All out for May Day!

May 1 is May Day—International Workers’ Day. It began in the United States a long time ago during the struggle for the eight-hour work day, but that history is not well known here, and for good reason. The scions of capitalism who feed us their ideology don’t want workers and oppressed people to know their own history of struggle.

But this year, like every year, workers around the world will take part in demonstrations, meetings and other actions to mark May Day. In Cuba and other socialist countries, May Day is a holiday that celebrates the role of workers in creating a new society.

In 2006, immigrant workers and their supporters revived the tradition of May Day in the United States by holding demonstrations and work stoppages involving millions of workers.

This year May Day will be commemorated  with demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit and other cities and towns from coast to coast. Once again, immigrant workers and their allies will mobilize to demand pro-worker immigration reform and an end to the detentions, raids and deportations that have torn apart thousands of families.

U.S.-born workers have every reason to join their immigrant sisters and brothers to make it clear to the bosses and the ruling class that “no worker is illegal.” Solidarity among all workers is a necessary component to combating racism and creating the kind of unity that can turn back the growing attacks on all workers and the oppressed.

The wealth created by the working class is being sucked into the bottomless pit of capitalist greed at an ever-increasing rate. Workers’ tax dollars have been diverted by the trillions to bail out banks and corporations and to fund the Pentagon’s continuing wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, unemployment and mass layoffs are soaring. Wages, benefits and pensions are being slashed. Budget cuts threaten what remains of social services. Health care is out of reach for tens of millions. Quality education is but a costly dream for many youth. Home foreclosures and evictions are devastating cities and communities while homelessness grows.

May Day is a perfect opportunity for working people of all backgrounds, ages and nationalities to come together to demand social and economic justice as well as show solidarity with immigrant workers. Whether the slogan is “A job is a right” or for a “Moratorium on foreclosures and evictions,” now is the time for workers to assert their demands.

As the capitalist collapse continues its downward spiral, workers will continue to find great contradictions in a system that creates fabulous wealth for a small minority and increasing poverty and misery for the majority. Objective conditions will create the basis for a growing understanding by workers that their aims and needs are irreconcilable with those of the capitalists.

Every demand made for social and economic justice, every step forward in unity and solidarity, will hasten the day when workers as a class will be able to act in concert on their own behalf to reclaim the wealth they create and use it for the benefit of humanity, not for the profit of a wealthy few.