02-05-2025
Large crowd gathers at Anchorage's Park Strip for May Day rally
May 2—More than 500 people descended on Anchorage's Delaney Park Strip on Thursday, bringing together supporters of more than a half-dozen organizing groups focusing on workers' rights and health care, among other issues.
The gathering was one of more than a dozen protests and rallies around the state and hundreds more nationally and internationally.
Dozens of people raised signs, covering a wide swath of topics including support for Ukraine, federal workers and students. There were signs lambasting Elon Musk, and the Trump administration's recent controversial policies regarding deportation and changes to the military.
May Day has evolved into a holiday celebrating labor and is also International Workers' Day.
Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, said the rally was important as a support system as well as to communicate to elected officials many Alaskans' dissatisfaction with how workers have been treated.
"Today, my heart is thinking about federal workers who have lost their right for collective bargaining," she said. "With the stroke of a pen, decades of protections (have disappeared). These are our neighbors who have lost their jobs. And for what? To give a tax benefit to who? This is just insanity."
(A federal judge last week temporarily blocked the executive order aiming to end collective bargaining for many federal workers.)
Amy Holonics, a retired teacher who came to Alaska working as a park ranger, held a sign that read "Fund Science Not Billionaires."
She said the sign referred to recent actions from President Donald Trump's administration that halted research and eroded food and drug safety. She said maintaining a strong federal workforce was important to her.
"That's how I came to Alaska in 1985 and I've been here ever since," she said. "I believe in the Park Service, my family has worked for the Park Service 75 years or more. It's a robust organization and when people travel, they go to parks."
Other organizing groups for the rally included NEA-Alaska, the 907 Initiative, Alaska Forward, Protect Our Care and Planned Parenthood, among others.
[Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR]
Education was major point of emphasis for people at the rally, with attendees raising signs advocating for increasing the Base Student Allocation and supporting educators.
NEA-Alaska President Tom Klaameyer spoke to the crowd, focusing on how to turn their collective dissatisfaction into action.
"People show up, they rally and sometimes that can be kind of an echo chamber," he said. "Unless you take that movement beyond your own personal feelings and thoughts and emotions, and you do something about it — we can come here every day and talk to ourselves, and if that's all we do, it won't make schools better for kids."
Suzan Mullane wore a shirt that said "Educate Don't Capitulate Hands off Harvard." Last week, the university sued the Trump administration for threatening to freeze more than $2 billion in grants.
Mullane said she was at the rally to show support for continued funding of preschool and to protect higher education.
While rally speakers focused on labor, education and health care, there were a number of other focuses from attendees in the crowd.
Eagle River's Richard Rearick said that range of protests shows how broadly actions by the Trump administration have impacted Alaskans.
"Everybody has been affected one way or another, but really, we're all affected in totality, by what he's doing," Rearick said. "And I think that we need to come together and show our presence, show our objection to what he's doing."
Trysten Walker, who held a sign supporting transgender rights, also had concerns about potential misconceptions about autism by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"They're creating a perception that will vilify people that don't really deserve it," Walker said.
Robert G. Lopez, a 40-year Anchorage resident, was rallying against cuts made by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, creating uncertainty for services like the Meals on Wheels program.
"They're taking food out of the elderly's mouth and taking money from the disadvantaged people," he said. "What happened to (the principle) of Christianity? Jesus would help the poor, feed the starving."
