THOUSANDS of activists across the globe have joined May Day rallies, with Occupy Wall Street members in several US cities leading demonstrations and clashing with police, and Europeans also taking to the streets to protest anti-austerity measures.
In Oakland, California, police fired teargas and “flash-bang” grenades to disperse the crowds, sending protesters fleeing a downtown intersection where they were demonstrating. Officers took four people into custody. Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to smash small downtown windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic. In New York, police in riot gear lined the front of a Bank of America, facing several dozen Occupy activists marching behind barricades. “Bank of America. Bad for America!” they chanted. About 50 demonstrators in Chicago rallied outside another of the bank’s branches. Across the world, protests drew tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets from the Philippines to Spain. They demanded everything from wage increases to an end to austerity measures. The US protests were the most visible organising effort by anti-Wall Street groups since Occupy encampments were dismantled. May Day, which has been associated for more than a century with workers’ rights and the labour movement around the world, has been used by American activists in recent years to hold rallies for immigrants’ rights. From New York to San Francisco, organisers of the various demonstrations, strikes and acts of civil disobedience said they were not too concerned about muddling their messages. They noted that the movements have similar goals: jobs, fair wages and equality. Organisers of Chicago’s rally said they welcomed participation from the Occupy groups. “I definitely see it as an enrichment of it,” Orlando Sepulveda said. “It’s great.” In Los Angeles, at least a half a dozen rallies were planned. A rally was also planned in Minneapolis. In Atlanta, about 100 people rallied outside the state Capitol, where a law targeting illegal immigration was passed last year. They called for an end to local-federal partnerships to enforce immigration law.
May Day New York
NEW YORK- MAY 15: Thousands of union members and Occupy Wall Street protestors march together down Broadway towards the financial center on May 1, 2012 in New York. Demonstrators have called for nation-wide May Day strikes to protest economic inequality and political corruption. The May Day protest was significantly smaller than last year’s, which drew about 1000 people. Organisers said turnout last year was greater, in part, because the rally was on a Sunday, rather than during the work week. In the San Francisco Bay area, service on the Golden Gate Ferry was shut down as ferry workers went on strike. They have been in contract negotiations for a year in a dispute over health care coverage. A coalition of bridge and bus workers said they would honour a picket line of at least 50 workers outside the ferry terminal. They were joined by some Occupy protesters. Organisers backed away from earlier calls to block the Golden Gate Bridge, but scores of police – some carrying helmets and batons – lined the span during the morning rush hour. Some protesters with signs stood nearby, but did not disrupt traffic. A group of workers, patrons and property owners clashed with a few dozen protesters who stormed a downtown diner in an attempt to shut it down. The two sides scuffled briefly before police moved in, and the restaurant stayed open. Threatening letters containing a white powder that appeared to be corn starch were sent to some institutions. Three letters were received on Tuesday, two at News Corp headquarters and addressed to the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, and one to Citigroup. The message in the letters said: “Happy May Day.” Seven letters were received on Monday at various banks. One was sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Occupy activists had said they planned to bring business to a standstill, but the crowds protesting in the rain were modest.
MEANWHILE, May Day protesters have poured into streets across Europe, swept up in a wave of anti-austerity anger that threatens to topple leaders in Paris and Athens. From the eye of the eurozone debt storm in Madrid to the streets of Paris and crisis-hit Athens, where tottering governments face elections within days, marchers spoke of job losses, spending cuts and hard times. More than two years after the eurozone sovereign debt crisis erupted, frustration with austerity is boiling over across the continent as voters wait in vain for signs of the economic pay-off.
Spain Financial Crisis
In Spain, suffering the industrialised world’s highest jobless rate of 24.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, the major unions called protests in about 80 cities. Tens of thousands massed in central Madrid’s Neptuno square yesterday, decrying the jobless queue, new labour reforms that make it easier and cheaper to fire workers, and a budget squeeze in health care and education. “Total Violence, You Are Robbing Us of Home and Bread!” said a banner brandished by 51-year-old Josefa Martinez Fernandez, adding that her two daughters in their 20s were out of work. “The young who had work have been thrown out,” she said. Thousands rallied in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities around Greece, five days ahead of cliffhanger general elections with voters fed up with years of austerity. “No One Alone, Together We Will Get There!” read a banner draped on a stage in Athens’ central Kotzia square. Polls indicate that Greeks are fleeing the main parties for smaller groups in revenge over a European Union-IMF economic recovery plan that has brought repeated waves of pay and pension cuts. The two parties that have ruled Greece for the past 37 years, socialist Pasok and conservative New Democracy, are blamed for catastrophic finances after decades of state overspending and nepotism. The new Greek government will face an early test when 436 million euros ($553.07 million) of debt, held by private creditors who turned down a swap, matures on May 15. In Paris, the French presidential election race overcast the day as three powerful political movements battled for attention with competing rallies five days before polling day. Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant far-right National Front kicked off the May Day events with several thousand supporters marching through central Paris in memory of Joan of Arc, who has become a far-right icon. Le Pen, who scored a record 18 per cent in the April 22 first round, led the march and urged supporters to abstain rather than back President Nicolas Sarkozy or Socialist Francois Hollande in the run-off. Waving a sea of blue, white and red French flags, Le Pen’s supporters chanted “France for the French!” and “This Is Our Home!” as they marched to the Place de l’Opera. Sarkozy’s right-wing supporters were to gather at the Place du Trocadero in Paris’s posh 16th arrondissement to hear their champion give his last major speech in the capital before the vote. And, on the left, trade unions were to carry out their traditional march to the historic Place de la Around 150,000 people took part in the “Holiday of Labour and Spring” march in Moscow, by coincidence similar to the numbers said by the opposition to have shown up at anti-Putin demonstrations over the last months. The authorities appear keen to revive worker celebrations and make May Day a centrepiece of the year as Putin seeks to hold onto popular support as he heads back to the Kremlin in defiance of the anti-government protests. Marchers unfurled huge banners proclaiming the names of their factories and unions as bands played rousing music that could have been taken from the score of a Soviet film. “The Union of Machine Builders! Hurray!” declaimed the announcer as another workers group filed past the town hall on Moscow’s Tverskaya Avenue. In an event that struck a chord with those nostalgic for the mass parades projecting Russian power in Soviet years, the crowds packed the avenue from the Kremlin to its end as far as the eye could see. Wearing a suit without a tie under the bright spring skies, Putin led the march next to a white overcoat-clad Medvedev and surrounded by supportive banners like “Workers for Medvedev and Putin!”. It was the first time for years that Russia’s rulers had joined the May Day rally, a key day in the calendar in the Communist Soviet Union. The last such appearance is believed to have been by Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
Massive Demonstration in Cuba:
In Cuba, every May 1st is an occasion of celebration, confirmation and commitment to the working class, the heroic nation to which we belong and the Revolution that was always “of the humble and for the humble”.
It is not any other day for the rest of the world. In many nations the workers carry out massive demonstrations, strikes and demands in favor of their dreams, hopes and rights.
There are some that do not think that the symbolic date is important. Even so, they cannot ignore the day, at least for the hours that the event lasts in each country in salute to International Workers’ Day. > The historic tradition guides the Cuban proletariat whose world debut took place in 1890, over a century ago, in compliance with the II International in Paris, France.
Banners, flags, posters and slogans carried by the workers and their families, students and foreign guests decorated this year’s rally accompanied by denunciations against Washington’s economic blockade and in defense of the Cuban Five and the concepts of unity, productivity and efficiency.
For the first time the health sector presided the rally representing the close to half a million of the sector’s professionals and technicians.
As an expression of the current economic transformations underway in the country, a new non state working force was present this May Day: self employed workers.
From east to west and north to south, educators, construction workers, civil defense, men, women, children and senior citizens were present. The youth, example of the continuity of the Revolution once again closed the rally. Some 50,000 young people marched to close the historic event, one thousand for every 50 years of the existence of the Young Communist League. Over one thousand representatives of 162 labor unions and social and solidarity movements from 62 nations also participated in the celebrations. Another 102 delegates from 37 nations participated alongside the Cuban people to celebrate International Workers’ Day.
In today’s world with new changes even in the U.S. itself, it will be impossible to stop the rallies of those that have been forgotten. This will be a different year. Thousands of workers, students, > immigrants and unemployed from over 115 cities in the U.S. will for the first time participate in protests and general strikes. This will not be a normal day in the U.S. either. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote: “May 1st is humanity’s only truly universal day , but in the U.S. the people work and no one, or almost nobody, remembers that the rights of the working class did not sprout from the ear of a goat, or from the hands of God or master”.
In Greece, Italy, Spain and other European nations, where workers are brutally exploited and workers rights are sampled on with the pretext of the crisis, the day will include protests against government policies that put an end to the so called “wellbeing” and launch millions to the unemployment line. Federico Engels’ phrase in 1890 is valid today: “The workers of America and Europe are revising their efforts (.) The event that we are witnessing today will make the capitalists from around the world take into account that the working class is truly united”.
The bells of International Workers’ Day are once again tolling. The words of August Spies, one of the Martyrs of Chicago, calls on the workers of the world and warns politicians and bankers: “If you believe that hanging us will smother the labor movement, the movements in which the millions of oppressed, millions that suffer scarcity and misery await salvation, if this is your opinion, then hang us. You will only burn out a spark, but there and yonder, behind and forward the flames will rise. It is an underground fire and no one will be able to put it out. (Courtsey: Ganashakti)
