Why May Day Matters
History doesn’t just happen to us—it’s made by us. And every time we rise, every time we resist, we make it harder for the machinery of repression to roll forward unchecked.
Right now in the U.S., we’re living in two different realities—at the exact same time.
There’s the world most of us wake up to every day. The one where you’re making coffee, rushing the kids to school, clocking into work, maybe squeezing in time to text a friend or fold the laundry. It’s tiring, but familiar. The headlines may be horrifying, but you have a job to do. You’ve got things to take care of, and somehow, you just keep going.
And then there’s the other world—a world of rising authoritarianism, racial violence, institutional collapse, and lawlessness dressed up as law. It’s the one where billionaires rewrite tax codes to steal your Social Security. Where people are abducted off the streets. Where the “rule of law” becomes an instrument of repression, not justice.
The terrifying part? These two worlds exist in parallel, but most people only see one. Until it’s too late.
Every society has both functional and broken parts. That’s not new. What’s dangerous is when the broken parts grow—and no one notices until they’ve taken over.
That’s what authoritarianism counts on: invisibility, denial, delay.
And that’s why May Day matters.
Because marches, actions, walkouts—these aren’t just symbolic. They tear through the illusion that everything’s fine. They force the two worlds to collide. They make it harder to pretend. They make it easier to remember that resistance is still alive.
The longer we wait to reveal the truth, the harder it gets to stop it. That’s the pattern. That’s the history.
If you’ve ever wondered how fascism takes hold, this is how:
People weren’t asleep. They were just trying to get through the day. They didn’t know what to do. Or they thought it wouldn’t get that bad. Or they told themselves someone else would stop it.
Meanwhile, the machine kept building.
When repression comes, it doesn’t always start with soldiers in the streets.
Sometimes it shows up in packed courtrooms, in rising deportation numbers, in billionaires draining public funds while smiling on magazine covers.
Sometimes it feels like that sinking feeling that the world around you is slipping—and you’re the only one who notices.
It’s easy to feel like resistance is pointless—that the people with money and power will do what they want, no matter what. But here’s the truth:
They wouldn’t be trying to silence us if our voices didn’t matter.
They wouldn’t be outlawing protest. They wouldn’t be targeting immigrants. They wouldn’t be terrorizing communities or punishing dissent unless people power still worked. Unless it was still a threat.
Which brings us to May Day - National Day of Action, our chance to stop the broligarchy in its tracks. And we need you and everyone you know to join in.
How do we know this works?
When we talk about the power of being in the streets, it’s not abstract. It’s not theoretical. There are moments—raw, real, and undeniable—when collective presence becomes the turning point.
In May 2020, the world watched the murder of George Floyd on video. And something ancient and righteous snapped. People flooded the streets—not just in Minneapolis, but across all 50 states, and eventually across the globe. It became the largest protest movement in U.S. history. There were no polished scripts. Just grief, rage, and the stubborn insistence that Black lives must matter in policy, in policing, and in public consciousness.
The protests didn’t stop at marches. Cities began examining their police budgets. Statues of colonizers and racists came down. Conversations shifted in schools, workplaces, and homes. Derek Chauvin was charged, tried, and convicted—an exceedingly rare outcome. And although the work is far from over, that uprising cracked something open. The streets made it impossible to look away.
Just a few months earlier and a continent away, women in Chile had taken to the streets in a different kind of uprising—this one through art and voice. They gathered in plazas across the country, blindfolded and chanting in unison:
“And it wasn’t my fault, nor where I was, nor how I dressed. The rapist is you.”
It was called Un Violador en Tu Camino—“A Rapist in Your Path.” And it spread like wildfire. Within days, the performance appeared in Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, and New York. The message was unmistakable: state violence is gendered, systemic, and global.
But the action didn’t stop with the song. The flash mobs catalyzed something deeper. Feminists in Chile helped lead the call to rewrite the nation’s dictatorship-era constitution. And when that process was approved by a public vote, it was clear: a performance had become a movement, and the streets had made it real.
Of course, these breakthroughs aren’t new. The roots go deeper.
In June 1969, police raided a gay bar in New York called the Stonewall Inn. It was routine harassment, the kind queer people endured constantly. But that night, the patrons fought back. Trans women, drag queens, butch lesbians, sex workers, and street kids turned over tables and stood their ground. The uprising lasted for days.
There were no rainbow floats back then. There were bricks and blood and an urgent refusal to stay quiet.
And from that fire came something enduring. The modern LGBTQ+ movement was born. Pride was born. And decades later, legal victories—from the right to marry to protections for trans youth—can trace their roots back to those nights on Christopher Street.
These moments weren’t just symbolic. They sparked chain reactions—because when people show up, loud and visible and unapologetic, systems have to respond. Power doesn’t step aside on its own. It bends when we push. It breaks when we refuse to back down.
So when we say May Day matters, this is what we mean.
May Day is a rupture in the ordinary. A line in the sand. A moment to say: We see what’s happening. And we are not going quietly.
Teachers, students and workers are staging walkouts. People are preparing to take to the streets across the country. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your issue is.
You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need the right words. You just need to show up.
Because history doesn’t just happen to us—it’s made by us. And every time we rise, every time we resist, we make it harder for the machinery of repression to roll forward unchecked.
So don’t stay home. Not this time.
They will not deport us into silence.
They will not crush us into compliance.
They will not steal our future without a fight.
Not if we show up.
Not if we stay loud.
Not if we remember that the most powerful force on Earth has never been money.
It’s been people. Always.
We’ll see you in the streets.
—
Look for an event in your city at maydaystrong.org. If you don’t see one, think about starting one yourself! If you can, reach out to your people in your networks - people in local unions, faith communities, students, the Movement for Black Lives, your local art group, your sports team, whoever it may be - and see who might be interested. Together we are powerful!
—