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OCCUPY MAY 1ST GENERAL STRIKE!
Event Details
Time: May 1, 2012 all day
Location: US > GLOBAL
Website or Map: http://www.occupymay1st.org/
Event Type: mass, strike
Organized By: OCCUPY
Latest Activity: Feb 28, 2012
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Event Description
In most European countries, May 1st is traditionally a ‘Workers’ day – a day of Labor Solidarity, and a public holiday. In Los Angeles, it’s a day to celebrate and march in support of im/migrant rights. In protest against the corruption of the worldwide marketplace, which has led to illegal foreclosures, mass unemployment, low wages, high taxes and a penalization of all those who do not own the ‘99%’ of the world’s resources, and in solidarity with the im/migrant movements of May 1st, OLA decided to declare May 1st, 2012 a People’s General Strike. Instead of calling upon unionized Labor to make a specific demand (illegal under Taft-Hartley), OLA is calling upon the people of Los Angeles and the United States of America to take this day away from school and the workplace, so that their absence makes their displeasure with this corrupt system be known.
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Comment by alexandria Knox on February 28, 2012 at 4:02
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Comment by alexandria Knox on February 28, 2012 at 4:02
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International May Day
A great international demonstration shall be organized for a fixed date in such a manner that the workers in all countries and in all cities shall on a specified day simultaneously address to the public authorities a demand to fix the workday at eight hours and to put into effect the other resolutions of the International Congress of Paris.
In view of the fact that such a demonstration has already been resolved upon by the American Federation of Labor at its convention of December 1888 in St. Louis for May 1, 1890, that day is accepted as the day for the international demonstration.
The workers of the various nations shall organize the demonstration in a manner suited to conditions in their country.
—Resolution introduced by Raymond Lavigne, International Socialist Congress, Paris, July 20, 1889Resolution, International Socialist Conference, 1904
May Day in Russia. Manifesto of the “Bund.”, 1908
Soviet May Day
Yes, the celebration of May Day has truly been made official. It has been celebrated by the state. The might of the state was evident in many ways. But is it not intoxicating to think that the state, until recently our worst enemy, now belongs to us and has celebrated 1 May as its greatest festival?
And yet, take my word, if this festival had only been official, it would have produced nothing but coldness and emptiness.
But no, the popular masses, the navy, the Red Army all true working people put their efforts towards it. And we can therefore say that this festival of labour has never been so beautiful.
Extract from A. V. Lunacharsky's diary for 1 May 1918, describing the May Day festivities in PetrogradVladimir Lenin, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme.
Vladimir Lenin, May Days in Kharkov 1900
Vladimir Lenin et al., On Monuments of the Republic, Decree, 1918.
P.P. Malinovsky, On the Organization of the 1918 May Day Celebrations in Moscow, Moscow Soviet, 1918.
Izvestiya, On the 1918 May Day celebrations on the streets of Moscow
Joseph Stalin, Talk With Colonel Robins, 1933
Leon Trotsky, May Day in the West and the East: On the 35th Anniversary of the May Day Holiday.
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Comment by alexandria Knox on February 28, 2012 at 4:02
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Origins: Haymarket
The eight hours working day movement lies at the bottom of the whole affair. Early in 1886, the Chicago employers were filching away from their employed the priviledge recently unreasonable length than ten or eleven hours. Against this familiar device of the masters, many meetings of the men were held in Chicago in the earlier months of 1886. One of these meetings was called in the Haymarket, for the evening of May 4th. It was called by the Anarchists. A special protest was to be made against the killing of seven unarmed people a few days earlier, outside McCormick's premises, by Pinkerton detectives.
Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling, The Chicago Anarchists.Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling, The Chicago Anarchists.
Eugene Debs, The Martyred Apostles of Labor.
Art Young, Haymarket Square, Chicago, May 4, 1886.
Haymarket Defendants, The Accused, the accusers: the famous speeches of the eight Chicago anarchists in court when asked if they had anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon them. On October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1886, Chicago.
Mother Jones, from her Autobiography: The Haymarket Tragedy, 1925.
See also Songs and Poems about the Haymarket Affair.
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Comment by alexandria Knox on February 28, 2012 at 4:01
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the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.
Rosa Luxemburg, What Are the Origins of May Day?,1894Karl Marx, The Working-Day
New York Times, Western Labor Parades: The Eight-Hour Movement in Chicago, 1886
John Most, The Beast of Property, 1884
T.V. Powderly, Anarchy and the Knights, 1890
Hubert Langerock, Twenty-five Years of Eight-Hour Propaganda, 1914
James Connolly, Changes, 1914
Second Congress of AFL, 1st session, 2nd session, 3rd session, 1882
See also a selection of the many Songs and Poems the Eight-Hour movement inspired.
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Comment by alexandria Knox on February 28, 2012 at 4:00
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May Day was also a pagan holiday and it carries over into everything we do. May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the unfarmable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations. As Europe became Christianized the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.
...Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope.......Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life—not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.Walter Crane, The Workers' Maypole, 1894
Definitions from MIA Encyclopedia
May Day
Working Day
Haymarket MartyrsEleanor Marx's Speech at the First May Day Hyde Park, 1890
May Day Origins: Overviews
Rosa Luxemburg, What Are the Origins of May Day? 1894
Rosa Luxemburg, The Idea of May Day on the March, 1913
Guido Baracchi, May Day, 1921
Nestor Makhno, The First of May: Symbol of a New Era, 1928
Alexander Trachtenberg, The History of May Day, 1932
Joseph North, May Day: Made in America, 1943
Origins: Eight-Hour Day
The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day...At first
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