Progressive activists, Democratic leaders and ordinary voters gathered in crowds large and small around the country on Monday to protest the Trump administration and voice support for workers on the Labor Day holiday.
Hundreds of events were organized by labor groups, local activists and Democratic Party officials, adding to a drumbeat of demonstrations in recent months, including the “May Day” protests that took place on May 1, the widespread “No Kings” protests in June and those last month opposing President Trump’s push to redraw congressional lines.
Even if many of the events themselves have not always been very large, the regularly organized protests have signaled a desire among a broad swath of progressive groups and many left-wing voters to keep up the pressure on the Trump administration and provide a steady voice of opposition.
“We have to take a stand,” said Cathy McCook, 70, who waved a large American flag at a roadside protest with at least 200 people in a suburb of Orlando in Seminole County, Fla. The county’s voters backed Mr. Trump in 2024 after favoring Mr. Biden in 2020.
One of the biggest demonstrations was in Chicago, where Mr. Trump has discussed deploying National Guard troops to address street crime, which Democratic officials have vocally opposed. The threat of putting the military on patrol in Chicago, as Mr. Trump has already done on the streets of Washington, motivated many of those who turned out.
Speaking on a makeshift stage, the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, led a crowd of several hundred in a chant of “No troops in Chicago” and “Invest in Chicago.”
Carole Delahunty, a 55-year-old woman from suburban Mount Prospect, said the fear of National Guard troops coming to Chicago motivated her to attend Monday’s event. “I have a fear of military occupation,” she said. “We don’t need the National Guard here.”
The range of issues being protested — mass deportations, cuts made by the billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, efforts to undermine the power of unions — was almost as broad as the locations of the protests, with demonstrators outside the Indiana State Capitol, in a park in Savannah, Ga., and on a highway overpass in Tempe, Ariz.
In Kansas City, Mo., hundreds of people congregated in a park to oppose a plan by Republican state leaders to redraw Missouri’s congressional districts in an effort to flip a seat held by a Democrat. The Trump administration has put pressure on Republican officials in red states to redraw their district maps.
In Boston, a Labor Day parade appeared to double as a kind of demonstration, with labor leaders carrying signs reading “Workers Over Billionaires,” the organizing slogan for many of the events on Monday. The Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, marched alongside her fellow Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In Los Angeles, not far from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where protesters faced off with police in June, a few dozen people watched the unveiling of a 100-foot-long art installation featuring 40 photos of men and women taken by immigration agents. In Manhattan, a crowd of several hundred people gathered near Trump Tower as traffic sped by along Fifth Avenue. Jonathan Gartrelle, a nonprofit worker from Jamaica, Queens, said he believed that opposition to the Trump administration was not a fruitless struggle.
“The ruling class, the governing class, the people that have all the money” were betting that most people “won’t act because they’re paralyzed by fear,” Mr. Gartrelle said. “But throughout history, when you underestimate anything, that is the point at which you fail.”
Florida has voted for Mr. Trump in the last three presidential elections. But in Seminole County, Democratic Party officials who organized the protest were hopeful that the gathering would lead to a greater number of volunteers and electoral success in the future.
“Protests are how you can channel energy into activism,” said Andrew Lisa, the chair of the Seminole County Democratic Party. “We are taking that energy and saying, ‘You’ve protested, you’ve taken two hours out of your day. Can you spend two hours knocking on your neighbors doors?’”
Ana Facio-Krajcer and Jacob Reber contributed reporting.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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