April, 27 2012, 03:53pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
"May Day is Coming Home"
WASHINGTON
NOAM CHOMSKY, via Karla Quinonez-Ruggiero at Adelante Alliance, occupy at adelantealliance.org
Available for a very limited numbers of interviews scheduled well in advance, Chomsky's latest pamphlet, titled Occupy, is being released on MayDay. It's the first of the new "Occupied Media" pamphlet series from Zuccotti Park Press. Chomsky just wrote the piece "May Day," which states: "People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That's because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. For example, Ronald Reagan designated what he called, 'Law Day' -- a day of jingoist fanaticism, like an extra twist of the knife in the labor movement. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement's organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution."
MARINA SITRIN, [in NYC] marina.sitrin at gmail.com
Sitrin is co-author of the forthcoming May Day: The Secret Rendezvous, which is part of the same "Occupied Media" pamphlet series. She said today: "The Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere are gearing up for May Day. One of the most significant things about these protests is their 'horizonalnzess' -- that is the lack of hierarchical structure. This is remarkably similar to how protests in Greece, Spain, Egypt and elsewhere are developing." See for NYC: maydaynyc.org and nationwide: occupytogether.org
STAUGHTON LYND, salynd at aol.com
Lynd's books include The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings, From Here to There: The Staughton Lynd Reader and Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks. He recently wrote the introduction to Howard Zinn's re-released book On History. He said today: "There is a general impression in the U.S. that May Day is a communist holiday since communists did latch on to it eventually, but it's a wrong impression. May Day originated in 1886 in the U.S. There was a large nationwide general strike that day, the purpose of which was to obtain an eight-hour day. There were radicals involved, but they were anarchists, not communists. On May 4 of that year, at a plant in Chicago that was locking out its workers, the authorities opened fire. So a meeting was called at the hay market and it was peaceful. Then a junior officer riled up the crowd and someone threw a bomb. The government went after the leaders of the popular movement in Chicago, who were not associated with the bomb-throwing, leading to the trial and execution of 'the Haymarket martyrs.'
"The European social movements picked it up immediately and May Day spread around the world. It was not associated with communism until after World War I. The U.S. government has feared and sought to suppress May Day -- creating things like 'Law Day' on May 1st and a new 'Labor Day' in September -- as a sort of tame labor celebration. But the original May Day was neither communist nor state-endorsed, it was a holiday of the international working class.
"Since 2006, May Day has been rescued to some extent by immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala and elsewhere who see it as a workers' holiday and a chance to come out of the shadows. And now, this year, we see the Occupy movement picking it up."
PRISCILLA MUROLO, pmurolo at sarahlawrence.edu
Murolo's books include From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States. She said today: "May Day is coming home. The oppression of the labor movement moved it offshore, but this year there should be extensive May Day activities inside the U.S. as well as around the world.
"In 1884, a nucleus of trade unions -- which would later become the AFL -- decided that, starting May 1, 1886, they would refuse to work for more than eight hours a day. When that day came, several hundred thousand workers across the country went out on strike for the eight-hour day. The movement's vital center was Chicago, where radicals -- in particular anarchists -- were a core component of the trade-union movement. On May 2, Chicago police opened fire on workers picketing the McCormick tractor factory and killed some strikers. In response to these shootings, thousands of workers gathered in Haymarket Square on May 4 for an 'indignation meeting' called by the anarchists. As this protest drew to a close, a phalanx of police entered the Square, and someone -- we still don't know who -- threw a bomb.
Among those killed by he bomb were seven police officers, and their deaths gave the enemies of the eight-hour movement a pretext to crush it. Picket lines were busted up, meetings were raided, labor activists were rounded up for questioning. In the end, eight anarchists -- some of whom had not even been in Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown -- were convicted of conspiracy to murder, despite a dearth of evidence against them. Four of the defendants were hanged, a fifth committed suicide, and the others were sentenced to long prison terms and later pardoned by a pro-labor governor.
"This assault on the labor movement was devastating. Not until the 1910s did labor unions establish the eight-hour day as the standard in some sectors, and it wasn't until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act defined the eight-hour day as the norm in workplaces covered by this law. The meaning of the Haymarket crackdown was not just that it derailed the eight-hour movement but also and more fundamentally that it deprived the U.S. labor movement of its most potent wing. In later years, U.S. labor radicals revived May Day. Veterans of the union organizing drives of the 1930s and 1940s will recall gigantic May Day marches in American cities, but McCarthyism saw to it that U.S. labor was once again deprived of its radical sectors.
"The re-emergence of May Day in 2011 signals of new convergence of organized labor, the immigrants rights movement, and the Occupy movement in the name of the 99%. The excitement surrounding this convergence gives us a chance to experience what our ancestors experienced -- the power of a workers' movement for better labor conditions AND for equality and human rights for one and all." Murolo is co-director of the Graduate Program in Women's History at Sarah Lawrence College.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
LATEST NEWS
'The Opposite of Leadership': US Vetoes Palestine's UN Membership
Palestine's permanent observer at the United Nations said the resolution's failure "will not break our will, and it will not defeat our determination."
Apr 18, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Thursday used the country's veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block Palestine's bid to become a full member of the U.N.
While 12 nations voted in favor of Palestinian membership and two abstained, the United States is one of five countries—along with China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—who have veto authority at the Security Council.
Since Israel launched what the International Court of Justice has said is a "plausibly" genocidal assault of the Gaza Strip in response to a Hamas-led October attack, the Biden administration has blocked three cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council. Under mounting global pressure, the U.S. finally abstained last month, allowing a cease-fire measure to pass.
In the lead-up to Thursday's vote, the Biden administration was pressuring other counties to oppose the Palestinian Authority's renewed membership effort so it could possibly avoid a veto, according to leaked cables obtained by The Intercept.
"Take a moment to ponder how isolated Biden has made the U.S.," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, after the veto. "Biden lobbied Japan, South Korea, and Ecuador HARD to oppose the Palestine resolution so that the U.S. wouldn't have to veto. They refused. So Biden cast his fourth veto in seven months (!!) This is the opposite of leadership."
In addition to the nations Parsi highlighted, Algeria, China, France, Guyana, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Slovenia voted for giving Palestine full U.N. membership while Switzerland and the United Kingdom abstained.
After the vote, U.N. Newsreported on remarks from Riyad Mansour, a U.N. permanent observer for the state of Palestine:
"We came to the Security Council today as an important historic moment, regionally and internationally, so that we could salvage what can be saved. We place you before a historic responsibility to establish the foundations of a just and comprehensive peace in our region."
Council members were given the opportunity "to revive the hope that has been lost among our people" and to translate their commitment towards a two-state solution into firm action "that cannot be maneuvered or retracted," and the majority of council members "have risen to the level of this historic moment, and they have stood on the side of justice and freedom and hope, in line with the ethical and humanitarian and legal principles that must govern our world and in line with simple logic."
"The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will, and it will not defeat our determination," Mansour added. "We will not stop in our effort. The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near, and we are the faithful."
Parsi said that "a Western-friendly senior Global South diplomat" told him of Biden's veto: "Whatever agonizing claim the U.S. had to lead a self-appointed free world has died a very loud public death on the Security Council horseshoe tonight. YOU CAN'T LEAD IF YOU CAN'T LISTEN."
Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection in November, has faced fierce criticism in the United States and around the world for U.S. complicity in Israel's war on Gaza—which Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, has controlled for nearly two decades. In under seven months, Israeli forces have killed 33,970 Palestinians, injured another 76,770, displaced most of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million population, devastated civilian infrastructure, and severely limited the flow of lifesaving humanitarian assistance.
Israel—which already got $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid before October 7—continues to receive weapons support from the Biden administration, even as a growing chorus of critics, including some Democrats in Congress, argues that the arms transfers violate U.S. and international law.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Shameful': Columbia Greenlights Police Crackdown on Anti-War Encampment
Even after dozens of students were arrested, hundreds "rushed to take the place of their classmates" and continued the protest.
Apr 18, 2024
The arrests of dozens of Columbia University and Barnard College students on Thursday "galvanized" other supporters of Palestinian rights on the campuses, as hundreds of students occupied the school's western lawn after New York City police filled at least two buses with protesters who had been detained for setting up an encampment.
"Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest," chanted hundreds of students as they marched around the area where organizers had set up a tent encampment early Wednesday morning.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik informed the campus community on Thursday that she had authorized the police to clear the encampment.
As it has been in the past, the school has become a center of anti-war protests—and crackdowns by school officials and the police—since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in October.
Pro-Palestinian students and alumni have demanded that Columbia divest from companies that profit from Israel's apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories and cancel its dual degree program with Tel Aviv University.
In response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Columbia in November suspended the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine—an action that pushed the New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal to file a lawsuit on behalf of the students last month.
On Thursday, police and Columbia employees took down about 50 tents that had been up for more than a day and disposed of them in trash cans and alleyways—but The New York Times reported later that "demonstrators repitched a couple of tents, and ... recovered the main signage from the encampment as well," while hundreds of students were "still gathered and chanting on the south side of the grass."
The arrests came a day after Shafik testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce about antisemitism on campus.
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whose daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among the Barnard students who were suspended on Thursday for participating in the encampment protest, questioned Shafik about whether antisemitic protests have actually taken place at Columbia, prompting the president to say there have not.
"There has been a rise in targeting and harassment against anti-war protesters, because it's been pro-war and anti-war protesters is what it seems, like, correct?" asked Omar.
"Correct," replied Shafik.
On Thursday, Omar posted on social media two images of protesters at Columbia: one from the encampment this week, and one from 1968, when students protested the U.S. war in Vietnam.
New York City Council member Tiffany Cabán was among those who condemned the university's crackdown on the protests on Thursday.
"Suspending and arresting Columbia/Barnard student activists and disbanding student organizations—including Jewish students and organizations—doesn't combat antisemitism or increase safety," said Cabán. "All it does is punish and intimidate those who believe in human rights for Palestinians. Shameful."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Pressure Is Working': Biden Weighs Climate Emergency Declaration
Campaigners urged the president to "keep listening to the millions of young, people of color, and working-class voters who are demanding climate policy that meets the moment."
Apr 18, 2024
The youth-led Sunrise Movement on Thursday celebrated Bloombergreporting that "White House officials have renewed discussions about potentially declaring a national climate emergency."
The Wednesday revelation came just two days after six young activists were arrested outside Vice President Kamala Harris' Los Angeles, California home to increase pressure on the Biden administration to make such a declaration, which would unlock various federal powers to combat the fossil fuel-driven global crisis.
According to Bloomberg:
Top advisers to President Joe Biden have recently resumed talks about the merits of such a move, which could be used to curtail crude exports, suspend offshore drilling, and curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because a final decision has not been made.
White House advisers are divided over the idea of declaring a climate emergency, with some saying it wouldn't provide Biden with enough newfound authority to make substantial changes, the people said. Others, however, argue such an announcement would galvanize climate-minded voters.
"The pressure is working. Let's keep it up," Sunrise said on social media, highlighting some of what Biden—who claimed last year that "practically speaking," he had already declared a national climate emergency—could do with a real declaration.
Sunrise wasn't alone in welcoming the news. The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) Action said that "we've BEEN calling for a climate emergency!! Now, the White House is considering declaring one."
The group urged Biden to "keep listening to the millions of young, people of color, and working-class voters who are demanding climate policy that meets the moment."
As Biden and Harris have campaigned for reelection in November—when they are expected to face former Republican President Donald Trump, whose plan for the planet is "drill, baby, drill"—the Democrats have encountered intense pressure from campaigners including members of CPD and Sunrise to step up their climate actions.
"I'm on the frontlines raising my voice for my Black and Latine families and friends, because I know that we deserve to have affordable housing and healthcare, we deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels," 18-year-old Ariela Lara, who was arrested at Harris' house, said Monday.
Climate campaigners have praised the Biden administration for parts of the Inflation Reduction Act and a recent pause on liquefied natural gas exports but blasted the president for skipping last year's United Nations summit, continuing fossil fuel lease sales, and enabling the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Willow oil project, and construction of the nation's largest offshore oil terminal.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular