A Peninsula state senator and multiple San Francisco supervisors were arrested Friday amid a swell of May Day protests across the Bay Area, which saw thousands of people decry the rising cost of living in America and an increasingly empowered billionaire class under President Donald Trump.
The arrests of Menlo Park Democrat Josh Becker and two-dozen other elected officials, labor leaders and fellow protesters at San Francisco International Airport marked the latest public action to hit the region and the nation. The rallies, under the banner of “May Day Strong,” called for a national one-day business boycott and “no work, no school, no shopping,” prompting some businesses to shut their doors as people took the streets in solidarity with International Workers’ Day.
At the San Francisco airport, protesters blocked access to one of the terminal’s departure lanes; police then zip-tied 25 people and issued citations for unlawful assembly. Others arrested included San Francisco supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Connie Chan there expired, Becker told this news outlet”].
“One job should be enough — you should be able to live in the Bay Area and feed your family on one job,” Becker said. “Unfortunately, in the Bay Area for too many workers, that just isn’t true.”
Across the Bay, at Oakland’s airport, a mass of protesters chanted “People power!” and “We’re May Day strong,” while marching through the drop-off areas for Delta Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Volaris. Organizers had said before the protest that they planned to target Delta specifically for its role in transporting a 5-year-old child from Minnesota to an ICE detention facility in Texas.
The protest typified the myriad demands on display Friday, including the end to aggressive immigration arrests and deportation operations across the nation, along with the war in Iran. At the airport, many people held signs opposing arms shipments to Israel through the Port of Oakland, while others read “Stop U.S. wars” and “Tax the rich.”
“We’re the people — we’re the ones who made them rich,” Gregory Slaughter, 73, said of the nation’s billionaire class. “They need to pay their fair share of taxes.”
In San Jose, hundreds of people — including Tom Steyer, the San Francisco hedge fund manager-turned-gubernatorial candidate — converged on the intersection of Story and King roads in East San Jose, chanting “Si se puede” and carrying banners urging the city to protect immigrants from ICE agents. Wearing a sign proclaiming “protect all immigrants,” Laura Randall said she joined the rally to protest a lack of respect for human rights.
“We’re not treating human beings the way they should be. No healthcare, no food, no — the schools for the migrants,” said Randall, a retired schoolteacher. “In this country we’re all immigrants. There isn’t anybody here who aren’t immigrants somewhere in the past. Including the administration.”
Speaking to the crowd, Communications Workers of America representative Louie Rocha urged attendees to sustain their opposition against the Trump administration.
“The billionaires and their evil twin, corporate greed, will never stop trying to divide us,” Rocha said.
In the East Bay, some businesses — including the Grand Lake Theater and Arizmendi near Lake Merritt in Oakland — remained closed for the day, in solidarity with protesters.
At Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, trades workers represented by a dozen unions joined Berkeley High School students and other young people in speaking out against the Trump administration. Some wore work boots and orange safety vests, while others carried signs calling for the abolition of ICE, lambasting corporate profit over community benefits and encouraging people to “resist fascists.”
One demonstration began nearly an hour before sunrise outside a housing development underway along Ellsworth Street in Berkeley being built with mostly non-labor workers. After two hours, the lone unionized worker at the site walked off the job in solidarity with the nearby picketers, said Jason Gumataotao, lead organizer with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 595.
“These are union members giving up a day’s wages when times are tough, to be in solidarity with everybody’s struggle,” Gumataotao said. “That’s a big deal.”
The Bay Area demonstrations came amid protests across the world supporting May Day, which is recognized in many countries as a national holiday celebrating workers rights. Demonstrations were seen in Seoul, Sydney, Jakarta, Morocco, Turkey, France and the Philippines, the Associated Press reported.
Passengers wait for their ride as demonstrators in a caravan slowly ride past at the Oakland International Airport as part of a May Day protest in Oakland, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Demonstrators riding in a caravan protest at Oakland International Airport as part of a May Day protest in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, May 1, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Alameda County sheriff’s officers stand guard as demonstrators protest at the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport as part of a May Day protest in Oakland, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Demonstrators in a caravan slowly ride past fellow protesters at the Oakland International Airport as part of a May Day protest in Oakland, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
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Passengers wait for their ride as demonstrators in a caravan slowly ride past at the Oakland International Airport as part of a May Day protest in Oakland, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
In Oakland’s Fruitvale district, where a mostly Latino worker base has come under threat from the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, demonstrators banged drums and held up flags, chanting in Spanish the popular Chilean protest expression: “The people united will never be divided!”
“It may seem that we have no rights,” said Sonia, a worker at an International Boulevard restaurant. “But we have rights if we stick together and join together.”
Bay Area News Group staff writer Shomik Mukherjee contributed to this report.