US activists plan more than 3,000 May Day blackout actions
US labor unions, democratic organizations and community groups are planning more than 3,000 may day economic blackout actions across the country for 1 May. The organizing includes city-wide blackouts in Chicago and Los Angeles, and calls for no school, no work and no shopping.
Neidi Dominguez, the founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, said the scale has more than doubled from about 1,300 actions last year. She said, “Last year, there were about 1,300 May Day actions across the country. This year, we think there’s going to be more than 3,000” and added, “Minneapolis really gave us the biggest push in real time to do it.”
Chicago unions line up blackout
In Chicago, several local labor unions and community groups jointly announced an economic blackout for 1 May. The Chicago Teachers Union, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana, Indivisible Chicago and the Chicago Federation of Labor are among the groups behind it, and Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said, “May Day has to become bigger in this moment” and “This is about building a more popular united front.”
Dominguez said the actions are a reaction to actions and threats from the Trump administration, while organizers are framing them as a protest against government policies they say put billionaires’ needs above workers’. The push also follows the economic blackout in Minnesota during a massive ICE operation in the state, which organizers say helped inspire the national effort.
Los Angeles coalition grows
In Los Angeles, the May Day coalition includes more than 50 local organizations and is organizing around immigration rights, voting rights, abolishing ICE, anti-war protests and defending workers’ rights. Pedro Trujillo, director of organizing at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said, “May Day had historically been a day of immigration and labor rights groups coming together to advocate simultaneously for these issues, including the day without an immigrant boycotts of about 20 years ago.”
Dominguez said the current plan is part of a bigger movement, not a one-day gesture. “We’re really trying to actually start organizing people to see that the power that we collectively have to do economic disruption is really the power that we need in this moment to not just defend ourselves, but defend democracy,” she said.
What happens on 1 May will be the first test of whether the planned blackouts can turn the jump from about 1,300 actions to more than 3,000 into a visible nationwide show of disruption, with Chicago and Los Angeles already positioned as the clearest city-level flashpoints.
