Poster for the 1st of May by the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Ring in the First of May by Committing to Another Year of Struggle.
“Class consciousness is in fact the premise for being able to divert the opposition movements from their mechanical, spontaneous course, which leads them to always remain clinging to small claims, small reforms, to activism that is as sensational and mediatically profitable as it is impotent and cowardly, to the ultimately illusory forms of pressure on governments and institutions, so that they “mend their ways” and renounce their bellicose and predatory intentions. ‘ – NUOVA EGEMONIA
The history of the first of May is a history of class struggle. First chosen by the American Federation of Labor to commentate the general strike of 1 May 1886 which culminated in the Haymarket massacre where a likely police provocateur threw a bomb at the police who responded by shooting into the crowd killing at least 4 and injuring hundreds. After this the government used it as a excuse to round up labor leaders and hung 4 without evidence of their involvement. Since then it has become a proletarian holiday celebrated by the world proletarian movement.
Since the beginning the government of the USA has attempted to suppress the holiday placing other things on the day such as “Loyalty day” and “Law day” and creating so-called Labor day on the first Monday of September which was explicitly created to attempt to separate the workers from their holiday and was proclaimed by reactionary president Grover Cleveland. These attempts have largely failed as the working people have continued to hold militant protests on the first of May.
In the coming year we should re-commit ourselves to another year of “serving the masses” and “clean living and hard struggle”. This means that we should try to put the interests of the masses before our own and work everyday to build the class conciseness of the masses so they increasingly understand that their struggle is not democrat vs republican but Class (proletarian) vs Class (bourgeois / landlords).