Conor here: The website for “Workers Over Billionaires” includes a long list of NGO and union partners—many of which include leadership that have failed miserably at this task— and a long list of grievances that are hard to disagree with, such as the goal to “reshape the future of this country so that it belongs to the working class.” Sounds great. But…
Not to be overly pessimistic, but I perused the “Workers Over Billionaires” website for some more detail, specifically what is the plan to accomplish those goals, and ended up down the rabbit hole of buzzwords and uplift. For example:
What is the goal?
“We’re activating 10 million workers.”
Okay for what?
“Create multiple pathways to action.”
Okay, like what?
“Guiding them through a ladder of engagement that builds confidence and power.”
A “ladder of engagement”? Leading where?
“Take bold, visible actions at scale.”
Okay, for example?
“Demands for a government that puts workers over billionaires are impossible to dismiss.”
And if those demands are ignored—as they have been for decades?There doesn’t seem to be a plan for that.
One would hope that’s what those at the protests are thinking about, but I see no mention of preparing for the 2028 May Day general strike, occupations, or a similar type of action that causes real pain for the billionaire class. What’s the alternative? Because marches aren’t getting it done.
By Stephen Prager, a staff writer for Common Dreams and originally published there.
Unions and progressive organizations are planning nearly 1,000 “Workers Over Billionaires” demonstrations across the United States this Labor Day to protest President Donald Trump’s assault on workers’ rights.
The day of national action has been organized by the May Day Strong coalition, which includes labor organizations like the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, and National Union of Healthcare Workers, as well as advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.
“Labor and community are planning more than a barbecue on Labor Day this year because we have to stop the billionaire takeover,” the coalition says. “Billionaires are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy, and building private armies to attack our towns and cities.”
Our members sharing why they joined the Workers over Billionaires campaign ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/mAPReN1KeD
— Organized Power in Numbers (@opinorg) August 27, 2025
Since coming into office, the Trump administration has waged war on workers’ rights. Among many other actions, his administration has stripped over a million federal workers of their right to collectively bargain in what has been called the largest act of union busting in American history and dramatically cut their wages.
He has also weakened workplace safety enforcement, eliminated rules that protected workers against wage theft, and proposed eliminating the federal minimum wage for more than 3.7 million childcare and home workers.
Despite Trump’s efforts, Americans still believe in the power of collective action. According to a Gallup poll published Thursday, 68% of Americans say they approve of labor unions, the highest level of support since the mid-1960s.
“Just like any bad boss, the way we stop the takeover is with collective action,” the coalition says on its website.
The May Day Strong coalition previously organized hundreds of thousands of workers to take to the streets for International Workers Day, more commonly known as “May Day.” On Monday, rallies are once again expected across all 50 states.
Four months later, their list of grievances has grown even longer, with Republicans having since passed a tax cut expected to facilitate perhaps the largest upward transfer of wealth in US history, featuring massive tax breaks for the wealthy paid for with historic cuts to the social safety net.
This Labor Day, I urge you to join a Workers Over Billionaires protest.
We must continue standing together to show Trump that we, the people, have the power – not his billionaire buddies and corporate cronies. https://t.co/udS0mGgNxr pic.twitter.com/MfjfWnaBBL
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) August 29, 2025
“There are nearly 1,000 billionaires in the country with a whopping $6 trillion, and that is still not enough for them,” said Saqib Bhattie, executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, another group participating in the protests. “They are pushing elected officials to slash Medicaid, [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits, and special education funding for schools in order to fund their tax breaks. We need to claw back money from the billionaire. We need to push legislation to tax billionaires at the state and local levels. We need to organize to build the people power necessary to overcome their money.”
The group also plans to respond to Trump’s lawless attacks on immigrants and his militarized takeovers of American cities.
“This Labor Day,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, “we continue the fight for our democracy, the fight for the soul of our nation, the fight against the vindictive authoritarian moves Trump and the billionaire class aimed at stealing from working people and concentrating power.”
“This is about workers showing up and demanding what workers deserve all across the country,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “This Labor Day is really different, because it’s not just labor unions, as important as we may be to the workers we represent. It has to be all workers and all working families saying enough. Workers and working families deserve the bounty of the country.”
May Day Strong will host a national “mass call” online on Saturday. The locations of the hundreds of protests on Monday can be found using the map on May Day Strong’s website.
Well, Conor Gallagher, you’ve diagnosed the problem:
Okay for what?
“Create multiple pathways to action.”
Okay, like what?
“Guiding them through a ladder of engagement that builds confidence and power.”
We are back to self-esteem, testifying to righteousness, and collective making of s’mores. It makes me wonder why the American character has been reduced to inaction.
Recently, Italian unionists, led by the CGIL (the commies) and the UIL (formerly moderates who are now throwing political bombs, evviva!), got concessions from Amazon. USanians were amazed. Yet Italy still has what might be called a blue-collar ethic, union “density,” and the use of strikes as tactics.
On the one hand, I am not going to criticize people for going to demonstrations. I have seen too many comments here by the well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning who think that demonstrations have no value. Tell that to Martin Luther King and to the many students now being oppressed by McCarthyist tactics for demonstrating. Tell that to Occupy Wall Street, where I talked to any number of interesting young people a generation younger than me.
One goes to demonstrations. One gets photographed ten thousand times (by whom?). One wonders in the U.S. of A. at all of the cops with guns, armor, and clubs. To attack people with backpacks to carry their peanut-butter sandwiches.
Yet in a country that is dominated by a particular socio-economic class, the top five percent, the only way to deal with that class is to inflict pain on them: Hit them in the money.
That means strikes: Imagine the flight attendants and the air-traffic controllers and what a week-long strike would do.
That means boycotts: A one-day boycott, or sitting out Black Friday (the holiest day of the neoliberal year), means nothing. USanians have to boycott a corporation and bring it down: Bankruptcy. That’s the only way. Candidates? Amazon / Whole Foods. Uber. One of the neo-slave delivery services like Uber Eats or GrubHub. Starbucks, which doesn’t make good coffee anyway (how hard is it to boycott crappy coffee?).
I recall so many U.S. unionists and working people who were shot to death during demonstrations. Skipping Starbucks permanently is the least one can do. Self-esteem be damned.
Maybe even more than boycotts, but that’s a good place to start. Per Frederick Douglass:
So people on the Left — the genuine Left, those who are, or would be, actors and speakers for the working class — may well have been only hurting their own future freedom of action these past four years, to the extent they backed the hyper-criminalization of the Jan. 6 protesters.
Totally agree. Demonstrations and protests vs. strikes and work stoppages: people are now being arrested and harassed by cops for what have been considered for a long time to be lawful freedom of expression, freedom to gather, etc when they protest publicly. How are the cops going to deal with work stoppages & boycotts? If everyone just stayed home they can’t go door to door looking for and arresting people who ‘should’ be at work or out shopping.
The real problem is lack of community and common grievance. Every ‘tribe’ has their own sense of injustice that no one else can possibly understand. Until we get together for universal basic human rights, which I believe Occupy was trying to do (hmm, how quickly did TPTB shut that down?), we cannot succeed against the current tyranny of neoliberalism and uber capitalism.
@DJG, Reality Czar, I agree with your good intentions, unfortunately, the US is somewhat unique. I can indeed imagine the flight attendants and the air-traffic controllers and what a week-long strike would do, which is why it won’t happen.
Within aviation, the flight attendants for example, fall under the Railway Labor Act which means their work contract doesn’t expire but becomes amendable. Good faith bargaining is part of the process and the process can be drawn out making a strike unlikely.
If you mean a strike by all the flights attendants who work for all the airlines, that’s virtually impossible since their contracts become amendable on different dates.
Nonetheless, if there was a strike, a wildcat type strike, there would be an injunction immediately and the union would be sued by the airlines for damages, and the union would lose.
I do like the idea of a boycott but this would have to emerge spontaneously to avoid injunctions and lawsuits against a particular group or organization.
I also agree Starbucks makes crappy coffee.
Victor Sciamarelli: time to read, or read again, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:
–You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.–
Liberals, who like these limited protests, want to control the outcome. I say, Force the crisis. Make the oppressors pay. The structure only seems sturdy because we acquiesce. Disobeying will wreck It.
Your original comment touched a few bases and I chose to respond to your flight attendants and/or air traffic controllers going on strike. I did not use the word negotiation. Perhaps you have been eating too much Gianduia lately.
The Railway Labor Act was from the 1920s and airlines were put into it in the 1930s. It was by design intended to resolve labor disputes and make strikes less likely because transportation was crucial to the economy. Thus, any mass collective action is nearly impossible.
I don’t need to re-read King. I value direct action. However, I agreed with and was as pessimistic as Conor Gallagher on the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ planned protests in my own comment.
Lastly, bear in mind that at the time of King’s death, he was less popular than most people think. When he began marching in northern cities like Chicago, opposed the Vietnam War and called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” in a 1967 speech, talked economics like a socialist, and was supporting the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike when he was murdered, his liberal supporters soon became less enthusiastic and his favorability rating was in the 25%-30% range.
DJG, Reality Czar:
“Yet in a country that is dominated by a particular socio-economic class, the top five percent, the only way to deal with that class is to inflict pain on them: Hit them in the money.
“That means strikes: Imagine the flight attendants and the air-traffic controllers and what a week-long strike would do.
“That means boycotts…”
Nice comment. Personally, I conscientiously boycott what I perceive to be greedy or deceptive companies and their products, if only because it’s the right thing to do. I fight mightily against their intentional moves toward “crapification” and refuse to buy their diluted canned or jarred foodstuffs, their shoes which mysteriously develop a hole in the sole or stitching after only one month of use, and (my personal tic) their shitty pens. I will not pay their latest “greed-flation” price. A la Naomi Klein, I decline to wear their logos.
And yet, sometimes it seems to be me alone against the world. When I mention any of this, most people look at me as if I’m crazy. They seem to be unaware that they’re being fleeced in the marketplace and anyway, why wouldn’t I want to wear a “Gap” tee-shirt? Are you nuts? So, unfortunately, there is still a lot of consumer resistance and/or ignorance to be overcome.
With regards to flight-attendants, here in Canada they’ve tried striking twice (to the best of my recollection). Both times the government applied its muscle, intervened, and promptly ended the strikes. After all, we can’t have the PMC class taking the train or riding the bus, can we? How demeaning. Sure, the flight-attendants got what they wanted but so did Air Canada, which can always count on another bailout if necessary or desired.
Meanwhile, in a community near to where I live, bus drivers there have been on strike for more than eight months. No level of government (municipal, provincial, or federal) seems interested in resolving the situation. Why? Because it only affects us peons.
Therefore, and to state the obvious, a general strike must be *general*. One or two sectors of the economy ain’t going to cut it. The government can always (and probably will) settle a localized strike that is “inconveniencing” the people that matter with bags full of money. No, the strike has to involve millions upon millions of workers and afflict the fewer millions of the comfortable.
The over-arching questions are, of course, can the addicted consumer refrain from his/her purchases for what should be, after all, only a matter of a week or two or four? And, can the average cash-strapped worker sustain a similar period of no wages? Maybe we’ll see. I hope we do.
I think you have described very well what a”neoliberal” protest consists on. Words but nothing else behind. Sounds familiar to me.
While Robert Reich may have been the best of a bad bunch among the Clintonites, he still spent the better part of thirty years telling us about the wonders of an economy made up of “symbolic analysts,” and telling coal miners and steel workers to learn to code. In other words, No Thanks.
Like the “No Kings!” protests held nationally on June 14th, these gatherings seem to be a way to allow the left/liberal groups to blow off steam. I attended the local “No Kings” and certainly there were a lot of impassioned speeches, and a very large crowd of angry people. But then ….. the Administration rolled along with its planned depredations and the local group that organized the gathering seemed to sink back into apathy, handwaving and the sale of cool tee shirts.
On a local worker level, I talked yesterday morning with a prison guard neighbor I had not seen in almost a year. He mentioned the January prison guard strike and went on to discuss the current working conditions at his facility. Due to staff shortages (many guards just quit after the strike) his shifts have been set at 12 hours, sometimes stretching to 15, with irregular days off. He says he’s making lots of overtime pay (but it’s mandatory overtime, not voluntary) but the stress is really getting to him. He doesn’t drink, but he says that’s how many of his co-workers are dealing with their stress. He is aware that he has a steady job, with good benefits, but feels that he and his co-workers are not being heard when they voice their concerns.
Plus, since 1999, New York’s prison population has declined over 50%. Maybe we should call in the National Guard?
From the hill article in links…
Rather than reckon with such grim realities, Democrats again are seeking refuge in the politics of evasion. It takes two forms: Calls for intensifying “resistance” to Trump and the beguiling hope that success in next year’s midterm election will spare them a bruising factional fight over the party’s core principles and purposes.
The dems want the hoi polloi to herd up so they can be led back into the corral. Ever since the iraq war have protests been used as a way to blow off steam from the masses but no political goal will be reached for them, I rest assured the billionaires will continue to flourish. “But trump” is still the party line.
I think you have good reason to be “overly pessimistic” because it seems the planned “Workers Over Billionaires” demonstrations are doing the same thing and expecting a different result insanity.
Why not protest in favor of giving the cops a raise? It’s axiomatic the police are the enemy, why? Workers need friends and according to Randi Weingarten in the penultimate paragraph, “It has to be all workers and all working families saying enough.” Are the police not workers too? Yet, the WOB group is concerned with “Trump’s lawless attacks on immigrants.”
The billionaires, imo, are organized and capable of accomplishing their goals. They have focused their resources on lobby organizations and politicians.
On the May Day Strong website is listed roughly 140 separate organizations. Rather than focus on the political class and their associated parties like the billionaires do, or even create a worker’s party—pray tell why that’s impossible—we are expected to support the many separate organizations instead. And above all, follow Robert Reich’s advice, “But please, remain peaceful.”
Protests don’t work under a totalitarian regime. Ballot access is legally impossible under a so-called “two-party system” completely controlled by billionaire funders from the Military-Finance Complex.
In California I watched as union leaders clung to their personal sinecures by funneling billions in state pension trust funds into billionaire-controlled Private Equity and Real Estate coffers. These nest-featherers are the organizers of the feel-good “Workers Over Billionaires” Labor Day rallies.
An effective General Strike has been made impossible by the destruction of unions representing federal workers — the essential functions will simply be militarized and uncooperative workers fired or imprisoned under military law. Most of the necessities of life are now imported goods delivered by so-called “independent contractors” chained to gig jobs as debt slaves.
Everyone in this country is out for themselves. Ayn Rand’s masturbation fantasy.
“An effective General Strike has been made impossible by the destruction of unions representing federal workers — the essential functions will simply be militarized and uncooperative workers fired or imprisoned under military law.”
You’re talking only—and only—about unionized federal workers. What about the rest—the overwhelming 93%—of workers who aren’t unionized? If they—all of them—failed to show up for work on the same day, that would indeed be a GENERAL strike. Imagine. No waiters in restaurants, no bartenders in bars, no taxi or limo drivers, no clerks in stores or banks, no nannies or tutors, no barbers or hair stylists, no gardeners, no haberdashers, no car mechanics, no Starbucks, no 3AM coffees at 7/11.
Now THAT’S a general strike. Try to militarize all those jobs. Try to imprison or fire all those workers. Can’t be done. That’s why governments the world over fear the general strike.
Only unionized federal workers? No, that’s a selective straw-man.
The rest of that paragraph talks about non-union at-will “independent contractors” and gig workers. Who is going to organize them? Who is going to set up a strike fund for them? Who is going to keep their cars and televisions from being repossessed? Who is going to keep them housed after they’re fired and black-listed?
A walk-out by waiters, bartenders, gardeners, hair stylists(!), baristas, et al. is not going to bring down the system, as seems to be suggested. Historically, the very concept of the General Strike presumes a unionized industrial workforce.
I’ll be attending our local rally and march tomorrow, being held in an upscale neighborhood next to the university campus. It brings together public sector workers, public school teachers and graduate student workers’ unions to demand that our fabulously well endowed private university, the biggest employer and landowner in town, pay a living wage to its workers and pay its fair share of property taxes so the people who work here can afford to live here. Real organizing and coalition building going on amid local election season. Good to see some serious rabble rousing happening, I don’t expect this to be anything like No Kings which I skipped — these are real workers who are hurting and speaking up about it.
I would suggest that what is happening on Labor Day is about as far away from an organic, grass-roots political movement as is possible.
Please begin to pay attention to how such “protest” is funded.
Think billionaire tax deductible donations flowing through 501(c) (3) charitable entities to 501(c) (4) political organizations (many of the unions and entities listed) which then coordinate among themselves for political activities, with government grant money also thrown in, to fund operational capacity for completely phony Democratic Party progressive advocacy of the type being planned for tomorrow.
This is not Workers over Billionaires but the exact opposite.
I have put off having a rally or protest in my (very rural redneck) town in western PA but decided to go ahead and do this one. I rebranded it as a Labor Day event for organized labor and posted flyers as such. I also asked people to not bring anti Trump signs bc I do not want counter protesters and to add fuel to the fire in a heavily MAGA area. I am a socialist and would very much like to bring the community together and let them see that we are in a class struggle instead of pitting one side against the other as the ruling class has done. I believe these events are to engage people in organizing, education, and agitation. I have speakers coming that are old union leaders and we will hopefully invite some new folks that we meet there to our book group for further discussion. It will also encourage people that are newer to these types of events to fuel their own voice, after all we all start somewhere. You begin as an activist then become an organizer and create more just like yourself.
The real action will start when the Confraternity of Saint Luigi the Adjuster begins to demonstrate direct, kinetic actions designed to “get the attention” of the professional managerial class.
The Abolitionists had John Brown. The Civil Rights movement had the Black Panthers. The early Unions had the “Mad Bombers,” plus the Wobblies. The early Anti-Neoliberal movement had Occupy. Oh, wait. They didn’t blow anything up. Then they were ‘disappeared.’ Sorry. If only someone associated with Occupy had had the temerity to “deconstruct” a Fusion Centre. Or even to make a credible threat of it.
Stay safe.
“The real action will start when the Confraternity of Saint Luigi the Adjuster begins to demonstrate direct, kinetic actions designed to “get the attention” of the professional managerial class.”
Always appreciate your keeping the memory of Saint Luigi green. For, although the PTB have succeeded in temporarily burying him, his “direct, kinetic action” will sooner rather than later be disinterred and remembered—applauded—by history. Much like this man’s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens
People brought together by common goals and motivations are one of the most powerful forces on earth. This helps explain the two-party system. Hating each other is essential to maintaining the status quo. Change is possible. We will have to overcome related issues. Most of us, for example, are not taught how to solve problems in a structured, effective manner. Even less learn how to do so in a collective manner. In the age of the Internet and AI, this is passe’ and costly. Ralph Nader found it only takes 3.5% of a population to start a movement. We’re not addressing high-priority problems using readily available tools. There are a lot of smart, conscientious people in this world. Replace the bickering with collaboration, and change will follow.
Nobody has mentioned closing the border? Seems like that was a really big pro labor move. It’s also a move for reducing housing costs.
Conor, I got quite a kick out of the dialogue you created to tell us this is a protest about nothing. I was reminded of an old schtick going around when I was in college:
Interlocutor 1: Tell me about a man.
Interlocutor 2: What man?
Interlocutor 1: The man of power.
Interlocutor 2: What power?
Interlocutor 1: The power of voodoo.
Interlocutor 2: Voodoo?
Interlocutor 1: Do what?
Interlocutor 2: Tell me about a man.
Interlocutor 1: What man? et seq
Everybody’s just talkin’ in circles.
Off topic, but hopefully fun: https://youtu.be/Lfv1Jx3_PRs
On topic: Maybe just a different generational pop-culture touchpoint, but Conor’s dialogue made me think we’re never, ever going to figure out Phase 2 of the underpants collection path to profit: https://youtu.be/a5ih_TQWqCA
https://medium.com/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop-fascism-in-history-the-success-rate-is-0-a665e2e048a2
“I researched every Democratic attempt to stop fascism in history. the success rate after fascists were elected was 0%. Once they win elections, it’s already too late.”
“Here’s what I found: Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever.
“I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think.”
“The statistics are brutal. Fascist takeovers prevented after winning power democratically: zero. Average length of fascist rule once established: 31 years. Fascist regimes removed by voting: zero. Fascist regimes removed by asking nicely: zero. Most were removed by war or military coups, and tens of millions died in the process.”
“No wealthy democracy with nuclear weapons has ever fallen to fascism. The 1930s examples everyone cites were broken countries. Weimar Germany was weakened by World War I and hyperinflation. Italy was barely industrialized. Spain was largely agrarian. They didn’t have the world’s reserve currency. They didn’t have thousands of nukes. They didn’t have surveillance technology that would make the Stasi weep with envy.”
“America has all of that. Plus a population where 30–40% genuinely wants authoritarian rule as long as it hurts the “right people.” The historical playbook is useless here. We’re in unprecedented territory.”
He does have some things that might perhaps work. But people have to be willing to die. Ian Welsh has been saying this for years.
“But people have to be willing to die.”
Don’t worry, we’ll get there eventually. Things simply aren’t bad enough for enough people… yet. But it’s being worked on.