Today, May 1, Left Horizons and its supporters and contributors extend greetings to socialists and organised workers everywhere in the world. At the present time, in almost every corner of the globe, the working class is struggling to defend social, political and national rights and living standards often built up over decades, but now under threat. There has never been a more important time for workers to show solidarity, unity and determination and May Day should be an outward expression of this.
There will be demonstrations, rallies and meetings of trade unions and workers’ organisations in every continent on this day. It is a day to celebrate the best traditions of the working class: its struggles in the past, its organisation, cohesion, unity and internationalism. At a time when political movements of the right are trying to use sex, religion, race, ethnicity and anything else to divide workers, it is right that workers should respond with a show of unity and international solidarity.
May Day had its origins in the United States in the struggles of workers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Today the government of the United States is the most militarily powerful and reactionary force on the planet. In the war on Iran, Trump has spent $25bn of workers’ tax-dollars devastating Iran in only two months.
That war on Iran is piling ever more hardships on American workers, as they struggle to pay bills for food, housing, medical treatment and the necessities of every day life. Agents of ICE are terrorising entire communities and incarcerating workers in camps and by his attacks on the judiciary and election processes, Trump is trying his best to assume the mantle of dictatorship rather than presidency.
A montha ago, more than eight million Americans took part in one of several thousand ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump. So we make no apology on this May Day, to put a focus on the labour movement of the USA, where, as it were in the ‘belly of the beast’, workers are moving increasingly into opposition. The ‘No Kings’ protests look like they will be eclipsed in scale by the May Day demonstrations being planned.
The US website Payday Reports records that May Day demonstrations are being planned – including strikes – in at least 85 cities across the USA (see map inset). Hundreds of unions are involved, and the list has grown every day as more groups of workers and trade unions added their support.
Nationwide, the National Nurses union is one of the few major unions to support the May Day Strike. “Nurses never back away from a fight,” the National Nurses United President Mary Turner told Payday Report in a story earlier this month. “Over 1,000 nurses at the University Medical Center New Orleans were inspired to begin a five-day strike on May Day. They say that they are frustrated by the employer’s refusal to agree to a first union contract after nearly two years of bargaining”.
“…Nurses at Ascension Via Christi St Francis and St Joseph in Wichita, Kansas also intend to hold a one-day informational picket on May Day. Nurses say that they are protesting unsafe and unnecessary cost-cutting by the hospital system”.
Minnesota has been the focus of intensive attacks by ICE over recent months, with hundreds injured, thousands incarcerated and two people murdered by ICE agents – crimes for which there have still been no indictments. The reaction of the population of Minnesota has been heroic, courageously countering ICE patrols with patrols of their own and with groups of demonstrators literally on every street corner.
The Minnesota push-back by city workers culimated in a general strike, when over 100,000 marched in temperatures around minus 30 degrees. On that occasion, Paydayreport suggests, at least 700 businesses closed across the city. In addition, more than three hundred solidarity marches were held across the country.
What is important is that these levels of solidarity will in all likelihood spill over into this year’s May Day marches. “…many businesses, particularly businesses in immigrant communities, which have been negatively affected by the decline in customers, plan to close their businesses in solidarity.”
We have no doubt that the fight-back which is beginning within the working class in the USA will be echoed in the labour movement internationally. Moreover, workers understand that it is not just a question of a one-day demonstration of unity. Workers face an ongoing and sustained fight, not only to defend democratic rights and living standards, but for a better kind of society: one that operates in the interests of all and not just a tiny number of billionaires.
Left Horizons invites its readers to send in reports, commentary or even just photographs of your May Day activities.
[Inset pictures from the Payday report website and part of ‘No Kings’ demonstration in Portland, Oregon, from Wikimedia Commons, here.]
