May Day

(credit: Democracy and Class Struggle blog)

This is a poem by Alfred Hayes, taken from the Marxist Internet Archive, which reprinted it from the New Masses, May, 1934.

Into the streets May First!
Into the roaring Square!
Shake the midtown towers!
Shatter the downtown air!
Come with a storm of banners,
Come with an earthquake tread,
Bells, hurl out of your belfries,
Red flag, leap out your red!
Out of the shops and factories,
Up with the sickle and hammer,
Comrades, these are our tools,
A song and a banner!
Roll song, from the sea of our hearts,
Banner, leap and be free;
Song and banner together,
Down with the bourgeoisie!
Sweep the big city, march forward,
The day is a barricade;
We hurl the bright bomb of the sun,
The moon like a hand grenade.
Pour forth like a second flood!
Thunder the alps of the air!
Subways are roaring our milllons--
Comrades, into the square!

May 1st is right around the corner. As most readers of this blog probably already know, May 1st is celebrated as International Workers Day around the world. For those that want more information, background and history about May Day, check out the Marxist Internet Archive resource page about it.

May 1st had been largely relegated to a day celebrated by the revolutionary left in the U.S....until two years ago. On May 1st, 2006, the immigrant rights movement shook the whole country, as hundreds of thousands of mostly immigrant workers skipped work and took the streets en masse in cities all over the country, and even a million people marched in Los Angeles. Pouring out numbers of people on the streets that the anti-war movement can't even come close to touching, it became clear that a new social force had made its mark, and May Day was back as a mass holiday in the U.S.

The marches last year on May Day were not as big as 2006, but that's not really even a fair comparison. The impressive point is that a year later, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters took to the streets again on May Day, on a work day.

Here we are in 2008. After the mass movement succeeded in stopping the heinous Sensenbrenner bill from passing, the ruling class has responded by pushing through pieces of Sensenbrenner, moving forward with the construction of the odious border wall, and most of all massively stepping up raids and deportations.

Those raids and deportations have stoked fear and been a large reason for the lower turnout at the immigrant rights marches since 2006. Also the alliances that came together in 2006 have broken down to varying degrees since then, at times coming together and at times falling apart dramatically. And the grassroots movement has gone through its inevitable ebbs and flows.

But here we are. A couple days from May Day 2008. We can continue to make a mark on history by pushing forward again on May 1st, 2008. I hope everyone reading here finds a way to participate in a march or action of some sort on May Day.

Here are some links for May Day 2008:

FRSO statement: May Day 2008: Long Live the Peoples’ Struggle!

Coverage from Fight Back Newspaper:
Chicago: Huge Immigrant Rights march planned for May 1
Los Angeles: Mobilizing for May 1 Immigrant Rights Protest
Minnesota: March for Immigrant Rights May 1st

National Immigrant Solidarity Network's May Day 2008 site with listings of activities in various cities

New York May 1st Coalition

Voces de la Frontera from Milwaukee, which last year had a demonstration of 80,000 people on May Day

March 10th Movement - Chicago did the first mega-march on March 10, 2006. Hosted the national conference on the heels of the 2006 upsurge, and organized huge numbers again in 2007

Latinos Unidos - Michigan organizing a mass march on May 1st in Detroit

MN Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAc) formed out of the 2006 upsurge and has continued to organize and build since then

This is just a quick start. Please add more links in the comments here if you know of groups organizing marches in other cities.