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Happy May Day !
Green Party members will be joining with other working people's
organizations to commemorate International Workers Day this year online,
given the social distancing we must practice in this coronavirus pandemic.
What Greens can to bring to these events is an understanding of the
connections between the Red and Green traditions of May Day.
The Red tradition of May Day emerged in the 1880s in the United States. The
immediate impetus came from the Haymarket Massacre in 1886. On the night of
May 4, 1886, 176 Chicago police attacked about 200 workers who remained
after a day long demonstration for the 8-hour day. The police fired live
ammunition, killing four and wounding 70. Somebody threw a stick of
dynamite. Eight of the labor organizers where charged and convicted. Four
of them were hung to death. One of the Haymarket martyrs, Albert Parsons, a
white former confederate soldier married to Lucy Parsons, a former slave of
African, Indian, and Mexican descent, said at this trial, "What is
Socialism or Anarchism? Briefly stated it is the right of the toilers to
the free and equal use of the tools of production and the right of the
producers to their product."
Lucy Parsons campaigned across the United States and Europe to have the
workers movement commemorate May 1 as International Workers Day. Many
workers' organizations supported her call, including the American
Federation of Labor, which then urged its adoption by the Second
International of socialist parties. The first international May Day
celebration in 1890 was a big success. The demonstrations worried the
establishments across the world. After Coxey's Army descended on May 1,
1894 in the first mass march on Washington, D.C. to demand public works
spending to employ the unemployed in the midst of a severe depression,
President Grover Cleveland got Congress to declare a federal Labor Day
holiday in September in move designed to divide the labor movement.
This year, the parallels to that time are so stark, and it's crystal clear
that it's not the rich that hold up the economy. It's us workers.
Everything has ground to a halt, and now state governors of both capitalist
parties are pretending that the pandemic isn't serious and are ushering us
back to work. But now is the time to demand safer workplaces, living wages
and more...just the basic respect that we deserve as workers.
Howie's comprehensive COVID-19 relief plan is calling for things like:
* Medicare to Pay for COVID-19 Testing and Treatment and All Emergency
Health Care
* Defense Production Act to Rapidly Plan the Production and Distribution
of Medical Supplies and a Universal Test, Contact Trace, and Quarantine
Program to Safely Reopen the Economy
* An OSHA Temporary Standard to Provide Enforceable PPE Protection for
Workers
* $2,000 a Month to All Adults Over Age 16 and $500 per Child
* Loans to All Businesses and Hospitals for Payroll and Fixed Overhead To
Be Forgiven If All Workers Are Kept on Payroll
* Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures, and Utility Shutoffs
* Cancel Rent, Mortgage, and Utility Payments; Federal Government Pays
Those Bills;
* High-income People Pay Taxes on this Relief
* Suspend Student Loan Payments with 0% Interest Accumulation
* Federal Universal Rent Control
If you feel this is a plan you can get behind, CAN YOU MAKE A DONATION TO
HOWIE'S CAMPAIGN TODAY [3]?
This is a campaign about issues that matter most to the 99%. We are
rallying progressives from all across this country to create an unstoppable
movement that is THE party of the left.
We cannot settle for the watered-down pseudo-results that we are currently
being fed. Lives are on the line.
We need an Economic Bill of Rights that guarantees income above poverty
level, jobs, housing, Medicare for All, tuition-free education, and secure
retirement.
With Ecosocialism, our country would be a world leader in ensuring the
health and wellbeing of both our environment and our people.
In eternal solidarity, Team Howie
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Howie Hawkins 2020
howiehawkins.us [2] |
[email protected] | (315) 220-0101
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