‘We Definitely Need to Do Something!’ Workers March in NYC Against DOGE Cuts
Protesters rallying against DOGE cuts assemble in Foley Square on March 15. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
“We definitely need to do something.”
Scores of working class New Yorkers—including laid off federal workers and anxious retirees—already pushed to the wall three months into the new Trump administration took to the streets of Lower Manhattan this weekend in a rebellious act of defiance that helped dispel some of the fear many have been experiencing.
"People are exhausted,” Anna Lisa Dinucci told Work-Bites. “I feel there is so little I can do as an individual. But this is the one thing I can do; I’m going to spend my Saturday doing something. I see like-mined people and realize there are more of us that feel very strongly about this than you would know if you were just sitting at home.”
1199 SEIU workers in Foley Square protest cuts to vital health care services.
Protesters representing more than 50 labor unions and grassroots organizations assembled at Foley Square on March 15, before heading up Worth Street to Broadway where they marched towards Battery Park and held a “die-in" to protest Donald Trump and billionaire oligarch Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] cuts.
“I am out here to protest this transfer of wealth from the poor to a billionaire oligarchic class,” magazine editor Virginia Vitzthum told Work-Bites. “I feel that we’re going down the path of [Russian oligarch and President Vladimir] Putin. “And it distresses me that the executive branch can take this sweeping control of appropriations that Congress is supposed to do—it feels like a coup.”
Many retirees attending this weekend’s march fear devastating cuts to Social Security.
Working people have been stretched thin, Vitzthum added, and “income inequality is already horrible.”
“I feel we need to stand up and call for it to stop,” she said. “The federal workers are traumatized. It’s a hostile workplace environment for federal workers—on purpose.”
Rose I. carried a sign evoking the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 in which 146 immigrant women and girls were killed.
Angry marchers move up Worth Street towards Broadway.
“Everything they fought for is being eroded by these people [in the Trump administration],” she said. If OSHA and other worker protections are weakened, she added, “it will happen again.”
A retired New York City school teacher who identified herself as “Danielle” told Work-Bites she and her colleagues were protesting "because we the people are the government—not some rich people who don’t pay any taxes. They are trying to steal our money, and that person that is in the White House is their puppet and allowing them to do it.”
Marcher get ready to turn onto Broadway past the Federal Building.
Saturday morning’s labor march against DOGE’s massive cuts to the federal workforce and multiple agencies could’ve also been a precursor to more potent street actions to come.
A week prior, American Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson told WBAI radio show host and Work-Bites contributor Bob Hennelly that American workers need to start gearing up for a general strike.
“What we have to understand is the people in charge, the people doing this, are doing this to make the federal workforce miserable—to make us all miserable and demoralized, and shrink into our own space—to inspire scarcity and competition among workers so that we don’t rise up together to stop them,” Nelson said.
Shame on you, Chuck: marchers carry a caricature of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.
Freelance photo stylist Yolanda Burkhard told Work-Bites on Saturday that she is ready for a general strike.
Push back, don’t lay down. Take action,” she said. “The more the better—I agree with that. People need to come out. It’s the only way things will change at this point.”
Union organizer Gino Murillo came to the Foley Square rally with a contingent of about 10 to 15 members of Laborers Local 79.
Protesters from multiple labor unions stood shoulder-to-shoulder on Broadway this past weekend against the DOGE cuts.
“We’re standing in solidarity with all our union brothers and sisters,” he said. “We’re here to fight back, we’re not here to back down. No matter what this president does, he’s going to have to hear us.”
Work-Bites also spoke to Aimee from Queens and a friend who were both laid off from their USAID jobs in February when the Trump administration announced it was gutting 90 percent of the agency’s foreign aid contracts.
“I think that radical action is probably needed,” Aimee told Work-Bites. “I work in education research on projects in low and middle-income countries. I’ve been doing this work for fifteen years. I was put on furlough in January and laid off by mid-February, and now I’m just trying to figure out how to find a new career in an environment in which tens of thousands of my peers who have done the same type of work are also being laid off.”
It’s clear to these marchers that the Trump administration is waging class warfare on working people.
Aimee’s colleague who wanted to remain anonymous said she worked on emergency food assistance programs getting food to starving people in countries around the world including Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Sudan and Syria.
“I don’t know the exact intent behind all of this—but the affect has certainly been to cause economic unrest,” she said. “Many of my colleagues have children and their only source of income—their mortgage payments—were dependent on these jobs. I genuinely don’t know when they’ll be able to find another way to take care of their families.”
“It’s a black hole, Aimee added. “There are a lot of people who will be left behind for a very long time.”
Marcher holds placard taking aim at un-elected Elon Musk’s power to eviscerate government agencies and fire scores of workers.
Ridgewood, New Jersey retiree Marybeth Protomastro, meanwhile, worried about cuts to Social Security and jeered rightwing ideology still trying to treat government like a business.
“The purpose of government is to not to make a profit,” she told Work-Bites. “The purpose of government is to help people—you can’t treat it like a company. All of these cuts, they’re hurting so many people in this country and around the world. People are dying because of their cuts. It’s just horrible.”
Workers protesting the DOGE cuts stage a “die-in” following Saturday’s march.
Not everyone at Saturday’s rally was ready to organize for a general strike, however.
Work-Bites also interviewed a married couple from New York who said “what’s going on in our country is atrocious and it has to be stopped,” but at the same time, added a general strike “might be a little too far.”
“We need people to turn out for elections—that’s what matters. Vote these people out,” the couple who wished to remain anonymous said.
Marchers fear a replay of 1911’s horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Photo/Steve Wishnia
Marches at Saturday’s rally, however, were clearly fed up with both Republicans and Democrats in office. Sure, there were no shortage of clever signs skewering both musk and Trump during Saturday’s demonstration—but marches also kicked off the protest underneath an ugly caricature of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer [D-NY] with the word “SHAME” stamped across his forehead.
“We’ll Be Back! We’ll Be Back!” they chanted after reaching Bowling Green.
“We need more people out on the streets like this,” Protomastro added.
—Additional reporting by Steve Wishnia