President Biden will be back in Philly to celebrate Labor Day
It marks the seventh time Biden has come to Philadelphia this year.
President Joe Biden will return to Philadelphia Monday morning to celebrate Labor Day, the White House announced.
Biden is planning to attend the AFL-CIO Philadelphia Council’s Tri-State Labor Day Parade and Family Fun Festival, council spokesperson Maggie Mullooly confirmed. The event begins with a rally at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 office on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia. Biden is expected to attend the kickoff, which is currently scheduled for 9:15 a.m.
Following the rally, union members and their families will parade north to Penn’s Landing, where the festival will be held.
AFL-CIO is one of the largest unions in the city and endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign along with 17 other unions in June.
It marks the seventh time Biden has come to the city this year and at least the 14th since he took office in January 2021, as he continues to hone in on a critical Democratic city in a key swing state more than a year before the 2024 election.
Biden was last in Philadelphia for a tour of Philly Shipyard on July 20. Vice President Kamala Harris visited a union training institute in Northeast Philadelphia on Aug. 8 to announce a program to increase pay to construction workers.
Biden has frequently highlighted his ties to and support for labor unions, and has said a number of times that he intends to be “the most pro-union president” in history.
He has made labor a focal point of his presidency and his reelection campaign. The president picked Philadelphia and a friendly union crowd at the Convention Center for his first large-scale campaign rally.
In March, he broke form and delivered his budget address from a union hall in Northeast Philadelphia instead of from Washington.
Last June, he headlined the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia. “You’re a gigantic reason why I’m standing here,” he told the crowd then.
Labor backed him heavily in his 2020 run. The AFL-CIO, SEIU, and the American Federation of Teachers were among some of the big unions who endorsed his first run.
While his 2020 campaign was based in Philadelphia, his reelection campaign is based in Wilmington, though he’s done far fewer official events in his home city.
Biden so far has two announced primary opponents: former candidate and author Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The DNC has already announced it won’t hold debates in the Democratic contest.
Biden is also slated to be in Montgomery County on Wednesday. The details of that event have not been released.