Coming on the heels of the culmination of Trump’s first 100 days in office in his second presidential term, tens of thousands took to the streets this May Day across the country in a significant day of action against the ongoing attacks by the Trump administration.
May Day was the third day of major action against the Trump administration within a month. In the first week of May, during a coordinated series of protests called “Hands Off,” millions took to the streets nationwide, voicing various grievances against Trump. Two weeks later, hundreds of thousands participated in the “50501” protests. Town halls have become battlegrounds, as constituents confront politicians over Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies and his assault on social programs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands have attended rallies headlined by Bernie Sanders and AOC, even in traditionally red states. There is widespread condemnation of the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and other pro-Palestine activists, accompanied by significant protests.
Protesters arrived with a broad range of demands — condemning Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant policies, his violent crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement, deep cuts to public programs in collaboration with Elon Musk and DOGE, and anxiety over looming trade wars. Protesters’ rallying cries centered on brutal ICE raids captured on video, the arrest of Khalil, the deportation of Kilmar Abrego García, and the revocation of over 1,500 student visas — a move the administration was forced to walk back after significant pushback.
This backlash is not only visible on the streets, but it also reflects a deeper loss of support for Trump’s agenda. In recent weeks, Trump’s approval rating has plummeted, with an ABC/Ipsos poll indicating that he has the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past 80 years. Even on immigration, where he’s enjoyed more support, Trump’s numbers have declined, with more than half of Americans stating that his measures go “too far” — a reversal from when he took office in January.
It is in this context that we must view this year’s May Day actions, which drew thousands of people in key cities across the country, from Chicago to Dallas and beyond. In New York City, participation estimates ranged from 6,000 to 15,000, according to different sources. In Philadelphia, an estimated 5,000 people took to the streets, while Chicago saw around 10,000 participants. Although turnout was smaller than the hundreds of thousands who mobilized on April 5, the significance of this May Day goes beyond simple numbers; it marked one of the largest and most politicized May Day mobilizations in recent years — a remarkable occurrence in a country where May Day has historically been marginalized.
Illustrating how widespread these protests were, there were over 1,000 May Day rallies planned across the country. They took place in small towns, including conservative strongholds. Even when the actions were small, with only a few hundred protesters, they revealed important fissures in the Trump coalition. Along with denouncing Trump and his policies, protesters expressed rising anger at the rich — especially regarding the role played by Elon Musk and DOGE, as well as tech CEOs such as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who’ve cozied up to Trump. This renewed focus also emphasized the role of the working class in shaping society.
The Revitalization of the Democratic Party
The May Day mobilizations coincided with the efforts of a Democratic Party attempting to reconstitute itself after losing prestige in the face of Trump’s victory. Prominent figures from the progressive wing of the party — such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar — delivered fiery speeches in Philadelphia, New York, and Minneapolis, respectively, on the need to fight Trump. But despite their harsh words for Trump, they view the task of the “resistance” as strengthening the Democratic Party rather than fostering a movement in the streets or in workplaces and universities, a mass movement that can effectively defeat Trump. They are even less inclined to support the emergence of an independent, working-class organization that fights with its own program.
As an example, AOC’s surprise speech in NYC was merely symbolic. Appearing unannounced, she became the face of the protest while containing the mobilization, rather than motivating her base to join rank-and-file union members and protesters in the streets. Indeed, with their appearances at the May Day rallies, which were in line with their “Fight the Oligarchy” tour, AOC and Sanders presented themselves as “worthy alternatives” to those who want to take up the fight against Trump and are frustrated with the Democrats. Their solution to “fight” the oligarchy, however, is not to challenge the capitalist class from below as a united working class but to change the “leadership” of the Democratic Party — a capitalist party through and through. To reinforce the illusion that the Democratic Party can — and should — be reformed into a vehicle for working-class liberation, AOC said at a Nevada rally, “This isn’t just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us too. But what that means is that we as a community must choose and vote for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.”
This politics isn’t limited to national figures alone. At the local level, politicians like Zohran Mamdani — a DSA-endorsed New York Assembly member — play the same game, wrapping themselves in progressive imagery while working to resuscitate the Democratic Party’s rotting corpse. Rather than organizing a fighting movement that can resist Trump’s attacks or address the compounding capitalist crises, Mamdani and his ilk recruit an army of door knockers and volunteers to expand the Democratic machine. Under the banner of “socialism,” Mamdani has overseen substantial voter registration drives for the Democrats in New York City, all while peddling the same old promise: that change lies just over the horizon, if only we keep electing “progressive” Democrats. But that horizon never arrives. The function of these campaigns remains the same: to demobilize independent working-class politics and keep struggles confined within the boundaries of a bourgeois party. They propose reforms to appease those angry at the capitalists by offering workers some crumbs. But this is just to ameliorate the worst aspects of the capitalist crisis, leaving the root causes of exploitation and the capitalist system itself untouched.
Building a United Front
As hundreds of thousands join the fight against Trump and the capitalists who support him, we have to reject the tendencies toward a popular front — a strategy that sacrifices working-class independence on the altar of “unity” with “progressive” capitalists in the face of greater threats, such as fascism or the Far Right. History has shown that these alliances have ultimately served to demobilize workers and tie mass movements to the goals of ruling-class parties like the Democrats, rather than advancing an independent working-class organization that can fight for its own interests, which are at odds with those of the ruling class.
Indeed, the Democratic Party has repeatedly played this role, rallying social and labor movements to make common cause with the “lesser of two evils” as a means of strangling class struggle. From FDR’s New Deal coalition (which co-opted labor struggles to stabilize American capitalism and mobilize the working class for World War II under the banner of American imperialism), to Cold War–era anti-communism (which crushed radical unions), to Obama’s “hope and change” rhetoric (which bailed out Wall Street during the 2008 crisis while workers lost their homes) — the Democratic Party has always acted as a mechanism to absorb popular anger. The false alliances brokered with them have done little to empower workers; instead, the Democratic Party has demobilized them, tying our movements to the agenda of its capitalists it serves and obstructing the emergence of the working class as an independent political force. The popular front does nothing to neutralize the Far Right — as Trump’s reelection demonstrates; it only enables the Far Right by refusing to address the rotting foundations of the system that breeds it.
As a party of war, repression, and capitalist crisis, the Democratic Party cannot be a vehicle for our liberation. Yet groups like the DSA continue to serve as the popular front’s most effective left cover, rebuilding the Democratic Party’s credibility among the tens of thousands of disillusioned workers and youth who have flocked to its ranks in search of political alternatives. On May Day, in major cities like New York, the DSA was a key force in organizing the main rallies, mobilizing hundreds — not with the perspective of building independent working-class action against Trump, the oligarchy, and the Far Right, but by leading them to cheer for Sanders and AOC as figureheads of the “resistance.”
After Trump’s victory in November, the DSA declared that we need to build a new party for the working class. Yet, in the months since, they have put its apparatus in the service of rebuilding the Democratic Party. It has doubled down on its reformist electoral strategy, viewing its electoral victories with the Democratic Party as ends in themselves, treating the space it conquers in social movements and within the labor movement as tools for winning office rather than as foundations for developing a genuine struggle. Now too, they hail figures like AOC and Sanders as champions — the very figures that dutifully lined up behind Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Party, even as they funded Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In the DSA’s vision of “socialism,” the Left politely petitions the ruling class for concessions instead of mobilizing workers to seize power directly. This strategy ultimately relegates the impressive organizing from many sectors of its rank and file toward being mere “pressure campaigns” on bourgeois politicians, rather than being the basis for independent organization. The DSA’s cheerleading for progressive Democrats who vote for war budgets, anti-strike legislation, and brutal policing reveals the organization’s ultimate role: not as a challenge to the popular front, but as its left flank, providing radical cover to a party that aims to disarm the working class.
The Left must break with this strategy. We need political independence from both parties of capital and a united front from below. This entails calling on major federations and unions, like the AFL-CIO and UAW, to mobilize their ranks, escalate actions, and prepare for political strikes against Trump’s agenda — fully aware that this means a struggle against union leaders who will pacify worker organization for a seat at the table with bourgeois politicians working on behalf of the bosses. It means linking workers, students, migrants, and all oppressed people in a common struggle — using the methods of the working class: strikes, walkouts, assemblies, and mass mobilization.
This year’s May Day highlighted both the possibilities and the limitations of our current moment. The Left — including but not limited to the DSA — missed a critical opportunity to march together as a united, class-independent force alongside rank-and-file workers, students, and all those ready to confront Trump, the Far Right, imperialism, and the genocide in Gaza. It could have rallied people around the necessity to fight back against the repression of our movements by politicians and university administrators — including making a call on the unions to take up the fight to reinstate Grant Miner of the Student Workers of Columbia and all of its members who are the targets of political repression. A stronger left bloc could have served as a pole of attraction for those seeking to mobilize independently of forces that, despite their radical rhetoric, remain tied to the Democratic Party. Instead, the Left’s divisions weakened our ability to fight for real unity — not the false “unity” demanded by a party of war and exploitation, but unity grounded in independent mass action from below.
Some groups, like FSP and SAlt, marched under slogans that did not clearly differentiate them from the Democratic Party, reinforcing the popular front logic that dominates the broader movement. At a time when even the rally itself lacked a firm basis in class independence, it was urgent to build a left pole that could advance sharp demands while unequivocally rejecting reliance on the courts, Congress, or the Democrats. Meanwhile, the PSL and IG opted for entirely separate contingents, prioritizing their own organizational growth over constructing a unified left presence. Their approach fragmented what could have been a stronger, clearer signal: that there exists a current within the movement that refuses to be co-opted by pro-capitalist forces. A cohesive left bloc would have sharpened our message and amplified our collective strength at a moment when faith in the Democrats and Republicans is at a historic low. Instead, the Left’s scattered contingents mirrored the very disunity that holds us back — precisely when we need a bold, independent alternative the most.
There have been many calls made across the Left for the construction of a united front against the Far Right. It’s true that confronting the attacks on our democratic rights and against the working class requires the massive intervention of workers, students, and activists who oppose Trump’s agenda; but within those mass movements we have to fight to make space for the Left as a force that shows we don’t need the Democratic Party. To start it means uniting in action even while we march under our own banners.
As our comrade Madeleine Freeman recently wrote, “This May Day showed that there is no ‘single issue’ facing working people living in the United States, but that we must fight with a single fist for the interests of our entire class against the attacks of the Far Right.” As the burgeoning anger against Trump continues to express itself in different ways, it is essential that we seek to understand and merge with this sentiment, expressing our endeavor — to unite our struggles — and put forward a political struggle against the emerging tendencies toward a popular front that are burgeoning.
That is the task ahead.