May Day is the real Labor Day!
De Anza on Thursday, May 1st will be the site of a rally with campus workers, student artists and speakers, faculty members, a guest DJ and an open mic. We will be gathering at 10:50 AM around the L Quad fountain. Those of us who are able will then bus/carpool to downtown San Jose for the annual march, which is at 3:00 (we’ll be leaving campus at 2:00). We demand an end to the slave-like “illegal” status of millions of American workers, to the occupations of foreign countries, the rape of the environment, economic attacks on students and workers, ethnic cleansing in New Orleans, and the brutalization of poor people in the United States.
We invite any and all students, faculty, staff and community members to join us and let their voices be heard. If you, your club, union or some other organization would like to speak/perform at the rally at De Anza, please contact us on this website so we can get you on the lineup!
Get your class to march and stand in solidarity with us! Bring your friends! Help us publicize and organize this event! Join Students for Justice!
History of International Workers’ Day:
On Tuesday May 4th 1886, the fourth day of a strike for the eight-hour day which had begun May 1st, Chicago police attempted to disperse a crowd of striking workers. Police spies planned to set off a bomb and blame it on the strikers, but they clumsily set off the explosives early and one of them was killed. The police then began firing wildly into the crowd, many of them accidentally shooting each other. Seven police officers and an unknown number of civilians were killed, almost all of them by police bullets.
The violence was blamed on eight anarchists who had organized the rally. None of them were linked to the bombing or violence, but since they believed in a revolution, four of them were executed by hanging - for thought crimes.
Since then, May 1st has been a day of international protest by the workers’ movement in order to demand workers’ rights, workers’ power, and an end to imperialist wars. It became almost forgotten in the USA, the country of its origin, for some time, and was replaced by “Labor Day” so as to cut US workers off from our brothers and sisters around the world.
Thanks to the efforts of the immigrants’ rights movement and rank-and-file union workers, May Day is finally making a comeback in the United States!
