More than 250,000 turn out nationwide on May Day

CHICAGO–An estimated 250,000 turned out in over 1,100 May Day protest rallies and marches throughout the country Thursday, surpassing in numbers those who have turned out recently at Labor Day marches. There was an attempt to replace May Day protests in the U.S. with Labor Day in order to separate workers and their allies in this country from those all over the world celebrating working-class struggles on May 1.

The marchers in Chicago paraded through the city’s downtown area after a spirited rally at Union Park. They were, like the May Day marchers across the country, a massive fusion of workers, their unions, and immigrants, all of whom have been under assault by the Trump administration.

Cable TV networks, not normally a presence at May Day demonstrations, featured the nationwide protests in their news coverage yesterday. A priest in Chicago who marched, the Rev. Sandra Castillo, noting the heavy participation of Latinos in the rally and march, said the protest was “a testimony to the incredible courage of people who have been the recipients of a terrible fear campaign mounted by the administration.”

May Day actually began here in Chicago. The International Workers Day commemorates how workers in the city went on strike 139 years ago as part of a nationwide movement demanding the eight-hour day.

Unions, as well as faith and community organizations, participated in the march and denounced the policies of President Donald Trump, with many especially criticizing his actions against immigrant communities. A recent poll found that Trump has the lowest approval rating through his first 100 days of any president in the last 80 years.

Scattered rain showers forced many to don plastic ponchos as they marched roughly three miles from Union Park to Grant Park. Thursday’s march was the latest in a series of large-scale protests against the Trump administration, with many thousands having demonstrated in the Hands Off! protest last month. Organizers who spoke with People’s World estimated the May Day crowd in Chicago numbered around 10,000 people.

Crowds began to meet at Union Park after 9 a.m. as part of an interfaith gathering organized by Arise Chicago.

“Donald Trump is ignoring federal judges; he’s ignoring the Supreme Court; he’s ignoring the Constitution of the United States,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church. “We must come together and remind him he was elected president. He was not crowned a king.”

In an interview with People’s World, Rev. Pfleger said President Trump is using the “blueprint” of Nazi Germany for his domestic and foreign policy. He also characterized the Trump administration as one that espouses hate and white supremacy while “trying to redefine who Jesus was.”

“Every church ought to be standing up. Every church ought to be condemning what he’s doing now,” Rev. Pfleger said. “Don’t be afraid of him. Don’t be intimidated by him. Don’t assimilate into what’s going on. Fight it and resist it at every opportunity. As individuals, join some church, some organization that’s fighting it. Every church, if you’re not going to fight what’s going on now, close your doors.”

Also in attendance was Donna Miller, who serves on the Cook County Board of Commissioners for the 6th District.

Status as a sanctuary city

Miller spoke about Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city, which has drawn the ire of the Trump administration over the past 100 days. President Trump has previously threatened to withhold federal funding for sanctuary cities.

“Chicago, being a sanctuary city, has been something that’s been in effect for a long time,” Miller said. “Why? Because immigrants move here. Why? Because immigrants work here. Why? Because immigrants build their families here. And we’re not going to take that away just because the Trump administration wants to strip the rights of immigrants. We’re not going to stand by and let that happen.”

LaNell Piercy, the president of Communication Workers of America Local 4252, said members of her union and others have been negatively impacted by President Trump’s economic policies.

“You can already see some shortages in the grocery stores, the price of eggs, the price of produce, the price of beef, I mean everything is going up,” Piercy said. “He hasn’t lowered the price of eggs. He hasn’t lowered the price of gasoline. Everything is rising, and we’re losing money in the stock market.”

Piercy compared the U.S. under the current Trump administration to the McCarthyism of the 1950s, where people were “blackballed” and “couldn’t get jobs.” She said it is “very important” for people to take part in May Day rallies “because it’s time to stand up, rise up, and start fighting for our freedoms that are being taken away from us.”

“I’m 71 years old. I marched in ‘72 for women’s rights. I never dreamed that I’d have to be marching for women’s rights again, for children’s rights, for immigrants’ rights. And it’s just something that we all have to do,” Piercy told People’s World. “We’re just failing as a nation if we don’t have these rights built back up for us. We have to stand up and fight.”

A large contingent at the march included organizers from the Chicago Teachers Union. In March, Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” On the day of the march, it was announced that the Trump administration would discontinue $1 billion in grants for mental health programs for schools.

“Everything under the umbrella of education is under attack,” said Jhoanna Maldonado, a CTU organizer, who added that school programs are being “cut left and right.”

“As a special education teacher, I needed more resources for my students. I couldn’t just go off of the regular curriculum. They needed more hands-on learning. They needed more hands-on experience. And the Trump administration doesn’t care about those students,” Maldonado said. “They want to throw them away like they don’t matter.”

Maldonado also highlighted some of the CTU’s recent work that has sought to undermine some of the Trump administration’s agenda, such as codifying in their contracts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can’t enter school buildings.

CTU organizers brought along more than 400 students from Chicago Public Schools to participate in the May Day march. Maldonado said it is important for students to demonstrate on May Day and learn first-hand about the holiday’s history and significance.

“It is vastly important for young people to know the history so that they don’t think that they can’t fight back, that they have to lie down, that they can’t push back on a system that doesn’t care about them,” Maldonado said. “Because it is only us that care about each other, and so we’ve got to.”

Shared similar sentiment

Jitu Brown, the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, who was recently elected to the Chicago Board of Education, shared a similar sentiment about the importance of young people marching on May Day.

“It’s powerful. Young people are not the future. They’re now,” Brown said. “Our young people need to understand how communities operate, how to lead communities. They need to know that now.”

When asked how the Trump administration has impacted education in Chicago, Brown noted how the Black Student Success Plan – a program that seeks to eliminate “opportunity gaps” for Black students, for which he is the committee chair – was “immediately” challenged by the conservative group Parents Defending Education. The Virginia-based group alleges the CPS program violates Title IV of the Civil Rights Act.

“I think the fact that they are suing a school district for finally addressing the historic disinvestment in Black communities, they’ve turned the Office of Civil Rights into a white supremacist organization,” Brown said.

Brown said Trump’s cuts to education are “catastrophic” and will lead to “mass school closings” and “large class sizes,” but added that “it’s worse than the cuts.”

“It’s also telling people that they can’t learn about themselves. We’re being ‘othered,’” Brown said. “When people tell me that I can’t learn my history, that I can’t learn about my ancestors, that we can’t learn about the things that have happened beautifully in this country and the things that have happened tragically, so we can learn from them, then we’re moving backwards.”

As the large crowd was preparing to march from Union Park, People’s World was able to speak with Kristen Perez, who is a board member of the Illinois Nurses Association.

“We’re seeing so many violations of union rights,” Perez said, “Not only by the Trump administration, but we’re seeing those rights violated by our own local management in multiple units. And they’re empowered by Trump’s blatant disregard for union rights and using that to their advantage to manipulate the situations and disregard our union contracts overall.”

Perez also criticized Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has previously pushed the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. In a recent interview, he misleadingly claimed that measles vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris and DNA particles,” as the U.S. is currently experiencing one of its worst measles outbreaks in the last 25 years.

“It’s asinine to have someone who has no medical training or experience running that department,” Perez said. “The use of misinformation from his department just furthers the issues that we have with enforcing public health policies that are meant to keep people safe.”