The annual May Day rally declares the cause of workers across the United States and around the world. However, this year, demonstrations in the US were fulfilled with the broader anti-Trump movement as they continue to grow over the growing presidential agenda and enforcement power.
Protesters denounced the administration's efforts to roll back workers' rights (specific painful places for a day dedicated to celebrating organized labor), and denounced plans to cut education funds and implement massive deportation.
“We're here to support workers and unions,” said 63-year-old Jena Olsen, who had worked as a flight attendant for 39 years, at a large gathering in Union Park, Chicago. But protesters also said they were angry about the “threat to democracy” raised by President Trump.
So this May date was different, said President Yvonne Wheeler of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation.
“Workers are under attack. Immigrants are under attack,” Wheeler said after speaking to a crowd of thousands of people in downtown Los Angeles. “There's confusion and confusion every day.”
Behind her, the sound of a voseras pounding the drums and breathing out of her breath, cheering as the immigration rights leader made a statement from behind the revised pickup truck.
A diverse array of flags, including American flags, flags of several Latin American countries, flags of pride, and more, floated in the sea of ​​equally diverse people. Workers scrawled signs and banners with the acronyms of their respective unions.
A similar scene unfolded across the country as police closed streets due to crowds in major cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
But protesters also gathered in small communities that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, including Norman, Oklahoma. Salk City, Wisconsin. And the Hendersonville Group, North Carolina, held signs in front of city buildings and public schools, with some demonstrators wearing red to show support for public education.
The rallies in Los Angeles began early Thursday and focused primarily on immigration rights.
Jose Sabin, 31, organizers of the statewide coalition of advocacy groups that helped set up the rally had a sign that read, “Come for one of us, come for all of us.”
Selvin moved to the United States as a child, he said. “I found a place where I can succeed here. I can thrive. I can plant roots. I'm a father now – and I'm going to fight like hell to protect it,” he said.
Another effort the organizers requested as National Law Day brought legal experts to Washington's Supreme Court and federal courts nationwide on Thursday to promote judicial independence and opposed Trump administration's efforts to threaten law firms.
The lawyer who demonstrated in the Supreme Court reaffirmed their oath to protect the rule of law – the principle that appears to be uninterested in Trump is 28 years old.
The protest, which was expected to reach more than 1,000 people nationwide, was planned to coincide with a loose coalition of grassroots activist groups, as well as traditional May Day labor gatherings by labor, nonprofits and civil rights groups. May Day commemorates the eight-hour working hours struggle that workers acquired in 1886 only after the conflict in Chicago led to a fatal Haymarket riot.
The Trump administration has sought to quell the opposition from businesses, universities, government agencies and news media. However, in recent weeks, demonstrations against the president's agenda and resistance from several agencies that Trump has targeted have increased in scale and frequency.
The Labor Group made up a large portion of the demonstrators at a rally held in Chicago on Thursday, but pro-Palestinian activists and anti-Trump demonstrators have inflated their ranks, with many deeming their concerns overlapping.
“He's tearing our constitution apart,” said Bill Hins, an union official in the Chicago suburbs of Oak Forest. One of the names spoken and written over the signs held by protesters across the country on Thursday was the name of Kilmer Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison.
Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez, spoke with thousands of people at a rally at Lafayette Square in Washington. “My husband was illegally detained, accused, disappeared, abandoned to die in one of El Salvador's most dangerous prisons, and there was no legitimate procedure due to his mistake,” she said.
“Stop playing political games in your husband's life,” Vazquez said.
Listening to in the crowd were fellow immigrants from Central and South America, including those who knew those who had recently been deported.
“It helps our undocumented community,” said immigration sovereignty organizer Nelly Bautista Hernandez, who fought her young children to come to the assembly. “I'll march for everyone who's not here.”
Notable politicians also joined the protesters at several events.
In New York City, Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pleaded participants to keep GOP lawmakers under pressure seen throughout the first 100 days of Trump's presidency.
She appeared on Manhattan's Fourley Square on the news. The votes by House Republicans on the future of Medicaid were delayed.
“They stopped Medicaid cuts next week and stopped because they're so scared,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “They look at you, New York, they see the gathering.”
In Philadelphia, dozens of demonstrators locked their arms in after a speech from Vermont's independent senator Bernie Sanders and sat at an intersection near the highway entrance about 30 minutes before police began arrest.
“We are not moved,” they sang.
Katie Benner Contributed from Washington, Joel Wolfram Philadelphia and Cassidy Jensen Contributing from New York.
