Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world rallied Thursday in May Day protests that united many in anger over President Donald Trump’s agenda from aggressive tariffs that are stoking fears of global economic turmoil to his administration’s immigration crackdowns.
In the United States, organizers framed this year’s International Workers’ Day protests as a pushback against what they see as the administration’s sweeping assault on labor protections, diversity initiatives and federal employees. Protesters lined streets in many cities from New York to Philadelphia to Los Angeles and held a boisterous rally outside the White House in Washington.
I saw on the news last night that here in Philly, there were almost 70 arrests by city police of a group of union demonstrators doing an organized sit-in. When they were hauling one middle-aged black lady away, the news shoved a microphone in her face and asked if it was worth it. She just replied, “solidarity forever.” ✊🏻
It honestly shocked me so much that I had to do some research before bed just to make sure that number was right. Seems like it was. But I also was there in Pittsburgh during the riots that happened during the 2009 G20 summit, and that also saw similar numbers of people arrested and charged.
No city has resources, especially right now, to find charges that stick on all those people, so they put everyone in front of a judge on a rapid fire basis, and that judge basically triages the ones with charges that would actually matter. I saw something like 80% of the cases get dropped entirely, though, many months later, which is still plenty of time to ruin a worker’s life.
