‘The real Labor Day’: People around the suburbs rally for workers’ rights on May Day
Following a call from organizers for “no school, no work, no shopping,” people around the suburbs and across the country rallied to honor workers on May Day Friday.
More than 200 people filled the square in front of the Wilder Park Promenade in Aurora, toting signs, chanting and cheering on a series of speakers before taking to the streets for a march through the city’s downtown.
“Every generation has to push this country closer to its ideals, and today it’s our turn,” Aurora Deputy Mayor Casey Cuevas said. “May Day has always been a day when ordinary people stand up and say our labor has value, our lives have dignity, and our rights are not negotiable.”
Tracey Sherman-Falcon of Aurora, carrying a sign that read “people have the power,” said she was fully on board with the agenda of not working or spending any money today.
“We need to show what an impact that us people have on our communities,” she said.
Protesters also took to the streets of Bartlett, Des Plaines, Elgin and Glen Ellyn as people across the country supported International Workers Day and expressed disapproval of the Trump administration’s policies.
An afternoon rush hour rally at the intersection of Bartlett and Stearns roads in Bartlett featured demonstrators whose messages ran the gamut from International Workers’ Day to the war with Iran.
Glenn Stanko of Bartlett said criticism of many of the Trump administration’s policies had found its way onto the group’s signs.
“It’s about his policies in general, the whole administration, which is basically corrupt,” he added. “Trampling on people’s rights, including workers’ rights.”
Keith Marvin of Hanover Park explained why he thought such demonstrations were an effective way to be heard.
“It helped to end the Vietnam War, didn’t it?” he asked. “And I protested in that.”
During the Aurora rally, U.S. Rep. Bill Foster said that workers who are already under stress are facing more pressure every day from the progress of technology and AI.
“I’m hopeful that there will be a blossoming of May Day in the coming years, because we’re realizing it’s not just a bunch of union people and communists,” Foster said. “There’s going to be, I hope, a realization that we’re really all in this together.”
Aurora Mayor John Laesch echoed the sentiment.
“We’re going to start to see more of these events pop up as we see the growing wealth divide and the continued war on the middle class that the president and the Trump administration has brought to our streets,” he said.
Robert Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois, told the crowd that May Day is “the real Labor Day in America” and extolled the value of trade unions in a democracy, saying they function as a “meaningful agent of change.”
“In normal times, labor unions and other civic bodies are not standing at the ready to resist tyrants, but brothers and sisters, these are not normal times,” he said. “Saving our democracy from extremist forces is a task a multi-ethnic, racially diverse organized labor movement is best suited to execute.”
State Sen. Karina Villa, who led the crowd in chants of “tax the rich,” lamented the loss of SNAP benefits to 150,000 Illinoisans on May 1, as well as other social programs that are going unfunded at both the state and federal levels.
“The only way we’re going to fight back is by taxing the rich in the state of Illinois,” she said.
In Bartlett, Lynette Leonard said such protests have been a part of her life only recently. “I felt helpless to put a stop to the crazy,” she said.
While her colleagues’ signs touched on a number of current events, her own “Workers Over Billionaires” message tried to evoke the original meaning of May Day.
“This is the important part,” she said. “Why do we need so many billionaires paying zero taxes?”