Leah Greenberg backs 3,500-event May Day Protest blackout
Thousands are expected to join a protest economic blackout today for International Workers’ Day as part of 3,500 May Day Strong events across the country. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping,” with walkouts, marches and block parties planned into the evening.
Leah Greenberg, one of the main organizations behind No Kings, described the blackout as a “structure test” for the movement. She said, “We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives – as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” and added, “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”
May Day Strong mobilization
The May Day Strong coalition brings together labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city.
The nationwide action is already showing up in public spaces. In Manhattan, Amazon workers, Teamsters and local politicians marched from the New York public library’s main branch to Amazon’s nearby corporate offices to demand that Amazon cut its contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. In Washington, D.C., protesters with Free DC shut down intersections across the city while carrying handmade banners reading “Workers over billionaires” and “Healthcare not warfare.”
Chicago Teachers Union
Teachers and students are part of the organizing in several places. At least 15 school districts in North Carolina gave teachers the day off to join a statewide May Day “Kids Over Corporations” rally, and school is also canceled in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where teachers planned to demonstrate.
Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, said earlier this week, “As educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve” and “We want to connect people not just to the affordability crisis but the crisis of our institutions being marginalized in this moment and the impact on our young people.” The Chicago Teachers Union also fought and won to have May Day made a “day of civic action” in Chicago.
Sunrise Movement arrests
By midday today, six protesters with Sunrise Movement were arrested for blocking a bridge in Minneapolis, and Sunrise protesters occupied a Hilton hotel lobby in Portland where DHS officials are allegedly staying. Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University and organizer with the campus’s Sunrise Movement chapter, said, “We’re taking collective action to send a message to the billionaire class: it’s our labor, our spending and our participation that keeps the whole system running, and if we don’t work, they”.
The day’s spread of marches, school disruptions and business slowdowns makes the scale easy to measure: 3,500 events, with organizers asking people to withhold labor and spending at the same time. That is the movement’s test, and today’s turnout will show whether the coalition can translate a one-day blackout into broader organizing power.
