The mass protest marches slated for May 1 across Arizona and nationwide are just the latest show of people power against the seemingly bottomless pit of White House directives aimed at dismantling our democracy.
Organizers predict hundreds of thousands of people will take to the streets in all 50 states on May Day, known globally as International Workers Day.
Millions more are set to rally around the world — not necessarily because of President Donald Trump, but because democracy and workers’ rights matter.
On the May Day 2025 website, organizers posted this: “Trump and his billionaire profiteers are trying to create a race to the bottom — on wages, on benefits, on dignity itself. … We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes…”
Not a word of that is hyperbole.
Denying the very real threat posed today by Trump and his abettors, not just in Washington but also at the state and local levels, is to live in a fantasy world of empty patriotism where simply pledging blind allegiance to the flag and chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” passes for a meaningful defense of “liberty and justice for all.”
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their lives defending our democracy, but we now have a president who is fine with letting people die so long as it furthers his goal of becoming our nation’s first dictator.
Consider the cutoff of foreign aid that’s literally led to more children starving and the premature death of people with AIDS across Africa; or the decision by Trump appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose repeal of abortion rights has fueled a jump in mortality rates for pregnant women in states with abortion bans; or Trump’s denigration of vaccines that almost certainly contributed to tens or even hundreds of thousands more COVID-19 deaths that might otherwise have occurred and a subsequent drop in vaccination rates nationwide, including in Texas, where an ongoing measles epidemic has led to the death of two unvaccinated children and the infection of hundreds more.
Former Arizona Democratic Party Chair Raquel Teran, an organizer of Thursday’s May Day rally in Phoenix, says, “It’s important that we speak up…and rise up against the atrocities happening at all levels of government. [On May Day] we’ll be marching with workers. We’ll be marching with immigrant communities. We’ll be marching with faith leaders. This is a moral crisis.”
Indeed. The growth in grassroots activism across the U.S. is in direct response to President Trump’s heinous agenda and deep-seated immorality.
How else do we account for Trump’s willingness to deport U.S. residents, without due process, to a notorious prison in El Salvador, as he has done with alleged, not tried or convicted, gang members, and now three U.S.-born children to Honduras, including a Stage 4 victim of cancer.
Let that soak in. U.S. citizens are now being deported.
While Teran believes protest marches serve an important role, mainly as a public display of the popular sentiment, marches are just one piece of the puzzle needed to counter the Trump agenda.
She praised Gov. Katie Hobbs for vetoing dozens of “bad bills” proposed by Republicans over the past two-plus years. And Joe Murphy, political director in Arizona for the AFL-CIO, lauded Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for her work on at least a dozen lawsuits challenging the Trump administration on multiple fronts.
In fact, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s legally dubious, if not outright unconstitutional, executive mandates. The president’s approval ratings, meanwhile, have dipped dramatically during his first 100 days in office. At 41%, a CNN headline reports: “Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades.”
Still, the Trump administration had proven time and again it could care less if it’s violating federal statutes. That’s why, in their pursuit of scapegoating immigrants, there’s no concern about deporting them on the flimsiest evidence — or no evidence at all, as happened with a Maryland man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Supreme Court has ordered returned to the U.S., after the Trump administration admitted to deporting him by mistake.
Ironically, Trump’s opponents may have the law on their side, but their commitment to abide by the law carries inherent disadvantages, said Arizona Director of Mi Familia Vota Monica Sandschafer, another top organizer of this week’s rally in Phoenix.
“Change takes time. Community-led change takes time,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s been an onslaught of terrible actions coming from the White House. [Trump] has the ability to move very fast and our [efforts] to push back are happening at a slower pace, but that doesn’t mean they’re not working.”
In fact, as of April 28, “at least 123 of those rulings [in court challenges to Trump’s executive orders] have at least temporarily paused some of the administration’s initiatives,” according to the New York Times.
“If you listen to Trump, he’s the most popular president that has ever existed,” Sandschafer added, “but when we march and say ‘hell no’ and show we oppose everything he is doing, his attacks on immigrants, citizens, workers, students, the environment, our support systems, like Medicaid and Social Security, this is our way of saying he does not have as much power as we have.
“We are the majority.”