Hi John,

Today’s May Day is a historic moment. The scale is huge. Well over a million people will strike from school or work and disrupt business as usual in the streets in 3000 towns and cities. 

But, that’s not what I think matters the most. Today marks a turning point for how progressive movements protest and organize. I want to share some of why it's such a big deal. 

Young people have grown up in an era of mass marches: from BLM to climate marches, the goal was to flood the streets and scare power-holders into meeting our demands. For years, that worked. 

But in 2026, with fascist billionaires at the helm, these tactics aren’t cutting it. To be clear: we still need mass protest. It proves to the world and to ourselves that we have public opinion on our side. But for protest to be enough, power-holders must fear public opinion — and, Trump and his billionaire goons have made clear this isn’t how they operate. 

The reality is that they're too corrupt to care what we think, and they’re rigging our political system to insulate themselves from public fury. Just this week, Trump’s Supreme Court Justices axed the Voting Rights Act. Fascist billionaires are openly plotting to overturn the 2026 midterms so that they can continue looting us unchecked.

If we want power in our government and economy, we can’t ask for it anymore. We need the muscle to take it. That’s what we’re exercising today. This goes beyond marching: we’re leaving schools and workplaces empty, we’re shutting down the heart of corporate America. We’re showing the billionaire class and the fascists that working people have the power to end their regime. 

We saw this work in the Twin Cities: nobody asked nicely for ICE to leave – we organized block by block and forced a crisis until they had no choice. Now it’s time to take the strategy of mass noncooperation nationwide.

That’s what today is about. All across the country, all at once, we are performing a dress rehearsal for a general strike.

Cynics will tell you that a one-day strike isn’t enough to fully defeat fascism. They’re not wrong, but they’re missing the point. To pull off what’s happening today, a massive coalition of labor, students, social movements, and other leftist and progressive organizations have successfully coordinated on strategy.

And even more importantly, millions of people are practicing something that feels unfamiliar, even risky we're going to strike from work, school, and shopping. The more we do this, the better at it we’ll get.

The era of mass noncooperation has begun. Join a May Day protest near you today.

See you in the streets. Let’s make history. 
Aru