Protests are planned across the world on Friday in honor of International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day, including in the Pacific Northwest.

Organizers have planned demonstrations in Portland, Seattle, Salem, Vancouver and other cities in the region. In fact, the Pacific Northwest has a long history and awareness of May Day marches and celebrations.

May Day memorializes the events of the Haymarket Affair of 1886, when a bombing and riot during a labor protest in Chicago killed seven police officers. Seven labor organizers were sentenced to death for conspiracy in connection with the deaths.

Steven Beda, an assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon, specializes in the history of labor in the Pacific Northwest. He said many in the labor movement came to believe that these men were convicted because they were immigrants, not because they committed a crime.

Workers began to celebrate International Workers’ Day every May 1 in their honor.

“People across the world throughout the later 1880s recognized this as a grand injustice,” Beda said.

While International Workers’ Day had violent beginnings, Beda said it was most prevalent during the 1930s. At that time, the Great Depression galvanized labor movements and led to many strikes, some of which began around May Day.

One of the largest examples was the 1935 Lumber Strike. More than 30,000 timber workers across the Pacific Northwest walked off the job for several months. There were multiple violent clashes between striking workers and the National Guard.

More recently, Portland saw protests turn violent in 2000 and 2017. Both times, police arrested dozens of people after skirmishes broke out. The 2012 May Day protest in Seattle saw some demonstrators break windows and attempt to set fire to a federal building.

May Day began to fall out of favor during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when it became tied to communism. As a result, many unions began celebrating the traditional Labor Day in September.

But in the Pacific Northwest, many continued to celebrate May Day. That’s due, in part, to the large presence of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, a powerful union that remained committed to a more radical labor culture, Beda said.

“That has a lot of profound effects on the Pacific Northwest’s economy,” he said. “The ILWU retains this kind of radical culture, and part of that radical culture was continuing to celebrate international holidays like May Day.”

It’s a tradition organizers are hoping continues on Friday.

Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, Oregon’s largest farmworker advocacy group, has organized a demonstration outside the Capitol building in Salem. PCUN Executive Director Reyna Lopez said they’re demanding the removal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from Oregon and a clear pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers.

“We’re working with — not only our immigrant community — but workers of many other sectors, businesses, faith leaders, who are going to be coming together to bring their voice to what’s happening in the current climate today,” Lopez said.

May Day is also the culmination of the PCUN’s “Day Without An Immigrant” protests, which encourage people to not shop and call out of work in solidarity with immigrant workers.

Beda said May Day nowadays sees greater involvement from people outside of the labor movement, who oppose injustice across all of society.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/01/may-day-protest-pacific-northwest-portland-labor-union-holiday/