This May Day finds the American working class at a crucial juncture. Trump, at the helm of the U.S. government, has decided to wage war against the working class both at home and abroad.

The imperialist war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran could not be going worse for Trump. Iran has won the media narrative, and the majority of the population is against it. Trump is in a war from which he does not know how to extricate himself, nor does he know how to proceed. The war has already hit the global economy harshly, and gas prices in the United States are skyrocketing, ranging from $4 to $7 per gallon depending on the state. Most bourgeois economists agree that if the war continues, inflation could rise by three to four percentage points.

The Trump administration’s issues are intensifying as the midterm elections approach. It is fair to say that the coming elections will serve as a referendum on the government — which millions view as an administration of war, of the wealthy that protects pedophiles — and could deliver significant victories to the Democrats.

Looking down the barrel of a major electoral defeat in November, the GOP are scrambling to redraw the electoral districts of states like Louisiana, where the Supreme Court, in an utterly authoritarian and Bonapartist decision, just overruled the Voting Rights Act. They intend to do the same in Florida and other states.

The Trumpist and far-right offensive has not gone unchallenged though. In Minneapolis, workers and the oppressed showed us that Trump’s agenda can be defeated if we mobilize, organize, and build resistance and unity from the ground up, using the methods of struggle that have brought about real change for the working class instead of backroom deals with the Democratic and Republican establishment.

A War On the Working Class

The ruling class is in trouble. Profits are declining, inflation is rising, oil is going through the roof, political instability and war are spreading, and the working classes are increasingly restless. Faced with a new period of what Lenin called “crises, wars, and revolutions,” the bourgeoisie are doing everything they can to solve their problems by putting forward a war against the whole working class.

This is a war aimed at forcibly restoring U.S. hegemony, further plundering the resources of the colonial and semi-colonial world, and disciplining the U.S. working class through brutal methods such as those employed by ICE against immigrants, who make up around 20 percent of the American working class. These brutal methods were applied also to American born workers fighting for immigrant rights like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. This is also a war against women, children, and the LGBTQ+ community, aimed at disciplining the most vulnerable sectors of our class and keeping us divided.

In Minneapolis workers organized a massive day of strikes from the ground up that forced the union bureaucracies to participate, even as they did everything in their power to ensure it would not have a definitive economic impact.

So profound was the experience in Minneapolis that the Democrats — divided, disoriented, and always seeking to “realign” the working class without offering anything to fundamentally change its situation — attempted to co-opt the movement, strip it of its militancy, and turn it into a means of strengthening themselves electorally.

Minneapolis was a missed opportunity to deepen the struggle against Trump’s agenda further, largely because the bureaucracies of the unions and social movements did everything they could to contain the struggle within the limits imposed by the politics of the bipartisan regime. By supporting mobilizations that do not deepen our self-organization, and by channeling pressure from below toward the goal of winning elections rather than for substantive change, they managed to contain what could have been a much more explosive revolt.

In this sense, the class war is not led solely by Trump, and it is essential that we, the working class, build a massive social force that can creatively mobilize and escalate resistance against Trump while remaining politically independent of both parties of capital. Facing this war, the working class and the oppressed can only rely on our own forces.

The Democratic Party’s Left Wing Is No Alternative, We Need Class Independence

The Democrats remain divided and they still lack identity, even though they have been bolstered by anti-Trump sentiment. The Democratic establishment has no alternative to Trump’s foreign policy for restoring U.S. hegemony, precisely because they share the same fundamental principles. Though the two parties may differ in method, the alliance with Israel, the almost existential strategic competition with China, and the historic drive to contain Iran and strengthen the chains of domination over Latin America are all part of the bipartisan agenda.

The wing of the Democratic Party best positioned in this scenario is the one represented by Zohran Mamdani and AOC, who are successful examples of candidates with a left-wing populist program based on the idea that insurgents like themselves can gradually build a majority in Congress to pass reforms. This wing is further strengthened by recent successes, and the stronger it becomes the further it moves away from its principles and the closer it moves to the center of gravity of the Democratic establishment.

May Day Strong Means Unleashing the Potential of The Working Class

The “No Kings” protests demonstrated the massive scale of the resistance against Trump. At these demonstrations, workers raised demands and chants against the war on Iran, in solidarity with Venezuela, Palestine, and immigrants. The last No Kings, in particular, drew millions, including young people and students from across the country who took to the streets to voice their anger against the government. However, in the hands of the union bureaucracies and social movements, these demonstrations risk becoming merely electoral protests.

This May 1st, in New York City and across the country, the left-wing of the labor movement are mobilizing what could be a historic day in the country of the Chicago martyrs. Major unions, from the UFT to the UAW, are calling for mobilization as part of the May Day Strong coalition.

It won’t be a strike, but it’s expected that the discontent of the working class and the active sectors of the labor movement — which have been mobilizing in recent years for Palestine and in defense of immigrants — will turn out en masse. However, we must not allow May 1 to be just another routine day of protest; it must serve as a springboard to deepen unity, organization, and the struggle.

It is essential to build a broad united front of unions, social movements, community and grassroots organizations, and the Left to take to the streets and to prepare for more decisive actions, including nationwide strikes — an idea that is gaining traction within the labor movement.

But we cannot wait until 2028 as Shawn Fain from the UAW proposes, nor can we fight for the Democrats to win the election, since this will not stop the imperialist offensive or the offensive against the American working class as a whole.

The insurgent wing of the Democrats worked tirelessly for Biden, whose administration was marked by genocide and inflation, and they will work with the establishment because both seek to realign the working class with the Democratic Party — that is, to rebuild one of the major parties of imperialist capital.

The vanguard of the labor movement — including the thousands who mobilized during the pandemic against the criminal actions of the capitalists and their governments, in defense of Black lives in 2020, against the Palestinian genocide, and more recently against ICE — must lead the struggle for unity within the ranks of the working class.

This unity cannot be built in the abstract but only by unifying our demands and confronting our enemies, which are none other than the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie and its two parties.

That is why at Left Voice, this May 1, we will take to the streets to demand full rights for immigrants, confronting the idea that it is acceptable that millions of workers live in the United States without economic, political, and social rights; we demand immigrants’ right to citizenship, to political organization, to work, to social security, and to a full and dignified life in the land where they have left their sweat and their lives. We fight for the defeat of U.S. imperialism and Israel in Iran because their victory would pave the way for the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and for greater repression in the United States. We also march against imperialism as a whole, in defense of Cuba and oil for the Caribbean island, and we march in solidarity with the Palestinian people, against neo-McCarthyism at home, for the reinstatement of “the CUNY Fourth,” and for the immediate release of all those kidnapped on the Global Sumud Flotilla by Israel.

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