Demonstrators protest against President Donald Trump’s use of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in the city during a rally at Union Station, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) 
Raven Winchell, of Seui 2015 Long Term Care Givers, raises her first as hundreds gather to protest the Trump Administration while calling for workers over billionaires in the Mission District in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (Bronte Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP) 
Protesters use their bodies to deescalate an argument with a counter-protester at Union Station, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry) 
Aurora activist Martha Karnopp, left, and another impromptu protester at the corner of South Havana Street and Parker Road during a anti-Trump protest Sept. 1, 2025 PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK
Protesters took to the streets in Aurora, Denver and multiple U.S. cities on Labor Day to criticize President Donald Trump and demand a living wage for workers.
Demonstrations in Chicago and New York were organized by One Fair Wage to draw attention to the struggles laborers face in the U.S., where the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Chants of “Trump must go now!” echoed outside the president’s former home in New York, while protesters gathered outside a different Trump Tower in Chicago, yelling “No National Guard” and “Lock him up!” Large crowds also gathered in Washington D.C. and San Francisco.
Protests in Aurora, at the corner of South Havana Street and Parker Road, focused on a bevy of Trump policies and actions since he took office in January. In particular, protestors were critical of Trump overstepping the rule of law and presidential powers. In addition, some were critical of immigration policies and sending National Guard and other military troops into American cities.
In Denver, protesters gathered at the state Capitol, focusing on the Trump administration and GOP support of legislation benefitting the rich and undermining the rights of workers across the county. Denver protesters also focused on what critics say is the indiscriminate firing of federal workers.
In New York, people gathered outside Trump Tower, which has become a magnet for protests and remains a prominent symbol of the president’s wealth, even though the president hasn’t lived in the Manhattan skyscraper for years. Demonstrators waved signs and banners calling for an end to what they said is a fascist regime.
In Washington, a large crowd gathered with signs saying “Stop the ICE invasion” and an umbrella painted with “Free D.C. No masked thugs.” Hundreds more gathered at protests along the West Coast to fight for the rights of immigrants and workers.
Multiple groups joined together at the protests in Chicago to listen to speeches and lend their voices to the chants.
“We’re here because we’re under attack. We’re here because our core values and our democracy is under attack. We are here because they are threatening to send the military into our streets,” Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, told the crowd in Chicago as he urged them to stand up for workers.
At one point, a woman got out of a vehicle with Iowa plates in Chicago to shout “Long live Donald Trump” over and over again, resulting in a brief confrontation as the protesters responded with shouts of their own until the woman left a few minutes later.
In the crowd, Ziri Marquez said she came out because she’s concerned about overlapping issues in the U.S. and around the world, decrying anti-migrant attitudes in the U.S. and the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.
“I think especially, you know, when we’re dealing with low wages and we’re dealing with a stagnant economy, immigrants are largely used as a scapegoat,” said Marquez, 25.
Along the West Coast from San Diego up to Seattle, hundreds gathered at rallies to call for a stop to the “billionaire takeover.”
Groups supporting federal workers and unions marched in Los Angeles; San Francisco; and Portland, Oregon, in support of workers rights. Rally organizer May Day Strong said on its website that “billionaires are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy and building private armies to attack our towns and cities.”
They called on people to take collective action to stop the takeover.
Portland protester Lynda Oakley of Beaverton told Oregolive.com that her frustrations with health care, immigration and Social Security inspired her to join the march.
“I am done with what’s happening in our country,” she said.
King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who took part in a demonstration at Seattle’s Cascade Playground, told KOMO News that they wanted to send a message of workers above billionaires.
“Workers should be more powerful than the small billionaire class,” she said.
Associated Press Writers Michael Sisak contributed to this report from New York and Martha Bellisle contributed from Seattle
Democracy is under attack when you shout down speakers you disagree with, when you “cancel” individuals who hold differing points of view, when you control the media so as to present only your point of view, when you try to create a Dept. of Disinformation and when you send your activists out to key automobiles and burn dealerships of an individual you disagree with. Control and suppression of free speech and the media is the greatest threat to Democracy and is how dictators in North Korea, Russia and Iran remain in power. Now tell me, which party has, and continues to try, to control and suppress free speech. You are correct, it is the far-left contingent of the Democrat Party.
Today, I turned on Reuters news. They’ve been interviewing the same 20 Trump voters since his inauguration. All of them still approved of his handling of immigration and crime. Yesterday on the Associated Press website I read that 1.2MM working and tax-paying immigrants were gone from the workforce and that the administration woke up 600+ immigrant children in the middle of the night to load them on planes to send them to Guatemala, ostensibly to “reunite” them with their families. This included honor students and children who feared a return to Guatemala. A judge blocked the flight. The 20 Trump voters allowed that they may be naive or that the methods of deportation “could be handled better,” but almost all of them were fairly certain that Trump was getting rid of the worst of the worst and accordingly approved of his behavior. Now, it certainly didn’t take me much time or effort to find out that the worst of the worst don’t include these 600+ children or the 1.2MM tax-paying workers, but the disconnect with facts was palpable within this group. The same can be said of the federal takeover of cities around the country. Trump lied about the crime statistics, saying the crime was the worst in years. Again, I found it easy to discover that in most cities violent crime had plunged since the pandemic and was at lows that spanned decades. And again, this group was sure that Trump was saving these cities from the worst crime wave in decades. To me, it defies logic for so many to be willing to set reason aside and to rely on Trump for “facts” when the man lies repeatedly! It also defies logic for so many to dismiss so many long-standing legitimate news sources as fake news and to embrace Fox propaganda, when Fox was forced to admit in court that they didn’t present real news, that they were an “entertainment” network!
The same people complaining about “billionaires,” who start peacocking their socio-economic status every time they think they’re talking to someone lower on the ladder who doesn’t share their dumb, long-discredited political theology.
Oh, that’s right, a Republican is in office now, so they have to pretend that they’re concerned about the working classes–when they aren’t mocking them in the next breath over their lack of “education,” of course. Posers.