On Labor Day 2025, San Francisco’s 16th & Mission BART entrance will become the stage for a rally that organizers say is both a warning and a call to arms. The event, titled “On Labor Day Fight for United Front Against Fascism, General Strike & Labor Party,” is convened by the United Front Committee For A Labor Party and endorsed by the Revolutionary Workers Front. Slated for September 1, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the protest aims to galvanize the city’s working class—and perhaps the nation’s—against what organizers describe as the growing threat of fascism in the United States.
According to Indybay, the rally’s organizers are sounding the alarm over a host of developments they view as harbingers of authoritarianism: military occupations in major cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as well as threatened deployments in Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland, and San Francisco itself. These actions, they argue, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader agenda to implement martial law nationwide. The organizers warn that such measures could pave the way for concentration camps targeting not only immigrants, but also Palestinian activists and trade unionists.
“The only action that can STOP these attacks is united action of all unions and the entire working class with a general strike,” the rally’s announcement declares. The message is unmistakable: in the face of what they call the “fascist Project 2025”—a set of policies they say would privatize public services, undermine public education and healthcare, and establish company unions—working people must act collectively and decisively. The organizers advocate for the creation of a mass democratic labor party, one that would defend democratic rights, end U.S. support for what they describe as genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, and shut down American military bases around the globe.
This Labor Day rally is not just about local grievances. It’s part of a tapestry of global and historical struggles, a theme echoed by grassroots journalist John Collins in a recent piece for Weave News. Drawing inspiration from the life of Spanish militant Cristina Farré, Collins reflects on the enduring relevance of anti-fascist activism. Farré’s autobiography, Ho Vam Donar Tot (We Gave It Our All), published in Spain in 2025, recounts her journey through student protests, underground resistance, imprisonment, exile, and eventual return to her homeland. Her story, Collins writes, offers “wisdom that has tremendous value in our own moment of antifascist reckoning.”
Farré’s activism began in earnest on January 17, 1969, when she and fellow students at her university decided to confront the institution’s rector for allowing police to enter the campus—a space previously considered off-limits to law enforcement. “We held a very tense meeting and decided to go to the rector’s office to throw him out,” Farré recalls in an interview with El Diario. The confrontation culminated in a symbolic act: tossing a bust of dictator Francisco Franco out the window. For Farré, this was no mere gesture. It marked the beginning of years spent living in hiding, then in exile, and finally as a political prisoner in the notorious Alcala de Henares prison outside Madrid.
Farré’s commitment, she explains, transcended the boundaries of traditional activism. “When you decide you don’t like this world and want to change it, militancy and life become one and the same. I’m a mother and I’m a militant. I study and I’m a militant. So, when I’m a mother, I’m also a militant. When I study, I’m also a militant. And when I’m in prison, I’m also a militant.” Even behind bars, she worked to improve conditions for fellow inmates, whom she saw as “victims of capitalism” and gender violence.
Her journey took her from Spain to Algeria—once, in her words, “the Mecca of revolutionaries around the world”—and later to Colombia and Cuba, each move shaped by the shifting tides of political violence, imperialism, and the search for safety. Farré’s family, like many before and after them, found themselves caught in the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of statelessness: “We’re a very strange case because, although there were refugees from the Civil War, we were among the very few from the Transition,” she notes. “And that put us in a tough situation since Spain didn’t recognize us because, you know, democratic Spain didn’t generate refugees.”
In time, persistent advocacy—including a campaign of letter-writing to newspapers—helped them secure the documents needed to return to Spain in 1996. But Farré’s story is not only about personal survival. It’s about the ongoing struggle to build coalitions across ideological lines, a lesson she underscores: “When I was young… many of us were giving it our all. Many, and from many parties that might have had differences, but we were all there.”
Yet, as Farré points out, the end of dictatorship did not mean the end of repression. “The repression didn’t end with the end of the dictatorship. Dissent is still not accepted today. There is no democracy or anything like it here, and there won’t be as long as there is torture and political prisoners continue to be imprisoned. It’s a constant trend since the Civil War. But we will continue working and fighting, organizing ourselves, until the spark ignites and we return to the barricades.”
For Collins and other observers, the parallels between Spain’s 20th-century struggles and the current climate in the United States are impossible to ignore. The vectors of fascist brutality that once tore Spain apart now seem, as Collins writes, “bent on bulldozing almost every democratic institution in the US.” The rally in San Francisco, with its calls for a general strike, a new labor party, and an end to what organizers call “US-supported genocide and pogroms in Gaza and the West Bank,” is situated squarely within this tradition of transnational resistance.
Beyond the rhetoric, the Labor Day protest will also address local issues with global resonance: the Navy’s controversial plan to demolish radioactive buildings in Hunters Point, and what organizers describe as attacks on public education. These topics, though rooted in specific neighborhoods, are linked by a common thread: the belief that only mass, united action can halt the erosion of rights and the advance of authoritarian power.
As the rally’s announcement puts it, “Working people have the power to challenge the fascist agenda and we cannot wait for the midterm elections as Newsom and the Democrats are pushing.” The urgency is palpable. Organizers warn that former president Trump has promised his supporters there will not be another election, citing widespread disillusionment with trade wars, inflation, and what they call “fascist terror against immigrants and all people.”
Farré, reflecting on a lifetime of militancy, offers a final note of encouragement: “Without a doubt. It’s one of the things I’m most certain of in life: it was worth it, and it continues to be worth it. We have to try and give it our all. I think we left a legacy, a school of struggle, and the promise that future generations will be able to look back without feeling ashamed that we didn’t fight. We stood up for many just causes and defended them to the very end. And that seed will grow. Definitely.”
As Labor Day approaches, the echoes of past and present converge in San Francisco, reminding all who gather—and all who watch from afar—that the fight against fascism is, and always has been, a matter of collective action and enduring resolve.
