International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, happens every year on May 1.
While it’s observed around the globe as a day to celebrate organized labor, May Day is an unrecognized holiday in the U.S. But many Americans still march to highlight organized labor’s wins and recognize the struggles workers still face.
This year, thousands of Angelenos are expected to walk in different marches across Los Angeles County, but the central one will be at Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street, organized by the L.A. May Day Coalition, starting at 10 a.m.
May Day in L.A. has grown to be a significant day where worker and immigrant rights intertwine. And this year, there will be a focus on unity under the current U.S. presidency.
May Day’s start
May Day has American origins. It started after Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket Affair where workers joined a national strike advocating for an 8-hour workday.
It became an international symbol after an unknown person threw a bomb that detonated near Haymarket Square. Experts say police panicked, shooting at their own officers and protesters. Seven police officers and four demonstrators died in the aftermath.
That bloody history, along with some of the activists’ ties to the rising socialism movement, is largely why the U.S. has been so reluctant to formally observe the day. Instead, the U.S. set up Sept. 1 as Labor Day in 1894.
There have been efforts to counter the movement locally, too. It’s been remarketed as Loyalty Day in the past, as well as Law Day. In 1961, a group of advocates joined with an L.A. Superior Court judge to observe Law Day in the San Fernando Valley, which encouraged respect for law over the more rebellious and leftist-perceived May Day.
Victor Narro, a project director and labor studies professor at the UCLA Labor Center who’s been involved in May Day for decades, said that’s a mischaracterization of the movement’s purpose.
“ Fighting for workers’ rights, fighting for a union contract, fighting for immigrant rights is deemed political," Narro said. "But you are talking about fighting for a better quality of life, a better life for human beings.”
Despite the reputation, L.A. workers have marched for decades on May Day. The focus shifts each year as a response to the political climate.
For example, Angelenos gathered in 1933 to advocate for the release of a prominent labor leader in San Francisco. Flash forward to 2000, L.A.’s May Day focused on a restaurant in Koreatown where employees said they weren’t paid properly. (The employer, Elephant Snack Corner, later settled the wage claim and agreed to payroll monitoring.)
L.A.’s modern May Day
Narro said he saw the movement locally merge with immigrants’ rights starting in the 1990s.
That’s when worker centers popped up, organizing L.A. workplaces with largely immigrant employees. May Day in turn expanded from solely supporting better working conditions.
“ Immigrant rights has also become interconnected with May Day here in Los Angeles because a lot of the workers are from immigrant communities,” Narro said.
One of the significant May Days, he said, was the one after 9/11 in 2002. Roughly 15,000 joined the march that year, causing the Lakers playoff game to be delayed. Protesters marched that day against surveillance fears in immigrant communities and denounced the growing negative sentiments against them.
Four years later in 2006, about 500,000 Angelenos showed up to marches throughout May Day. During that time, Republicans in Congress were trying to pass legislation to make it a federal crime to be in the U.S. without legal status under H.R.4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
“People got fed up and took to the streets…so that was a pivotal moment. Those marches derailed that bill from moving forward,” he said.
Among other locally significant rallies is one from 2007 in MacArthur Park that focused on amnesty efforts for undocumented people.
That year was dubbed the “May Day Melee” as law enforcement tried to break up a crowd that spilled into the streets. The event turned violent as police fired rubber bullets into the crowd and used batons to clear demonstrators and reporters.
“ We had families and children fleeing,” Narro said. He sheltered people in the nearby labor center and faced three misdemeanors for disrupting a police operation.
In the aftermath, the LAPD had to pay out more than $30 million to settle lawsuits alleging LAPD misconduct, and the department ultimately took the blame.