Day Four Of The Worker Action Tour | Rename Hayward Field To ‘Hidup Buruh’
May 29, 2025
As athletes competed in the OSAA State Track & Field Championships inside Hayward Field, a powerful act of protest unfolded just outside. Three Indonesian garment workers—Dedeh, Dinar, and Leni—joined by allies, demanded that the Nike-funded stadium be renamed to “Hidup Buruh” – meaning: “Long Live the Workers!” The symbolic action highlighted a jarring truth: while Nike co-founder Phil Knight funneled over $270 million into the stadium’s renovation during the pandemic, garment workers making Nike products saw their wages slashed.
Leni Oktira Sari, a worker activist and Nike garment worker, says, “Rename Hayward Field. Rename it after us, the people who really made its renovation happen. In Indonesia, we are taking risks and fighting hard. When we are in the streets rallying and protesting injustice from brands like Nike, we have a unifying chant—‘Hidup Buruh!’ It means ‘long live the workers,’ and it lifts us up, the workers who make the world’s clothing, the workers behind Nike and other iconic fashion brands.” The chant echoed through the campus as worker activists and allies affirmed that the wealth behind the track was built on exploitation.
“We came to see the stadium that Nike built from the money from our wages that were cut during the pandemic,” – Leni.
“We’re here because the labor of the workers of Indonesia and Southeast Asia is actually what creates the profit to pay for Hayward Field and its renovations,” said Gonzalo Bustamante Moya, Vice President of Political Education for the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon. “Long live the workers is not only a way for us to honor the actual labor that created the profits that paid for the stadium, but also to show that workers are indispensable for all the living that we take for granted… it is actually the labor of living people that deserve living wages and dignity that makes this world run.” Today’s action made one thing clear: the fight for wage justice doesn’t stop at factory gates—it follows the money, all the way to the stadiums built on stolen wages.
Stay tuned for more updates and read: Day Three Of The Worker Action Tour | Garment Workers Bring The Fight To Nike’s Headquarters