Along one side of the park were booths giving away chili, raising money for the local soup kitchen, and registering people to vote.
Among them, retired laborer David Guttenberg explained why the event was on International Workers Day.
“Well, this is, this is May Day. We’re celebrating or honoring the lives of people that sacrificed for working Americans, right? All the things that they had to work for and sacrificed for: the 40-hour work week, overtime, workers' compensation. And in this environment, we need to rally around and keep enunciating that, that those things are important to us and we have rights and we want 'em honored,” Guttenberg said.
Guttenberg is a former legislator and is on the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. But he was speaking for himself as a union member.
Jacob Howdeshell is president of the Central Labor Council. He said the national environment for labor unions has shifted significantly this spring, for example, President Trump firing members of a board that reviews labor practices.
“The dismantling of the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, from the inside has been a theme with both Trump administration 1 and Trump administration 2," Howdeshell said.
"And with the weakened NLRB, it's harder to form a union, it's harder to join a union, it's harder to hold bad actor employers to account. So that's obviously something that we are bringing attention to, not only today, but every day.”
Also speaking was Natalie Detwiler, vice-president of the Alaska Graduate Workers Association at UAF.
Also Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins, who’s last job was a director with Fairbanks Education Association. He spoke briefly about historical labor protests that are marked by modern rallies, such as this one.
“We've been having these protests and because we've been doing this work for the last 140 years, since the first May Day and because the work that we've done in protests like this, have led to better protections and better rights. But as we've seen, those rights can be eroded if we don't keep standing up for them,” Hopkins said.
Rallygoer Phil Drum took issue with the president of the national Teamsters Union endorsing tariffs and other policies he thinks will hurt workers; he held a sign that said so.
“Mine says, ‘Sean O'Brien can kiss my butt. Dump Trump.’ Mr. O'Brien decided to side with the MAGA cult. I'm just out here to say that there's a lot of Trump-supporting members and the teamsters, and they're doing that at their own peril, and I just want to voice my protest about that.”
After the speeches, musicians played labor and protest songs in the park and rally goers took their signs out to Cushman Street, to demonstrate to traffic on Fairbanks' main street.
