May 1 is a holiday for workers all over the world -- except America, the country that branded May Day in the consciousness of workers everywhere on the occasion of Haymarket. Haymarket Square, Chicago, was the site of a May 1, 1886, anarchist-led rally in favor of the eight-hour workday that resulted in massive police violence and the unjust execution of eight anarchist "Haymarket martyrs."

The Anarchist movement has always had a close connection with May Day, first through Haymarket and then through the movement's consistent emphasis on internationalism -- bringing workers from all countries together. This year, May Day has particular significance: unprecedented levels of popular outrage have focused on the havoc that the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have wreaked on developing countries in the name of the so-called "democratic" governments that created and sponsor them. Working people everywhere are realizing that no one is immune from the repressive, unsustainable robbery that these governments perpetrate in the name of "free trade," and for which the WTO, IMF and World Bank are now the primary engines.

The evidence is everywhere: 

* Sweatshop labor that feeds off the labor market "reforms" the IMF/Word Bank demand 

* Destruction of the environment that results directly from IMF rapid-development policies; 

* IMF-created financial straitjackets that undermine the economic stability of societies that adopt them; 

* Unprecedented dislocations of peoples all over the developing world for purposes of creating vast new pools of cheap labor; and 

* Loss of control over the most basic issues of social development due to the ceding of decision -- making power to the WTO, IMF and World Bank.

May Day is about uniting working people around the world who are outraged by these problems - problems that transcend boundaries and are remarkably similar whatever country or region we come from and whatever degree of "development" the population has achieved. We reject the idea of "development" as defined by the WTO, IMF and World Bank, and call for the people to take back the power to determine their political, economic and social future.

May Day was taken from us during the Cold War era by a McCarthyite US government bent on convincing American workers that they were not subject to the same economic forces that afflicted workers in other countries. But American workers aren't fooled anymore. As the new Millennium dawns, we're retaking May Day as OUR holiday, and the beginning of a new movement to unite with workers throughout the world.

As anarchists, we are working for a society without bosses, bureaucrats or politicians, where the products of our work are shared equitably, where decisions about social policy are made by all those affected by them, and in which people are free to lead their own lives in freedom. This is a goal of workers everywhere; May Day is our day to express it.

Atlantic Anarchist Circle (NYC,) next meeting May 14th 1:30 339 Lafayette/ Bleecker Blackout Books 50 Ave.B 777-1967 www.panix.com\~blackout Industrial Workers of the World (NYC) IU-330 (FW's,) ABCNoRio Food Not Bombs 1-888-365-0000, free food for the homeless Bruno Group
 

May 8, 2000 | The A-Infos News Service | News about and of interest to anarchists