This video from the USA is called “Occupy Everywhere”: May Day Special Show on OWS, Immigration, Labor Protests. 1 of 3.
Across New York City, People Honor May Day. J.A. Myerson, Truthout: “Walter Hillegas marches with a scale-model of the former World Trade Center. ‘I was there for the first five days after the tower came down,’ he tells me, ‘doing debris-recovery and victim-removal. I got sick and lost my job.’ Hillegas is beset by sarcoidosis and lower lumbar spondylosis, both of which he attributes to his first responder work in the days after September 11, 2001. ‘These guys taught me how to stand up,’ he says of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters in whose midst he marches. Hillegas had his day in court this week and won: ‘I’m here to honor them'”: here. See also here.
In this video from the USA, Truthout’s Matt Renner joins a roundtable of guests from The Media Consortium on Free Speech TV to discuss themes related to today’s May Day celebrations and protests.
Chicago’s May Day Takes the Streets. Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: “The birthplace of May Day celebrated the workers’ holiday Tuesday with an Occupy-led action against Bank of America and a thousand-strong march chanting for immigrant rights and justicia for the 99 percent. ‘Unionize, Organize, Papeles Para Todos [Papers for All]’ was the slogan of this year’s May Day, bringing together two traditional strongholds of the march in Chicago – immigrant rights and labor”: here.
Sarah van Gelder | Why This May Day Matters. Sarah van Gelder, YES! Magazine: “If the mainstream media was confused about Occupy Wall Street in its early days in Zuccotti Park, they’re bound to be completely befuddled this May Day. May Day already has a lot piled on it. In pre-Christian Europe, May Day was a time to dance, light bonfires, sing, and carry on in celebration of the changing seasons. May Day also marks the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket massacre, which occurred during a Chicago strike for the eight-hour work day. Also called International Workers’ Day, it’s a holiday in more than 80 countries”: here.
Jerry Elmer | Martyrs for Justice: The Haymarket Affair and the Origins of May Day. Jerry Elmer, New Clear Vision: “May Day is celebrated in at least 80 countries worldwide, from Argentina to Vietnam, but not in the United States. Here, our ‘Labor Day’ was carefully put into September – by President Grover Cleveland in 1894 – specifically so that we would not observe May Day, with all of its radical roots in syndicalist labor history. This is deeply ironic, for the event that gave rise to May Day observances the world over occurred right here in the United States: the bombing at Haymarket Square, Chicago, on May 4, 1886, during a labor rally”: here.
Jason Leopold, Mike Ludwig and Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) turned over another batch of documents to Truthout Monday morning in response to our wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request pertaining to the agency’s role in monitoring the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest movement. We’ve just started to scrutinize the files and we intend to publish a series of reports later today highlighting our findings”: here.
From News Line daily in England:
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
500,000 WILL STRIKE ON MAY 10 – says Serwotka
Half a million workers will be taking strike action on May 10th, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka told the mass rally at the end of yesterday’s May Day march in London.
He told the Trafalgar Square crowd: ‘I pay tribute to the Occupy movement. We have to defend the right to protest.’
He added: ‘On May 10th half a million public sector workers will be on strike.
‘If we lose our pensions now we will never get them back, so join the strike.
‘The government are going to try to divide and rule.’
He slammed the attacks on welfare and concluded: ‘We should defend every job, every community, every pensioner who is fighting back.’
Victorious Occupy London protesters commemorated May Day on Tuesday by briefly occupying the home of the London Stock Exchange: here.
TENS of thousands of workers and youth held strong anti-government marches and rallies in all Greek cities and towns on May Day. Seafarers, railway, urban transport and local government workers staged 100 per cent solid 24-hour strikes or stoppages: here.
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