Oak Park’s downtown will be the site of another anti-Trump protest on Labor Day, the third such demonstration this year.
Demonstrators will be on Lake Street from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to protest organizers.
As with the previous “No Kings” and “Hands Off!” protests held along Lake Street in June and April, the Labor Day protest is a local edition of a national series of protests against President Donald Trump’s administration. More than 700 communities across the country will participate in the “Workers Over Billionaires” protests on Sept. 1, according to “May Day Strong,” the organizing group behind the demonstrations.
“Billionaires are converting the government into their private slush fund and just passed the largest wealth giveaway in the history of the US,” organizers said in a statement publicizing the protests. “The money they take from working families, they put in billionaires’ pockets and set aside to fund a private army of ICE agents. Just like any bad boss, the way we stop the takeover is with collective action. We are working people rising up to stop the billionaire takeover – not just through the ballot box or the courts, but through building a bigger and stronger movement.”
The organizers are supported by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization, an organized labor group comprised of 63 trade unions with a combined 15 million members worldwide, according to the group.
In Downtown Chicago, protestors will gather at both the Haymarket Bombing memorial and outside of Trump International Hotel. Other suburban communities hosting protests include St. Charles, Crystal Lake and Frankfort, according to organizers.
Thousands of protestors lined Lake Street and filled Scoville Park in the village during the “No Kings” protest. Oak Park is one of the most liberal communities in the United States, with over 90% of Oak Parkers voting for Democrat Kamala Harris in the last Presidential election.
The Chicago-area protests come as the President threatens to send National Guard troops to Chicago and use Great Lakes Naval Base in Lake County to house both ICE agents and National Guard for operations focused on the city with little coordination with local officials, according to reporting by the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to Reuters, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s offices have been preparing or months for such a step, but there’s not much they can do to thwart it.
Trump has said that federal troops are needed in the city to put a stop to the city’s violent crime “disaster.” But Chicago’s homicide rates have fallen drastically since the nationwide post-pandemic surge in gun violence rates, as is the case in all of America’s largest cities, according to city statistics.
May of 2025 saw the lowest number of homicides for any month of May in Chicago since 2007.
Trump’s plans to send federal troops to the city come after his administration cut $145 million in grant funding for violence prevention programs in Chicago and other cities.
Oak Park along with Chicago and neighboring Berwyn have previously been included on a federal list of immigration “sanctuary cities” the Trump administration said were actively violating immigration law. The list was pulled off the Department of Homeland Security’s website days later, but it had followed threats from federal agencies that cities like Oak Park that have policies against cooperating with civil immigration enforcement investigations would lose access to infrastructure support and other forms of federal funding.
