May Day 2026 – No ICE! No War! No billionaires!

May Day — International Workers Day — commemorates the struggle for the eight-hour day in Chicago in 1886. It honors the five labor leaders who were executed by the state of Illinois in 1887. Four were hanged and one was found dead in his cell the night before his scheduled execution.

For decades May Day has been a holiday in most parts of the world. This year millions of people took part in marches, rallies, strikes and civil disobedience. Huge actions took place all over Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America.. 

There has been a welcome resurgence in commemorations in the U.S., with May Day Strong estimating that 3,500 separate actions took place. In some cities, organized labor played a big role in May Day. However, May Day Strong has significant ties to Democratic Party-oriented anti-Trump groups such as No Kings and 50501 and reported many smaller actions that were not union-led.

Nevertheless, it was not hard to spot antiwar signs, signs against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and expressions of solidarity with Palestine throughout the crowds. International Workers Day around the world reflected the need for global, working-class solidarity — as it should!

Actions in Boston began with an 11:00 a.m. rally of airport workers and flight attendants at Logan Airport. Taking part in May Day actions were graduate student workers at Harvard University, who continue their strike for a decent contract. This past week, faculty at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, went on a two-day strike to demand wage hikes and job safeguards. 

To top off the day’s actions, thousands of demonstrators surrounded the bandstand on Boston Common in the evening. A coalition of local unions and organizations, including the Greater Boston Labor Council, Massachusetts Teachers Association, Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), LUCE Immigrant Justice Network and the Pioneer Valley Worker Center organized the rally. 

Hundreds of immigrant workers, including members of Unite Here! Local 26 and Service Employees Union Local 509, took part. The Boston Teachers Union marched to the Common from Boston City Hall Plaza, where they had rallied to demand higher pay and protection of the 400 jobs the Boston City government is planning to cut. 

Speakers at the rally demanded an end to these cutbacks and pledged working-class solidarity in the fight against President Donald Trump’s fascist ICE deportations and his ongoing austerity regime. 

The New York City Central Labor Council-AFL-CIO held a rally at Washington Square Park and a march down Broadway to Foley Square to commemorate International Workers Day. Dozens of unions and organizations participated in the exuberant action, with many carrying signs in support of immigrants and opposing ICE and war. 

About 10 groups participated in a stationary, unified, anti-imperialist contingent to greet the march with drums, flags and signs opposing all U.S. wars and defending resistance to U.S. imperialism. Their nine-foot banner declared: “On May Day Defend Workers of the World – Fight ICE, Fight U.S. Imperialism.” A large foam core board read: “U.S. Workers Fight ICE & Help Defend: Cuba, Palestine, Iran, Venezuela & Lebanon!” 

In an address to the anti-imperialist contingent, Workers World Party First Secretary Larry Holmes stated: “May Day is about workers in New York, workers in every part of this country. But it’s also about the workers in Iran, the workers in Palestine and Lebanon, in Gaza and Venezuela and Cuba and every place that U.S. imperialism is targeting with bombs and war and starvation in a desperate effort to hold onto their empire, which is crumbling. So Long Live Palestine! Long Live solidarity! Long Live revolution. Workers of the world unite!”

Thousands of workers rallied and marched in Philadelphia. A diverse crowd holding colorful banners and signs from numerous unions and political organizations heard a succession of speakers raise a ten-point “Working People’s Vision for Philadelphia.” The program included the demand for a tax on billionaires, a statement that “healthcare is a human right” and additional demands for union rights for all, a higher minimum wage, a call to preserve public education and more. After each point was described, the crowd was asked to respond with “yes” or “no.” Yes was unanimous each time.

The march that followed, endorsed by over 30 unions, targeted the Sheraton Hotel on 15th Street in support of workers there who held a four-day strike last October. Workers there are still demanding significant wage and pension increases, improvements in healthcare coverage and an end to long-term trends of understaffing. 

The march ended in front of Comcast headquarters. Behind the lead banner of “Workers over Billionaires,” other banners and signs were wide-ranging in their slogans: “Mayday — stop the rising tide of fascism,” “Fuera ICE,” “Community, not cages,” “No ICE, No War, Free Palestine!” “Workers’ rights are trans and queer rights,” “Abolish ICE, the police and the Pentagon,” “Fund schools not weapons” and “Community needs over corporate greed.”

The Atlanta corporate headquarters of Home Depot was the site of a noisy protest in support of 80 flatbed truck drivers employed by Temco Logistics, a wholly owned Home Depot subsidiary. The drivers won an historic union election three months earlier. These new members of Teamsters Local #528 had already shown their grit by fending off a barrage of threats and phony promises during their successful unionization campaign.

For three months now, Temco and Home Depot have refused to meet with the drivers’ bargaining team. Instead, the conditions of long hours, safety issues, insufficient pay and hostile management have continued, if not worsened.

According to the Temco drivers, this response by the bosses has only increased their determination to secure a contract that ensures fair treatment.

Dozens of union members, community and progressive organizations, elected officials and candidates for office joined in a spirited display of worker solidarity. Continuous supportive honks filled the air as a steady stream of cars and trucks passed by on the busy roadway. 

The victory — winning a union at the notoriously anti-union Home Depot — is a sign of the times, according to the worker advocates and militants gathered.

Later in the day, several hundred celebrants of May Day gathered in a midtown Atlanta park to listen to workers from a variety of unions and organizations, including the Temco workers, members of the Union of Southern Service Workers and National Domestic Workers Alliance. The rally concluded with a spirited and loud march to a nearby office building that houses the offices of the notorious Blackrock investment firm. 

The next day, May 2, street protests continued in front of Atlanta’s ICE offices with a noontime demonstration of another coalition of immigrant, community and political organizations demanding the end of immigrant detention centers in Georgia and ICE raids in Atlanta and throughout the state. The horror of immigrant detention at the Stewart detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, was underscored by the suicide of still another refugee a few days prior. 

Again, the steady sound of supportive honking horns by bus and truck drivers, cheers and clapping hands by car passengers and revving motors of motorcycles animated the already enthusiastic crowd, united in opposition to the government’s terror campaign against immigrant workers and their families. A number of groups made the protest a success with the leadership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Workers World Party was an active participant in all these actions, bringing a message of international solidarity with workers everywhere, from Iran to Atlanta.

Hundreds of labor, community, antiwar and anti-racist activists stayed out for hours in unseasonably cold temperatures in Cleveland. Rally speakers included Cleveland Teachers Union building representative Rebekah Lejarde; Yvonka Hall of the Northeast Ohio Community Resilience Center; Heather Jamison of Kinnect United, whose union drive began one year ago; Laborers International Union of North America steward and PSL member Kailee Barnett.

Also speaking were; Genevieve Mitchell of the Ohio Poor Peoples’ Campaign; Legal Aid United representative David King, who is involved in the attorneys’ union drive; Starbucks Workers United representative and DSA member Shay Singh; Verónica Martínez of Cleveland Heights for Immigrant Rights; TiHa Antoinette Charfourus McDaniel of OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership; and Yousef Khalaf of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

After listening to speakers and musical artists — many of them openly anti-capitalist — for over two hours, the demonstrators held a spirited march through downtown. Three dozen organizations endorsed the demonstration.

Just as May Day was founded on the sacrifices of the murdered and executed Haymarket Martyrs, May Day in Seattle honored local activist Kai Sorem. Kai, a young trans activist, was a leader in Anakbayan South Seattle fighting for self-determination for the Philippines. She gave her life for the liberation of the Philippines, murdered on April 19, along with 18 others in Negros Occidental Province by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, agents of U.S. imperialism. 

Kai was on a solidarity tour with the popular movement of the Philippines. Anakbayan South Seattle vowed to continue the struggle in Kai’s memory and called for justice for Kai, Lyle Prijoles, Alyssa Alano, RJ Ledesna, Maureen Santuyo and all victims of the April 19 massacre. 

An Anakbayan brochure reads: “We join the call to demand an independent investigation of the attack. We demand that the victims’ families, their lawyers and human rights activists have full access to the remains of their loved ones without interrogation or intimidation. We demand an end to Memorandum 32 in Negros Occidental, to end the fascist militarization of the countryside and to end U.S. military aid and operations in the Philppines.”

Several speakers at the Seattle May Day rally protested the murder of Kai and the Negros 19. 

A crowd of 5,000, including many union members and other worker solidarity organizations, heard the many speakers and then marched. While the crowd left the rally site, an International Longshore and Warehouse Union singer on stage sang, “No contract, No coffee” in support of the fighting Starbucks Workers United members.

As the march went through downtown, the demonstrators left the streets and gathered on the property at Amazon headquarters, demanding an end to Amazon’s Pentagon contracts for murder of Palestinians and others in West Asia. A fired Amazon worker spoke to the crowd against Amazon profiting from its weapons of mass destruction. 

The march was strongly antiwar and a step forward for labor’s international solidarity against racism and imperialism — as were many of this year’s May Day marches in the U.S. and across the globe.

 

 

 

 

 

Will Hodgkinson, Jim McMahan, Dianne Mathiowetz, Joe Piette and Brenda Ryan contributed to this article.