DETROIT—Over 500 union members, immigrant rights advocates, and working-class Detroiters converged on Roosevelt Park in the city’s Corktown neighborhood Friday, marking May Day with a rally and march that drew together the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, community organizations, and protest groups united against an agenda they say puts bosses before workers.
The event, sponsored by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, was billed under the theme “Workers Over Billionaires” and was one of more than 5,000 different May Day actions around the country.
“Society runs on solidarity—don’t let anyone tell you different,” Metro Detroit AFL-CIO President Daryl Newman said from the stage set up in front of the historic Michigan Central Station, flanked by “Workers Over Billionaires” banners.
“May Day serves as both a day of recognition and protest, where we come together to advocate for workers’ rights, fair wages, and safe working conditions around the world,” Newman said. “That’s why we’re here together today in Detroit—the beating heart of the labor movement.”
The gathering aimed to lift demands around good pay and workers’ rights, but the issues broadcast from the main stage and which resonated among those assembled went beyond the usual workplace justice topics.
Newman and several other speakers brought a consciousness-raising message about the class struggle and the effort bosses have expended to make workers forget about their own history of fighting back and winning.
“In 1886, the working class rose up in Chicago and got us what we enjoy today,” Newman said. “Eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep, eight hours to live. May Day is our day, the workers’ day, and we can never forget that.”
“You know why a lot of workers don’t know about May Day?” Mark DePaoli, United Auto Workers Region 1A Director, asked the crowd. “It’s because corporate giants and the politicians in their pockets have been condemning May Day for 140 years.”
Past struggles weren’t the only topics on the agenda, though. “They just killed the Voting Rights Act, they gutted it,” Newman said, referring to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling last week throwing out Louisiana’s electoral map, which had been drawn to guarantee Black voting rights and representation. The whole working-class movement, he said, should view what happened in the case as an attack on everyone, not only the voters of Louisiana.
The rally at Michigan Central drew union leaders from across the region, with heavy representation from the UAW, one of the key movers behind May Day 2026. Vice President Laura Dickerson, who oversees negotiations with Ford Motor Co., also took up the theme of interconnected struggles, telling the crowd that workers’ fights don’t end with bargaining victories.
“In 2023, we had the Stand Up Strike. The workers sacrificed, and they were able to get great contracts, but it doesn’t stop there—we have to continue it and have even more creative strategies and tactics for the next time,” Dickerson said.
UAW Region 1 Director LaShawn English said “next time” happens in 2028. She pointed to May Day 2028 as a strategic rallying point. “We’re going to actually prepare to stand up for May Day 2028, and we’re getting ready,” English said, referring to the campaign to align contract expiration dates to give not just auto workers, but all workers, maximum leverage against Big Business for a possible general strike.
But a general strike cannot just be declared, she emphasized, saying, “They have to be organized.” Part of that work is building the connections beforehand, preparing for unity in action when the time comes.
Speaking to People’s World after her speech, English said that May Day has special importance this year because “all workers are coming together as one, no longer separate unions.” She emphasized that in Detroit, as in many other cities, unions “are all coming together to build strength and solidarity and make sure we are all showing our power for the working class.”
IBEW Local 58’s Justin Steenbergh, a Metro Detroit AFL-CIO executive board member and key organizer of the May Day event, said the call of the day was clear—support unions, join unions, start unions. Speaking to the media, he added that immigrant rights are inseparable from labor rights, arguing that immigration enforcement falls hardest on workers while leaving the powerful untouched. “This billionaire class can essentially operate without regard to borders,” he said.
That border-crossing solidarity was on display in the march that followed the rally. Starting from Roosevelt Park, marchers proceeded to the ICE Field Office at 985 Michigan Ave. and then to the McNamara Federal Building, where chants against wars, deportations, and economic austerity echoed against the cement walls.
Em Barnes, a member of the Detroit Union Education League (DUEL) and the Detroit Club of the Communist Party USA, addressed the marchers alongside Dr. Seydi of the African Bureau for Immigrant and Social Affairs (ABISA). They both called for special attention to the attacks on labor rights, voting rights, and civil rights and implored all trade unionists to unite together with community organizations this fall to deliver a blow to right-wing reaction at the 2026 midterm elections.
Taking the workers’ agenda from the streets and giving it life in the form of legislation was the May Day message shared by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who circulated among the crowd in Corktown, having conversations with those present.
“Detroit birthed the labor movement that has been fighting for dignity on the job for all working people,” she said in a statement on the morning of May 1. “Let’s thank our workers with action. It’s time to increase the federal minimum wage, restore collective bargaining, and protect the right to organize.”
Nationally, May Day Strong organizers reported that millions of workers, students, and families took part in actions, with the “Workers Over Billionaires” slogan being adopted from coast to coast. As in many cities, Detroit’s gathering was the largest seen in years, and the message from labor was unambiguous: The movement is organizing, it is growing, and it is not done.
Michael Joseph, president of the Detroit chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and long-time member of UAW Local 600, made that point in a conversation with People’s World. Asked about where the drive to reclaim May Day goes from here, he said, “We aren’t waiting around. We meet next week to start planning 2027.”
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