May Day Means Resistance

A Call to Take Action on May First

2025-04-08

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This May Day, gather in defiance of tyranny and oppression. Gather to create communities based in solidarity and mutual aid. Gather with everyone who wants a better life. Gather to honor those who fought before us. Gather to show that another world is possible.

As May Day 2025 approaches, we face an increasingly grim situation. Donald Trump and his lackeys are restructuring the state, redirecting even more resources towards repression and filling their pockets along the way. They are already deporting students on the basis of their political views and they have made it clear that they intend to escalate to deporting US citizens as well. All the while, the ecological damage, climate disasters, wars, and genocides that were already in progress are only intensifying.

While some are laying low, hoping that the tide will turn, that is a terrible mistake. How far this nightmare can go will be determined by what people do now to build movements of resistance. The more time passes, the firmer Trump’s grip on the institutions will be, and the better positioned he will be to expand and intensify repression. Even if Trump’s ill-thought-out policies alone suffice to turn the majority of the population against him, that will not answer the question of how to push him out of power—he has already shown that he will not leave office willingly. It also will not ensure that what comes after will be any better. Remember, we ended up in this situation because of the catastrophic reign of the Biden administration.

There’s no way around it: we have to build powerful grassroots movements through which to defend each other and popularize a radical analysis of what we are up against.

May Day offers a perfect occasion for this. For nearly a century and a half, anarchists and other revolutionaries have observed it as a day of celebration and resistance. Tapping into this longstanding tradition offers many reference points for what we can do right now.

Wherever you are, you can do something for May Day. Better yet, organize a week of events, including education, mutual aid, arts and entertainment, and a march or demonstration.

We’ve prepared a poster design to support you in organizing and promoting events in your community.

Click on the image to download the poster.

Most of the suggestions that follow here are things you can do with two dozen people. Organizing doesn’t have to involve massive numbers to be worthwhile. Even in movements that do involve massive numbers, the best way to ensure that they will be resilient and effective is to make sure that people are in the habit of talking, making decisions, and taking action in small groups so as to maximize the agency of the participants.

In Washington, DC, an ad-hoc group is calling for an occupation of the National Mall:

Our strategy is to establish a 24/7, legal, non-violent demonstration on the National Mall, calling on Congress to take the only logical step in this crisis: impeach and remove Donald Trump.

You can follow their announcements here.

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Elsewhere around the country from Seattle and Eugene to Minneapolis, longstanding groups are planning events. People in Aberdeen, Washington are planning a whole day of activities the preceding weekend just to get things started.

But don’t leave everything to them. If anything really exciting is going to happen, it’s up to you.

Outreach

Spring is in the air; it’s a good time to make new connections. Even if you are already organizing in a tight-knit community of anarchists, this is a chance to reach out to people you don’t know yet. Invite them to events! Talk to them about their concerns! Propose ideas for what you could do together!

Even if you are completely isolated and cannot organize events with other humans, you can order stickers from Municipal Adhesives—and, sure, from us as well—and bring the bus stops and electrical boxes of your neighborhood to life. Pocket a paint marker and add “ICE” to every stop sign in your county. Cut a stencil design into the bottom of a thick paper shopping bag and walk around your neighborhood with a can of spray paint in the bag, leaving a little trail of messages everywhere you go. If you are not a gifted artist, Municipal Adhesives mails out stencils, too. Download and print posters, make wheatpaste or obtain wallpaper paste, and go out putting postering. You could do all of these things even if you are the only sentient life form within a hundred miles.

On the other hand, if you are not the only sentient life form within a hundred miles, you could also print or order some zines and set up a literature table at a punk show, a campus, a farmer’s market, or, failing all else, at that bus stop where you put up your first sticker.

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Education

For May Day, you could organize a reading group around a text engaging with the history of May Day. You could host a presentation on anarchism, or on the history of resistance in your local community. You could call for a discussion connecting one of those themes to the various attacks that the Trump administration is currently carrying out, with an eye to strategizing a response.

You could also announce a gathering in a public location at which people read aloud the final statements of the Haymarket martyrs—the ones whose sacrifice for the labor movement gave rise to May Day as we know it today. Likewise, you could read one of the speeches of lifelong anarchist organizer Lucy Parsons, whose husband was among the murdered.

As the Trump administration smashes and loots the infrastructure of state-sponsored education, it is important to be building up our own educational models in their place.

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Organizing

You could call for an assembly bringing together different people affected by or working on an issue such as ICE deportations or environmental damage, at which to coordinate resistance.

Even if the administration has not targeted your local community yet, you should do this now, in order to be prepared. For example, you could come up with a plan and get all the resources in place to respond as soon as they take a given action.

Arts and Entertainment

The May Day parade is a time-honored tradition, especially in places like Minneapolis. If there is already something like that happening near you, great—all you have to do is organize a contingent for it. But if there is not a May Day parade in your area, that is also great—it means that you can organize one according to your own preferences.

Don’t neglect to prepare banners, giant puppets, or other artistic elements. In 2017, anarchists in Portland made giant spiders for their May Day parade.

The spiders of mutual aid, solidarity, and direct action: May Day in Portland, 2017.

How to make spiders of your own!

For later in the evening—or over the weekend—you could book a benefit show featuring local bands. For extra credit, you could host a show in a subversive location, such as under an overpass or in an abandoned warehouse.

End the night with a dance party!

Mutual Aid

For the occasion, you could host a Really Really Free Market, a potluck, or a work day at a community garden or social center.

Taking the Offensive

All of this will be of little use if we can’t also go on the attack. Limiting ourselves to attempting to manage the details of our survival in a non-hierarchical way while the state inflicts brutal violence on more and more people means accepting defeat in advance. We should respond to their offensives, but it is crucial that we pick the time and place of our own.

Thus far, the one solid example of this is the Tesla protests, which have opened up a new front of conflict, distracting the attention of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and laying bare their vulnerabilities. But there are many other ways to take the fight to our oppressors—recall the ICE occupations of 2018.

Identify a target and call for a protest or some other form of action there. If there is no obvious target available, you could still organize a public demonstration for the purposes of getting people used to moving together and engaging in collective expression, however symbolic. A smaller group of people preserving the element of surprise could also take action, sending up a signal flare to let others know that they are not alone in their rage.

Remember, at any demonstration that could be subject to repression, leave your phone at home and dress to preserve your anonymity.

You can find more resources about taking action here.