It’s always a little strange to suddenly have some hope in times like this. But today, this May Day, there are so many reasons to hold onto hope in the middle of so much tragedy, and in fact the acts of hope come as a response to the darkness we’re witnessing. Today faculty and student workers in multiple locations across the country are withholding their labor to protest the brutal crackdowns and repression that university administrators have ushered onto college campuses. It warms my heart especially to see a number of rank-and-file workers at my old union, CUNY PSC, which is composed of both full-time and adjunct professors at New York City public universities, collectively conducting a “sick out” and refusing to work in solidarity with their students protesting for Gaza, many of whom were brutalized last night.
And May Day couldn’t be a better time for workers and students and people everywhere to take bold action for justice. As the Zinn Education Project writes, “May 1 is International Workers’ Day. May Day began as a commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago. The day is officially recognized in much of the world, but not the United States.” And the reason it’s not recognized here is because the bosses feared it. They instead gave us a watered-down labor day which is vaguely tied to American labor and American workers, rather than being tied to the labor movement’s struggle to even be recognized, and the bold unionists who fought so hard for every inch of progress that the working class has won.
International Workers’ Day specifically was born in Chicago out of militant unionists calling a mass meeting in Haymarket Square to protest police brutality at a strike action. Today police still participate in union-busting, harass picket lines, and attack movements for the greater good wherever they may pop up. At the very moment you are reading this, odds are good that cops in one state or another are being sent to beat up and arrest college kids who are protesting for Palestine. As I write this for you I’m seeing footage from the University of South Florida where police are tear gassing students and using rubber bullets, all because some college kids camped on a lawn to participate in the movement calling for divestment from the war machine, a ceasefire, and a Free Palestine. And as I edit police are attacking students at Columbia and CCNY.
Today we see as clearly as ever that the legacy of May Day lives on not just in the police repression of those fighting for liberation, but in the people struggling and fighting for a better world. College students everywhere, at well over 100 different universities across the country, and across the world, are rising up. They see how our economic system is invested in war, how our political class is invested in imperialism, and how they can play a part in creating a better world where the military-industrial complex is not so powerful, and may one day cease to exist. In the same vein, unionized workers are flexing their power to bring some colleges grinding to a halt today in solidarity with their students protesting for Gaza, others are blockading arms factories and weapons depots, and still others are marching, rallying, and demanding a ceasefire and divestment from the war machine.
Part of the reason a lot of union workers and unions themselves are participating in a range of actions today, both related to Palestine and not, is that the union movement is surging and finding its power. And part of finding its power means getting more radical and more democratic. The current wave of union wins and strength began largely with a push to switch unions over to a one member-one vote system. Most notably, workers in the UAW seeking to reform and improve their union first won the right to directly elect their union leadership via the one member-one vote approach, and only then could they elect the people we see today, like Shawn Fain, who are simultaneously winning huge deals for workers and helping lead the labor movement on issues like pushing for a ceasefire. The UAW isn’t perfect, no person or union is, but what they’re doing right now is demonstrating a direction that workers can move in. And, crucially, they’re demonstrating that getting more radical and fighting harder leads to more wins.
For too long we’ve been told that being radical is “unrealistic” and that we must always be pragmatic, where pragmatism is defined by what’s possible right now within the constraints of a fundamentally flawed system. The people currently leading over at the UAW know that a little radicalism means that what’s impossible today could be possible tomorrow. That’s how they executed a historic, unprecedented strike. And that’s how they made sure that the strike resulted in record contracts for 140,000 workers. Now, they’re pushing for a ceasefire while simultaneously conducting a push to unionize another 150,000 auto workers at non-union plants across the country, and largely across the South. Just two weeks ago people would’ve told you that was impossible. Then thousands of workers overwhelmingly voted to join the UAW at the non-union Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Southern auto workers at a foreign company have never voted to join a union in the U.S. before. Now, thousands more workers at a Mercedes plant in Alabama look like they’ll unionize next. Their vote begins in just two weeks.
Even though it’s May Day today does feel like a strange day for hope, don’t get me wrong. The NYPD viciously and relentlessly attacked students at the City College of New York and Columbia last night. It is an indictment of the state of higher education, of policing, and of this country that we are seeing students attacked rather than seeing colleges rapidly divest from genocide and apartheid. But the last time the NYPD attacked the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia, it sparked a student movement that has spread across the country and across the world. There are actions for Palestine taking place on every continent, even Antarctica. We can’t be sure that we’ll win, but we can choose to practice hope every day, and we can do so by taking action that embodies hope, that both makes a better future more possible and that rejects defeat and nihilism. I know that these past two weeks, as hard as they’ve been, have renewed my hope in the people of America and the world, even if it has simultaneously cemented my lack of any sort of faith in the ruling class.
One day I hope we have a world where our belief does not need to be born out of despair, out of darkness. But that’s not where we are right now. People are reacting to oppression, to the violence of the current system, and in that reaction we see power, hope, possibility. May Day is a day to celebrate that, to celebrate and engage in the possibility of radical change and worker empowerment. We can build a better world and people are urgently and determinedly fighting for one right now, as we speak. It’s imperfect, sometimes it’s ugly, and sometimes we falter or misstep. But all around you the struggle for a new world, a more just and more peaceful world, is taking place right now. Don’t let it pass you by, instead dive in, live as though there’s hope, because in your actions and the actions of those around you there is a hope greater than we know. Solidarity.
just saw this come through the NYT... another ray of hope: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/us/brown-divestment-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.fUSG.oTXA5ht92o81&smid=url-share
Happy May Day!
Like you, I've been contemplating for awhile how we seem to have been driving full speed towards the abyss on multiple fronts... climate change, income inequality, backlash to social equality efforts, disinvestment from public goods and services, etc.
If the metaphor is a car careening towards a cliff, you reach a point where "moderate" solutions are no longer adequate to avoid disaster. We're clearly in that stage where only something deemed "radical" by many can actually change our collective course. The gooey center might prefer we take our foot off the gas and still roll over the edge, but at a more seemingly controlled rate of speed. The extreme right would prefer to cut the brake lines entirely if possible.
If these students are "radical" in mostly peacefully protesting against military violence and putting their own wellbeing and collegiate futures on the line, I think that's more a statement about just how terrible the problems really are, and that our recourse has to be strong and swift. Sometimes the only way to defeat cancer is chemotherapy. We're in that moment as a society.
I guess it remains to be seen if we'll allow those with the courage to do the RIGHT thing in hard times to actually turn this car around, or if those who prefer the status quo, even if it's dysfunctional and destructive will prevail.
I'm squarely on the side of people who value human lives and our collective wellbeing as a society and a species, over power and money.