“No Kings” Seeded a Mass Movement Against Trump, Backed by Labor

Protester Louise Wollman came as part of the Democratic Party-aligned Downtown Nasty Women Social Group to decry Trump’s abuses of power and deportation raids. 

Protestors nationwide championed various causes in their signs and chants, decrying attacks on trans people, cuts to social programs like Medicaid that working people rely on, the United States supplying the bombs and political support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, book bans and prohibitions against teaching about systemic racism, and the takeover of government by billionaires. But the main messages in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles were about defending immigrants from ICE abductions that have torn families apart, and the defense of democracy, including the right to due process, political speech and dissent.

​“The fight is hitting too close to home,” says Gladys, a 12-year public school teacher who requested to use only her first name, when asked why she participated in the New York rally. ​“A lot of our [immigrant] students are very scared.” She says absence rates at her school have been high. 

“As a teacher, I feel like I’m a mom to all of these kids,” Gladys continues. ​“Citizens, people that are permanent residents — my own family members — are also scared. And I think that’s what’s different now, like there are no laws that are being followed, and it’s just not fair.”

“What we saw in Chicago on No Kings Day was a great showing of solidarity with immigrant workers,” says Jorge Mújica, an organizer with the workers’ center Arise Chicago. Mújica highlighted the importance of marchers, many of them white, lifting the banner of solidarity with immigrants as Trump stokes fear through provocations like the brazen, sweeping and coordinated raids in Los Angeles that began on June 6.

“I saw tourists joining us — no signs, no political T-shirts, just people coming to visit our beautiful city and willing to march with us while on vacation because we are all tired and fed up with what’s going on in our communities,” says Marcelina Pedraza, a member of United Auto Workers Local 551 at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant. 

Tahtebah Gonzalez, a worker leader with the Union of Southern Service Workers who rallied in Atlanta, was inspired by the Los Angeles protestors the previous weekend who stood up to local law enforcement and federal agents to oppose the raids, facing down tear gas and flash-bang grenades.

“The city of Los Angeles is fighting for their community,” he says. ​“Families are being torn apart. People are being taken from courthouses, their jobs and even schools. At the same time, public programs like Medicaid, SNAP and Social Security are also being targeted, affecting some of our most vulnerable communities.”

The Los Angeles crowd was diverse but predominantly people of Mexican and Central American descent, says Reverend Edgar Rivera Colón of the advocacy group Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. ​“My sense is that the rage, the sadness, the love and willingness to fight were palpable. The young people were ready for anything. I think we have the elementary building blocks for a popular rebellion that centers itself in self-defense in the most practical way: caring and militant vigilance for neighbors.” 

“I was in clerical attire and I was shocked by how many people thanked me for being there and even asked me to bless them,” Colón adds. ​“One kid asked me to bless his gas mask.”

Overall, the No Kings protests were vastly larger but more subdued than the initial Los Angeles protests against the raids earlier this month, although there were incidents of repression and political violence this weekend as well, in cities across the country. Police in tactical gear lined New York sidewalks and three protestors were arrested. In Riverside, Calif., a mood of ​“joyful/​optimistic resistance” turned to terror when the driver of an SUV plowed into a demonstrator, says University of California Riverside professor Kaya Arro. 

“There was a bizarre, three-block-long instance of ​‘telephone’ when the attack occurred,” says Arro. ​“A palpable bolt of fear shot through the crowd.” The demonstrator suffered ​“significant injuries” but is in stable condition; the police are investigating the incident as a felony hit-and-run. 

And both during the peaceful protests and elsewhere over the weekend, demonstrations took place against a backdrop of intimidation, political violence and a sense of escalating war: a political assassination in Minnesota, a fatal shooting in Utah, a man driving an SUV through a crowd of protesters in Virginia, far-right Proud Boys showing up to a demonstration in Georgia, squeaky 60-ton tanks grinding down the avenues of the nation’s capital, and Israel launching airstrikes on Iran while starving and killing people in Gaza, threatening to set off an out-of-control regional conflagration. 

In Philadelphia, tens of thousands turned out to fill Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Keon Liberato, a high school social studies teacher and member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, says he participated to model what he teaches in the classroom about self-determination and democratic rights. 

“One thing I want to show students is that the way you actually enforce your rights is through collective action, and you actually have to put your body on line to make sure that you actually have those rights,” Liberato says. ​“It’s pretty clear that the seeds of fascism have been nourished pretty well in the United States. So I think that the only way to put a check against the damage is meeting fascism with mass democratic action.”

Liberato also noted that organized labor has an important role to play in resisting the actions of the Trump administration. ​“We know that when organized labor is defeated, it usually means open season for everybody else. They’re not done attacking organized labor and trying to dismantle what remains of working class organizations, and so this is actually, in my opinion, a little bit late to the game,” he says. ​“We should have been out doing a lot earlier. But, you know, here we are. We’re doing something, and hopefully we can build a movement.”

For the most part, unions didn’t mobilize members to participate in the No Kings protest as organized groupings. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was prominent in Philadelphia and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in California and the South. (In Los Angeles, an SEIU-organized music truck featured Ozomatli and an appearance by Tom Morello.) In New York City, the most organized groupings were PSC-CUNY, the Communication Workers of America and federal workers, who have been at the center of Trump’s efforts to destroy the labor movement.

Beating back those attacks will require ​“making the political cost too high to do certain things like the budget cuts pushed by Congress, and continually making it almost impossible for the president to keep the facade that he’s a competent ruler and that he could actually make the country better,” says Danny, an American Federation of Government Employees member at the New York City march who asked not to use his last name for fear of retaliation.

“We interact with every part of society, from child care, children’s health, public health, financial security for everyone,” Danny adds. ​“So it’s just recognizing the interconnectedness of everything and how we are part of the broader labor movement.”

“Authoritarian overreach is also really financial abuse of workers, New Yorkers, of people who need the social safety net,” says Jen Gaboury, first vice president of PSC-CUNY, comparing Trump’s budget cuts to a ​“big vacuum Hoover” swallowing up money and resources. 

Carl Rosen, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, says a new formation called Labor for Democracy brought together 15 national unions and hundreds of locals and regions to back the No Kings Day protests, recognizing ​“that the labor movement has a special role to play in defending democracy in our country.” 

The next steps are already shaping up, and there’s lots that points towards a dynamic fusion of efforts, cascading in a genuinely democratic way.

The labor movement is escalating actions and experimenting with tactics. Labor for Democracy is gearing up to launch a political education program for rank-and-file union members. UNITE HERE Local 274 is teaming with the local AFL-CIO council to orchestrate a series of direct actions on June 18 in Philadelphia directed at Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) as part of an effort to persuade lawmakers to vote no on the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. The bill has fractured Republicans, in a rare rebuke to Trump, because provisions like eligibility changes to Medicaid would cut healthcare coverage to nearly 11 million people. Labor unions and community groups will block traffic as part of die-in to symbolically show the devastating impact these cuts will have on thousands of working people if the bill passes. 

The May Day Strong coalition, a nationwide network of unions and community organizations, is building towards Labor Day weekend actions as part of #SeptemberSolidarity, says Jackson Potter, vice president of Chicago Teachers Union, the powerful AFT local anchoring efforts to scale up labor’s fighting capacity and develop joint strategy alongside national education unions, federal unions, logistics workers and the AFL-CIO. Potter says the game plan is to shift the focus, amid the transition from summer to fall, ​“from a time of BBQs and beer to a sharp expression of workers defending our communities against the billionaire agenda hellbent on cutting healthcare, food for hungry children and school funding.”

“As a mass movement, we must ensure that Black leaders and strategists are at the forefront with their siblings to create the future we need,” says Potter. ​“We will seek to infuse targets into these marches to increase pressure on the wealthy corporations profiting from Trump’s demonization of Black and Brown communities and attacks on working families such as Tesla, Target, Family Dollar, Palantir and T-Mobile.”

Potter says the May Day coalition will also support SEIU’s push to defend immigrant and civil rights as part of the ​“Justice Journey” caravans, starting June 27, bringing labor and community together at key cities to protest outside detention centers with families sharing stories about how ICE’s cruel deportation sweeps have affected them.

“The actions this past week suggest that the movement against authoritarianism is growing,” says author and labor scholar Stephanie Luce. ​“Not just in size, but in tactics. While the No Kings Day marches of over five million people were traditional marches, we also saw an increase in disruptive actions such as blocking ICE vehicles and shutting down highways, veterans getting arrested at the Capitol and Palestinian activists occupying Maersk headquarters in Manhattan. Organizers are stepping up the research on strategic targets, training on non-compliance and outreach to disenfranchised communities. It’s going to be a long fight, but the momentum is in the right direction.”

“Since Trump and his billionaires took office, we’ve seen his regime attack working people at every level,” added Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000, ahead of Saturday’s protests. ​“This weekend gives us the opportunity to flood the streets to peacefully protest these outrageous attacks, but if we don’t use this opportunity to build lasting power, then we’re just blowing off steam. So as we’re out there marching, we also need to organize. Organize our co-workers, our fellow students and our neighbors. That’s how we build power to stop wannabe kings.”

Gabriel Fontes, a public school teacher in Brooklyn who joined Saturday’s march in New York, sees labor as one of the few forces with the necessary structural power to transform society. ​“Looking at examples of Chile or Czechoslovakia or Portugal, where my family’s from, we know that workers coming together and doing mass strikes is one of the only ways we can topple dictatorships, and so it’s really gonna take an organized workforce,” says Fontes, a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators, a reform caucus of the United Federation of Teachers. 

But while Saturday’s march fell short of a general strike, Fontes found it an important start to knitting together a movement around shared principles. 

“I think a lot of us live very isolated lives,” he says. ​“So seeing thousands of people come out together with shared values and shared analysis of what the problem is helps us feel less isolated and more connected.”