On this Labor Day, change is in the air.

The Resistance Movement is rebuilding and winning victories.

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

BREAKING — Zohran Mamdani announces a new endorsement from the CWA. The union represents 25,000 workers.

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This is a special Labor Day, while the headlines churn with familiar chaos and Trump’s provocations and militarized crackdowns continue to crush democratic norms, unions and anti-Trump activists are taking to the streets by the thousands today. The progressive left finds itself not in retreat, but in resurgence.

What began as an anti-Trump reactive protest has matured into a sprawling, intersectional resistance movement that’s larger, sharper, and more strategically grounded than when Trump first took office.

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Horse-Poop Media

The biggest load of crap I read today was in Politico (‘Giddy’ Republicans cheer Mamdani’s impact on Democrats’).

It claims that Zohran Mamdani’s front-running campaign to lead the nation’s largest city is stoking fear among moderate Democrats that his far-left politics will cost them at the ballot box.

“I’ve never seen Republicans more giddy about the idea of a socialist mayor of New York City,” said former Nassau County executive Laura Curran, a Democrat. “They’re more excited about this than Mamdani’s followers or supporters.”

My first thought was: Am I reading this right? Are these Democrats so stupid as to think that the victory of a fellow Democrat in the nation’s largest city is a bad thing? That a Mamdani victory will cost them future elections because the Republicans will red-bait them?

No wonder their guy, Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, is losing this race by double digits. And no wonder the Democratic base is abandoning the fearful party leadership and rallying in the streets behind Mamdani and other progressive leftists like AOC and Bernie Sanders.

The Mamdani moment underscores the deeper crisis, the Democratic Party’s leadership void. A March CNN poll found about 3 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters couldn’t name a single leader who best reflected the party’s core values. An AP-NORC poll last month showed only 35% of Democrats said they were at least “somewhat” optimistic about the future of their party, compared with 55% of Republicans who said the same about their party. The party isn’t just losing elections, it’s losing relevance.

Meanwhile, a growing number of NY labor unions are endorsing Mamdani.

As The Nation put it, Democrats have become a party of “affluent professionals” disconnected from working-class struggles. They’re losing the war for attention, ceding cultural ground to right-wing influencers while failing to build a media-savvy infrastructure of their own. The result? A vacuum that movements like Mamdani’s are rushing to fill.

I think what the “moderates” are really worried about is not losing future elections so much as losing millions in AIPAC campaign donations.

Shame on them

Change is in the air

The early days of resistance—remember airport sit-ins, pink hats, and spontaneous marches—have evolved into a more durable political infrastructure. Organizations like the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, JVP, and other local mutual aid networks have shifted from street-level defiance to policy influence and electoral strategy.

On this Labor Day, unions are linking arms with social justice activists. Immigrant rights groups are collaborating with abolitionist organizers on co-authored platforms. There’s still a long way to go, but resistance is becoming less siloed—it’s intersectional, multilingual, and increasingly transnational.

This year’s labor landscape is a testament to labor’s growing muscle. From coast to coast, workers are striking not just for wages, but for dignity, democracy, and a future beyond Trumpism and oligarchic control.

The picket line outside Hilton Americas-Houston was the city’s first in decades, according to hospitality union Unite Here. Courtesy of Unite Here Local 23

A great example is the striking workers at Houston’s Hilton Americas Hotel, many of whom are immigrants or come from immigrant families. While the coverage doesn’t explicitly break down demographics, several clues point in that direction:

The workers are organized under UNITE HERE Local 23, a union recognized nationally for representing immigrant, refugee, and first-generation hospitality workers—especially in cities like Houston, where the hotel and food service industries heavily rely on immigrant labor.

Houston’s hospitality sector is one of the most immigrant-heavy in the country. According to past labor studies, a significant portion of hotel workers in the city are Latino, Southeast Asian, or African immigrants—many of whom are women working in housekeeping, food service, and maintenance roles.

The strike itself is historic: it’s the first hotel strike in Texas, and workers are demanding a minimum wage of $23 per hour, safer working conditions, and manageable workloads. It’s not just a labor dispute—it’s a fight for dignity in a city where tourism profits have soared, but frontline workers are still bartending on weekends just to “finally breathe.”

• California teachers syncing contract expirations for coordinated bargaining.

• Kaiser Permanente health workers are preparing for a major strike over staffing and equity issues.

• Starbucks Workers United, where baristas are still struggling with low pay and subpar working conditions

• Longshoremen threatening port shutdowns over automation.

• NJ Transit engineers, nurses get contract wins.

These are more than isolated skirmishes. They’re part of a coordinated wave. Unions are syncing contract expirations, rallying across sectors, and embracing strike threats as real leverage. The labor left is no longer just playing defense.

Transnational Solidarity and Anti-Carceral Resistance

The call to “Free Palestine” has become a rallying cry across many labor halls, classrooms, and protest lines. Unionists in Melbourne, activists in New York, and thousands in Canberra have demanded an end to Israeli apartheid and U.S. complicity. The movement isn’t just anti-war. It’s anti-colonial, anti-corporate, and rooted in worker-led liberation.

Meanwhile, anti-ICE resistance has surged. From punk shows in MacArthur Park to sanctuary networks in Queens, communities are blocking raids, tracking ICE vans, and building digital tools to protect their neighbors. The fight isn’t just about immigration. It’s also about the right to exist without surveillance, detention, or displacement.

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Next up…The battle of Chicago is coming soon as Trump’s troops from Dixie are poised to invade.