By Geo White, for MPLS Page | May 2, 2025
In South Minneapolis, MayDay isn’t just a parade—it’s the day the Southside gathers. After a long, hard winter, neighbors step out from behind storm doors and bundled routines like bears waking from hibernation. Sidewalks fill with strollers, kids, chalk art, and cigarette smoke. Old friends spot each other across the street with wide-eyed grins. The band starts. The puppets sway. And for a few loud, weird, beautiful hours, spring belongs to the people.
The Parade Returns This Sunday
On Sunday, May 4, 2025, the MayDay Parade returns to South Minneapolis, stepping off at noon from Bloomington Avenue and 28th Street. From there, it winds down to 34th Street, turns west, and slips into Powderhorn Park like it always has—wild, homemade, and full of heart.
This is MayDay number 48, a nearly five-decade tradition that’s teetered on the edge more than once. It’s a DIY pageant of protest and puppetry, bikes and beer, drumming and dancing. It’s also the first time many neighbors truly see each other since fall—sunlight on their faces, salt still crusted on their sandals, greeting one another like survivors of a shared frost.
What You’ll See (And Smell)
Look for pasty Minnesotan legs emerging from winter jeans into last year’s shorts. Smell the weed in the air, drifting with bratwurst smoke and whatever someone’s vaping under their hoodie. You’ll hear the crash of a drum circle, the honk of an art car, the clink of cans in paper bags. Everyone’s out: grandmothers with lawn chairs, toddlers with bubble guns, teens on fixies, dancers in body paint, and activists in face paint.
You’ll see lovers napping on picnic blankets, friends reuniting after long spells, and old punks sipping IPAs from bike baskets. And you’ll see giant papier-mâché puppets, stilt-walkers, elaborate floats, street theater, and spontaneous outbursts of joy, rage, and everything in between.
It’s messy. It’s strange. It’s real. And it’s ours.
Built By the People
This isn’t a city-funded spectacle. This is a miracle made of hot glue and hustle.
When In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre stepped back from producing MayDay in 2023, the tradition looked finished. But South Minneapolis doesn’t drop what it loves without a fight. Local artists, organizers, and neighbors filled the gap, organizing from basements, park shelters, and bike co-ops.
This year’s MayDay Parade is completely community-built. The Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts, based in the Phillips neighborhood, helped wrangle the vision and secured a one-time grant from Lake Street Lift to cover essential infrastructure like permits, porta-potties, and traffic control.
There are no food trucks, no giant stages, no corporate banners. Just people and their art, rolled into the streets like a middle finger to winter and apathy.
The Tree of Life Ceremony
After the parade, the crowd migrates to the west hillside of Powderhorn Lake for the Tree of Life Ceremony—an open-air ritual of puppetry, movement, song, and collective grief and joy.
This isn’t passive entertainment. You don’t just “watch” the Tree of Life—you feel it. You carry it home in your chest. It’s a ceremony for the things we’ve lost and the hope that keeps crawling out from under the rubble.
Bring a blanket. Bring someone you love. Bring whatever weight you’ve been carrying and let it shift.
Why It Still Matters
MayDay has outlasted funding cuts, city indifference, and multiple existential crises. Minneapolis has seen its streets burn, its politics twist, and its people tested. But MayDay keeps rising, a soft but defiant reminder that joy, resistance, and creativity still grow in these streets.
“This year’s MayDay isn’t being run by anyone,” said one volunteer. “It’s being held by everyone.”
If You Go
- Date: Sunday, May 4, 2025
- Time: Parade starts at 12:00 p.m.
- Route: Bloomington Ave & 28th St → 34th St → 15th Ave into Powderhorn Park
- Tree of Life Ceremony: After the parade, west hillside of Powderhorn Lake
- What to Bring: Blanket, snacks, water, layers, trash bag, open heart
Support the Parade
This year’s event is powered by a one-time grant. The future of MayDay depends on all of us.
Donate to the MayDay Sustainability Fund at maydaympls.org.
