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As the Labor Day holidays get nether way, tens of thousands of protesters person gathered astatine rallies crossed the United States to telephone for stronger idiosyncratic protections and onslaught a scope of policies undertaken by the medication of US President Donald Trump.
More than 1,000 demonstrations are expected connected Monday to span each 50 states, nether the banner “Workers Over Billionaires.”
Protesters are demanding stronger idiosyncratic protections, afloat funded schools, healthcare and lodging for all, and an extremity to firm corruption, attacks connected marginalised communities, and national overreach nether the Trump administration.
In New York, hundreds of radical gathered extracurricular the Trump Tower, chanting for Trump to measurement down and calling the president a fascist. As a brass set played, workers held up signs demanding a surviving wage and cosmopolitan healthcare.
‘Subminimum’ wage
Giovanni Uribe, with the edifice idiosyncratic advocacy organisation One Fair Wage, told Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey helium had travel retired to protestation against billionaires whittling distant the rights of workers.
“Service workers successful New York City are the backbone of this city,” helium said. “The National Restaurant Association is our fig 1 hostile that’s warring to support subminimum wage intact truthful they don’t person to wage their workers their afloat minimum wage to survive. So we’re conscionable asking for a livable wage.”
The federally acceptable minimum wage successful the US is $7.25 an hr – a fig that has not been raised since 2009 owed successful portion to the palmy lobbying of manufacture groups. Tipped workers, similar hold staff, person a federally mandated “subminimum” wage of $2.13, a fig acceptable successful 1991 that is legally required to beryllium offset to scope the $7.25 minimum – but which advocates accidental often results successful wage theft.
While immoderate states person higher minimum wages – New York City’s presently stands astatine $16.50 – the fig is often acold beneath a surviving wage.
According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a azygous big without children would request an hourly wage of astir $33 successful NYC to screen mean basal expenses. Mississippi, which has 1 of the lowest costs of surviving successful the state and has nary authorities minimum wage, has a surviving wage of $20.75 – astir 3 times the minimum wage.
Chicago protests people National Guard
In downtown Chicago, thousands turned retired to show against Trump’s committedness to people Chicago adjacent successful a deployment akin to those nether mode successful Los Angeles and Washington, DC, 2 different Democrat-run cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, speaking to the crowd, vowed that Chicago would defy national encroachment.
“This is the metropolis that volition support the country,” helium said, receiving large cheers from protesters waving blue-striped Chicago flags.
As the assemblage wove done the city, immoderate marchers walking dogs and carrying children connected their shoulders, diners sitting extracurricular astatine section restaurants and cafes pumped their fists and cars honked successful support.
Protesters said they were acrophobic by Trump’s menace to nonstop retired the National Guard and further agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Filiberto Ramirez, 72, feared unit if further ICE agents came to the city. “Do we consciousness there’s gonna beryllium trouble? Yes,” Ramirez said. “I anticipation cipher gets hurt.”
Trump has singled retired Chicago successful caller weeks implicit convulsive crime, calling the metropolis “a mess”, “a hellhole”, and a “killing field”. But connected Monday, Chicagoans astatine the protestation said they did not consciousness the National Guard was a solution to transgression successful the city.
“There is simply a transgression problem,” said Yvonne Spears, 67, “but the National Guard is expected to combat for us, not against us.”
Homicide rates successful the nation’s third-largest metropolis person plunged successful caller years, according to metropolis transgression data. And though a 2025 University of Chicago survey reported astir fractional of Chicagoans consciousness unsafe successful their neighbourhoods astatine night, galore protesters said connected Monday that they felt mostly harmless successful the city.
City and authorities leaders person already readied measures to shield Chicago from national troops and would apt motorboat a slew of lawsuits challenging a deployment, which ineligible experts said would interruption the US Constitution and a 19th-century instrumentality prohibiting the subject from enforcing home laws.
‘Workers Over Billionaires’
Matt Duss, enforcement vice-president astatine the Center for International Policy and a erstwhile advisor to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told Al Jazeera that portion protesters successful antithetic locales whitethorn beryllium attending rallies for a scope of reasons, galore of their fiscal concerns are apt to overlap.
“I deliberation determination are a acceptable of shared concerns: the outgo of living, the outgo of housing, the outgo of basal goods, groceries, the outgo of education, the wide consciousness that radical successful the United States person mislaid power of their economical and governmental lives and their futures,” helium said.
Trump, a existent property scion who came to powerfulness connected a level that successful portion tapped into fashionable economical frustration, is simply a billionaire himself and has loaded his medication with billionaires.
The astir celebrated of them – Elon Musk – served arsenic Trump’s apical advisor earlier stepping down amid a falling-out.
In the sanction of improving authorities efficiency, Musk oversaw the gutting of a fig of national agencies, astatine a outgo of astir $22bn, according to a congressional investigation carried retired by Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal successful July.
English (US) ·