May Day around the world
War, immigrant bashing, and poverty fuel angry
protests
By Leslie Feinberg
May Day arose out of class battles by workers against their
bosses in the United States in 1886. The first May Day
combatants demanded an eight-hour workday. Since then, the
demands and struggles that arise in regions and countries
around the world on May Day reflect the living relationship of
forces between workers and peasants, and the wealthy owning
classes that exploit them.
This year May Day reflected a variety of issues facing
working people. Reports rounded up from diverse world media
sources include the following.
Just days before the U.S. upped the ante against this
revolutionary Caribbean island by adding Cuba to its
never-ending list of "terrorist" countries in its crosshairs,
1.2 million Cubans jammed into Havana's Revolution
Square. There, the ever-defiant President Fidel Castro
pledged, "We will not lower our flags before the hegemonic
superpower that today dictates its orders to lackeys and
boot-lickers" in Latin America. He noted, "This has been the
largest demonstration in Cuba since the triumph of the
Revolution" in 1959.
Across the 14 provinces of Cuba, seven million out of the
population of 11.2 million marched and rallied in support
of their country. They joined Fidel Castro in castigating the
governments of Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico,
Peru and Uruguay for supporting a U.S.-sponsored resolution in
the United Nations condemning Cuba. The mass demonstrations
also demanded freedom for the Cuban 5--prisoners being held in
U.S. for the "crime" of monitoring right-wing terrorist groups
operating against Cuba from U.S. soil.
Protesters marched through the streets of Colombia's
capital Bogotá on May Day, dressed up in costumes
similar to those worn by the hated death-squad paramilitaries
that the U.S. supports. The demonstration hit the Pentagon's
"Plan Colombia." The Andean country is the hemisphere's
number-one recipient of U.S. aid. But the more than $2 billion
that Washington will sink into the nation by the end of 2005 is
solely for U.S. military intervention against those fighting
for social change in their country.
Corporate news reports in the days before May 1 forewarned
that opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez might clash with his supporters on May Day. But
there were no reports of any mass outpouring for the
counter-revolutionary business and banking class that tried to
oust Chávez in a recent CIA-supported coup. Instead,
alternative media sources like FrontlinesNewspaper reported
that hundreds of thousands of working and poor people poured
into the streets of Caracas--as they did to bring
Chávez back to power after the capitalist coup
d'état of April 13-14. Many proudly wore the red berets
and tee shirts of the neighborhood organizations known as
"Bolivarian circles"--neighborhood groups armed to defend the
revolution. The Bolivarian circles were one of the primary
military targets of the bosses' coup regime.
Fidel Castro was right on target when he told the May Day
crowd in Havana that the Latin American governments attacking
Cuba have no ground to do so. Their servile relationship with
imperialism has not raised the standard of living of the
masses. Just the opposite. Imperialist globalization has left
these countries wracked with economic and political crisis.
Argentina is a good example and one of the three largest
South American economies. But the insatiable appetite of the
International Monetary Fund has deepened poverty, unemployment
and suffering in the country. Mass anger erupted in December,
toppling the Argentine government. On May Day, tens of
thousands turned out to press their demands for economic
and social justice in four protests in the capital and 10
other cities.
In Haiti, several thousand members of the
National Peoples Party (PPN) marched through the streets of
Port-au-Prince carrying signs and banners demanding land to
those who cultivate it, an end to the "free-trade zones" on the
Dominican border and agrarian reform. Farmers in Haiti are
generally the poorest laborers in the poorest country in the
Western Hemisphere. Since the IMF forced the Haitian government
to open its markets, Haitian farmers have to compete with big
U.S. agribusinesses that drive down prices until local
competitors are out of business. Prices then shoot up, leaving
urban dwellers hungry.
A specter is haunting Europe
As the U.S. unabashedly continues to arm the Israeli settler
state against the Palestinian people, anger is growing--even
within the NATO countries that the Pentagon tries to lead into
its vortex of imperialist war.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Greece burned an
effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon outside the U.S.
Embassy in Athens. Thousands assembled in Syndagma Square in
the central city. They unfurled a red banner that read, "Long
live international solidarity to Palestine."
And in Turkey, where government and police repression
make May Day an event requiring great courage, the theme of the
Istanbul rally this year was, "A thousand greetings to the
Palestinian resistance."
Europe is becoming more volatile as the capitalist
economies slump while unemployment and the cost of living soar.
The political lurch to the right since counter-revolution
overturned workers' states on the continent is arousing
resistance.
In France, an estimated 1.5 million French
anti-fascists of all nationalities flooded into streets in
Paris, Lyon, Rennes, Montpellier, Marseille and other
working-class strongholds. The huge and powerful outpouring
eloquently denounced the racist, anti-immigrant policies of
neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen. The former torturer of Algerian
liberation fighters came in second in the first round of
France's presidential election. The progressive vote had been
split among many candidates.
Police fired water cannons and tear gas at protesters in
Berlin on the eve of May Day who took to the streets to
oppose neo-Nazis. Left-wing youth fought hand-to-hand with
police, who claimed 62 officers injured in Prenzlauer Berg and
21 in Kreuzberg. Cops protected an ultra-right-wing march in
one of Berlin's northern suburbs by members of the National
Democratic Party, keeping anti-fascists from getting their
hands on the neo-Nazis. Other ultra-rightist marches were
scheduled to take place in Goettingen, Mannheim, Dresden,
Ludwigshafen, Fuerth and Heidelberg.
Police attacked progressive demonstrators in the northern
city of Hamburg. Cops arrested a dozen anti-fascist
activists. In the western city of Frankfurt, anti-Nazis
tried to block a neo-Nazi march by igniting tires in the
streets. (BBC, May 1)
Workers and the poor in other countries across Europe are
feeling the toll of the capitalist economic crisis and the
ensuing anti-labor offensive.
Tens of thousands of Italians protested in Bologna
against attempts by the right-wing Berlusconi government to
repeal a law that workers had won to protect their jobs.
Massive demonstrations also took place in Milan,
Turin, Napoli and Rome.
In Spain, center-right government plans to slash subsidies
for unemployed workers sparked mass opposition in Madrid
and some 75 other demonstrations across the
country.
Several thousand workers and progressive activists gathered
outside Brussels for the May Day festival of the Belgian
Workers' Party (PTB). Organizers and invited guests discussed
the Congo--at one time a Belgian colony and now wracked by an
imperialist-incited civil war--and a report from a trip in
solidarity with Iraq. The parents of young anti-globalization
activist Carlo Giuliani, who was murdered by the Italian cops
in Genoa last summer, spoke, as did trade-union militants known
as the Clabecq 13. PTB General Secretary Nadine Rosa-Rosso
reported on the recent challenge of the French fascist
Jean-Marie Le Pen and the aggressive worldwide war crusade of
U.S. President Bush.
One invited speaker was Tony Murphy of the International
Action Center, who reported on the April 20 anti-war and
pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco.
He discussed the role of Marxists in the anti-war movement in
the United States.
Bicyclists converged on the U.S. Embassy in London as
thousands took part in anti-capitalist, pro-environmental pro
tests in the British capital. (Reuters, May 1) The BBC reported
that about 6,000 police massed against a demonstration of
10,000 anti-globalization activists who targeted London's
well-heeled Mayfair district.
After years of imperialist dismemberment of the former
socialist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, thousands of
workers from the two most important unions in Serbia
demonstrated on May Day in Belgrade for jobs and wage
increases. News accounts noted they voiced their rejection of
the so-called "Transition" period to a NATO-dominated,
neocolonial capitalist economy. And amidst economic hard times
in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, workers marched
in the capital Zagreb to protest government attempts to
curtail labor rights.
May Day at a glance
Detention of immigrants by a private prison corporation was
the focus of the May Day demonstration in Sydney,
Australia. Police on horseback tried to disperse
activists who surrounded the offices of Australasian
Correctional Management to "imprison" company executives so
they would "know what it feels like, in the way that they
imprison refugees."
Iran is enduring intense imperialist pressure after George
W. Bush labeled the country one of the "Axis of Evil" targets.
In Tehran some 5,000 workers marched against mounting inflation
and low wages. Clothing factory workers who swelled the ranks
of the demonstration said they had not been paid in 14
months.
In Japan, where workers are reeling from the plunging
market economy, a total of 670,000 workers took part in several
protests against wage cuts and layoffs. An estimated 35,000
demonstrated in Tokyo, where near-record unemployment is
devastating workers' lives.
As conditions of life worsen under capitalism, a reported
100,000 rallied at Karl Marx Square in Moscow,Russia, at
a May Day event organized by the Communist Party. Party leader
Gennady Zyuganov pointed out to those gathered that more youth
are taking part in the May Day celebrations than in recent
years. Rallies were also slated in about 500 cities and towns
across the former Soviet Union.
Almost two decades after the bloody CIA-engineered coup in
Chile, protesters burned a U.S. flag at the May Day
rally in Santiago.
Indonesian police unleashed violence against workers in the
country's second-biggest city of Surabaya. Thousands of
laborers across Indonesia marched for better conditions
of work and life. Seven thousand police outnumbered some 3,000
May Day protesters in Jakarta.
When labor activists marched through the center of Kuala
Lumpur in Malaysia, with banners demanding more rights
for plantation workers, police arrested at least 17. Organizers
pointed out that "May Day is an act of solidarity, recognized
even by the state. The police action mocks fundamental rights
of workers to assemble peacefully."
More than 2,000 sex-industry workers held a torchlight march
in Calcutta, India, to demand social welfare benefits
and an end to their criminalization by the state. Radha Sardar,
speaking for a nongovernmental organization working in the "red
light" districts, said, "Sex workers are a part of society, and
as such they are exercising their right to join the
international working class in celebrating May Day."
May Day protests also reportedly took place in Manila in
the Philippines where the U.S. has extended its "war on
terror" by beefing up Pentagon bases and troops inside the
archipelago; Damascus, Syria; Calcutta, India;
south Korea, South Africa and other African
countries; Mexico, Ecuador, Switzerland and
Sweden.
Reprinted from the May 16, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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