Philadelphia labor unions celebrated International Workers’ Day on Friday, May 1, with a pro-labor “For the Workers, Not the Billionaires May Day Rally” at City Hall featuring Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “May Day,” the precursor to the modern Labor Day, commemorates the historic push for the eight-hour workday and the Haymarket Square riot in Chicago.
Five thousand people, many of them union members, amassed at the north apron of City Hall on May Day afternoon, spilling out onto Broad Street. While Philly normally sees some May Day demonstrations, the energy of the crowd — and its numbers — spoke to Sanders’ star power and the ongoing backlash to President Donald Trump’s controversial policies.
The rally was put on by the Philadelphia AFL-CIO and featured prominent Philadelphia labor leaders and fifty-plus of its more progressive unions and organizations, with a sizable delegation from local and federal employee unions. Philadelphia is still a union town, as rally organizers were happy to point out, though the city’s more staid trade unions skipped the event.
The rally did not shy away from non-labor politics: immigrants’ rights groups were prominently featured, and speakers took strong progressive stances on immigration and civil liberties.
Consequently, Sanders, who had been touring the country on a “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” made Philly an informal tour stop. His presence was met with varying levels of enthusiasm by Drexel’s left-wing student organizations, some of whom attended the rally.
“Bernie Sanders is the leader of working class people and [is] doing more than any other political figure in the country for them,” Necati Aslan, President of the Drexel Democrats, told The Triangle. Aslan cited Sanders’ pursuit of the 2016 Democratic nomination and his clear challenge to Democratic Party leadership for inciting a wave of Democrats embracing progressive ideas.
Aslan views Sanders, who is politically an Independent that caucuses with Democrats, as a social democrat because he argues for a mixed market economy in which the government should step in on areas where the private market fails, such as healthcare and retirement funds.
“He may be a socialist in words, but he is not waging any meaningful fight against the billionaire class,” Yan Burets, the vice president of Drexel Socialists, contested. The organization is currently petitioning the university to rename itself Drexel Communists.
Burets believes that Sanders has capitulated to the mainstream Democratic Party with his support for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. In the view of Drexel Socialists, the two parties dominating American politics are two sides of the same coin, and the only way to break through is revolution.
While there was no revolution at the rally, it culminated in a city-approved march around City Hall and up to Broad Street and Vine Street. There, a group of union members and leaders spontaneously moved to block the Vine Street Expressway ramps. According to a press release, 75 were arrested in an act they deemed civil disobedience.
When Sanders spoke, he was introduced by Tiffany Davis, a food service worker at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, where Aramark employees recently unionized. He began his remarks by praising trade unions for their historic role in advocating for improved working conditions and civil rights, calling May Day “a sacred holiday.”
He particularly took aim at the billionaires filling out the Trump administration, invoking President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to declare, “[W]hat everyone knows is today, we have a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class, and we will not allow that to continue.”
The war in Gaza was a specter looming over the event. Two huge Palestinian flags made their way toward the stage, in front of the media, but caused no disruption.
“Instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military, instead of giving billions of dollars to Netanyahu and his horrific war against the people of Gaza, we can cut military spending and build five million units of low-income and affordable housing,” the senator proclaimed.
The numerous other speakers echoed and foreshadowed Sanders’ remarks, calling for a unified working class, a stronger social safety net, dignity and rights for immigrants, an end to the Trump administration’s “chainsawing” of federal spending, and for billionaires to pay their fair share. Living paycheck to paycheck was a common refrain.
The crowd that afternoon, though unabashedly progressive, was drawn from a broad cross-section of perspectives, as evidenced by the multitudes of homemade signs: “Stop the Coup,” “Hands Off,” “Make Dystopia Fiction Again,” “Stop DOGE Surveillance State” and “Pissed Off Republican.” United in a rebuke of Trump’s unrelenting policies, the addresses by Sanders and other pro-labor figures brought a vision for a future beyond MAGA politics.