May Day 2012
History: May 1 has always marked the coming of Spring: a time of rebirth and new possibilities. For over a century, May Day has been known as International Workers Day, a day where the 99% — workers throughout the world — have united to fight their common exploitation by the 1%.
CHICAGO 1886
The origins of May Day lie in the revolutionary year of 1886: a wave of mass strikes—focused on the fight for an 8-hour day—surged across the heartland of America. The American Federation of Labour had adopted a resolution stating “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1st, 1886”. In Chicago, over 100,000 workers struck. There, during a demonstration on May 3rd, a crowd confronted strike-breakers leaving the nearby McCormick factory, chasing them back inside. Without warning, police opened fire on the crowd, killing four and seriously wounding many.
The following day a rally was called at Haymarket Square to protest the police violence. The mayor was in attendance, and the crowd debated how to continue their strike. As the meeting was winding down, a group of 180 police stormed in and ordered everyone to disperse. A bomb was thrown towards the police line. Who threw it — whether protestor or provocateur — has never been determined. As the bomb exploded, chaos descended. One police officer was killed, many others were injured. The police opened fire on the crowd, killing dozens. A police dragnet swept the city. Eight revolutionary labor leaders were arrested, seven of whom had not even been present in Haymarket at the time. In the absence of any evidence linking them to the bomb, the “Chicago Eight” were tried solely on the basis of their political beliefs. All eight were sentenced to death.
Several years later, in honor of their slain comrades, a coalition of workers groups declared May 1st International Workers Day. Ever since, people around the world have come together on May Day to remember the sacrifices of those who have struggled before us, to defend the gains they made, and to discuss the way forward to a better world for the 99%.
MAY 1ST 1968 – PARIS
The dust was still settling from the March 22 student occupation of the University of Paris at Nanterre. Civil and student unrest were bubbling up across the world. The authorities were discussing how to manage the growing industrial strikes and the emerging conflicts with students at Nanterre. No one knew that the very fabric of French society was about to explode.
It all happened very quickly; May ‘68 was totally unplanned and unexpected. On May 2 the administration decided to shut down Nanterre, and within a week tens of thousands of university and high school students were confronting the police on the streets of Paris: the police in full scale riot gear wielding batons and tear gas and savagely beating students, the protestors throwing rocks and burning cars in defense. The protestors gained mainstream support in Parisian society and called a general strike for May 13. It was an historic day: a million people marched, the prisoners were released and the Sorbonne was occupied!
A wave of mass strikes and worker occupations immediately followed. The strike lasted weeks, involving 11,000,000 workers, nearly 66% of the workforce and 22% of the population of France. Striking students and workers refused negotiation, putting forward broad and radical platforms for the transformation of modern society. For a week in May the city and its surrounding area was controlled by the workers themselves. The old guardians of power and authority looked on helplessly as workers took control of their own lives and city. On May 24 road blocks were set up around the city as farmers made a protest of solidarity with the workers and students. French society was on the brink of collapse; President de Gaulle fled the country and the remaining Ministers secretly counted the days until the full-scale revolution would topple them. With the military surrounding Paris, de Gaulle dissolved the parliament and called for new elections. It was a stroke of strategic brilliance, ending the revolution nearly as quickly as it had begun. The remaining protestors could sense their betrayal, dawning the slogan “Elections are a con.”
Perhaps the most striking element of the May ’68 revolution was the symbolic occupations which occurred in three distinct realms of Parisian life: education, work, culture. The student occupations of both Nanterre and Sorbonne united them with student uprisings around the world in the 60’s; it was a global uprising that signaled a young, militant, discontented youth. The workers of May ’68 took occupation and self-management to a new level: at its peak, 122 factories were occupied by workers, without the consultation of union officials. Lastly, the cultural occupations symbolized by the occupation of the Odeon Theatre took the revolution to the sphere of cultural expression and production: Parisians fought for sexual rights, individual freedoms and the rights of women and homosexuals.
To this day, May ’68 represents one of the most powerful historical critiques of capitalism, imperialism, consumerism and the foundations of representational democracy. The general rebellion of May ’68 took as its task no less than the rethinking of all social relations, the reshaping of politics and the liberation of a whole society from the shackles of capitalism. As they declared in ’68: “We don’t want to be the servants of capitalism.”
MAY DAY IN NYC
Reading the history of May Day in NYC is like taking a whirlwind tour through America in the modern age. May Day NYC is a story of ebbs and flows and rapidly shifting political terrains; a story of oscillations between brutal police repression and breathtaking exhibitions of collective force by the 99%. It is a story of the battle for social and economic justice.
In 1978, a worker-journalist asked:
“An old timer on my job told me that there used to be huge May Day parades in this country. Why is May Day today such a big event in other parts of the world but not here?”
Indeed, the 1% has tried to repress this history again and again, but May Day is as American as apple pie and as “New York” as a slice of pizza. The 1% has employed various tactics and opportunities to enact this repression: the Cold War, the hysteria of McCarthyism, the passage of anti-union laws, the expulsion of progressive labor leaders from unions. Accordingly, this political repression can be seen in the pathetic attempt to “forget” May Day by renaming it: it was first renamed “Americanization Day” in 1921, then “Loyalty Day” and “Legal Day” in 1958. Another manifestation of this repression can be seen in the attempts in the 1950s to ban May Day marches in NYC, keep meetings and rallies out of Union Square, and the ridiculous labeling of the May Day Planning Committee as “subversive” by the government.
NYC has a long, colorful history of resistance on May Day. Beginning in 1886, that infamous year in May Day history, thousands of workers went on strike, strutting down Broadway, joining the fight for the eight-hour day. Throughout the 1890’s, after the establishment of May Day as International Worker’s Day, tens of thousands of workers flooded the streets, decrying the slavish nature of the wage system. They often converged at Union Square, which has come to be a welcoming home for all those voicing their discontent with an unjust system. Rallies at Union Square have been massive, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and frequent. They have been primarily peaceful assemblies, with the great exception being 1930, where over 1,000 police troops armed with tear gas and machine guns brutally attacked a crowd of over 100,000 innocent demonstrators.
A clear pattern emerges in this history: a progressive inclusivity and expansion of issues, peoples and populations. In the late 1800s May Day was dominated by male union workers. This quickly changed, with the 1910s uniting the struggles of female and child workers as well. The 1930s saw a staggering attention to unemployment and the hungry, homeless and disenfranchised. By the 1960s, students were mingling with workers at May Day rallies in Union Square which rallies condemned racism and inequality. In the 1970s, the prime motive of May Day was to show solidarity with victims of imperialism, colonialism and war (American Indians, Vietnamese, etc). Finally, in 2006, the Great American Boycott awoke the country to the struggles of immigrants in a system that ignores and oppresses them.
Throughout this hundred year history of resistance to the power of the 1%, the political and economic situations have been varied, as have been the demands, slogans and messages of the 99%. However, common threads and recurring themes cut across the years: a shorter work week, better working conditions, an end to the wage system, an end to war, imperialism and state repression, the freeing of political prisoners, solidarity among the oppressed, exploited and disenfranchised, equal rights for all, a system that works for the people. In short: peace, equality and democracy.
