May Day is the real Guy Fawkes Day. Hollywood may have attached the images of the Guy Fawkes mask and the Fifth of November to revolutionary ferment, but if any day actually stands for such a sentiment, it’s May 1, International Workers’ Day, commonly known as May Day.
May Day commemorates the Haymarket Affair of 1886 in Chicago during which police opened fire on a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday after an unidentified person threw a bomb at them. In the internationally-publicized trials that followed, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy, among whom seven were sentenced to death, despite overwhelming evidence that none of them could have thrown the bomb. This led to worldwide outrage from workers’ movements and promoted the Haymarket anarchists to the status of martyrs.
Soon, around the world, May Day became an occasion for demonstrations and strikes. To counter its popularity, the United States government made May 1 “Americanization Day” in 1921, and even today, May 1 is a minor legal holiday (though not a federal holiday) here under the name of “Loyalty Day.”
Thus, though May Day has its roots in the U.S., unlike more than 80 other nations in the world, it is not an official national holiday. From the days of some of the largest May Day marches during the Great Depression, May Day had waned in significance by the start of this century. However, in 2006, in what may have been the largest day of protest in U.S. history, massive migrant marches on May 1 reignited the tradition. By May Day 2012, riding on the wave of the Occupy Movement, International Workers’ Day had been restored as a focal point in the struggle for the liberty and well-being of the common person.
After a May Day march in Durham last year, May Day Triangle NC is organizing a demonstration in Raleigh this year. Leaving at 4 p.m. from Moore Square, the march will go through downtown, voicing demands for the rights of workers, women, the GLBTQ community and immigrants, reaching the N.C. Legislature for a rally, teach-ins and music.
However, students are leading the way in celebrating May Day. The North Carolina Student Power Union has organized a march for education from the Bell Tower which will join the general march in Moore Square.
Technician stands in solidarity with this effort to defend our education. With a brutal budget cut of about $140 million to the UNC System proposed by Gov. Pat McCrory, students need to get angry. One day we may not have the luxury of a sheltered university environment, and so, out of basic self-interest, we should demand that our education not be slashed and privatized to atrophy.
Moreover, this fight is connected to many others that May Day agitates for, because of their common economic base. If we take action to defend education, we’re continuing the ethos that won us the eight-hour-working day, other employee benefits and our social safety net. And fighting for any such social institution, in the end, is to the benefit of all other public services, such as education.
Standing on the gallows, in the final moments of his life, Haymarket anarchist August Spies shouted out, “There will come a day when our silence will speak louder than the voices you throttle today.” We students, though, are still in a position of power. Our voices have not been throttled, and there is no reason that we should be silent. Thus, we call on students to converge at the Bell Tower at 2 p.m. on May 1, and — for the love of ourselves, for the love of learning, for the love of the world — speak out loud and clear.
