Seattle, WA – On May 1, Seattle saw a May Day march almost double the size of last year’s, with nearly 4000 workers, students, immigrants, community organizations and other attendees gathering at Cal Anderson Park to celebrate International Workers’ Day.
This year’s May Day march brought together the people’s movements. Leading the way was the workers movement, represented by labor unions as well as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), and the movement for immigrant rights. Also represented was the anti-war movement under the slogan of “Services, not war!”
May 2026 nears the 18-month mark of the second Trump administration’s war on the working class. Since taking office, Trump and his followers in the government have carried out nonstop attacks on everything from wage protections to safety regulations to retaliation safeguards for farmworkers. One of the greatest assaults came last year when Trump signed an order ending collective bargaining rights for federal workers, weakening their ability to unionize.
In her May Day speech, April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, stated, “it has always been us, the workers, against anti-worker politicians and the billionaires who pull their strings,” Sims said. “Those billionaires and those politicians don’t give a shit about us, about our dignity, about our rights. They want to suck us dry for profit. Work us to the bone, chew us up and spit us out.”
At the same time, the Trump administration has been escalating its war on immigrants. January of this year saw a regime of immigration terror descend on Minneapolis, Minnesota, which resulted in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of immigration agents. Here in Washington, immigration terror is most clearly seen at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, which holds roughly 1600 people and is one of the largest detention centers in the country. In February of this year, a lawsuit was filed against GEO Group, which runs the NWDC, on behalf of detained people beaten and sexually assaulted by the NWDC jailers.
Connecting the shared struggle for immigrant and workers rights, Zenia Javalera, president of SEIU6, said, “Under the Trump administration, our immigrant communities and working families face constant attacks. The aggressive and inhumane ICE terror campaigns have torn families apart, violated people’s civil rights, detained workers, and have placed people on deportation flights, shackled into seats, flown thousands of miles away under conditions that no one should ever endure. And I want to share some information about these flights, because these flights are part of a cottage industry built for the benefit of companies like Avelo Airlines, GlobalX Air, Eastern Airlines and Omni Air International. They each are making millions off of these contracts!”
Trump has kept up the U.S. imperialist policy of war, genocidal sanctions, bombings, and assassinations against anti-imperialist states and movements in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Cuba and Venezuela. Trump’s deranged warmongering has brought about a global oil crisis, the effects of which are most strongly felt in Southeast Asia, but which also affect workers in the U.S. Average gas prices in Washington state have climbed to $5.57 per gallon. This added fuel cost will continue to drive inflation even higher, especially the price of food. With rising prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store, working people pay out of pocket for Trump’s wars.
Joel Schillinger, a member of Seattle Against War, said that the highly unpopular war on Iran, “has cost the U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 billion per day, and has caused unimaginable suffering for the people of Iran. $1 billion per day for workers and families would be life-changing! Instead, U.S. workers are losing jobs, and families are struggling from losing life-saving services.”
But Trump’s attacks, far from cowing the labor movement and the movement for immigrant rights, have only done the opposite. With every assault, more and more people are saying, “Enough is enough.”
“The billionaires want us to feel powerless,” said April Sims. “But look around my friends. Are we powerless? Do we look powerless to you?” The celebration of May Day in Seattle is also a reminder that far from being separate issues, every attack on the working class is also an attack on immigrants, and every attack on immigrants is an attack on the working class.”
122 years ago, the Marxist revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin said, “In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organization.” May Day is a yearly reminder that everything workers and the oppressed have won over the years, they won through militant organizing – in labor unions, in mass community defense and anti-war organizations, and ultimately in revolutionary communist parties that succeeded at putting political power itself in the hands of the workers.
The need for militant organization was echoed by the crowd of thousands at Seattle’s May Day march as they made their way through downtown Seattle chanting, “Union power on the rise! Now’s the time to organize!”
Many ask, “How or where do I organize?” At 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 3 at Cherry Street Village, FRSO will host a May Day panel on building labor militancy, the fight for immigrant rights, and the need for revolutionary organization. Anyone who wants to take the next step from showing up to fighting back should attend.
#SeattleWA #WA #Labor #ImmigrantRights #MayDay
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