail, foodservice, and prepared foods, Taylor Farms partners with every major retail group, club store, and quick-service restaurant chain in the country," the profile says. Which supermarket chains sell Taylor Farms lettuce?
Many.
Visit the company's Find-a-Product page and type in your location, and you'll see a Who's Who of American supermarkets and big-box retailers that carry Taylor Farms salad kits and other products.
Taco Bell is among the large restaurant chains that serve Taylor Farms lettuce and other produce.
Which restaurant chains serve Taylor Farms lettuce?
That question is trickier to answer.
We know that Taco Bell served Taylor Farms lettuce because of the much-discussed recall.
Chipotle also serves Taylor Farms produce, a company official confirmed on July 20.
"We are continuing to follow the Cyclospora investigation very closely, and at this time, we don't believe the ingredients we source are associated," said Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs and food safety officer at Chipotle.
The Taylor Farms website doesn't offer a full list of the big-name chain restaurants that serve its lettuce in 2026. That makes it hard for consumers to guess which brands they might want to avoid.
We do know which chains have served Taylor Farms lettuce and other produce in the past, thanks to a 2014 report from Capital & Main and The Huffington Post.
That list includes McDonald's, Subway, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, as well as Darden Restaurants, whose brands include Olive Garden.
Has Taylor Farms had previous recalls?
Yes, although some past recalls have involved mislabeled products rather than potential pathogens.
In 2024, Taylor Farms was involved in the removal of Quarter Pounders from McDonald's menus in many restaurants over potential E. coli contamination in raw onions.
In 2013, The New York Times reported that Taylor Farms had "an unusual number of voluntary recalls" involving potentially tainted products.
Company officials ascribed the volume of recalls to the company's scale.
"Just if you do the sheer math, our recalls relative to our size are fewer than anybody else," said Bruce Taylor, chief executive of Taylor Farms, speaking to the Times. What is the Taylor Farms story?
Taylor Farms was founded in 1995 by Taylor, a third-generation lettuce grower in California's Salinas Valley, and some partners. The company's goal was to be "North America's favorite producer of salads and healthy fresh foods," according to its website.
Taylor Farms has grown into the leading producer of salads and other healthy fare, according to the Berkeley business-school profile.
Taylor Farms has also taken a prominent role in promoting food safety.
Around 2007, Taylor partnered with the Produce Marketing Association to create a Center for Produce Safety. Taylor Farms worked with other growers to standardize food-safety practices in the industry.
In 2009, Taylor Farms introduced "SmartWash Solutions," which the Berkeley profile termed "a revolutionary wash-water monitoring system to sanitize and prevent microbial cross contamination."
In 2012, Taylor Farms entered the supermarket industry with "with the first-ever branded prepackaged chopped salads with dressings and condiments," according to the profile.
According to a 2026 report in the trade publication Western Farm Press, Taylor Farms also revolutionized its industry "by turning it into a fixed-price business that offered growers a guaranteed profit while providing customers a consistent supply."
In years past, restaurateurs and supermarkets had struggled with unpredictable prices for produce. Taylor Farms changed that.
"McDonald's wanted shredded lettuce," Bruce Taylor said in the trade report. "They wanted consistent product at a stable price." Contributing: Melina Khan, Mary Walrath-Holdridge
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY
Sunday, July 05, 2026
Defiance Against Trump Drives Rise of Democratic Socialist in DC Mayor’s Race
Grassroots organizers offer a look inside the movement that helped Janeese Lewis George win the Democratic primary.
Mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George celebrates her early lead at her election night party at the Howard Theatre on June 16, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Maxine Wallace / The Washington Post via Getty Images
On August 11, 2025, President Trump initiated a federal takeover of Washington, D.C. Nearly 11 months later, Washingtonians organized around one of the most progressive candidates in the District’s mayoral history, a democratic socialist named Janeese Lewis George.
Since August 2025, every corner of the District of Columbia has swarmed with thousands of National Guard troops, from major metro stations to residential neighborhoods. In September, thousands of residents gathered at Malcolm X Park and marched from Ward 1 all the way to the White House for the “We Are All DC” march. The event was attended by thousands and was the single largest demonstration against Trump’s takeover of D.C.
Countless bright red signs were scattered all over the marching masses, printed with the same words that the crowds were chanting: “Free DC.” This also happens to be the name of the organization that co-hosted the march, alongside labor unions and community groups. Free DC is a fiscally sponsored special project of Community Change, and according to Washingtonians, one of the biggest reasons that Lewis George won big in the Democratic primary.
“We are the only country in the world where the citizens of the capital city do not have full political protections, full legal protections,” said Alex Dodds, campaign director and co-founder of Free DC. “And we know from other countries where dictatorships have taken root, that dictators and authoritarian leaders will always seek to control the capital city, because it’s a really easy way for them to silence dissent.”
While this group was founded just a few years ago, the Free DC movement has roots in the 1960s, when Marion Berry, who would later be elected as the second mayor of Washington, D.C., mobilized students and communities to participate in acts of civil disobedience to protest the lack of representation for D.C. residents. In 1974, Washington got its very first elected mayor after Congress passed the Home Rule Act. The legislation gave power to D.C. residents in the form of day-to-day governance but still withheld representation from Washingtonians at the federal level. This lack of real representation is the power imbalance that was central to this year’s mayoral primary, according to organizers.
“She is a progressive Black woman who is not a status quo candidate. She is unapologetically a democratic socialist and someone who sees D.C. for exactly what it is, a city that should be a state.”
Lewis George was one of just two candidates that Free DC chose to endorse this cycle, alongside Robert White, who won his race for delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. According to Dodds, the endorsement process involved an in-depth questionnaire, a forum, and a community voting process. After everything was tallied, Lewis George was head and shoulders above the other candidates being considered.
“Janeese’s campaign was really focused on building the power of the people together to do things very aligned with a Free D.C. … no one is coming to save us but us. And so we have to do this together,” Dodds told Truthout.
Lewis George’s platform included universal affordable child care, an issue of particular importance to Washingtonians as D.C. has the highest average child care costs in the country. Transportation was also a focus of her campaign, as she promised to make buses free for residents enrolled in SNAP food assistance programs and invest in bike lanes and the metro system. Lewis George also focused heavily on affordability, listing her intention to expand rent stabilization programs, fund affordable housing, and invest in down payment assistance programs to increase homeownership across D.C.
Lewis George’s candidacy as a democratic socialist came at a time when D.C. residents could see the effects of Trump’s takeover on every street across the city. Under the president’s orders, Washington, D.C., has become ground zero for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and detentions. Just days before the election, Trump even threatened a deeper federal takeover if Lewis George is elected mayor. In response, Lewis George doubled down on her defense of her hometown.
“We are not going to get ICE off our streets by fearing this president. We are not going to protect our rights or Home Rule by obeying in advance,” Lewis George wrote in a statement. “Threatening Home Rule because you do not like how residents vote is an attack on democracy itself. The people of D.C. elect the mayor of D.C., and they want someone who will stand up to Donald Trump.”
Lewis George’s supporters say this response was one of many reasons why so many D.C. residents swung toward her platform.
The Free DC movement aims to do more than accomplish statehood — it is a response to authoritarianism and federal occupation.
“Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide who represents Washington, D.C.,” Delvone Michael told Truthout. “The voters do.”
Michael, who is a senior political strategist at the Working Families Party, another group that endorsed Lewis George, added: “I think they saw strength in her response to him. And just like any bully you stand up to, the bully will fold.”
Voters largely saw through these attacks, understanding that threats to home rule would be coming down the line no matter who won the primary; the biggest concern for many was how a leader handled those threats.
“The reality is, President Trump will do exactly what he wants to do. It doesn’t matter who is elected mayor of Washington, D.C.,” Preston Mitchum — a Black queer attorney, activist, and supporter of Lewis George — told Truthout. “I think people use that against Janeese in particular because she is a progressive Black woman who is not a status quo candidate. She is unapologetically a democratic socialist and someone who sees D.C. for exactly what it is, a city that should be a state.”
Lewis George is a D.C. council member, a third-generation Washingtonian, and a former prosecutor. On paper, her experience is not unlike that of the other leading candidate in the mayoral race, Kenyan McDuffie. McDuffie is a fourth-generation Washingtonian and, like Lewis George, is also a D.C. council member and a former prosecutor. McDuffie, however, was regularly aligned with current Mayor Muriel Bowser.
“Kenyan ran a very uninspiring campaign about what couldn’t be done,” said Michael. “We’re in a change moment, and right now the status quo is not going to be enough.”
While both candidates are former prosecutors, an issue that defines their differences is how they hoped to address public safety. One of the most heated issues this cycle was youth curfew zones and “teen takeovers.” The current mayoral administration has used emergency youth curfew zones, specific areas of the city where young people are not permitted after a certain hour, to address the mass gathering of teenagers. After a viral “teen takeover” at a Chipotle in D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood, McDuffie attacked Lewis George for her votes against curfew zones, labeling her soft on crime. Critics of the curfew strategy have labeled it as inherently racist, saying it targets Black young people for simply existing in public.
Lewis George has instead recommended expanded programming and job pathways for young people in the District. On another issue related to policing, while both candidates spoke in favor of defunding the police in 2020, they have also both voted to increase funding for the Metropolitan Police Department while serving on the Council of the District of Columbia. While McDuffie pledged to immediately add additional officers to the force, Lewis George ran on promises to invest in alternatives to policing while increasing police accountability.
Lewis George’s embrace of the movement against occupation was the magic that delivered her a victory by nearly 20 points.
According to voters and organizers, Free DC was the hinge that pushed Lewis George across the finish line. The vast majority of D.C. residents want statehood; that is no secret. But the Free DC movement aims to do more than accomplish statehood — it is a response to authoritarianism and federal occupation.
“Lewis George has commitments to stand up against Trump as opposed to Bowser and McDuffie’s stance of appeasement and compliance in advance,” said Kurtis Hagans, chair of the Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). “We have laws on the books about the sanctuary status of the District. And we’ve been lied to by the current mayor, Mayor Bowser, about the cooperation of our police forces and our local government with ICE … Janeese Lewis George has said that she will make sure that that cooperation truly stops.”
Bowser’s administration has been criticized for its quickness to comply with the White House’s demands. In March 2025, Mayor Bowser folded to Trump’s pressure and painted over Black Lives Matter Plaza, a memorial to the racial justice protests of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. In August 2025, Mayor Bowser praised the president for the federal takeover and its effects on crime in D.C., although recent data indicates the National Guard has had little to no effect on crime across the District.
According to a 2025 poll conducted by We Are Labor, the majority of D.C. voters rated Bowser’s performance as mayor unfavorably, 59 percent wanted a new candidate for mayor, and 72 percent disagreed with the mayor’s cooperation with Trump. Voters were looking for the change that Lewis George represented, and the defiance that she led with.
Lewis George was not the only progressive who won in D.C. this cycle. Aparna Raj, a democratic socialist and tenant organizer, won her race to represent Ward 1 on the D.C. Council. Robert White, a current council member, overwhelmingly beat a more moderate opponent in the primary for delegate to the U.S. House. D.C. shadow representative Oye Owolewa, also a democratic socialist, won the at-large council seat in a crowded field (D.C. representatives to Congress are known as “shadow representatives” because they are not granted voting power).
Organizers say these results prove that D.C. wants more people-powered movements and fewer machines that run on the status quo.
“The United States is descending at groundbreaking speed towards fascism and authoritarianism…,” said Dodds. “What works in moments like that is not lawyers. It is not legislation; it is not policy. It is not wealthy people coming in to save you. It is people power. It is mass movements.”
Free DC has been at the center of these mass movements since the takeover. Its members have done canvassing, engaged in election protection work, held community events, and organized protests attended by thousands. Lewis George’s embrace of the movement against occupation was the magic that delivered her a victory by nearly 20 points.
“Talking more about jobs and centering labor unions built the broadest coalition that I have ever seen D.C. create in the time I have been here,” said Mitchum. “It wasn’t just about the name of Free DC; it’s what Free DC and Janeese represented. This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license. Nick Fulton
Nick Fulton is a queer social movement journalist who has covered politics, protests, elections, and culture for over a dozen outlets, including Salon, Prism, Common Dreams, and Queerty. Nick is also the editor of The Fourth Estate, a publication covering the journalism industry’s fight for survival.
Saturday, May 02, 2026
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)
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.”
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)
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). Full Bio >
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)
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.
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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! Full Bio >
‘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)
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. Full Bio >
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)
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. Full Bio >
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