May 1 general strike rally starts at noon

Presenter: A nationwide general strike this Friday May 1 is being supported locally by ACES, the Activists Coalition of Eugene Springfield. With more on May Day actions from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Rob Fisette: 

Rob Fisette: We’ve been organizing alongside PCUN, the Piñeros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste since they put out a call in early December for this ‘Day Without An Immigrant’ campaign, which was kind of building days of economic boycott, essentially general strike—no work, no school, no shopping—leading up to May Day 2026, basically in response to the attacks on immigrant communities from ICE.

They work with a lot of farmworkers, and that’s the main thing that they were responding to with this campaign.

Within the PSL, we had been thinking about the revival, essentially, of the general strike tactic in the U.S. since at least No Kings 2. I think seeing No Kings as a movement that had the seeds for what could eventually become the general strike that we need to effectively fight back against the Trump administration.

That is to say there’s like 7 million people in the street that are willing to think of politics as something different from just going to vote and then going home, okay—doing politics in the street. Once people kind of understand that then you have those kind of numbers, it’s the next logical step is to go toward the general strike.

So we’ve been participating with PCUN in that campaign, with the understanding that we can really do it, that the general strike in the U.S. is an idea whose time has come, and that people are actually ready for it if we organize it. It needs to be organized. 

And you know, there’s no single organization around the country (in the U.S. at least) that is strong enough to just kind of put out a call for a general strike and then people are like, ‘Okay, we’re doing it.’

In some countries, the labor unions are that strong, other community organizations or there are political parties that are that strong. We don’t have that single organization in the U.S. for various historical reasons, with that amount of pull and power.

It would take spreading the idea among the general population that the general strike is necessary, it can be effective, and that we can actually do it, it’s possible.

And then merging that kind of rising consciousness with any of those progressive organizations that are willing to fight for it. And pushing toward it that way.

And so Jan. 23 in Minneapolis, in the state of Minnesota broadly, I think was a proof of that concept. They were under attack by ICE. There was a lot of grassroots mobilization and the call to shut down Minneapolis, what they called the ‘Day of Truth and Freedom,’ it didn’t come from the socialists. It didn’t come from the radicals.

It came from local labor unions, it came from the faith groups, it came from the nonprofits. They all stood up at the same time, sort of settled on, ‘We need to shut it down, that’s how we’re going to show our power.’ And that’s like how it was able to happen.

And so thinking about May Day, I think it’s very similar. In the state of Oregon we’ve been building toward May Day with PCUN. There are a lot of other organizations around the country with a lot of different political orientations, they’re all zeroing in on the same tactic at the same time.

So they’re all pushing for May Day as a day of economic shutdown, general strike.

That’s us, obviously, the May Day Strong coalition, which includes a lot of the labor unions and other progressive organizations, even the liberal groups like Indivisible and 50501 and the Women’s March. So like tactically, everyone coming into alignment about like, we all know what is needed and we’re going to do it.

Another big piece of May Day for socialists and anarchists is the real radical history of May Day, which at the time was an anarchist-led fight in Chicago for the eight-hour workday, which ended in the arrest and execution of several of the organizers. 

The fact that in the United States, May Day was not celebrated International Workers’ Day, despite having its roots in Chicago in the workers’ struggle in the United States. The United States very quickly was like, ‘No, no, no, we’re not doing that. We’ll celebrate labor, but in September,’ and disconnected the celebration of labor from those radical sort of revolutionary roots.

And it wasn’t really in the U.S., and broadly speaking, until ‘Day Without an Immigrant’ protest movement in 2006, that it was really revived as a regular celebration within the United States. Not federally recognized, but a lot of people, at least, were kind of connecting to the historical roots and then that’s been a pretty regular thing leading up to now.

We have an event scheduled for May Day that I think is going to be pretty awesome in downtown Eugene. 

We’re having a rally and march starting at noon at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza and we’ll have speakers and music and organizations and an overall fun time.

What should people bring? You should pay attention to the weather. We’re going to be there, rain or shine. My lesson from No Kings 3 was: ‘Bring sunscreen just in case. And water.’ We’ll have some of that available in an emergency, but bring enough to take care of yourself.

So we’ll have a rally and march starting at noon at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza. Starting at 2 p.m. at the Park Blocks, we’re going to have a community art build. So we’ll have a few different pieces available and a prompt for folks to come show up and add something to the canvas that they want. So by the end, we’ll have a couple of pieces that are basically built by and for the community.

We’re also putting out a call to artists to bring pieces to display at that event, which includes physical art pieces that are pro-worker, pro-immigrant, anti-ICE, anti-war, and then also we’ll have music and spoken word pieces as well.

We’re asking people to RSVP if you’re bringing artwork or bringing a performance piece to the afternoon event, so if you don’t have physical art pieces, but you have performance you want to bring, we’re asking people to come and bring that too. And that’ll be from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. over at the Park Blocks. So it’s a whole afternoon celebrating workers and our power. 

Presenter: You can join the celebration of International Workers Day Friday May 1  at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza and the Park Blocks. The rally and march start at noon, with a community art event from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.