Local labor celebrates May Day

On May 1, a crowd of 50 workers, students and community members gathered in Nichols Park for a rally in celebration of International Workers’ Day. Organized by the University of Chicago Labor Council (UCLC), the May Day celebration was joined by several area labor unions, student groups and social justice organizations, and culminated in a march through the streets of downtown Hyde Park.

The event began at Nichols North Fountain, 1355 E. 53rd St., where members from Graduate Students United (GSU), Tenants United, National Nurses United, UChicago Against Displacement and the UChicago chapters of Care Not Cops, Students for Justice in Palestine and Young Democratic Socialists of America tabled throughout the afternoon. 

By 2:30 p.m., the group took off to march down 53rd Street, South Harper Avenue, 55th Street and Woodlawn Avenue. Activist John Hieronymus, a nurse at UChicago Medicine, rallied the crowd. 

“We're gonna go out and raise a little hell and let people know that none of this happens without us,” said Hieronymus. “Nothing happens without our working class communities and all the people who work and do the things at home, in their apartments and their workplaces to make sure that we all have what we need to live.”

Hieronymus also described the origins of International Workers’ Day, which commemorates the strikers and protestors who were killed in an altercation with the police during the Haymarket Affair of 1886 while demonstrating to secure an eight hour work day.

The crowd chanted “Get up, get down, Chicago is a union town” to the beat of bucket drumming and cowbells. Pedestrians hollered and passing cars honked in support. Along the way, the group paused to hear from speakers with GSU and UChicago Against Displacement (UCAD). 

Speaking on a megaphone outside of the Hyde Park Shopping Center, UCAD member Jasmine called for legislation to protect residents from being priced out of the neighborhood by development related to the Obama Presidential Center. They also called for reparations from the U. of C. for its displacement of Black residents through racially restrictive covenants, redlining and urban renewal. 

“Today, on May Day, we stand in solidarity with everyone here against capitalist greed and oppression,” said Jasmine. “We demand that the university give funds to the community it's displaced out of its grossly large 11 billion dollar budget.”

As the group paraded down Woodlawn Avenue, a worker in an Amazon truck honked in support. (On April 1, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, won recognition of their labor union, Amazon Labor Union, becoming the first Amazon warehouse in the country to unionize.)  

Arriving back in Nichols Park, the Love Fridge, a mutual aid organization fighting food insecurity in Chicago, served granola bars and seltzer water while participants wrote messages on the sidewalk in chalk. One read “Caregiving is WORK.”

“We’re building power, we’re building solidarity, we’re coming together to be joyful and have a community among all of the people who are part of the ecosystem of workers at UChicago and in Chicago” said GSU co-president Neomi Rao. 

GSU communications secretary Laura Colaneri said the union is planning more in-person events to connect graduate students with one another and provide a space for workers to share the issues they’re facing. 

“When people are confronting an issue in their department, it can be really isolating, especially in a pandemic,” said Colaneri. “But when you're just having lunch with somebody in your cohort, and you're venting a little bit, and you find you both have the same problem, that's where union starts.”

Inspired by a wave of graduate student union recognition and contract wins at the University of Illinois at Chicago, MIT and Harvard over the last year, GSU plans to revisit legal recognition with the university administration over the next year.