by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror, https://antiracist.org
May Day, the celebration of International Working People’s Day on May 1, arose out of labor struggles in the United States (as did International Women’s Day on March 8). Specifically, the struggle for the Eight-Hour Day and 40-hour work week as sufficient to support a working class family, and the campaign to free the anarchist political prisoners who faced the death penalty in Illinois over a bombing, probably by provocateurs, that took place during a rally for the 8-hour day that took place in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May, 1886, 140 years ago.
The demand was eventually won through general strikes and other labor agitation and organizing, establishing the legal basis for overtime pay. But May Day was suppressed and for a period of time forgotten in the US because of anti-communism and the control of media and cultural expression by big business and mega-corporation, the capitalists who fight tooth and nail against any attempt by labor to organize itself and to regulate working conditions. Instead, Labor Day was established in the fall in this country, while most of the rest of the world continued to commemorate workers’ struggles and interests on May Day.
May Day was revived by immigrant workers, especially here in Los Angeles, and this year in the context of the war-making, fascistic Trump regime, the call has gone out for a May 1 General Strike, workers over billionaires, against ICE and war and for democratic and human rights. And such a development could not be more timely. Even the 8-hour day, won through that original May Day struggle, is currently under attack.
Workers are ‘promoted’ into phony “managerial” positions that are exempt from the requirement. Bosses transform workers from employees into ‘contractors,’ gig workers who are not covered by labor law. Bosses use digital devices and programs to intensify work and break down the difference between the work day and the rest of your life. Bosses set up job categories that are precarious and casual (temporary or part-time), without benefits or sufficient pay, and force workers to string together multiple part time positions that have no security, no retirement plan, and no limits on how many total hours you need to work to make ends meet. Even workers with secure, full-time employment are forced to work second jobs because of the crushing burden of student and medical debt and the lack of affordable housing. Child labor is being re-legalized. Pay differentials, less money for the same work, still plague women, particularly Black, Indigenous, Raza, and Asian/Pacific Islander women. Trump’s attack on ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ on unions, and on public education have all fallen disproportionately on women and people of color.
What’s more, Trump understands that the workers who produce the billionaires’ wealth do that work not only here inside the US but around the world, in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, in China, the Philippines and the rest of Asia and the Pacific, in the Congo and the rest of Africa, because of capitalist globalization.
Despite his claims that he would put “America First”, and that his tariffs would protect jobs in the US, he has bombed and invaded multiple countries in an effort to achieve hemispheric and global domination and maintain that stolen wealth and access to low-cost energy and other resources. Trump has even proposed taxing remittances, money sent by poor working people in the US to their poorer families in their countries of origin.
He has sought to mask and justify his attack on labor inside the US by scape-goating migrant workers and refugees as a so-called “invasion.” He has used that as a pretext for virtual martial law in the streets of US cities. Congress has already passed a massive budget increase for ICE that is paying for the build-out of excess warehouses around the country into prisons, so-called immigration detention centers. Congress is considering his request for a $200 million dollar “supplemental appropriation” to cover the unexpected costs of his war on Iran, and his proposal for a trillion-and-a-half — $1,500,000,000.00 — dollar budget for the military (not even counting military satellites with NASA, or nuclear weapons under the Energy Department, or the debt burden from current and previous wars). Trump opposes any regulation of A-I, with its threats to jobs, the environment, and privacy. His reactionary attacks on renewable solar and wind energy, and support for fossil fuels, are threatening irreparable harm to the atmosphere, oceans and climate that sustain life.
But frankly, to put a stop to this will take far more than a one-day general strike. We need to embrace and sustain a protracted political, cultural, social and economic struggle for a transformation of this society, to put an end to oppression, exploitation and environmental devastation for private gain at the expense of working people and planetary survival. We need to be forthright about the need for eco-socialism, decolonization, and an end to the carceral police state. That will take much than a symbolic general strike or a “blue wave” in the mid-term elections.
May 1 can be a lesson about the collective power of working people and our communities, but we must translate that potential power into deeply-rooted organization and ongoing participation in mutual aid and liberatory initiatives to reshape this economy and society in fundamental ways. Conscious solidarity, both within the US but also globally, with the rest of the working class, is essential. Trump has over-extended and weakened the US empire with his attacks on Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine and especially Iran, but we here in the “belly of the beast” have the responsibility and capacity to take advantage of that weakness to put an end to that empire of exploitation once and for all.
