May 1: Unions, community orgs plan nationwide ‘economic blackout’ against billionaires and authoritarianism

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. And first, I want to apologize to everyone out there about not having a new episode for you guys last week. I was back home in Southern California with my family for my grandpa Fletcher’s funeral. So I obviously needed to take a break from that and I really do appreciate y’all being so patient and kind during this difficult time for our family. But to pay you guys back for last week and to honor the sacred holiday of May Day (aka International Workers Day) this Friday, we’re going to have two episodes dropping on the feed for y’all this week. And in today’s episode, we’re talking about what mayday means for workers in the labor movement here and now in the year of our Lord 2026, and about the plans for a national day of protests that are going to take place this Friday on May 1st in cities and towns around the country. As journalists and friend of the show, Michael Sinato reports at the Guardian, quote, “Labor unions, democratic organizations and community groups are organizing an economic blackout this year to commemorate Mayday, International Workers’ Day inspired by the economic blackout in Minnesota during the massive ice operation in the state. Mayday’s strong events are being planned across the US with organizers calling for no school, no work, no shopping. In protest of government policies, they say put billionaires’ needs above those of workers.

In Chicago, several local labor unions and community groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union, SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, indivisible Chicago and the Chicago Federation of Labor jointly announced an economic blackout for Chicago on May 1st. In Los Angeles, the LA Mayday Coalition comprising more than 50 local organizations is organizing an economic blackout around numerous demands, including immigration rights, voting rights, abolishing ICE, anti-war protests and defending workers’ rights. So to talk about what is happening this Mayday, why it’s important and what you can do to get involved, I am really grateful to be joined today by three guests who are all involved in organizing Mayday events this week from Philadelphia to Chicago to Iowa. First, we’re joined by Jana Korn, who currently serves as the chief of staff for the Philadelphia Council AFL- CIO, and also serves on the board of Philadelphia jobs with justice. Prior to becoming chief of staff, Jana was the organizing director at her Central Labor Council.

And prior to that, Jana worked with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, organizing alongside hospital and home healthcare workers to build power both inside and outside the workplace. And we are also joined by returning guests, Jeff Kurtz. Jeff was a locomotive engineer and union member for 40 years, and he is a member of Railroad Workers United. He served as a union officer most of his career, including eight years as president of BLET Local 391 and chairman of the BLET Iowa State Legislative Board, where he oversaw safety and legislative matters for the union in the state for four railroads for 10 years. He retired in 2014 and served as state representative for one term in the Iowa House after winning the 2018 election in his House district. And we are also joined today by John Emiliano from the Tahanan Center in Chicago. John is a healthcare worker and organizer in Chicago, advocating for the Filipino community and is also part of Tango Migrante, a grassroots Filipino Migrant Defense Network.

Jana, Jeff, John, thank you all so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. And before we get into the details of this week’s Mayday protests, I want to start first by asking you three as working people in America, as dedicated members of the labor movement. What does Mayday mean to you? Why is this such an important holiday?

Jana Korn:

Thanks, Max. And thanks for the opportunity. I’m really excited to be here in conversation with folks about Mayday International Workers Day. I think for me, Mayday is an opportunity for workers to lead in a world where we very rarely have the opportunity and to continue the fight that folks started hundreds of years ago for both bread and roses. We have a rose in our slogan that we’re putting everywhere. It’s really the opportunity for workers to say, nobody else is coming to save us. It is our world that we’re going to fight for. And Mayday is the day that we have set to lead that fight. And I think for me as a relatively young person in the labor movement, this is kind of an opportunity for us to test where we are in the fight to build a more militant, more powerful fighting labor movement that hasn’t really existed in my lifetime.

We only really started doing big things for Mayday in Philadelphia last year. It hasn’t been a holiday that the labor movement really took on for ourselves. We’re big on the Labor Day picnic, but maybe less so on the Mayday fight. And so really as an opportunity to test where we are in terms of the amount of risk and the amount of disruption that the labor movement is willing to take. And then I think lastly, as we know, Ray International Workers Day, and it’s an opportunity for us to really be in solidarity with workers around the world, and particularly now in a moment when the US or workers in the US might feel particularly isolated from workers around the world to say, no, actually our fight is your fight and vice versa and to really continue the fight for an international workers movement.

Jeff Kurtz:

To me, it means solidarity, especially in the railroad industry. We’ve got 13 different unions and we’ve all got our own issues. And the carriers, the rail carriers have been just wonderful about using those issues against us. And so we have had no solidarity, almost no solidarity whatsoever. Even in the 2022 contract fight, we were together, we were together, and then unions started to peel off. And eventually it came down to our politicians on both sides of the aisle betraying us because we weren’t together. So this is something … We’ve done this here in Lee County before. We’ve had a Mayday celebration. This year, I think it’s going to be a lot different. I was in Northern Iowa, actually canvassing for an independent candidate for Congress. And I walked and knocked doors from 10:30 to about two o’clock. And it was amazing because unlike Janet, I’m ancient.

I’m one of the ancient labor guys, but for years and years, they said, “Oh, this is year. We’re coming back. We’re coming back.” And I’ve always said, “Okay, probably not. ” This year, when we were knocking the doors, 85% of the doors, and this was a very red count, at least 85, maybe 90% of the doors we went to, people were saying, “We got to do something different. We absolutely have to do something different than we’ve been doing.” Being from that world, we can’t trust politicians unless we put the proverbial done to their head. And the only way we’re going to do that is through solidarity and they want us there when they want money and when they want workers, but after that, they forget about us. And this is probably going to be a theme for what we do on Friday. We’re going to make it very clear.

I don’t care what party you are. If you are not poor workers, you’re not going to get anything from us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and Jeff, before we toss it to John, I’m just curious, as you describe an ancient member of the labor movement, as a veteran worker, did Mayday used to mean something different back in the day? I mean, was it ever an important thing for you or do you feel like that’s kind of like a newer tradition that’s building in America?

Jeff Kurtz:

It’s definitely newer. When I was working, especially the last 15 or 20 years, we were so busy. Ironically, our officials, railroad officials, they got Labor Day off. The workers had to work. And Mayday just didn’t mean that much to us. It didn’t really mean a lot until I started working with the Lee County labor chapter. And one of our vice presidents, Carrie Duncan, she is just big on this. I mean, every Mayday we’ve got to do something and she has been absolutely right, hit the nail on the head. So I think this is a relatively new phenomenon. And from what I’m hearing, what we’re doing this Friday is going to be pretty well attended.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And John, what about you? What does Mayday mean to you? Why is this an important holiday for you? Yeah,

John Emiliano:

I think especially as a young, also young person doing the labor organizing and being in Chicago and also having connections and being from the Philippines, I think Mayday is this huge culmination of really the experiences of our community as well. For us, our migrants are also our workers, and so mayday, especially now more than ever, is a huge joint effort between the problems of workers and migrants because they’re often overlapped. And I think this is a really big opportunity for us to really bridge that gap and have something really large. And I think for us, Filipino community, a lot of us leave the Philippines in the first place to find work abroad. So even our own migration away from our home is a problem of work itself. And so when we come to America and work these conditions as caregivers and food service, there is a real need for us to really link those struggles of our workers here in this country and the struggle of our people back home where we actually couldn’t find work or there’s no jobs.

And I think one really cool thing about being from Chicago and the Philippines is Mayday started here in Chicago and we have the Mayday movement, but also in the Philippines, we actually have a very militant workers movement called Gilosong Mayo Uno, or the Mayday Movement in English. And yeah, I’m already watching all the preparation happen across here in this country and back home in the Philippines for us. And seeing all the workers really take on these struggles, not only struggles for their rights and livelihoods, but the larger economic struggle of people all over the world. In the Philippines, we have an energy crisis. People can’t even get to work right now. And for us here in America, that means we’re sending double the amount of money that we were having to send before. And now it’s becoming this burden of us really taking on double the shifts, double the conditions.

And when we’re forced to do this, I think Mayday is the opportunity to bring workers together to really talk about what conditions they have, but also how can we really fight against this systematic exploitation that happens from the Philippines, from all over the global south towards this country, and how can we link that international solidarity of workers all over the world to really take back the means that they are creating, the wealth that they really create. So yeah, for us and for me, it’s this huge culmination of everything, our whole existence, our whole stories, and to really take that back and put it in the hands of the people who make the wealth of the world and to really just show workers that this is a holiday for them and that they have the power to continue pushing forward, celebrate the gains that we have had historically and continue making them as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. No, I thought that was all beautifully and powerfully put by all three of you. And I think just by nature of growing up in this country, yeah, we’re taught Labor Day is like the quote unquote worker’s holiday, but it’s always just an excuse for a picnic and an excuse to sort of look at our own history of labor struggle as a thing of the past, right? As something that our forefathers fought for, but now everything’s great. Now we don’t need to struggle anymore. And I think what I’m hearing in all three of what you’re saying is that Mayday really, it pays homage to the traditions and the struggles and the ancestors who have fought for us to get to where we are now. But it’s also very much a reminder that that struggle is inherited by each new generation and must be carried on and moved forward or else we’re going to see it slide back.

We’re going to see what we’ve been seeing in this country and increasingly around the world, which is like the hard won gains and victories of the working class of the labor movement are being stripped away to say nothing of the gains from the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement. I mean, they’re coming after all of us, right? And that I think is a kind of perfect setup to what makes Mayday 2026 so important, right? Because you all said the word solidarity, right? You all talked about how Mayday is about bringing workers together. And as we know, the greatest tool that the bosses, the billionaires, the power brokers and order givers of our world, their number one trick is to divide and conquer. And like you see that in America today, right? I mean, people are being pitted against each other. We’re being pushed away from each other.

We’re being told to hate each other and fear each other and we’re moving away from each other the more afraid we are because we’re trying to hold on to what little we still have. That’s a recipe for exploitation. It’s a recipe for us to be taken advantage of and brutalized more easily. And so the message of coming together and uniting across differences to confront the monstrous forces that we’re confronting today, I think is really important, powerful, and urgent. But I want to sort of ask you three, I want to go around the table and ask if you could just sort of set the scene for listeners like in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Iowa. What is the sort of atmosphere right now leading up to this mayday? What are workers going through there and how are you translating that to this push to be on the streets this Friday?

Jana Korn:

Well, I’ll talk a little bit and then you can tell me if I actually answered that question. But last year in 2025, it was sort of the first few months of the second Trump administration. Already hundreds of thousands of workers had lost their collective bargaining rights. Folks were being rounded up in the streets. It was a very scary time. And we looked around and we were like, okay, we haven’t actually done anything for Mayday in many years. The CLC hasn’t. There’s been sort of the occasional action here or there, but on May 1st, 2025, we want to take the opportunity to show that the labor movement is going to respond to the threats of authoritarianism. We’re not going to wait for the parties to respond. We’re not going to wait for the nonprofits to respond. We’re going to take Mayday and show what we believe.

And so we brought a really large coalition of organizations, local unions, immigrant rights groups, community organizations together under this slogan of workers over billionaires.

And we ended up having seven or 8,000 people in the streets, which according to my local nerdy labor historian was the largest Mayday action since 1935 in Philadelphia. We’re on a smaller scale than Chicago, but we also did sort of a mass civil disobedience. We had 70 people take arrest, including 10 labor leaders, which was a bit unprecedented. And it really showed that labor leaders, union members are willing to do more and risk more than we ever have because we understand the stakes. People are struggling. And so we were really proud of the action we pulled off. People were really excited about it and really excited to see really the labor movement leading in Philadelphia. In the months following Mayday, we brought those same organizations together, basically any organization that shared the same theory of change, which was we need to organize a lot more people.

Our path to power is organized people and we’re not big enough. And so if folks want to commit to an arc of work until Mayday 2026 with the idea that we just need to organize more and more people, come on in. And so we have been working together basically since last summer and we have … It was basically like an internal organizing campaign shared amongst many organizations. So folks were going into their memberships, talking to union members, talking to folks in their congregations and their neighborhoods with the same organizing wrap, which was basically, what’s going on in your life? What keeps you up at night? What’s your hopes? What’s your dreams for the city of Philadelphia? And let me explain to you why it’s the billionaire’s fault, which requires some real political ed. It’s like, you’re mad that your libraries closed on the weekend because our libraries are rarely open seven days a week.

Let me explain to you how that could be funded, but it’s not. And out of all of those conversations, we had thousands of conversations with workers. We have built out what we’re calling the working people’s vision for Philadelphia, which is sort of our vision for if workers actually had more power than the billionaires, this is what Philadelphia would feel like, would look like. And it’s beautiful, right? It’s unions for all. It’s safe homes and neighborhoods for everybody. One job should be enough, healthcare for everyone.

To all of us, it’s like nothing that crazy. It’s not that radical, but it came out of these thousands of worker conversations. And on Mayday this year, on Friday outside of city hall in Philadelphia, we’re going to have thousands of workers vote to ratify that vision. And so we’re going to sort of be out in public, publicly voting. Yes, this is our vision for Philadelphia and not just that, but we’re willing together to fight for it and to make it a reality.

Jeff Kurtz:

Yeah. Around here, one of the real problems that labor has is the fact that everybody is working mandatory overtime. They don’t have time to go to union meetings. They don’t have time to go to union picnics. They don’t have time to just get together with their union brothers and sisters. God, we’ve seen that in the railroad. We were the frog in the boiling water. It went up, they slowly took things away from us and eventually we came to 2022 when I first met Chumats with a high biz policy that basically killed people because it was so draconian and it got better for a while, but now it’s worse. It’s worse than it ever was because now they’re going after union officers. Union officers that take time off to defend their members are being penalized for taking time off and are being fired. And you know what the Railway Labor Act, what happens with that.

It takes forever before you get any justice whatsoever, if you get justice at all. This is starting to spread to other companies. Like I said, we’ve seen mandatory overtime for a lot of manufacturing around here, six 12s, seven 12s, six 16s, things like this. How are you going to have solidarity when you’re at work all the time? Either you’re at work or you’re sleeping. So this is one of the things that we’ve talked about in some of our chapter meetings, that we’ve got to get our membership to realize what’s happening to them because they see the big paychecks from all the overtime. They should have those paychecks anyway without the overtime. I mean, they should be able to enjoy their families, be able to enjoy life, be able to enjoy their coworkers, but it’s getting harder and harder to do. And that’s why I think this mayday is so important.

I’m really hoping that we see a big turnout. We’ve got a lot of guest speakers coming in. We have actually barred politicians from speaking except me, but- I

Maximillian Alvarez:

Was going to say, you barred all politicians or is there one exception?

Jeff Kurtz:

We let the old guys come in. But yeah, this is a day where we say we’ve had enough. Now we’re coming to get ours.

John Emiliano:

Yeah. I think for us in Chicago, really, under the second Trump presidency, we already knew what was going to happen. The countless attacks on workers, migrant workers. We formed our grassroots, our migrant defense networks, even as early as October of 2024, right when he was announced to take the presidency and did all the education, know your rights training, community buildup. And even in January, some of the first reports of workers already being taken were actually between caregivers that were both Filipino and Latino, and they were taken right outside of their facility as they were going into work and really showing that these attacks on our migrant community were the attack on the working community as well. And throughout 2025, the Filipino community alongside so many other communities waged so many campaigns of ice watch, migrant defense. We in particular took up a lot of deportation defense campaigns of our community members who were workers, who were legal residents even.

Most of our cases were green card holders and they were people who were caregivers, they were truck drivers, food service, really working all these awful conditions. And then to be picked up and detained really showed how we needed to bring in the labor movement and the migrant movement together to really push for, to end these attacks that we were seeing. And so our mayday last year, similar to Jana’s, was pretty big in Chicago, really linking the migrant workers and putting it at the forefront. And as we continued taking on our campaigns, especially with midway blitz, we saw ICE outside of stores, schools, hospitals, communities. Our workers continued to be those folks that were on the forefront of really defending our communities and our families and our people. And so we continued taking on those cases of workers and building solidarity with other working groups like SEIU and healthcare worker groups, church groups, youth and student groups as much as we could to really broaden this fight, but really putting our workers at the forefront.

And with the continued attacks of the US all over the world, we were sent into economic crisis both here in the States and in the Philippines. And it really became real when so many of our workers, similar to what Jeff was saying, we’re having to work this overtime because like I said earlier, there’s actually no energy in the Philippines. There’s an oil crisis, the gas prices were rising. And we really saw how our workers were working double the amount that they were before to support their families back home and what kind of conditions they were forced to be under. Not only the duress of really being scared to go outside and to go to work and not even being able to drop their kids off at school out of fear, but now they were having to put themselves out there even more and working to the point of their health declining.

We even had someone, a community member all the way in SoCal that we were connected to, he died of overworking actually. And when we as the Filipino migrant community really asked the Philippine government, similar to how the Korean government, many Latin American governments really stood up for their workers, they were not willing to stand up for us and actually were super compliant with what the US wanted to do and how they wanted to treat their Filipino community here. And every time we had asked, “What are you going to do to support us?” There was nothing. So even our own migrant community here and our Filipino workers are taking up fights both against the US government to hold them accountable to expose and oppose those conditions of what they’re seeing in their communities and what it’s like in detention centers, but also to challenge and expose and oppose the Philippine government too for actually working with the US.

They sent us abroad and now there’s no support for us. And we’ve even seen cases of the Philippine government working to expedite deportations of our community members, hiding it from us. And we have to chase them to really tell us where they’re flying them out to. And so our workers are really seeing the truth of what the working class is willing to do to us, to treat us like we’re nothing, only use us for our labor. And then when we’re not useful anymore, to just put us in these detention centers, send us back to a country where we don’t have jobs, opportunities. I think one of the aunties told me, she was like, “We come to the States and we fear criminalization, but what’s scarier than not being able to feed your own family?” And that’s the reality of what we’re going through today. But as we did this, we were able to build a huge mass movement.

We’ve been able to free Filipino workers, we’ve feared 12 Filipino migrants from detention across the country, a few here in the states or in Chicago as well. So there’s been huge gains. And really out of that struggle and showing people what we could do, we launched the Tahanan Center, which is a Filipino migrant center here in Chicago, and we’re being housed with the Latino Union of Chicago and really emboldening and building up our workers movement. And so for Mayday, we have so many things happening because she Chicago is huge in the labor movement. We have folks going to high schools with large migrant student populations going to present at our worker centers. And then there’s mini rallies happening in Albany Park where our migrant center is, where there’s huge migrant populations. We’re doing a mini rally there. And then some of us are going to the Illinois Medical District that houses the largest hospitals across Illinois, and the healthcare workers are having a rally there.

And then youth and students from our Tahanan Center are also having rallies on their campuses, and they’re all coming together to culminate at Union Park as different sectors, but really to unify under one banner of the workers over billionaires. And that’s super exciting for us to really see the breadth of all these different groups. We have church groups coming, youth and student groups coming, community groups, healthcare worker groups, et cetera, to really come together because workers is the issue that really binds us together. So yeah, we’re expecting a huge rally at Union Park in Chicago that is surrounded by five major unions like SEIU, pipe fitters, et cetera. So yeah, that’s what we got coming up. And even after that, the Filipino community across the US is coming together for a national migrant workers conference to go confront our Philippine president who’s coming here to talk about why he’s a star in migration and treating workers properly when we know the truth of our own conditions, both here in the States and back home in the Philippines.

So that will be happening May 3rd through May 6th. We will be confronting him in New York as well. And what kind of audacity is it to have a conference about migrants here in the US and boast about how well you treat them when we’re watching what the US is doing to the workers and to migrant workers especially. So yeah, a lot of confrontations coming up and the building of our

Maximillian Alvarez:

Mass movement. Yeah, that’s great, baby. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. I mean, that’s the whole spirit of the holiday, is you don’t get what you deserve by just asking your oppressors nicely for it. If history teaches us anything, it should be that. Working people’s gains in improving our lives and building a better world, they come because we fight for them and because we fight together for them and overcome the many obstacles that we have to face. And I wanted to sort of round us around the final turn here on that note. I mean, I want to give you all both one more chance if there are any other points you wanted to make about what is going to be happening in Philly, Chicago, Iowa, but also around the country this week on Mayday. Anything else that we haven’t covered that you want to stress to people out there listening?

But also, I’m curious to get everyone’s take on what this mayday means for whatever comes next. I mean, how these organizing efforts, this day of action, this day of protest, these economic blackouts, what is the kind of goal for those actions in terms of communicating to power and communicating a message to our fellow workers, but also what is that building towards? What sort of infrastructure for something different could come out of this? So any final thoughts you wanted to share on that? And then I promise I’ll let you all go.

Jana Korn:

I mean, I could probably talk for a while. I’ll try to keep it brief. A couple of thoughts. I think, I guess similar to John, what you were saying, I think one of the other sort of interventions that we’re trying to make this year is to put a name and a face to the … When we say workers over billionaires, billionaires is not just this amorphous figure, right? They’re real people. And in Philadelphia, we’re kind of a poor city. We don’t have that many billionaires, but we have one. The CEO of Comcast is the only billionaire that lives in the city. So why should we as a city accept that they take and take from us and then with that money, what do they do? They donate to Trump’s ballroom project. Well, people in Philadelphia are struggling. We’re struggling. Our transportation system barely works. We’re at risk of having 17 schools closed down this year.

And these giant employers take from us. And then instead of giving back to the city, they align with the authoritarians. They go to Mar-a-Lago, they do whatever. And it’s not even just the private companies, it’s Eds and Meds, it’s Penn and Jefferson who do the exact same thing. And everywhere that has an Eds and Meds economy knows the drill. And so after we ratify our vision on Mayday, we’re going to take folks on a march past a couple of these key employers to make very clear, right? When we say workers over billionaires, we are the workers and you all are the billionaires. It’s not something up in the sky and it’s not just Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, right? We know our local folks. The other thing is that folks may have heard it’s the 250th anniversary of this year country. In Philadelphia, folks have been gearing up to quote unquote celebrate that anniversary for a long time.

We know that we have the FIFA World Cup here this summer, the MLB All-Star Game, the 250th anniversary amongst a lot of other things. And so in Philadelphia, we’re really aware that the world’s eyes are going to be on us and we have an opportunity to continue to share the vision that we are fighting for and to really call the question on folks really, truly which side are you on? Workers or billionaires, visitors coming in, every elected official, we’re going to be asking the same question. I think the next piece and folks are starting to talk about this is preparing to defend our democracy towards the end of the year. And I think really for us in the labor movement, it’s thinking about how do we build the capacity to really disrupt, to strike when necessary, to shut things down when we have to. And that’s something that we have not been called to do as a labor movement in a very long time.

And so how are we spending the next couple of months building those muscles up and just like really we got to shake our training wheels off because the big fight is coming. And so how are we using Mayday and the month’s following to really get ready for whatever’s going to come? And then I think my last point that I want to just make is I think we have an obligation as the labor movement, as leaders in the labor movement to help folks imagine a different kind of world. And we say a lot as we’ve been preparing for Mayday, that we have been living in the political imagination of the billionaire class and it’s time to live in our own. That imagination is not a frivolous practice, it’s necessary and we haven’t been doing it enough. And so it’s hard. It’s hard for workers to say like, I don’t know whether I can pay my rent or my grocery bill or keep the lights on and you’re asking me to imagine this nice, pretty world, but we have to.

We have to give ourselves something better to fight for. And I think that’s part of our job and part of this national movement is to say we are going to win a better world and it’s going to be a lot better than this one.

Jeff Kurtz:

One thing that I want to say about this is part of the solution is going to have to be, whether we like it or not, it’s going to have to be politics. When I was in the house, I saw the potential that we had where we could do a lot of good. And then I saw the reality of it too. And I think we need more labor people to run for office. We’re starting to see that here. In fact, a guy that you interviewed from Burlington, Iowa, Marcus Derby, is running for state rep. And I think one of the reasons he’s running is because Case, which has been in Burlington forever, is pulling out a town of 20,000 people is going to lose 200 good jobs. And this is happening. I know Maytag is moving out of … I can’t remember the community. It’s up near Central Iowa someplace, but this is happening a lot.

And the way we combat this is to get our own in there. And I would encourage you, after I played the party game, I would encourage people to run as independents because what I’m starting to see is there’s a real thirst for people that aren’t beholden to either side because in reality, they’re one and the same. I mean, that’s just what it is. The final point I want to make is, Janet keeps talking about billionaires. And I watched in the morning just to get my blood pressure up so I make sure that it’s high enough that I can get through the day. I watch financial news and they have the billionaires come on and talk about what great things they’re doing. And then they talk about Zora and mom, Donnie giving free bus tickets to people. How can he do this? And he’s going to get childcare and all this.

Oh my God, how are we going to afford that? And I’m thinking … And they keep talking about all these working people getting free stuff. And I look at these people and I think, how hard do you have to work to make a billion dollars? Because I’ve seen people work their ass off and they’ll never even snip being a millionaire. And you’ve got some guy that throws his money around and all of a sudden he’s worth a billion and that billion turns into 10 billion and now we’ve got a guy that they say in the next year, there’s an 88% chance he’s going to be a trillionaire. That’s where the free stuff is going. It’s not going to workers. And that’s why we need people in politics that understand this, that they’re getting the free stuff and we need to cut that off so that people can live and they can have good lives.

And our immigrants and migrant workers can have a good … I have never understood this, what the problem is with people coming into this country. So anyway, I’m going to get off my soapbox and let somebody else talk.

John Emiliano:

Yeah. I mean, I think I agree so much with both what Jeff and Jana were saying, that it’s really what comes next is building something big. We are trying to coalesce everyone in Chicago, aside from whatever group or sector you come from, whether you focus on migrants rights, women’s rights, your church sector, to really come together and not only be on the defensive of the attacks that we’ve been seeing, but how do we start being on the offensive and actually show workers and show the community that when they fight, they can really win. And like Johnath said, it’s having those really specific targets. There’s so many targets we have here in Chicago, like the Trump Towers here and things like that. We even have so many consulates and international governing bodies that exist here in Chicago. And so for us to really strengthen our movement across the city and then to really start targeting and pressuring those things and be in solidarity with all movements is what I think is really the next vision.

Like I said, we’re having these confrontations as a Filipino community with our Philippine government in the upcoming days after Mayday as well. And there’s bringing together this summer of so many conferences, like the International League of People Struggles to really … It’s being hosted here in this country to really show workers and a militant mass movement that it’s not just the people of this country that can strike blows, but be in solidarity with the rest of the world that is striking blows and can also really help us envision a future where we don’t have the exploitation and really take back, like y’all were saying, all those means and even targeting things like the One Big Beautiful Build that’s super actively taking away from us here in this country and going towards the militarization of our communities abroad and things like that. And yeah, linking the struggles of Workers Church all over the world, youth and students, migrants, women, to ensure that we can create future and not only show them what we’re fighting against, but show them what we’re fighting for.

So I think these alliance building and solidarity across all the sectors is a huge opportunity that will happen at Mayday and we’ll continue moving throughout the summer. It’s going to be really hot in Chicago throughout the summer as we’re building up towards even 2028 when some of the biggest major unions all over the country and in Chicago are going to have to resign their contracts and building up towards what could that actually look like. So yeah, the strength, anyone with any edge should come in and help strengthen our movement across. And for us to finally start dealing real blows, real tangible blows and making these huge gains for the community all over the world, both here and in the global south as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, Jana Korn, chief of staff for the Philadelphia Council AFL CIO, Jeff Kurtz, retired railroad engineer and union officer and former state representative in the Iowa House of Representatives and John Emiliano from the Tahanan Center in Chicago. You can find out more about the important work that they’re all doing and about the Mayday events happening in their areas and yours this week using the links that we provided in the show notes for this episode. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle.

Check us out across our YouTube channel, our podcast feeds, our website, and our social media pages, and help us do more work like this by going to the realnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Happy Mayday, all power to the workers, solidarity forever.