Community Members Rally at Cal Anderson Park for May Day

By Aulla Elhassan

Multiple local organizations and thousands of Seattleites gathered at Cal Anderson Park for May Day. (Photo by Aulla Elhassan.)

Over a thousand people gathered at Cal Anderson Park on May 1 in commemoration of International Worker’s Day. 

The theme of this year’s May Day was “Workers Over Billionaires.” Participants were encouraged to also engage in a national strike, which entailed not attending school, showing up to work, or going shopping. In light of federal actions largely impacting the working class, general dissatisfaction with Trump and the billionaire class has skyrocketed.

Speeches began around noon, with attendees assembling on the baseball diamond. Speakers led chants, sung songs, and commemorated the Negros 19, 19 people who were killed in a Phillipine military operation in April 2026,  including Seattle activist Kai Sorem.

Over 30 organizations tabled at the Capitol Hill rally, including Radical Women Seattle,  350 Seattle, Revolutionary Communists of America, Workers Strike Back, SEIU and Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity.

Gina Petry, an organizer for Radical Women Seattle, spoke about why it was important to her for Radical Women to be present at the rally.

“We believe that ultimately, the protests that we’re doing are very important, and the various ways people are protesting … we really have to hit the system where it hurts,” Petry said. “And where we have power is our economic power, which is the way of the strike.”

Petry continued.

“[Intersectionality] means seeing that all of our oppressions are connected in the system, but also that the fight for liberation is, and has to be, connected,” Petry said. “And if we’re not doing that, we’re not actually working towards liberation. The system relies on us being divided.”

Jason Thiel, a member of United Front for a Worker’s Party, explained the roots of May Day, emphasizing how essential it was for attendees to know what they were rallying for.

“May Day is a day that is rooted in working-class struggle, and I think it’s unfortunate that May Days in recent history have lost some of that in the sense that I think if you polled people about whether we need mass strike action, they would say broadly yes, … but why is it not that?”

‘May Day’ originated in the late 19th century, when labor unions advocated for the establishment of an eight-hour workday by May 1, 1886. When this demand was not met, laborers gathered at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, on May 4, 1886. The rally was peaceful until an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they tried to forcefully dispel participants, leading police to fire and kill two demonstrators and injure an estimated 70 others.

At the time, working hours often lasted anywhere between 14 to 20 hours a day. Workers had long demanded better conditions and shorter work days, but the call for an eight-hour workday started gaining traction in the 1850s, when workers coined the slogan, “Eight hours work, eight hours recreation, and eight hours rest.” The movement for the eight-hour work day movement grew heavily in the 1860s, following the formation of the National Labor Union, the United States’ first national labor federation, and its backing. May Day is now celebrated globally. 

The march began around 1:45pm, and concluded around 3pm. Attendees marched from the baseball diamond at the park to the Amazon spheres, in which they denounced Amazon and Jeff Bezos for the company’s exhaustive list of labor violations, which were confirmed by the U.S Department of Labor. Signs referenced various social justice issues, including the Iran War, climate change, immigrant rights, the Gazan genocide, and more.

Attendees chanted “Trump must go now”, “Stand up, get down, Seattle is a union town,” among other rallying cries.

More information about Seattle May Day 2026 can be found here.