What will May Day 2025 teach us? 

May Day 2025 will measure the broad left’s strength vis-à-vis the Trump Administration and the MAGA Republican Party here in Maine and across the country. It won’t tell us everything, but it will tell us a lot. 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”—Sun Tzu

Know your enemy. Trump had a bad week. Even Fox News had to admit that “Americans are not overly thrilled” with Trump as his approval rating slumped into the low 40s. Hegseth keeps on Signaling, Putin doesn’t seem interested in a ceasefire, Netanyahu is ratcheting up his genocide machine, he fell asleep at Pope Francis’s funeral, and, worst of all, his trade war has rattled the markets. “He’s tanking,” as Rachel Maddow put it this week. I hope she’s right. 

Yet it’s Maddow, not Trump, who is being pushed aside, reduced to one show per week starting May 5 by MSNBC’s new CEO who is encouraging producers to take a more “measured” tone towards Trump. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is moving in lockstep towards its single most important goal this year: slashing $1.5 trillion from the federal budget. They will hand hundreds of billions in tax breaks to corporations and the rich and they will gut social programs, most likely tearing the first pound of flesh from Medicaid. Republican Congressmen may face angry crowds at constituent meetings, but compared to the millions of dollars pouring into their campaign coffers, they just don’t care. 

[Read next: Thousands say Hands Off! in Maine]

The one group that may have the power to back Trump down at this point are the big banks. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank are collectively worth $10 trillion. Trump’s tariffs may trigger a recession—which he clearly doesn’t mind—but if stagflation threatens the bond market and the status of the US dollar as the global benchmark currency, the Lords of Finance might try to get him to move on. But even if they do put their thumbs on the scales, it will only be to save themselves. Remember, Occupy taught us who gets bailed out and who gets sold out.

To my eye, Trump looks happy. He loves this. He may—or may not—believe his plan will bring manufacturing back, but his real goal is to Make his American Great Again. Meaning, make the rich richer. The elite and their hangers on are going to make out like bandits and they love him for it. The MAGA upper middle classes—the managers, big landlords, medium size businessmen, wealthy lawyers and professionals, tech bros—love him for telling them that they will get rich too. Deeper down in the MAGA-inflected sections of the working class, decades of betrayal and swindles from bipartisan union busters, insurance company pirates, and devious banksters have enraged millions of people. And in the absence of a powerful labor movement or a party willing to fight for workers interests, millions have thrown their lot in with Trump because almost anything is better than the status quo. 

Trump doesn’t need 50% approval ratings. He needs a ruthless Republican Party willing to gerrymander and intimidate, a loyal base of 35 to 40% of the electorate, and a Democratic Party leadership that has no idea how to fight. As of today, he’s got the trifecta and he intends to run with it.

Know yourself. The working class in the United States has been bruised and battered by neoliberalism. Unions represented about 30% of workers in 1970, today less than 10%. The rich, the very rich, and the ultra rich have scraped an unprecedented share of the national wealth off the rest of us and are—literally—sending their fiancés into space. Meanwhile, holes in the social safety net grow by the day and grocery store inflation hits the lowest paid the hardest. LGTBQ+ workers suffer escalating harassment at work, Black workers endure double-the-average unemployment, women still earn less than men for equal work, and immigrant workers face a terrifying escalation of hatred and repression. Basic democratic rights are under attack to a degree not seen since McCarthyism. In sum, we’re in rough shape. 

[Listen to the Maine Mural podcast: Camp Hope, Bangor, Maine]

Throughout the grim neoliberal period, unions and social movements have put up a fight: Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Bernie’s presidential campaigns, mutual aid during COVID, education and healthcare workers organizing and strikes in Blue and Red states alike, the UAW stand up strikes, Amazon union drives, and too many more to name. Each of these struggles proved that there are two sides to the class war. Chief among these was UAW president Sean Fain’s call for unions to align their contracts to expire on May Day 2028 and to lead a general strike to make working-class power visible. In fact, the UAW proposal—alongside the living legacy of the 2006 mass May Day marches and strikes by immigrant workers—is an important motivation for this year’s May Day mobilizations.  

Despite all this, we remain far weaker than our enemies. There is no shame in recognizing this fact. Nor is there any point in dwelling on it. If we want to defeat Trump and to change the social and economic conditions that gave him a mass base to begin with—Democratic leaders only care about the former—we will have to find ways to accomplish things that only seem possible in history books. How did we get unions in the first place? Factory occupations, mass picket lines, and defiance of pro-corporate courts. How did Black people win the right to vote? Civil disobedience in defiance of racist police and politicians. What brought the Vietnam War to an end? Courageous resistance by the Vietnamese people, campus and urban revolts, postal wildcat strikes, mass marches in the U.S., and soldiers refusing to fight. 

The scale and power of these events can seem impossible to reproduce. Too often, people attend a protest or two and despair that the monstrous policy they marched against remains in place. But this is to misunderstand history. The unions fought for seventy-five years before they beat General Motors. African Americans struggled for hundreds of years for freedom. Nothing important changes easily. 

However, that truism can lead to a certain kind of fatalism. The trick to bringing history to life is to understand the following. Those decades-long struggles moved in fits and starts, leaps forward and costly setbacks. Success always, in every instance, emerged from 1/ sharp strategic and tactical debates, which 2/ were only possible because hundreds of thousands of people joined political and social organizations, who in turn 3/ created local and national leaders, active and informed rank-and-file members, and skilled organizers. Whether they were called political parties or community organizations or unions or caucuses or churches, no examples of progress towards social justice were won outside the reality of mass membership participation. Why does this matter? 

Because we are weak and we must become strong. And the only way to do so is to practice democracy and politics by joining a political, community, student, or union group and dedicating time to building it into something powerful enough to defend yourself and those close to you. Root yourself locally and then link up with other groups and communities in mutual defense pacts, organizing campaigns, and united fronts. This will not be done online. It will require hundreds of thousands of people learning how to listen and how to persuade and participate..

What will May Day teach us? May 1st will show us how many people we can bring out to protest Trump. But May 2nd will show us how many people joined the fight to better our chances in the hundred battles to come.

[Read next: Solidarity against Trump means joining an organization]

Strength in Solidarity: May Day protests against Trump take shape in Maine

The slogan “Strength in Solidarity” won the vote to lead Portland’s International Workers Day protest on May 1st. About seventy people took part in the April 12 organizing meeting, including teachers, electrical workers, nurses, graduate student workers, LGTBQ+ activists, Gaza solidarity organizers, and political organizations like Maine DSA, Indivisible, and many more. The Maine May Day coalition meeting aims to build immediate mobilizations while contributing to a long-term united front to defend working peoples’ rights against the Trump blitzkrieg. 

The Portland effort is part of a larger picture. On April 17, over 1300 people participated in a national conference call spearheaded by the Chicago Teachers Union to organize May Day Strong protests in hundreds of cities across the country. [Note: Maine May Day sites will be listed starting later today.] Meanwhile, the Maine Education Association and Maine AFL-CIO affiliated unions are calling for rallies in multiple towns and cities across the state. 

[Read next: We need an anti-Trump united front in Maine]

Unfortunately, our social movements and unions are not yet strong enough to stop Trump in his tracks. This means we’re going to suffer losses and casualties, even as we increase our ability to fight back. Scores of immigrant workers are being detained and threatened with deportation in towns across our state. Bowdoin College faces threats from Trump for solidarity actions carried out by Students for Justice in Palestine. Free school lunch is at risk for more than 100,000 public school students. Transgender people face an orchestrated backlash, striking at the core of their basic human rights. Federal unionized workers have been illegally terminated and Trump wants to outlaw their collective bargaining rights. Cuts to Medicaid will lead to more hospital closures. Not to mention the impact of massive tax breaks for the rich, the slashing of environmental protections, and the very existence of our—already weak—democracy and civil liberties. The message is clear: if you stand up for basic civil liberties, you risk financial catastrophe and police repression.

Meanwhile, the Maine Republican Party, with Laurel “Doxxing kids” Libby at its head, is raking in millions from far-right groups across the country to ram through a referendum in November to limit voting rights for women, the elderly, the disabled, and—it must be said out loud—anyone that doesn’t look white enough for Libby and her entourage. Their strategy is to break our resolve and gerrymander power for themselves for decades to come in the name of profits for the rich and pain for the working class. They have the wind in their sales and we have to prepare for a drawn out struggle.

In that vein, one inspiration for the May 1st action comes from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain’s call to begin coordinating contract expiration dates and ongoing actions now in advance of an effort to launch a general strike on May 1st, 2028 to flex workers power. One graduate student union organizer put it this way, “If we want to win, we all need to get strike ready. We need to practice. Not just in our unions, but in our communities, too.” 

Collectively, we took an important step in the right direction when 15,000 people in towns across Maine turned out on April 5 to protest Trump’s wrecking ball. These mobilizations began to change the mood from isolation and disbelief to determination to put up a fight and they are set to continue on April 19. 

There’s no telling in advance how large the protests will be in the coming weeks and months. The ebb and flow of mass social movements cannot be scheduled in advance. However, the history of labor during the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s both demonstrate that the better organized we are in advance, the better we are able to cultivate and sustain opposition. The more we leave our internal organization up to a date posted on Facebook and Instagram—or to small professional staffs managing large databases of passive followers and donors—the weaker we will be. This doesn’t mean we can’t use social media or raise money, but there is no substitute for face-to-face planning between organizations who can democratically represent activists in every workplace, neighborhood, community and school. We’re not there yet. That’s where we have to get in the years to come if we want to beat Trumpism and replace it with something better than what came before. 

Fortunately, we’re not starting from scratch. Maine has hundreds of community and labor and advocacy organizations who have been doing the hard work of organizing for a long time. That work has expanded the rights and social programs we all rely on. Now, much of that is under threat. It’s no surprise that the first groups to stand up were those with the strongest organizations, for instance, unions representing postal workers, federal workers, nurses, and teachers. We have to build on those efforts. To defend ourselves, we all need to expand our circles and build bridges between communities.

[Read next: Sitting down with the Portland Tenants Union]

Final details will be hashed out this weekend, but the outline of Portland’s May Day action is coming into view. We’ll begin at 3:30 on the Portland campus of the University of Southern Maine to speak out against Trump’s threat to our public universities. And, we’ll march on the boss to demand the UMaine system bargain in good faith and sign a union contract with graduate student workers represented by the United Auto Workers. The two go hand in hand. 

Next, we’ll march to the Post Office on Forest Ave to oppose Trump’s threats to privatize it and hear from workers threatened with mass layoffs. Then up past Portland High School and the Portland Public Library in solidarity with educators and students opposed to Trump’s destruction of the Department of Education and his attacks on LGTBQ+ and immigrant students. Finally we’ll march up Congress Street during rush hour to the Portland Museum of Art to support funding for the arts and hold a final community rally starting around 5:00 pm. We’ll have a program of speaking out against Trump’s attack and offering ideas about how to deepen solidarity between all the different parts of our movement for democracy and justice. 

We need your help. Please attend the march if you are able. It’s a big state, so if you can’t get to Portland, please support or organize another action in your town or region hosted by the Maine Education Association and the Maine AFL-CIO or any other community group that steps up to stand up. Strength in solidarity. 

[Listen to the Maine Mural Podcast latest episode: Camp Hope in Bangor, Maine]

I write this truth so all may understand the reality of Disability.

Disability is the one category, the one group, the one community that anyone can join at any time in their life for any reason. Disability is defined by people.

People can be born disabled. People may become disabled due to an infinite set of possible factors: Illness, injuries, accidents, disasters, work, play, and so on.

Disability is inclusive by default. People are of any skin color, any gender, any sexuality, any class, any nationality, any ethnicity, any religion, any disease, any illness.

Because anyone can enter into disability, it is inherently intersectional. All Disabled people have multiple identities that describe them and inform how they navigate the world. Thus we have to be intersectional so we can understand the multitude of oppressive systems that overlap and attack from multiple sides.

Disability is creative. Our survival in a world hellbent on making our lives miserable, impoverished, and painful requires us to create our own forms of joy and resistance. We build up mutual aids, underground communities, and organizing using the tools we have.

Disability intertwines with technology in that many of us must use the Internet, our phones, our computers to interact with others. Where we may need devices to breath, to sleep, to eat. Where we may need mobility aids to navigate the physical realm. Where we must use what we have and transform it into what we need. Many of us become cyborgs through our leverage of technology to ease our symptoms, pain, and to help foster our independence and connections. We require collective access, cross-movement solidarity, and a recognition of our wholeness outside of productivity or other measures.

Our needs are diverse, unique to each of us, and thus we burst forth with imaginative and creative ways to exist in spite of the world's ableism. We lead with the most impacted, we pace ourselves, we balance our symptoms with our healthcare with our other work.

Celebrating Disabled means I am recognizing that Disability, the group in which I exist currently, the truth that I am Disabled does not mean I am less-than, but that I am whole even if society refuses to recognize that. My limitations may make navigating our society harder, but it pushes me to declare and demand a more equitable, just, sustainable, accessible society. The creativity of Disabled activists, our ways of surviving despite our limitations, our talents and skills, our personhood is all to be celebrated.

To become disabled is to enter into a world of diversity and creativity.

To become disabled is to enter into the resistance against oppressive systems that harm and disable and kill.

To become disabled requires us to reckon with society's health supremacy lies. To realize bodies are diverse and unique in needs; to realize that everyone is deserving of love, of care, of support; to understand how everyone deserves to have their needs met. Holding onto bigotry harms and potentially kills us, and so that must be exorcised.

To become disabled is to enter into a journey of realization, of truth, of rediscovering who we truly are. We can't hide from the limitations of our bodies and minds anymore. We must bravely face those limitations and find a balance so we can live another day.

Our body/minds are rich and brilliant as they are. As the Disabled, we discover how body and mind are interdependent. How we cannot separate them. We are our bodies, we are our minds, we are both/and.

Disability isn't a cure. It cannot erase bigotry from our minds and bodies. It only redirects our gaze, intensifies the truth of our relations with one another, and whether we walk through that fire more compassionate and loving depends on our willingness to accept the uniqueness of one another, to let go of what no longer serves us. To grieve that former self, to exorcise the harmful socializations society instilled in us, and to open up one's mind and body to one another's truths.

Disabled and newly disabled and formerly disabled all have this chance to explore an alternate view of our reality. To see what has lain hidden under the oppressive systems that alienate, isolate, and exploit us. Some may bunker down within the bigotry society instilled in us, but others break free from that cage and be reborn into a fiery phoenix of relentless hope and compassion.

Our world is changeable. Nothing is set in impervious stone. It all can be broken down and repurposed.

Capitalism, cisgender-hetero-patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism -- these are all disabling systems. They eat up people and spit them out, and only a privileged few escape the jaws of exploitation. Those privileged few fall prey to the greed and power that turns them into monstrous beasts that devour yet more of us in their quest for more wealth, more power, more prestige. They can no longer see us and them as human beings equal in body and mind, and instead see themselves as beyond-human.

They cannot be reasoned with. They can only be stopped. Violence and fear is their language.

For the Disabled, it is not fear and violence by which we live. It is not our suffering that defines all that we are. Our suffering is but one piece of our stories.

Disability is defined by our rich history, our unique stories, our creative will to live, to find a way to survive, to help one another survive, to speak our truths no matter how vicious others become. To call out the harm perpetuated against us, to demand the healthcare we need to live, to speak truth to our pain and our small joys.

We have persisted throughout history. It is our community, our compassion, our love, our fierce struggle to live that gives us a power the oligarchs and capitalists will never have.

We can defeat the monstrous beasts that exploit, devour, destroy, disable, kill. We can win through the bonds of our diversity, through the truth of our body/minds, through our interdependence on each other, through our support and our demand for justice.

We have won before: won rights, laws, building of technology that aids us.

We can win again.

Not in spite of our disability but because of our Disabled selves.