This Friday, May 1st, working people across the globe will observe May Day, also known as International Workers Day. And in the U.S., there is a national call for mass protest against all the attacks of the Trump administration under the slogan “No Work, No School, No Business as Usual!” There are at least 3,500 different demonstrations planned in over 1,000 cities across the country.
There is no shortage of reasons to take to the streets. Every day, their attacks on working people are intensifying. ICE thugs continue to terrorize immigrants workers across the country. The programs millions rely on are being gutted, from healthcare, education and food assistance to environmental safeguards and scientific research. Our resources are flowing directly into the hands of billionaires through trillions in tax cuts, massive increases to the ICE budget, and to fuel the U.S.-Israeli wars on the people of Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and the wider Middle East.
May Day emerged from the battles of workers in the U.S. to improve their living and working conditions during the 1880s, when workers began to organize for an eight-hour workday under the slogan “Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will!” They chose May 1, 1886 as a national day of strikes, which erupted across the country, involving 340,000 workers in 12,000 workplaces, with many strikes clashing with police. In Chicago – the center of the movement at the time – the police killed several workers in demonstrations and injured around 70. But this coast-to-coast movement resulted in many workers securing the eight-hour day. The bosses didn’t just give workers the eight-hour workday – workers fought for it and won.
In 1889, in honor of this struggle, May Day was declared a global holiday for working people by an international organization of socialist parties dedicated to overthrowing capitalism – the system we live under which is based on the exploitation of all workers. Since the dawn of the 20th century, workers across the globe have marched through the streets and gathered on May Day to celebrate the achievements of the working class. Today, it continues to be an occasion to honor the working class struggles of the past, and to uplift those happening right now. It also serves as a reminder of the collective power we hold for the battles that lie ahead, with a tiny class of billionaires on one side and billions of workers around the world on the other.
We don’t have to accept a world run by these parasites who exploit working people in order to suck the world dry of its resources. This doesn’t have to be our reality. Workers here and across the world can choose to organize and fight back. And May Day is just a small glimpse of the power we have, an expression of the fact that all workers are on the same side, regardless of which country we were born in or which country we happen to live in. An attack on workers anywhere is an attack on workers everywhere.
Not everyone may be able to take the day off work or organize to have their kids take off school, but we have to try to do everything possible to show our opposition to what is happening – there can be no business as usual. We can have discussions with our neighbors and our coworkers, or wear buttons in opposition to the war in Iran or the genocide in Gaza. The most important thing is that we realize it is up to us and our actions to change things – and not hopes that this will just go away if we put our heads in the sand, or that politicians will fix it for us, no matter how many election promises they spew out.
We have an immense amount of power if we choose to use it. Workers internationally are a class that is billions strong. A day without workers is a day without transit, production of goods, healthcare, water treatment, childcare, and so much more. When workers withhold their labor, the world of the billionaires grinds to a halt.
But those who run the corporations and the politicians who serve them run society to advance their interests. They want to hide our collective power from us. They want us to think of ourselves only as individuals competing with one another. They tell us that if we work hard enough and run ourselves into the ground, we can improve things and insulate ourselves from what’s happening. It’s not true – we do the work, but billionaires enrich themselves.
There is only one path to guaranteeing better conditions for ourselves and for others. And that’s by uniting as a worldwide class of workers to fight for a better future. May Day can be a reminder of a different future that is available to us. If we continue to organize and mobilize our forces – the immense forces of the working class – we can forge a different future.
