AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman in Boston. Juan González is in Chicago.

Workers around the world are rallying today to mark May Day, International Workers’ Day. In the Philippines, thousands of activists rallied earlier today in Manila calling for higher wages and an end to the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.

MARY ANN CASTILLO: [translated] At first, you might think there’s no connection. But as we saw when the war in the Middle East broke out, crude oil and gasoline prices shoot up. There’s a domino effect. Prices increase across the board. Gasoline prices rose by more than 100%, leaving our jeepney driver colleagues with very little income. Many of them no longer want to go out and drive, because they can’t earn enough.

AMY GOODMAN: In Argentina, thousands of workers rallied in Buenos Aires Thursday, ahead of May Day, to condemn the economic and labor policies of Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei.

MARIO MANRIQUE: [translated] Unfortunately, today in Argentina, the economic situation and the economic plan being carried out by Javier Milei’s government are seriously affecting the situation of all workers, which deteriorates more year after year. People are very angry, very dissatisfied, and they will make that demand felt by taking to the streets of Buenos Aires and the rest of the cities across all Argentine provinces.

AMY GOODMAN: In our last segment, we’re going to talk with an investigative reporter about her work in India, on A People’s History of Invisible India. But here in the United States, organizers with the May Day Strong coalition say 3,000 protests and events are scheduled for today, with organizers calling for “no school, no work, no shopping.”

On Thursday. Democracy Now! spoke with Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and organizer with the May Day Strong coalition.

NEIDI DOMINGUEZ: And so, we’re standing up to say that in this country, really, the billionaires are the only ones that are profiting and benefiting from our harm. And tomorrow, May 1st, to celebrate International Workers’ Day and standing up for all workers in the country, we’re calling for taxing the rich, so our families, not their fortunes, come first. We’re calling for no ICE, no war and no private armies to serve an authoritarian government in power, and to expand our democracy, not a corporate rule.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by two guests: in Los Angeles, Pedro Trujillo, the organizing director at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the coordinator of the L.A. May Day Coalition, and in Chicago, where Juan is also, Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

We’re going to begin with Pedro in the streets of Los Angeles. If you can talk about the organizing that’s going on in Los Angeles? Last July, immigration agents in SWAT gear and armored vehicles descended on MacArthur Park, where the largest planned rally is happening today. Can you talk about the scale of ICE activity now and the, particularly, targeting of workers, as we discuss this on International Workers’ Day?

PEDRO TRUJILLO: Good morning, all.

And we are just a few hours away from our major demonstration here in MacArthur Park. And as you said, we are standing on the ground that was utilized as a space to intimidate the community just over six months ago — close to a year ago, here in MacArthur Park, where Bovino and company descended on MacArthur Park while kids were out here in the park playing. And we have not seen the scale or operations that we were seeing in the summertime and up until the end of last year, but they’re still operating in our communities on a day-to-day basis. We’re still hearing stories of family separation, of cruelty, and a lot of cruelty in the detention center still.

And so, that’s why we’re bringing our group together. That’s why we see such a strong coalition coming together, over 120 organizations and unions here in Los Angeles endorsing this March. We haven’t seen this level of support, of engagement, in a very long time. So I’m really hopeful that we are able to advance our demands, which is that we want no wars. We want education, healthcare funded, instead of wars. We want citizenship for all. And we want that people’s dignity and that their lives are actually valued — right? — that they’re not being taken as ways of making money off of people’s bodies and their lives.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring into the conversation Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and of the Chicago Teachers Union. You’re speaking here from Chicago, the birthplace of May Day. Back on May 1st, 1886, thousands of workers in Chicago protested and went on strike demanding an eight-hour day. Could you talk about the efforts of your union to get the public schools to basically shut down so that students and parents and teachers could participate in May Day protests?

STACY DAVIS GATES: Thank you for that. Listen, in Chicago, our union is ran by high school history teachers, and so we thought it was necessary to wrap ourselves in the history of this great city and its interconnectedness to the workers’ rights movement. Four years after the Haymarket affair, our union was born. In order to make this holiday mean something to the families of this city, you have to speak to the young people and their parents. And so, we were able to negotiate an agreement, a memorandum of understanding, with the Chicago Public Schools to engage all of our children in teaching the truth about May Day and creating academic freedom for all of us to understand where our empowerment comes from. It comes from community. How do we practice it? With solidarity. And these are the most patriotic and American lessons that we can learn, especially on the 250th anniversary of this American story.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Pedro, I’d like to ask you — it’s been 20 years now since the massive immigration rights protests of 2006. You took part in those marches. You were just 17 at the time. Can you talk about the relationship, how those marches really began to represent the rebirth of May Day in the United States?

PEDRO TRUJILLO: Yes. That was a time when immigrants all over the country were under attack by national legislation that Congress was moving forward, the Sensenbrenner bill. And people rose up against it, the community rose up against it, because they saw it as a huge threat to the way of lives of many across the nation. And we saw the activation, again, of unions and community groups coming together. We saw church and faith leaders coming together, asking people to turn out, show up and demonstrate their people power in the streets.

And so, the city of L.A. is not known for shutting it down, the streets, because of marches, more for traffic that we have here. But on that day, my family and I witnessed just the gridlock that we had of people, blocks on end, hundreds of thousands of people that took to the streets. And that was the case in other major cities, and people in small cities were also demonstrating.

And so, this is a time, once again, where that level of engagement is needed, where people need to join their local group and participate in their local march to shut it down once more. Otherwise, this government will think that they can trample us and to get away with what they’re doing.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Stacy Davis Gates, as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union, in Chicago, several local labor unions and community groups jointly called for an economic blackout for Chicago today. If you can talk about how you decided to partner with, what, SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, Indivisible Chicago, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and what an economic blackout means?

STACY DAVIS GATES: Well, what it means is that we are creating a coalition to resist the tyranny of billionaires in this moment. Let’s be very clear: Billionaires put a president in place to dismantle democracy, a right-wing Congress to watch it and a right-wing Supreme Court to block us from doing anything about it. It is coalition in this moment that will provide the pathway forward. We know that when working people are allied within their community, showing solidarity with other workers across industry, and allied in community groups, that we not only sustain and secure the democracy that we have, but oftentimes we expand the opportunity for it for others.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Stacy Davis Gates, I’d like to ask you about another question. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana must redraw a congressional map that was designed to create a second majority-Black district in the state, where African Americans have long faced racial segregation and barriers to voting. The decision effectively guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. I’m wondering your reaction to what the impact of this will be on the voting rights of African Americans across the country.

STACY DAVIS GATES: Well, it’s going to challenge this democracy for everyone. Black Americans are your only reliable voting bloc for democracy in America. If you check exit polls for almost every election throughout this country, it is the Black voter, and in particular the Black female voter, who holds America down 10 toes. And so, what I would say is that this type of coalition is going to be even more necessary. And I would implore my siblings, my brothers and sisters in this struggle, to listen to Black women when we tell you what danger looks like, because, for us, it looked like Donald Trump.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Pedro Trujillo, the protests in Los Angeles come in the wake of all of the ICE raids across the country. Do you expect that you’ll get — you’re going to be able to get the same kind of turnout, given the enormous repression that the immigrant community especially is facing throughout the country?

PEDRO TRUJILLO: Yes, the city is not just an immigrant town. It’s just that we have — our families are from all kinds of statuses. So, maybe the undocumented person doesn’t feel comfortable going out to protest today, and so they’ll send, on their behalf, their U.S. citizen child or their legal permanent resident spouse to join this march. It’s just the city is just so intertwined between immigrant and nonimmigrant. We don’t really distinguish that, just because of our makeup of our city. It’s such a cultural melting pot that we have here in Los Angeles, that that’s not how we operate. And so, when we see ICE in our communities racially profiling people, it’s because the city, the makeup of the city, it’s just so intertwined that even U.S. citizens are caught up in the racial profiling, right?

And so, for us as organizers, we think of the risks. We prepare for the risks, the potential risks, as we always do in our demonstrations. But we always give people the agency to choose whether they want to fight for their liberation, knowing the risk, and giving the information so they’re able to show up.

The only thing I’ll say about the courts, in this last question, is that the courts are not going to save us. We, as community members, need to show up and show our strength, either by showing in these public spaces, organizing our dollars, where we spend it, who we boycott, especially these companies that are profiting off of immigrants being in detention. And that’s what it will take, us really taking our power back and reminding those in power that we are the ones that make this country run.

AMY GOODMAN: Pedro Trujillo, we want to thank you so much for being with us, organizing director at the Coalition for Humane and Immigrant Rights, coordinator of the L.A. May Day Coalition, speaking to us from the streets of L.A., and Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union, speaking to us from Chicago.

Coming up, we continue our May Day coverage. There are thousands of protests and events, not only across the United States, but around the world. We’ll speak with an Indian investigative journalist, author of The Many Lives of Syeda X: A People’s History of Invisible India. We’ll talk to her about labor conditions and unrest in the world’s most populous country. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Flame in My Heart” by Cool Whip, featuring our very own archivist, Brendan Allen.