MAY DAY

Today is May Day, the greatest holiday that you've probably never heard of. Commemorating the Haymarket Riot of 1886, it is observed worldwide as a sort of holiday of worker solidarity, the real labor day, if you will, which is just as well because the actual Labor Day is now nothing more than another three-day weekend. (In fact, I seem to remember reading something to the effect that one of the reasons that Labor Day was created by Congress was to assure that American workers would not celebrate May Day--capitalists feared the international unity concept built into the holiday and wanted to avert the worldwide revolution from ever making it to the good, old US of A.)

From the moment I heard of this left-leaning remembrance of an American labor history event that is celebrated by nearly everybody but Americans, I had to embrace May Day. My own personal observances have been very low key--maybe I remember to wear red, like I've done today, to represent the "blood of the revolution," or maybe I listen to John Lennon's "Power to the People," or maybe I watch Doctor Zhivago. I've made a point for the last six or seven years to leave a telephone message for my anarcho/commie friend, Vince, who told me about May Day in the first place, but he's now in Japan teaching English, and I'm still pissed at him for leaving a play I was in at intermission last summer without an explanation or apology, so he gets no call this year (that'll learn him). Instead, I'll observe May Day here on Real Art by providing some appropriate links:

May Day (scroll down a bit for this one)
Labor Day
The Communist Manifesto
Strike (rent this film!)
Emma Goldman
The Socialist Party (one of many)

This ought to make for some interesting reading. Enjoy. And find a way to stick it to the man today.

Workers of the world, unite!

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