May Day mobilizations in New York City were particularly large this year. The main action was a rally and march organized by the New York City Central Labor Council (NYC-CLC), the New York Immigration Coalition, and many unions and community organizations. Many of these groups are also part of the “May Day Strong” coalition, organizing events around the country under the slogan “Workers Over Billionaires.” There was also a higher education union rally at The New School and a Labor for Palestine rally earlier in the day, along with other rallies, picnics, and other events organized across the city.
Protesters with the Sunrise Movement were arrested while blocking the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange earlier in the morning.
At least a dozen arrested blockading the New York Stock Exchange for May Day as part of @sunrisemvmt.bsky.social’s national day of action.
Activists are calling to tax the rich, abolish ICE & stop funding war, and to defend the right to vote. pic.twitter.com/XAAgHNfaKS
— Talia Jane
(@taliaotg) May 1, 2026
The CLC action’s official slogan was “we will not be silent,” although other groups participating in the action brought their own slogans and demands, and the rally banners behind the official speakers proudly proclaimed “no ICE, no war, no billionaires.” The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), representing faculty, staff, and graduate assistants at the City University of New York (CUNY), sported “workers over billionaires” stickers and signage.
Many of its members marched with “immigrant solidarity working group” banners, and the Graduate Center and Professional Schools chapter of the union and several rank and file union groupings marched with the additional slogans of “down with U.S. imperialism in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and beyond,” “full rights for immigrants and international students,” and “reinstate the fired fourth,” referencing the adjunct faculty member of four fired from Brooklyn College last summer for Palestine activism that was not reinstated alongside three of her fired colleagues earlier this year.
These additional demands beyond the PSC leadership’s official slogans matter because while resisting ICE’s escalated activities is important, the pre-Trump status quo of immigrant rights still forces immigrants into an especially vulnerable underclass, with fewer rights and freedoms than their U.S. citizen family members and neighbors — true immigrant solidarity demands must go beyond returning to that norm.
The fight to reinstate the Fired Fourth is a matter of free speech in general, the fight against repression of the Palestine movement specifically, and the fight for job security for adjunct faculty, who work on precarious semester-by-semester or year-by-year contracts and can be non-reappointed for any reason at all. And it’s important for workers in the belly of the beast to not just criticize war in the abstract, but to recognize that U.S. imperialism is a system that extends far beyond military action.
While the May Day Strong rally and march in Washington Square Park was scheduled to begin at 4:00, the SEIU, the Laborers’ Union, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, and other groups rallied in the park beforehand, including an appearance by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first New York City mayor to address a May Day rally since Fiorello LaGuardia in 1934. It does not appear that Mayor Mamdani joined the march, although several other DSA-member politicians and political candidates marched in their organization’s contingent.
At the Labor for Palestine rally in another section of the park, speakers from the PSC, Teamsters Mobilize, the UFT, the UAW, the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and other unions and left organizations articulated the connections between the U.S. working class and the genocide and occupation in Palestine, chanting “workers of the world unite, Palestine is our fight.”
In the main march, nearly 1,000 workers mobilized from the Professional Staff Congress alone, with thousands more from other unions and left organizations. The march concluded when protesters arrived at Foley Square, passing by the Javits Federal Building (the tenth floor of which is in use as a detention center) with chants of “fuck ICE” and “NYPD, KKK, ICE — you’re all the same.”
This May Day in New York City was much larger than in recent years, and the prominent presence of anti-ICE and pro-immigrant slogans demonstrates the labor movement’s unity around defending our city from federal kidnappings and other attacks, and the inspiration many workers are taking from the movement in Minnesota against Operation Metro Surge. May Day is both a celebration of the legacy of working-class organizing and a day of action to continue that legacy. Today, we face anti-immigrant attacks, cuts to public funding, attacks on free speech and other democratic rights, war, and more — and working-class New Yorkers are responding.
The post Thousands of Workers March in New York City for May Day appeared first on Left Voice.
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