May Day

More US Activists Face Harassment By Authorities Upon Return From Cuba

May 8, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! Cuba, Customs and Border Patrol, May Day, State Repression

On May 7, several members of the US-based National Network on Cuba (NNOC) who had participated in the May Day Brigade, were detained and harassed by US Customs and Border Patrol upon arrival to the United States from Cuba. The NNOC released a public statement on the evening of May 7, emphasizing that “In face of persecution, we reaffirm our right to travel to Cuba. Solidarity is not a crime – the US blockade is!” They added that several of the people who were detained by CBP also had their electronics seized and some were even threatened with jail time. The harassment of their brigade members comes just days after over a dozen members of the International Peoples’ Assembly delegation to Cuba were similarly detained and questioned at the Miami International Airport and the Newark Liberty International Airport. Other organizations that traveled to Cuba for the May Day activities such as LA US Hands Off Cuba, faced similar treatment by border officials.

May Day In Havana: International Solidarity To Resist The US Blockade

May 6, 2023 Walter Smolarek, People's Dispatch. Resist! Cuba, Economic Blockade, May Day, Youth Activism

This year’s May Day celebration in Cuba was interrupted by severe storms that knocked out electricity in much of the country. Authorities had no choice but to postpone the traditional mass marches. But for over 150 young grassroots organizers from the United States who had traveled to the country to mark the holiday, this turn of events was just more reason to deepen their efforts to end the US-imposed blockade of the country. Miya Tada, a brigade participant from New York, explained how this showed that “the biggest obstacle the Cuban people are facing is the repression and economic warfare of our own government, and that just inspires me to further the struggle against the blockade back in the United States.”

May Day’s History Shows Why Labor And Prison Struggles Are Intertwined

May 2, 2023 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Criminal Justice and Prisons, May Day, Police, Worker Rights and Jobs

May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, is celebrated around the world by labor unions, socialist parties, and anarchists. May Day’s origins go back to the 1886 Haymarket Affair, when hundreds of thousands of US workers walked off the job, and 40,000 went on strike in Chicago for an eight-hour workday. Despite its origins, May Day is largely unknown in the US today. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joins Rattling the Bars for a discussion on the history of May Day, and how the persecution of organizers in the wake of the Haymarket Massacre highlights the importance of extending solidarity from the labor movement to the fight to abolish the prison industrial complex.

Left Parties And Trade Unions In West Asia And North Africa Mark May Day

May 2, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! Africa, May Day, Unions, Western Asia, Worker Rights and Jobs

International Workers’ Day celebrations were held in different countries of the West Asia and North Africa region on Monday, May 1, with trade unions and left parties organizing mass demonstrations. Marking the day, workers raised slogans of unity and revolution against capitalist exploitation. Paying homage to the martyrs of Chicago, Tunisia’s largest trade union movement, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), issued a statement on behalf of its general secretary Noureddine Al-Tabouni. It said that the UGTT was founded “on the principles of labour solidarity and victory of the interests of the workers and general public in all parts of the world regardless of race, gender, color and belief.”

Largest May Day Turnout Since Pandemic, Workers March Worldwide

May 2, 2023 Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams. Resist! International Workers Day, Labor Movement, May Day, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers from Japan to France took to the street on Monday for the largest May Day demonstrations since Covid-19 restrictions pushed people inside three years ago. Marchers expressed frustration with both their nations' policies—such as French President Emmanuel Macron's raising of the retirement age in March—and global issues like the rising cost of living and the climate crisis. "The price of everything has increased except for our wages. Increase our minimum wages!" one activist speaking in Seoul told the crowd, as The Associated Press reported. "Reduce our working hours!" "The price of everything has increased except for our wages."

Workers Fight Back On May Day, International Workers’ Day

May 1, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Higher Education, May Day, Strikes, Supply Chain, Worker Rights

May 1 is celebrated around the world, and unofficially in the United States, as International Workers' Day. In honor of this, Clearing the FOG speaks with two workers who are fighting for their rights and dignity. SN 'Yeager,' a spokesperson for the Graduate Employees Organization Local 3550, speaks about the conditions that brought them to go on strike at the University of Michigan (now in its sixth week), the tremendous outpouring of support for their struggle and how the University is retaliating against them. Billy Randel of the Truckers Movement for Justice, which is holding a day-long protest at the Department of Transportation today, speaks about the difficulties truckers are facing in the US and their demands that all workers are paid for all hours worked and greater transparency in the industry.

Lessons From Lenin For International Workers Day

May 1, 2023 Workers World Party, Workers World. Educate! History, International Workers Day, May Day, Working Class

International Workers Day, also known as May Day, reminds us of an anecdote about the 1917 Russian Revolution regarding the working class. At the time, the Bolshevik Party, trained and led by V.I. Lenin was in the process of seizing power. An anti-Bolshevik intellectual was arguing with a Bolshevik worker and bringing up all the complexities of running a government and of deserting Russia’s allies in the great slaughter of World War I. “I see it this way,” said the Bolshevik worker. “The bosses are on one side. We’re on the other side. If we don’t take power, they will.” The worker was right. Bosses, that is capitalists, are on one side. Workers are on the other side.

Revolutionary Cuba Delivers Marching Orders To The US Left

May 27, 2022 Jacqueline Luqman , Black Agenda Report. Resist! Cuba, Imperialism, Left, May Day

I saw with my own eyes the celebration of worker solidarity and the indefatigable defense of the Cuban Revolution as waves of workers walked with signs and costumes and Cuban flags past the iconic images of Ernesto “Che” Guevara on the Ministry of the Interior building with the words he may be most famous for accompanying his image, “Hasta La Victoria Siempre,” or “Always onwards onto victory,” and another of Camilo Cienfuegos on the adjacent Telecommunications Building with the words “Vas Bien, Fidel,” or “You are doing well, Fidel,” underneath the image. Any picture or video captured of the May Day 2022 parade would reflect an unabated stream of masses of people holding banners, waving flags or scarves, and dancing to a vibrant live band between the billboards on one building at the entrance to the Plaza that read “Cuba vive y trabaja (Cuba lives and works)” and the imposing 109-meter tall José Marti memorial that overlooks the plaza.

Over 5 Million People March On May Day In Cuba, A Country Of 11 Million

May 5, 2022 Evan Branan, Liberation News. Create! Cuba, Economic Blockade, May Day, Socialism

Led by the slogan, “Cuba Works and Lives,” Havana’s 2022 May Day parade was attended by more than 700,000 workers and students from across Havana, demonstrating both a joyful celebration and triumphant victory of the Cuban Revolution. More than 5.5 million people celebrated throughout Cuba on May 1 in their respective provinces, for a total of 6 million people at events over the weekend. It was a special celebration because of the parade’s cancellation the last two years due to COVID-19 restrictions. Cuba’s May Day parade is historically the largest in the world, and this year it came back with a roar in one of the largest turnouts seen in years. Intense fuel shortages due to the U.S. blockade make transportation difficult — even so, people from all provinces of Cuba traveled to take part in this historic International Workers’ Day celebration.

Marking Workers’ Day In Dispiriting Times

May 4, 2022 New Frame, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! May Day, South Africa, Worker Rights and Jobs, Youth Activism

Most young people in South Africa do not have a job and are, under current circumstances, unlikely to ever have one. For years, deindustrialization and the collapse of mining laid waste to unionized jobs. Now state austerity is hacking away at the public sector. Many of the few new jobs that are being created are poorly paid, precarious and not well unionized. Some of this can be ascribed to powerful global forces that are difficult for any state to resist. And the deep structural features of our society were built by colonialism and are so entrenched that they cannot easily be changed. But there is no doubt that the ANC’s poor economic policy choices have also been a significant part of the failure to build a viable economy. This has been compounded by the appalling state of public education, the collapse of a significant part of the ANC into a violent kleptocracy, the decay of infrastructure and a series of damaging events such as the brutally enforced hard Covid lockdowns, the winter riots and the recent floods in KwaZulu-Natal.

India: Workers Made Homeless On May Day

May 2, 2022 Bharat Dogra, Popular Resistance. Educate! Housing, India, May Day, State Violence

On May 1, in the presence of heavy police force, demolition squads of Chandigarh swooped on huts and houses of colony number 4, Industrial Area Phase 1. The homes and hearths of nearly 5000 people, all of them from the poorest sections of one of the most affluent cities of India, were destroyed within a few hours. Many of those removed have been living in this 40 year old colony for decades and have never known any other home. While this action would have been condemned under any circumstances, there are three particular reasons why this was excessively insensitive and ill-advised at this time. Firstly, this region has been passing through heat-wave conditions in the recent past and weather forecasts are for even more hot weather in the coming days.

May First Always Makes You Think

May 1, 2022 Agustín Lage, Resumen. Educate! Cuba, May Day, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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.

May Day: Worker’s Struggle Celebration Is Well-Deserved

April 30, 2022 People's Dispatch. Resist! Labor Unions, May Day, Socialism, Worker Rights

Working people across the globe are gearing up celebrate International Worker’s Day this May 1. Workers have been participating in monumental struggles since the previous year’s May Day, making this year’s celebration well-deserved. Peoples Dispatch looks back on some of the most important labor struggles of this past year: In Colombia, the National Strike Committee (CNP), which brought together diverse groups of social movements, organizations and trade unions, presented ten bills in Congress, which included measures to alleviate the worsening socio-economic conditions, protection and security for social leaders, actions against gender-based violence and violence against LGBTQ+ people, financial support to the agricultural sector, and strengthening of education and healthcare.

Making International Workers’ Day A Day Of Action Against Imperialism

April 30, 2021 the Black Alliance for Peace, Popular Resistance. Organize! Afghanistan, Capitalism, May Day, US Imperialism

War, repression, and imperialism characterize the objective plight of billions of humans still gripped by the vicious colonial-capitalist world system. May 1 is the day laboring classes claim for themselves as International Workers' Day to reaffirm the struggle against the dehumanization and degradation of the global capitalist order kept in place by state violence and war. May 1 also is the deadline the United States agreed to last year to pull out of Afghanistan to end the suffering of that nation of workers and peasants. It also is the day the workers and poor of Haiti have chosen to revolt against the puppet government imposed on them by the Biden-Harris administration, a duo that has proven in its first 100 days its commitment to Black life does not extend beyond domestic public-relations stunts.

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