Seattle, WA – A crowd of 150 people gathered at Saint Mary's Church at noon on May 1 to celebrate international worker solidarity at a May Day march and rally. The group marched through the International District and downtown Seattle where speakers addressed pressing issues in the local and international worker struggles.

Leading chants and speaking, the organizers of the event encouraged onlookers to come together as workers to support fellow workers around the world. Participants offered workshops on how to unionize the workplace and meetings to discuss the history of Haymarket together.

A speaker demanding immigration reform during the Biden administration led chants calling to “end to deportations.” Another speaker called for stopping the war in Tigray, Ethiopia. There was a speech calling to stop the war on women's bodies. In the spirit of internationalism, a speaker explained the need to provide equal vaccine access worldwide, as we see between India and the U.S. corporations.

Supporters of police reform and abolition promoted Nikkita Oliver for Position 9 on Seattle City Council and Lorena Gonzalez for mayoral office. They provided information for people to register to vote and utilize funding programs, known as the Democracy Voucher Program, to support these candidates.

A common spirited chant was, “Up, up, up with liberation; down, down, down with deportations!”

The organizations that were present at and endorsed the events include: Anakbayan Seattle, the Cascadian Workers' Association, the Democratic Socialists of America, Food Not Bombs, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Freedom Socialist Party, International Communist Workers Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Socialist Workers Party, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

#SeattleWA #PeoplesStruggles #MayDay2021

Milwaukee, WI – In spite of gusts of wind in excess of 50 miles per hour, more than 250 people marched from the office of Wisconsin’s premier immigrant rights organization, Voces de la Frontera, to the office of reactionary U.S. Senator Ron Johnson on the afternoon of May 1. The focus of the march was on essential immigrant workers.

The action was kicked off in the streets outside the recently-opened Voces headquarters. A few speeches, a song, and a prayer got the people in attendance ready to march. Marchers then made their way downtown to pay Senator Johnson’s office a visit. Along the way, people chanted in both English and Spanish: “The people united will never be defeated / El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,” “Sí se puede” and “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here!”

While the action was hosted exclusively by Voces de la Frontera, many different people’s organizations turned out in support. Trade unionists representing the Young Workers Committee of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council joined with members of Teamsters Local 344 to demonstrate solidarity. Community organizations like the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression mobilized in force, helping to lead chants along the march. And it wouldn’t be May Day without the socialist organizations that turned out in support, including the Freedom Road Socialist Organization with a strong contingent.

The march ended in the street outside of Senator Johnson’s offices. Speeches there were highlighted by the daughter of VDLF leader Christine Neumann-Ortiz as the keynote. Traditionally, Neumann-Ortiz has served as the headline speaker, but she along with a group of other Voces leaders and supporters were marching in Washington, D.C. The speeches called for an end to deportations, COVID recovery for all and citizenship for all.

May Day fell on President Joe Biden’s 100th day in office. It’s notable that under the new Democrat administration, deportations have continued, including an increase from the Trump administration for people of particular origins, such as Haitians. It remains to be seen whether the Biden-Harris administration will meet the demands of the people, but what is certain is that the people will not stop fighting until they have achieved victory in the struggle for justice and liberation.

#MilwaukeeWI #OppressedNationalities #PeoplesStruggles #ChicanoLatino #internationalWorkersDay #VocesDeLaFrontera #MayDay2021

Chicago, IL – The movements for immigrant rights, against police crimes, and the labor movement of essential workers united today to mark May 1, International Workers Day in Chicago. Banners read “Legalization for all,” “Stop police crimes” and “Justice for essential workers.”

The mobilization represented the unity reached between the major immigrant rights group the state, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), and the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR). ICIRR’s two legislative priorities are legalization for all and a pathway to citizenship at the federal level, and community empowerment to hold the Chicago police accountable.

Speaking for CAARPR, co-chair Jazmine Salas said, “The Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance will put us on a path to community control of the police – no more murders like those of Adam Toledo and Anthony Alvarez.” Both were killed by CPD in late March. Adam Toledo was 13 years old and had his hands in the air when he was shot; Anthony Alvarez was shot in the back while running away from the police.

Essential workers and their unions, particularly SEIU Locals 73 and Health Care Illinois/Indiana also joined the rally. HCII Vice President Jaquie Algee explained about the 1886 nationwide strike for the eight-hour day, organized mainly from Chicago, in honor of which May 1, is celebrated around the world as International Workers Day. She said, “It’s a disgrace that over 100 years later we’re still fighting for the same things: respect on the job and decent wages.”

The rally at Union Park was capped by remarks by Congressman Chuy Garcia, who pledged to support the PRO Act legislation in support of labor organizing; legalization for all, including removal of exclusionary bars; and a pathway to citizenship to be included in the budget reconciliation. “It’s high time to stop criminalizing immigration and desperation, and to end an immigration system entangled with the flawed criminal justice system. It’s no accident that the same communities that are over-policed due to racist policing and racial bias are suffering at the hands of immigration enforcement.”

Garcia then spoke about his legislation, the New Way Forward, which would end the mass criminalization and deportation pipeline.

After rallying in Union Park on Chicago’s West Side, they marched two-and-half miles to Federal Plaza in the Loop. A cultural program featuring youth performers was interspersed with speeches by Rev. Emma Lozano, her daughter Tanya Lozano, Frank Chapman of CAARPR, Oswaldo Gomez of ONE Northside and the Grassroots Alliance for Public Safety, and alderpersons Byron Sigcho Lopez and Carlos Ramirez Rosa, all of whom came together to help create the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #legalizationForAll #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #MayDay2021

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following 1904 article by the great Russian revolutionary VI Lenin.

Comrade workers! May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all lands celebrate Their awakening to a class- conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom.

On one side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions of acres of land and mountains of money into their private property. They have made the government and the army their servants, faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed.

On the other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their labor they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities.

But now these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labor from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a system of society where the wealth created by the common labor will go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. They want to make the land and the factories, mills, and machines the common property of all toilers. They want to do away with the division into rich and poor, want the fruits of labor to go to the laborers themselves, and all the achievements of the human mind, all improvements in ways of working, to improve the lot of the man who works, and not serve as a means of oppressing him.

The great struggle of labor against capital has cost the workers of all countries immense sacrifices. They have shed rivers of blood in behalf of their right to a better life and real freedom. Those who fight for the workers’ cause are subjected by the governments to untold persecution. But in spite of all persecution the solidarity of the workers of the world is growing and gaining in strength. The workers are uniting more and more closely in socialist parties, the supporters of those parties are mounting into millions and are advancing steadily, step by step, towards complete victory over the class of capitalist exploiters.

The Russian proletariat, too, has awakened to a new life. It too has joined this great struggle. Gone are the days when our worker slaved submissively, seeing no escape from his state of bondage, no glimmer of light in his bitter life. Socialism has shown him the way out, and thousands upon thousands of fighters have thronged to the red banner, as to a guiding star. Strikes have shown the workers the power of unity, have taught them to fight back, have shown how formidable to capital organized labor can be. The workers have seen that it is off their labor that the capitalists and the government live and get fat. The workers have been fired with the spirit of united struggle, with the aspiration for freedom and for socialism. The workers have realized what a dark and evil force the tsarist autocracy is. The workers need freedom for their struggle, but the tsarist government binds them hand and foot. The workers need freedom of assembly, freedom to organize, freedom for newspapers and books, but the tsarist government crushes, with knout, prison and bayonet, every striving for freedom. The cry “Down with the autocracy!” has swept through the length and breadth of Russia, it has been sounded more and more often in the streets, at great mass meetings of the workers. Last summer tens of thousands of workers throughout the South of Russia rose up to fight for a better life, for freedom from police tyranny. The bourgeoisie and government trem bled at the sight of the formidable army of workers, which at one stroke brought to a standstill the entire industrial life of huge cities. Dozens of fighters for the workers’ cause fell beneath the bullets of the troops that tsarism sent against the internal enemy.

But there is no force that can vanquish this internal enemy, for the ruling classes and the government only live by its labour. There is no force on earth that could break the millions of workers, who are growing more and more class- conscious, more and more united and organised. Every defeat the workers sustain brings new fighters into the ranks, it awakens broader masses to new life and makes them prepare for fresh struggles.

And the events Russia is now passing through are such that this awakening of the worker masses is bound to be even more rapid and widespread, and we must strain every nerve to unite the ranks of the proletariat and prepare it for even more determined struggle. The war is making even the most backward sections of the proletariat take an interest in polit ical affairs and problems. The war is showing up ever more clearly and vividly the utter rottenness of the autocratic order, the utter criminality of the police and court gang that is ruling Russia. Our people are perishing from want and starvation at home—yet they have been dragged into a ruinous and senseless war for alien territories lying thou sands of miles away and inhabited by foreign races. Our people are ground down in political slavery—yet they have been dragged into a war for the enslavement of other peoples. Our people demand a change of political order at home— but it is sought to divert their attention by the thunder of guns at the other end of the world. But the tsarist govern ment has gone too far in its gamble, in its criminal squan dering of the nation’s wealth and young manhood, sent to die on the shores of the Pacific. Every war puts a strain on the people, and the difficult war against cultured and free Japan is a frightful strain upon Russia. And this strain comes at a time when the structure of police despotism has already begun to totter under the blows of the awakening proletariat. The war is laying bare all the weak spots of the government, the war is tearing off all false disguises, the war is revealing all the inner rottenness; the war is making the preposterousness of the tsarist autocracy obvious to all and is showing everyone the death-agony of the old Russia, the Russia where the people are disfranchised, ignorant and cowed, the Russia that is still in serf bondage to the police government.

The old Russia is dying. A free Russia is coming to take its place. The dark forces that guarded the tsarist autocracy are going under. But only the class-conscious and organised proletariat can deal them their death-blow. Only the class- conscious and organised proletariat can win real, not sham, freedom for the people. Only the class-conscious and organised proletariat can thwart every attempt to deceive the people, to curtail their rights, to make them a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Comrade workers! Let us then prepare with redoubled energy for the decisive battle that is at hand! Let the ranks of the Social-Democrat proletarians close ever firmer! Let their word spread ever farther afield! Let campaigning for the workers’ demands be carried on ever more boldly! Let the celebration of May Day win thousands of new fight ers to our cause and swell our forces in the great struggle for the freedom of all the people, for the liberation of all who toil from the yoke of capital!

Long live the eight-hour day!

Long live international revolutionary Social-Democracy!

Down with the criminal and plundering tsarist autocracy!

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #internationalWorkersDay #Socialism #VladimirLenin #MayDay2021

International Workers Day is celebrated on May 1. Around the world, workers have accomplished many great things over the past year that we can be proud of. The ruling class, made up of monopoly capitalists, have tried their best to keep profits high at the expense of the people during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we’ve seen time and time again that the people can rise above the obstacles created by the 1% and bring about real change. On May Day 2021, it is important to reflect on the past year. We must also renew our efforts to end the rule of the monopoly capitalists and replace their broken, failed system with a system that benefits not the few but the majority of people – socialism.

May Day began as a celebration of the working class and its heroic struggle after Haymarket in Chicago in 1886. Workers at Haymarket fought against terrible working conditions and for an eight-hour workday. The greedy bosses and their servants, the police, tried to brutally repress the workers and their movement. The police attacked, injured and killed striking workers, most of them immigrants, leading up to the Haymarket massacre. Then the state of Illinois held a trial and hung four labor leaders, the Haymarket Martyrs. Still, the spirit of that first May Day lives on and is celebrated by workers around the world each year.

In the United States, the monopoly capitalists and their politicians tried to replace the globally celebrated International Workers Day with ‘Labor Day’ in September. It wasn’t until the massive marches for immigrant rights of 2006 that the celebration of May Day became once again widespread in the U.S.

Workers around the world continue to struggle in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The ruling class has made it clear over the past year that they value making profits much more than they value the lives of the working class. This is especially true as we see African American, Latino/Chicano, and Native American communities continuing to suffer the worst effects of the pandemic, even as many people begin to have access to vaccinations. Asian Americans are being hit by a wave of racist violence, as both the Trump and Biden administrations have ramped up tensions with China The situation in the U.S. lies in stark contrast to the measures being taken in other countries like Cuba, where the socialist government is actively helping their people against the pandemic.

A few stimulus checks over the past 12 months is nowhere near enough financial help for families struggling in the U.S. Teachers continue to struggle with administrators and politicians over safety in our schools. College students are fighting back against administrations that have treated many young adults unfairly. Many people who should have been among the first to receive vaccinations are having to wait because capitalism is a failed system that doesn’t serve our best interests.

May Day is a time to plan for the battles to come as we analyze and reflect on the current situation. Justice must be won by any means necessary for George Floyd and all victims of police crimes. We must fight for an end to the cruel treatment of immigrants and refugees at the U.S. border, and we need to shut down all the detention centers where terrible abuses are taking place. We must support sectors of the working class that are organizing for better conditions, including the workers at Amazon in Alabama currently seeing massive repression from the boss and from the state throughout their union election. For each and every cause, we must double down on our organizing efforts and continue fighting for a people’s agenda that puts the needs of the many first.

Capitalism is on its last legs, and the weakness of that system shows more and more as time goes on. The attempts of the ruling class become more desperate as each crack in their system brings forth increased resistance to their outdated and rotten way of doing things. This is evident all over the world, as workers continue their fight along many fronts. Over this past year, after the murder of George Floyd, we have witnessed a great rebellion that has drawn millions into motion. This country is at a turning point. History is on the side of the working class and oppressed people all over the world. Only once economic and political power is in the hands of the working class can the people’s needs truly begin to be met. Seize the time – let us renew our efforts to win a better world for all and smash the system that’s holding us back.

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #ImmigrantRights #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #StudentMovement #InJusticeSystem #Labor #OppressedNationalities #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #HousingStruggles #internationalWorkersDay #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationFRSO #Socialism #MayDay2021