May Day demonstrations are expected to draw crowds across the country on Friday, with organizers calling for a boycott of work, school and shopping to protest the Trump administration's policies — and what activists describe as a billionaire takeover of government.
The "May Day Strong" protest events in various cities, ranging geographically from Boston to San Francisco, are meant to mark International Labor Day. They follow anti-Trump protests under the "No Kings" banner that organizers say have drawn millions of people nationwide.
Unlike the Labor Day celebrations in the U.S. each September, May 1 has traditionally been reserved as a day of protest. In the U.S., May Day goes back to the 19th-century movement to establish an 8-hour workday at a time when it wasn't unusual for Americans to work shifts of 12 hours or more. The shorter, standardized workday was first proposed in the early 1800s. But it wasn't until 1938 that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set a workweek of 44 hours, and then became 40 hours in 1940.
The National Education Association — the nation's largest labor union, with 3 million members — is a key organizer of Friday's protests. NEA President Becky Pringle told NPR that the message this year is that the country should be "focusing on workers over billionaires."
"We know there are bus drivers in New York and teachers in Idaho and nurses in Louisiana who are feeling the impact of a system that has decided … to put billionaires ahead of everyone else," she said, while "cutting services like public education that this country has made to our kids and impact our future."
Organizers say more than 500 labor unions, student groups, community organizations and other groups will participate. One of those student groups, Sunrise Movement, which bills itself as "young people fighting fascism to win a Green New Deal," said that more than 100,000 students were expected to miss school, in what it called a "strike."
In North Carolina, where the NEA says per-pupil spending and teacher salaries rank near the bottom nationwide, some 20 public school districts will be closed due to planned staff absences. The NEA says educators and school workers, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and maintenance staff, are planning to rally in the capital, Raleigh, to pressure the state legislature for more education funding.
In North Carolina's biggest city, Charlotte, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education issued a statement saying it had voted to call off school on May 1 due to the number of staff absences expected for that day.
"The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools know that teachers want to live in the communities they serve and to continue doing what they love: teaching children. We want the same for the sake of our staff and our students," spokesperson Tom Miner said in an email.
Bryan Proffitt, a North Carolina teacher and vice president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said Friday's planned rally in the capital will mark the third time in eight years that educators have demonstrated for an increase in funding as part of the "Kids Over Corporations" campaign. Proffitt told reporters the movement's aim is "more investment in public schools, an end to corporate tax cuts, a restoration of our democracy, and the expansion of union rights."
But not everyone is happy about the school closures. North Carolina State Sen. Amy Galey, a Republican, said shutting down the schools for a day "is not going to benefit students."
"We have less than 20 instructional days left in the school year, and the teachers are taking time to come to Raleigh on one of those really important critical instruction days," she said, according to WFMY.
Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union, said billionaires need to pay their fair share. "Not taxing the ultra-rich leaves schools without teachers, libraries without books, unsafe bridges, shuttered hospitals, and the rest of us paying more," she said in a statement. "We want a different future where students and communities have what they need. It's going to take all of us organizing together to make that happen."
May Day events are also planned in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Albuquerque and Portland, Ore., among other cities.
In his first term, President Trump followed his predecessors going back to Dwight Eisenhower, declaring May 1 "Loyalty Day" — a time to celebrate the country's loyalty to individual liberties.
The White House said in a statement that the Trump administration "has never wavered from standing up for American workers, from renegotiating broken trade deals to securing trillions in manufacturing investments to slashing taxes on overtime to securing our border. President Trump will always have the backs of American workers."
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