Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/01/may-day-strong-economic-protests
Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout
Walkouts, marches and other gatherings planned for ‘May Day Strong’ demonstrations across the country
Thousands are expected to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day , as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country today. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” with walkouts, marches, block parties and other gatherings planned into the evening.
On the east coast, protests were already under way by the early morning. In Manhattan, a group of Amazon workers, Teamsters and local politicians marched from the New York public library’s main branch to Amazon’s nearby corporate offices to demand the corporation cut its contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the nation’s capital, protesters with the organization Free DC shut down intersections across the city, holding handmade banners reading “Workers over billionaires” and “Healthcare not warfare”.
By midday, six protesters with youth-led Sunrise Movement were arrested for blocking a bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Portland, Oregon, Sunrise protesters occupied a Hilton hotel lobby where DHS officials are allegedly staying.
May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year, many active movements are converging to demand no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich. The May Day Strong coalition includes 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.
Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, one of the main organizations behind No Kings, described the May Day economic blackout as a “structure test” for the movement.
“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,” she said. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”
Teachers’ unions and students are an active part of the fight, a continuation of their months of organizing against ICE. At least 15 school districts in North Carolina have given teachers the day off to join a statewide May Day “Kids Over Corporations” rally for public education funding. In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union fought and won to have May Day made a “day of civic action”. School is also canceled in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where teachers planned to demonstrate.
“As educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve,” Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, said earlier this week. “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.”
Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and organizer with the campus’s Sunrise Movement chapter, is helping coordinate a local walkout for students, teachers, workers and residents. “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 don’t have profits,” said Kukutla.
Some labor unions also planned for a strike today. Nurses at University Medical Center New Orleans announced they would begin a five-day strike for a fair contract.
Organizers say the day of action is an effort to build toward a general strike, which was essentially outlawed through the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act and hasn’t happened in the US since. As a workaround, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has called for unions to work toward a general strike on 1 May 2028, by having existing union contracts expire in unison.
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