May First Always Makes You Think
This commentary will be published several days before the celebration of International Workers’ Day, on this May 1, 2022. It has been 136 years since that Saturday in 1886 when 200,000 workers in Chicago went on strike to demand the 8-hour workday; and every celebration of this day always makes us think.
No longer was that strike, as in previous history, a battle for the sovereignty of a nation-state. This was a battle for social justice.
In Cuba, many years later, we are fighting the same battle. But we are doing it from a Revolution in power, and we are fighting not to lose the social justice we have conquered, and to conquer more.
The risk of losing it comes from the economic difficulties, and also from the possible wrong solutions to those same difficulties.