Come Thursday, it will be exactly 139 years since workers gathered in the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour day. Ever since then, May Day has been a day when workers across the planet have assembled to celebrate their victories, bemoan their defeats, and agitate for more power on the job, more equitable economies, and, consequently, generally happier times. This Thursday will be no exception, though turnout in these United States will be exceptionally large as the crowds will swell in response to the Trumpocratic and
oligarchic plague that has descended on us. There will be demonstrations in more than 900 cities, bringing together the anti-Trump legions, though this time—it being May Day—with more of a working-class perspective. Much like the Bernie Sanders rolling circus, this May Day will have an anti-oligarchy theme as well as an anti-Trump focus, each subsuming and being subsumed by the other. The design of this year’s actions initially emerged out of discussions among some seasoned progressive organizations, including the Chicago Teachers Union, the Midwest Academy (a venerable trainer of
community organizers), and the strategists at Bargaining for the Common Good, which promotes the practice of unions’ bargaining not just for their members but also for and with the communities their members live in and serve. In short order, their May Day initiative drew the support of not only major national unions (among them the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America, the Flight Attendants, the United Electrical Workers, and the American Association of University Professors) but also a broad range of diverse activist groups
(Sunrise, Planned Parenthood, People’s Action), liberal rank-and-file Democratic organizations (Indivisible, MoveOn), an anti-Trump demonstration facilitator (50501), groups representing the left edge of Democratic politics (e.g., the Working Families Party), and groups representing the center of Democratic politics (e.g., the Center for American Progress and Common Cause). Local branches of every current liberal cause, from immigrant rights to reproductive rights to Palestinian rights, have clambered aboard.
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