MEDIA Cross-Cultural Understanding Opinion Editorials, May 2013

May Day Celebrated Worldwide But Not in America, in Commemoration of Struggles of the 
American Workers ---- Al-Jazeerah Editor's Note: ---- American workers set May 1st, 1886 
for a general strike to demand an eight-hour work day. The developments after that day led 
to killings and repressive measures against them. The Second International socialist 
movement adopted May 1st, 1890 as the International Labor Day to be celebrated worldwide. 
---- The US pro-business federal government decided another day (the first Monday of 
September), in 1894, following another event in which American workers were killed 
(Pullman strike of railroad workers). The main objective was to distract American workers 
from the original event which led to the May 1st worldwide Labor Day celebrations (See 
references below).

No Mayday on May Day for American Politics

Another May Day gone by? 2013 this time! And as usual, our beloved local politicians, 
business leaders, peace-enforcers (cops), corporate journalists, and citizenry busy in 
making the proverbial buck, made sure that the protests taking place were pictured as 
smallish and un-American as that foreign-sounding International Workers? Day. And if any 
incidents occurred ? other than having folks peacefully walking the streets collared with 
a permit ? it was the anarchist thugs that need to be blamed; idiots and ingrates who fail 
to appreciate our freedoms, or the greatness in America?s capitalist way of life.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we had our share of mini gentle-marches protesting this, 
that and the other thing. Portland and Seattle, showing their larger-cities? colors, did 
their progressive bits, with the Emerald City trying to emulate May Day 2012? and its 
brief chaotic upsurge of demonstrators in Black Bloc clothes doing their anarchist thing. 
This time the arrests were kept at just 17? and there were millions spent by the FBI and 
other fed-agencies in prepping for the symbolic-vandalizing of a few store windows.

It?s both interesting and pathetic how we in America have been brainwashed into 
willy-nilly hating, repudiating May Day as truly Labor Day. Never mind that the US has a 
proud history to commemorate such a day. Americans, other than perhaps scholars and a 
small number of progressive activists, haven?t the slightest clue as to what happened in 
the 1886 Chicago protest ? the Haymarket Affair ? which brought about the standard 
eight-hour workday. Never mind the labor-heroes who died during the ?unpermitted? protest 
march as police opened fire on them; or those who were later hanged as a result of this 
protest, justice be damned. Our power-elite has always reserved the right to tell 
Americans those we should claim and venerate as heroes, who unsurprisingly turn out to be 
those who defend their elitist interests, usually at the point of a gun while wearing an 
?accredited? uniform. It was true in 1886? and it?s just as true in 2013.

(See below more details about the international commemoration of the struggle of 
American workers).

When American political fervor makes an attempt to venture outside of the 
Republican-Democrat same-old, same-old playground of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the chaos 
of ignorami starts to take place? a socialist, a communist, a syndicalist, an anarchist? 
aren?t all these folks one and the same thing? Aren?t they really the anti-Christ of good 
old American politics? Well, there is strength in numbers? so the ignorami win the day 
excommunicating any people or ideas which might appear foreign to them. You know, crazy 
foreign ideas filtered from that enclave in Turtle Bay to the sacred soil of all New York 
City boroughs and far beyond. People in the world may think of the United Nations 
compound in NY as sort of an international Guantanamo of the opposite kind: a place to 
advocate world peace and human rights. Five years ago, during Barack Obama?s first 
campaign for the presidency, when he promised his first action as president would be to 
close Guantanamo, I was told by a Spanish friend-journalist and correspondent writing from 
Afghanistan that such likelihood [as he put it, ?Obama being allowed by Congress and the 
Pentagon to close the base-prison?] was as far-fetched as the UN moving out of NY. 
Another fulfilled prediction added to the many others he expressed to me for all the 
American failures he observed during his three stints in Afghanistan.

My distracted issue here, however, is neither Guantanamo nor the UN headquarters, but the 
total disregard and disdain that Americans have been taught about civics and even the most 
rudimentary knowledge of political philosophies. All the names seem to have acquired 
negative connotations, and clarification of terms or explanation of ideas seldom, if ever, 
receive a lending ear; or, perhaps even worse, any enlightenment in good faith is likely 
to be interpreted as that of a messenger from unholy lands and creeds? and a potential 
ideological enemy combatant when dealing with people who don?t know you well: A revisit of 
Jr. Bush?s inquisitorial patriotism.

May Day in the United States is not a holiday. It only serves to remind us, via pyrrhic, 
non-explanatory news on TV, that there are a few crazies out there with little to do but 
to protest; among them, a contingent of window-smashers who call themselves anarchists and 
are there solely to cause mayhem.

How do you explain to a politically-sedated ? some would say poisoned ? population that 
the advocacy and intent of anarchism is participatory democracy? And that anarchists are 
proponents of the least government, or no government, their greatest barriers found to be 
lawyers and guns?

Group decision-making and horizontally organized tactics and strategies for people to 
govern themselves are for now too idealistic? at least in a nation where guns and prisons 
rule the day. Yes, we must admit, the concept of anarchism is antithetical to the 
predatory instincts of American capitalism.

So we?ll just wait for May Day 2014? and the incredible cost associated with a few windows 
not being smashed; and job security and growth for the FBI staff.

=============

Background information about the Labor Day worldwide and the United States:

American workers set May 1st, 1886 for a general strike to demand an eight-hour work day. 
The developments after that day led to killings and repressive measures against them. The 
Second International socialist movement adopted May 1st, 1890 as the International Labor 
Day to be celebrated worldwide.

The US pro-business federal government decided another day (the first Monday of 
September), in 1894, following another event in which American workers were killed 
(Pullman strike of railroad workers). The main objective was to distract American workers 
from the original event which led to the May 1st worldwide Labor Day celebrations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day