Thousands of protesters march in Portland, Ore., protesting President Trump’s administration, April 5, 2025, part of “Hands Off” protests taking place around the country.
Joni Auden Land / OPB
UPDATE — May 1, 2025: Hundreds of people took to the streets at the Oregon capitol in Salem and other parts across Oregon on Thursday in support of May Day.
Original story below:
Cities and towns across the Pacific Northwest are expecting May Day demonstrations on Thursday, allowing some to express political outcry and leaving others to brace for the sometimes unpredictable day.
In Oregon and Washington, organizers are hoping to see demonstrations pop up in state capitals such as Salem and Olympia, major cities like Portland and Seattle, and in small towns such as La Grande and Ellensburg.
May Day, also known as International Workers Day, in part commemorates a bloody workers’ strike and conflict in the 19th Century that helped secure rules for an eight-hour work day. In more recent times, protesters in the Pacific Northwest have gathered to promote many causes on May 1 — and at times have been met with force by police.
During President Donald Trump’s first administration, police in cities like Portland and Olympia declared that demonstrations on May 1, 2017, were riots as Trump supporters and opponents clashed, property damage ensued, and police deployed tear gas and other weapons to break up crowds. May Day protests in 2021 in Portland, during President Joe Biden’s term in office, also led to conflicts with police. At other times, marchers have gathered peacefully with few issues.
Twenty-five people were arrested in Portland during a May Day protest that police say turned into a riot, May 1, 2017.
Amelia Templeton / OPB
That backdrop is certain to affect expectations of Thursday’s protests, as liberal political groups Indivisible and 50501 aim to recreate a massive nationwide turnout they helped organize in early April.
While muted during the beginning of Trump’s second term, Northwest residents have increasingly taken to the streets to express their displeasure at White House policies that have slashed the federal workforce, targeted students and others for strict immigration enforcement, launched businesses into uncertainty over tariff policy and diminished the footprint of U.S. foreign aid.
Northwest cities like Portland became a national symbol of opposition to the Trump administration during his first term, leading to both widespread derision and praise — and a tense political climate that left many injured and some killed between 2016 and 2020.
The Portland Police Bureau expects at least three protests near downtown on Thursday, though they declined to estimate how many people will attend.
Demonstrators march through downtown Pendleton as a part of the “Hands Off” protest in Pendleton, Ore., April 5, 2025.
Antonio Sierra / OPB
Assistant Chief Craig Dobson said the bureau is trying to talk with organizers with lukewarm results. The bureau will send out white-shirted “dialog officers” to talk with protesters while others watch from a distance for criminal activity.
“Our dialog officers are usually the frontline that we put out there to communicate and also encourage folks to self-monitor,” Dobson said. “Typically, it’s individuals or small groups of people who maybe aren’t part of the main message, but that are out there looking to do nefarious activity, and so we are looking for those folks.”
Like the first Trump administration, few subjects may be as politically tense in Oregon and Washington as immigration and immigrant rights. Both states have so-called “sanctuary” policies that limit state officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities. While that policy was met with immediate defiance, other jurisdictions in the Pacific Northwest, such as the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, have expressed enthusiasm for more immigration related arrests. Those tensions led the Washington state attorney general to sue Adams County in March for cooperating with ICE, in violation of the state’s sanctuary law.
That setting may draw attention to May Day protests in Salem on Thursday. The immigrant and farmworkers rights group PCUN plans to hold its annual May Day gathering at the Oregon state Capitol Building from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. In its flyer, the group notes they’ll be “marching for Driver’s Licenses, to defend workers’ rights to organize, and to make it public that we condemn any and all efforts to take Oregon’s sanctuary state status away.”
Earlier this week, PCUN and several religious groups sued the Trump administration to block immigration enforcement at so-called “sensitive locations” like schools, churches and hospitals.
