400 rally in Syracuse marks International Workers’ Day protest

Roughly 400 people gathered outside Syracuse’s federal courthouse on Friday, filling the block around the James M. Hanley Federal Building with chants aimed at wages, affordability and the Trump administration’s treatment of workers. The turnout turned a downtown federal site at 100 S Clinton St into a visible labor protest, with organizers using International Workers’ Day to connect Syracuse paychecks to national policy.

The rally was part of a May Day event listed by the Central New York Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which scheduled the gathering from noon to 2 p.m. and described the day as International Workers’ Day. The federation said it stood with workers abroad and at home who were being targeted by the administration. The message in Syracuse was broad but pointed: tax billionaires, defend workers’ rights and push back against the economic pressure many households feel in Onondaga County.

The event also fit into a larger organizing push that has been building across Syracuse. Indivisible Syracuse added more than 500 people to its private Facebook group since February, a sign that anti-Trump activism has continued to draw new participants. Groups including the 50501 movement helped lead turnout efforts, while local coalitions such as Indivisible Onondaga County and the CNY Solidarity Coalition have become part of the city’s regular protest infrastructure.

The crowd was smaller than the more than 1,000 people who marched through downtown Syracuse on May 1, 2025, from Clinton Square, but it still showed that labor and political organizing remains active in the city. Last year’s International Workers’ Day actions also centered on labor rights and Trump administration policies, and organizers had planned to gather at the Everson Museum of Art. WAER described the spring 2025 anti-Trump protests as some of the largest the region had seen in decades.

This year’s theme, “Workers Over Billionaires,” sharpened the politics of the moment. The Mobilize listing attached to the rally called for taxing the rich, opposing ICE, opposing war and expanding democracy rather than corporate power. May Day itself reaches back to the 19th-century fight for the eight-hour workday, which gives the Syracuse rally a longer labor frame than a single afternoon downtown. In a city where affordability remains a daily concern, the protest showed that workers’ rights are still being argued not just in Washington, but on Syracuse streets.