“This is No Time for Just a Barbecue” : Labor & Community Groups Plan “Workers Over Billionaires” Rallies, Canvasses and Other Mobilizations
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Building on actions from Hands Off to May Day to No Kings, Good Trouble, and others, workers across the country are calling for 2,000+ rallies on Labor Day (September 1) this year.
Unions and community groups planned May 1st to expose the billionaire agenda driving Trump’s authoritarian rise and center the conversation on the impact on working people specifically, demanding a unifying platform of:
- Stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
- Protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs for working people.
- Fully funded schools, healthcare, and housing for all.
- Stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people, and all our communities.
- Invest in people not wars.
Now, organizers say that the urgency is only growing to stop the billionaire agenda that has taken over the federal government. Instead of making life more affordable, lifting wages for workers, or repairing generations of racial injustice, the Trump administration is dismantling the government, overseeing mass firings, and gutting worker protections and social services in order to transfer wealth to the 1% and to fund Trump’s private army of ICE agents.
Whereas Labor Day is known for unions hosting barbecues and picnics, groups in attendance are planning to turn it into a day of protest and recruitment and are fortifying their national campaign. They are connecting with 30 million workers, training thousands of new leaders to create ‘strike ready’ cities and states, and supporting each others’ local fights to stop abuses in the workplace, win contracts and policies that give working people what they need, and confront the attack on public schools, civil rights, and, democracy.
“The Trump regime is perpetrating the most anti-union, anti-worker agenda in modern American history,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Trump’s union busting efforts are an order of magnitude greater than Reagan’s attack on the air traffic employee union; he is working to destroy the independence of the NLRB and he has perpetrated possibly the largest ever transfer of wealth from working people to the super rich. This Labor Day, Americans are joining together to reject Trump’s authoritarian anti-worker agenda and demanding the society we want and need.”
“We have to summon our history to rise to the historic moment we’re in today,” explains Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union which hosted the planning convening. “Enslaved Africans broke the back of the confederacy through a general strike and a coalition with abolitionists. We’re going to need that organizing and that level of coalition to confront Trump’s attempt to bring the confederacy back. It won’t be stopped just in the courts or at the ballot box. Authoritarianism and the robbing our children of our future stops when labor and communities organize together to demand a country that works for workers instead of the billionaires.”
“We know what we are up against. The consolidation of power is happening quickly. We know that the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few has been a steady march for decades. That has all of us together pushing, demanding, cajoling that this country live up to the poetry of the Constitution and to live up to ‘We the people.’” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
“The train has already left the station. We talk about fascism and authoritarianism coming from somewhere else, but the call is coming from inside the house. We don’t have the luxury to stand on the sidelines. Our movement cannot wait, we must be bold. We must be unapologetic. Community, labor, and students are coming together and fighting back.” Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.
“Since May Day, we’ve see the onslaught of attacks on our communities escalating, our organizing has to escalate with it. We know that billionaires are making record profit while we are losing people every day. And we are facing the moment, through mobilizations, conversations, and training. There’s more of us than there are of them. We just have to organize ourselves together.” Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers.
“We have billionaire oligarchs like Peter Thiel, Antonio Gracias, and Joe Gebbia who are trying to hijack our democracy. They’re trying to increase their own power and wealth and push their draconian vision of the future. We are coming together on Labor Day as community and labor to fight for the society that we all need and deserve.” Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE).
“The only thing to stop billionaires like Trump or Peter Thiel from bulldozing working families’ economic security and the safety nets we’ve built to take care of each other is people power. They attack our democracy in order to get away with stealing our schools, our health care, and our futures. On Labor Day, workers of every race and every corner of this country will stand together to show them, stop their agenda, and push forward a democracy that actually puts working people’s needs first.” Analilia Mejia, co-director of Popular Democracy.