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GLOBAL LEFT MIDWEEK – MAY DAY 2024  
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May 1, 2024
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_ A special gift to GLM followers _

, Grandjouan, 1906

 

* For May Day
* Campus Protests Going Global
* Palestine Resistance is an Array of Forces
* Streets of Rage in Argentina
* Two Takes on Coalitions of States and Imperialism  
* EP Elections
* Theory and Practice for a Feminist Future 
* The Sudanese Revolution in Crisis
* Brazil: Indigenous Wrestle with Lula
* Marching on April 25, Liberation Day in Italy

__________
FOR MAY DAY

From _Peter Linebaugh_, _THE INCOMPLETE, TRUE, AUTHENTIC, AND
WONDERFUL HISTORY OF MAY DAY
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MAY DAY SINCE 1886

Lucy Parsons, widowed by Chicago’s “just-us,” was born in Texas.
She was partly Afro-American, partly native American, and partly
Hispanic. She set out to tell the world the true story “of one whose
only crime was that he lived in advance of his time.” She went to
England and encouraged English workers to make May Day an
international holiday for shortening the hours of work. Her friend,
William Morris, wrote a poem called “May Day.”

 WORKERS 

They are few, we are many: and yet, O our Mother, 

Many years were wordless and nought was our deed, 

But now the word flitteth from brother to brother: 

We have furrowed the acres and scattered the seed. 

 EARTH 

Win on then unyielding, through fair and foul weather, 

And pass not a day that your deed shall avail. 

And in hope every spring-tide come gather together 

That unto the Earth ye may tell all your tale.

Her work was not in vain. May Day, or “The Day of the Chicago
Martyrs” as it is still called in Mexico “belongs to the working
class and is dedicated to the revolution,” as Eugene Debs put it in
his May Day editorial of 1907. The A. F. of L. declared it a holiday.
Sam Gompers sent an emissary to Europe to have it proclaimed an
international labor day. Both the Knights of Labor and the Second
International officially adopted the day. Bismarck, on the other hand,
outlawed May Day. President Grover Cleveland announced that the first
Monday in September would be Labor Day in America, as he tried to
divide the international working class. Huge numbers were out of work,
and they began marching. Under the generalship of Jacob Coey they
descended on Washington D. C. on May Day 1894, the first big march on
Washington. Two years later across the world Lenin wrote an important
May Day pamphlet for the Russian factory workers in 1896. The Russian
Revolution of 1905 began on May Day.

With the success of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the Red side of May
Day became scarlet, crimson, for ten million people were slaughtered
in World War I. The end of the war brought work stoppings, general
strikes, and insurrections all over the world, from Mexico to Kenya,
from China to France. In Boston on May Day 1919 the young telephone
workers threatened to strike, and 20,000 workers in Lawrence went on
strike again for the 8-hour day. There were fierce clashes between
working people and police in Cleveland as well as in other cities on
May Day of that year. A lot of socialists, anarchists, bolsheviks,
wobblies and other “I-Won’t-Workers,” ended up in jail as a
result.

This didn’t get them down. At “Wire City,” as they called the
federal pen at Fort Leavenworth, there was a grand parade and no work
on May Day 1919. Pictures of Lenin and Lincoln were tied to the end of
broom sticks and held afloat. There were speeches and songs. _The
Liberator_ supplies us with an account of the day, but it does not
tell us who won the Wobbly-Socialist horseshoe throwing contest. Nor
does it tell us what happened to the soldier caught waving a red
ribbon from the guards’ barracks. Meanwhile, one mile underground in
the copper mines of Bisbee where there are no national boundaries,
Spanish-speaking Americans were singing “The International” on May
Day.

In the 1920s and 1930s the day was celebrated by union organizers, the
unemployed, and determined workers. In New York City the big May Day
celebration was held in Union Square. In the 1930s Lucy Parsons
marched in Chicago at May Day with her young friend, Studs Terkel. May
Day 1946 the Arabs began a general strike in Palestine, and the Jews
of the Displaced Persons Camps in Landsberg, Germany, went on hunger
strike. On May Day 1947 auto workers in Paris downed tools, an
insurrection in Paraguay broke out, the Mafia killed six May Day
marchers in Sicily, and the Boston Parks Commissioner said that this
was the first year in living memory when neither Communist nor
Socialist had applied for a permit to rally on the Common.

1968 was a good year for May Day. Allen Ginsberg was made the “Lord
of Misrule” in Prague before the Russians got there. In London
hundreds of students lobbied Parliament against a bill to stop Third
World immigration into England. In Mississippi police could not
prevent 350 Black students from supporting their jailed friends. At
Columbia University thousands of students petitioned against armed
police on campus. In Detroit with the help of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement, the first wildcat strike in fifteen years took place
at the Hamtramck Assembly plant (Dodge Main), against speed-up. In
Cambridge, Mass., Black leaders advocated police reforms while in New
York the Mayor signed a bill providing the police with the most
sweeping “emergency” powers known in American history. The climax
to the ’68 Mai was reached in France where there was a gigantic
General Strike under strange slogans such as

Parlez a vos voisins!

L’Imagination prend le pouvoir! 

Dessous les paves c’est la plage!

On May Day in 1971 President Nixon couldn’t sleep. He ordered 10,000
paratroopers and marines to Washington D.C. because he was afraid that
some people calling themselves the May Day Tribe might succeed in
their goal of blocking access to the Department of Justice. In the
Philippines four students were shot to death protesting the
dictatorship. In Boston Mayor White argued against the right of
municipal workers, including the police, to withdraw their services,
or stop working. In May 1980 we may see Green themes in Mozambique
where the workers lamented the absence of beer, or in Germany where
three hundred women witches rampaged through Hamburg. Red themes may
be seen in the 30,000 Brazilian auto workers who struck, or in the 5.8
million Japanese who struck against inflation.

On May Day 1980 the Green and Red themes were combined when a former
Buick auto-maker from Detroit, one “Mr. Toad,” sat at a picnic
table and penned the following lines,

The eight hour day is not enough; 

We are thinking of more and better stuff. 

So here is our prayer and here is our plan, 

We want what we want and we’ll take what we can. 

Down with wars both small and large, 

Except for the ones where we’re in charge: 

Those are the wars of class against class, 

Where we get a chance to kick some ass.

For air to breathe and water to drink, 

And no more poison from the kitchen sink. 

For land that’s green and life that’s saved 

And less and less of the earth that’s paved. 

No more women who are less than free, 

Or men who cannot learn to see 

Their power steals their humanity 

And makes us all less than we can be. 

For teachers who learn and students who teach 

And schools that are kept beyond the reach 

Of provosts and deans and chancellors and such 

And Xerox and Kodak and Shell, Royal Dutch. 

An end to shops that are dark and dingy, 

An end to Bosses whether good or stingy, 

An end to work that produces junk, 

An end to junk that produces work, 

And an end to all in charge - the jerks. 

For all who dance and sing, loud cheers, 

To the prophets of doom we send some jeers, 

To our friends and lovers we give free beers, 

And to all who are here, a day without fears. 

So, on this first of May we all should say 

That we will either make it or break it. 

Or, to put this thought another way, 

Let’s take it easy, but let’s take it.

__________
Campus Protests Going Global
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Al Jazeera (Doha)

From France to Australia, university students are part of
pro-Palestine protests as Columbia students continue encampments.

__________
PALESTINE RESISTANCE IS AN ARRAY OF FORCES
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_Bashir Abu-Manneh_ / Jacobin (Brooklyn)

As Palestinians reckon with the genocide being inflicted on them and
their prospects for national liberation, it does them a disservice to
flatten their political diversity and complex ongoing debates.

___________
STREETS OF RAGE IN ARGENTINA
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_Mar Centenera_ / El País (Madrid)

The cuts to free public universities triggered mass demonstrations
throughout the country, reflecting the growing social unrest
surrounding President Javier Milei’s economic policy.

__________
TWO TAKES ON COALITIONS OF STATES AND IMPERIALISM 

* THE LIMITS OF BRICS
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  _Eric Toussaint_ / CADTM (Liège)
 
* WORLD DEMOCRACY THROUGH AN ANTI-ISRAEL BLOC?
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_Muhannad Ayyash_ / Al Jazeera

__________
EP ELECTIONS
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_Cornelia Hildebrandt _/ transform!europe (Vienna)

What is needed is a comprehensive policy that balances both economic
stability and environmental protection. It would mean creating a
sustainable, integral concept for the future of Europe. 

__________
Theory and Practice for a Feminist Future

* FROM MEXICO
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  _Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar_ / Ojalá (Puebla)
 
* FROM UKRAINE
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Le Tréhondat_ / Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (Paris)
 
* FROM INDIA
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  _Priyanka Samy_ / The Wire (New Delhi)

__________
THE SUDANESE REVOLUTION IN CRISIS
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_Muzan Alneel _/ Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)

The war that broke out in the Sudanese capital Khartoum brought an
abrupt end to the over 15 months of continuous protests against the
military coup, paralysed a thriving resistance movement, and, above
all, inflicted suffering on millions of people living in Sudan.

__________
BRAZIL: INDIGENOUS WRESTLE WITH LULA
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_Bianca Feifel_ / Brasil de Fato (São Paulo)

The joy of the twentieth edition of Brazil’s largest Indigenous
mobilization, _Acampamento Terra Livre_, is haunted by the delay in
demarcating Indigenous lands, and by the increase in violence against
leaders, problems that are connected.

__________
MARCHING ON APRIL 25, LIBERATION DAY IN ITALY
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_Micaela Bongi, Luciana Cimino and Giuliano Santoro_ / il manifesto
Global (Rome)

“We need to say exactly what needs to be said: that antifascism is
the civil religion of this country, that it founded the Republic, that
it gave freedom. And that to be antifascist today means to continue to
fight for freedom and for the rights of all, not just commemorate
them.”

* May Day
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* Student protests
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* Gaza
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* Palestine
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* Argentina
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* imperialism
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* BRICS
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* European Parliament
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* Feminism
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* Mexico
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* Ukraine
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* India
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* Sudan
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* Brazil
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* Indigenous Rights
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* Italy
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* Liberation Day
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