May Day protests across Illinois link labor, immigration rights and
anti-war calls
[May 05, 2026]
By Chloe Park and Medill Illinois News Bureau
CHICAGO – Georgette Foss, 66, walked hand in hand Friday through Union
Park with her friend Mary Shapiro, 64, holding a sign that read,
“Workers over billionaires — fund communities, not wars.”
“My neighbors are being snatched off the streets. I’m worried about
retiring at the end of this year and having the government take my
Social Security, and about my grandson not having access to a
neighborhood school,” Foss said at a recent May Day protest.
Foss and Shapiro were among tens of thousands of Illinoisans who took to
the streets Friday afternoon for May Day demonstrations, with rallies
held at more than 50 locations across the state, according to the May
Day Strong website.
May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, is an annual day of
demonstrations held worldwide on May 1 in solidarity with the labor
movement. While its origins trace back to the 1886 Haymarket affair in
Chicago, a defining moment for workers’ rights, the day has since
expanded to include a broader range of social justice causes, including
immigrant rights and, this year, calls to end the war in Iran.
The state’s largest rally drew thousands to downtown Chicago, where
leaders, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, emphasized the needs of the
city’s working people and its immigrant and refugee communities. Amid
heightened immigration enforcement following “Operation Midway Blitz,”
many attendees carried signs calling for federal agents to leave their
neighborhoods.
Federal agents carried out the immigration enforcement campaign for
three months last fall in the Chicago area before disbanding.
Protest focuses varied across the state, including on public university
campuses, where labor and immigration issues intersected.
Downstate protests
At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, protesters connected
labor demands with concerns over reported local immigration enforcement
activity.
“Certain local immigration rights organizations had heard that federal
agents were going to be coming up to Champaign-Urbana,” said Thair
Thursday, a member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization at U of I.
“We weren’t sure whether it was for immigration-related enforcement.
However, we’ve seen in other places, Minneapolis being one example, that
the presence of federal agents for non-immigration-related activity does
not preclude the possibility of immigration-related activity.”
He added that these reports came as demands for protections were already
in development.
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Illinois State University students and workers gathered to advocate
for a fair contract, holding signs calling for union rights and
better pay. (Photo courtesy of Keith Pluymers)
On May Day, organizers including graduate employees, undergraduate
groups and local unions delivered these demands to the university,
calling for protections against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for
students and workers. The proposals include restricting ICE and Customs
and Border Protection agents’ access to campus buildings, canceling
contracts with corporations that collaborate with immigration
enforcement and providing support for students and workers facing
deportation or visa revocation.
Further north, at Illinois State University, where non-teaching staff
have been on strike for nearly a month, students and workers gathered to
advocate for a fair contract, holding signs calling for union rights and
better pay.
Keith Pluymers, an assistant professor of history and vice president of
United Faculty ISU, said the protest reflects two “contrasting visions”
for the future of higher education — one from university administrators
and the other from labor advocates.
“What you see from the university administration is a vision of higher
education that is a miserable death spiral,” Pluymers said Friday. “In
contrast, what you’re going to see today with the events we organized is
that labor and students and community groups can see a much better
future for what it should look like.’’
Pluymers added he hopes the protest demonstrates that university workers
are invested in their institution’s future and are working to build a
school the entire state can be proud of.
“We need support from across the state,” he said. “Because the
alternative is that you’re going to have people in charge who are
willing to let conditions get a little bit worse and a little bit
grimmer for students who go to a public university.”
Chloe Park is an undergraduate student in journalism
with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media
and Integrated Marketing Communications, and is a fellow in its
Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News
Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is
funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
McCormick Foundation.
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