By Hailey Allen, Sr. Communications Specialist | Birmingham, Alabama
Every year on May 1, people around the world honor International Workers’ Day—a day shaped by walkouts, bold demands, and the enduring call for respect on the job. But behind the protest signs and rallying cries is a more personal truth for those of us in the United States: May Day is as American as apple pie.
Born in the U.S. and forged in the fire of Chicago’s Haymarket Affair, May Day began in the spring of 1886, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the country joined a national strike to demand an eight-hour workday. In Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a peaceful rally turned violent after someone threw a bomb into a crowd of police officers, triggering a deadly crackdown. In the aftermath, four labor organizers were executed, and May 1 became an international symbol of worker resistance.
Despite its origins here, the U.S. has long tried to gloss over or erase this history—replacing May Day with Labor Day in September and rebranding it at times as Loyalty Day or Law Day.
Even now, May Day remains a site of tension—between corporate control and collective action, between historical amnesia and living memory. It is a day that refuses to disappear, precisely because the struggle it represents is still unfolding. The spirit of May Day lives on in every strike line, every organizing campaign, every demand for good jobs and a seat at the table. At Jobs to Move America, it also lives in the work of Haeden Wright, our Assistant Director of Campaigns for the Southern Program.
Haeden’s journey to JMA began not in a policy room, but on the frontlines of a coal miner strike that lasted over 700 days. When more than 1,100 miners from Warrior Met Coal in Alabama walked out in 2021 to protest pay cuts and other working conditions, Haeden stood with them. As Auxiliary President of UMWA Locals 2245 and 2368, she helped organize mutual aid, solidarity caravans, and community support networks to sustain striking families. She held the line—alongside her husband, her neighbors, and hundreds of coal miners—for nearly two years.
Her story is not unique. It’s part of a broader Southern labor tradition that is easier recognized in our civil rights history and often overlooked in national conversations. Like the workers in Haymarket Square, Haeden and the UMWA miners risked everything not just for wages, but for human dignity, democracy, and fairness—the very values May Day was founded on.
Today, Haeden is building the next chapter of that legacy through her work at JMA. From Alabama to California, our campaigns are rooted in the belief that workers and communities must lead the way forward. Whether we’re fighting for community benefits agreements, supporting workers organizing for safer conditions, or working with communities to forge win-win-win legal agreements with employers, our mission is the same: to make sure public dollars are used to create good, clean, manufacturing jobs that uplift rather than exploit.
When we recognize May Day today, we don’t just commemorate the past—we honor those carrying the struggle forward in our own communities. Because the history of labor justice isn’t a relic. It’s the foundation of the future we’re building—together.