New Yorkers gather in the streets for May Day

New York, NY – Thousands gathered in neighborhoods around the city on May 1 to celebrate International Workers Day. As this day is important for the people on the left, different events throughout the day pepper the streets calling for immigrants and workers’ rights.

Members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization attended these different events as solidarity contingents.

One of the first events began at noon in front of City Hall, called by the No More 24 Campaign. The Campaign champions a bill that in-house aid workers should not work 24-hour shifts while only getting paid for 13. Led by the workers themselves, who are mainly immigrant women, a sizable crowd of 200 gathered at the intersection of Warren Street and Broadway.

They changed, “No more 24” and “Adrienne Adams, shame on you!” referring to the speaker of city council who is currently blocking a bill to ban 24-hour shifts. A home health aide worker spoke about her experience working 24-hour shifts. “Because I look strong,” she said, “the agency I worked for gave me the hard cases. It destroyed my body, but they didn’t care. I’m fighting not just for myself, but for the next generation!”

Almost at the same time, almost 100 students and community members gathered at Washington Square Park for a May Day rally called by NYU YDSA and endorsed by several different student organizations that include NYU Students for a Democratic Society, NYU Black Student Union, NYU Mexican Student Association, and others.

Throughout sunny Garibaldi Plaza, people chanted, “Power to the people! Nobody is illegal!” and “NYU, take a stand! ICE off campus, we demand!”

Speakers repeatedly pointed out that the struggles for workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights have long been connected, and that we must show solidarity to achieve our demands.

NYU’s student body has been facing repression from their administration for speaking out against the genocide in Palestine. With the attacks from Trump on international student visas, the NYU student population is apprehensive, as 50% of them are international students. But despite the fear, the students were loud and militant, demanding that NYU pledge to end all collaboration with ICE and the Trump administration.

The last May Day event of the day was in Foley Square, the heart of the city’s Federal Plaza. A slew of NYC’s largest trade unions, union locals, radical union caucuses, and leftist organizations gathered there, including but not limited to UAW, UFT, TWU, Starbucks Workers United, 1199 SEIU, PSC-CUNY, NYCLU, NYC Educators for Palestine, Rise and Resist, Pal-Awda, CPUSA, NYCDSA, FRSO, and many, many more.

The broad demands of the event were to end the attacks of the Trump administration on workers in general, and against immigrant workers and federal workers in particular. Thousands gathered to chant, “Who’s got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!” and “When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” There were many speeches given by different union leaders.

Spirits were high as people marched to Bowling Green, the center of the Financial District and a symbol of the financial oligarchy that rules over us in the U.S. The protesters clearly chose this location as an ending spot for the march to show their opposition to the billionaires behind Donald Trump, who are chipping away at the rights of workers in the U.S.

The city was alive with a militant energy, and it rang throughout the five boroughs!

#NewYorkNY #NY #Labor #ImmigrantRights #MayDay