First Published: The Worker, for Hawaii, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 20, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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(WPS) In Haymarket Square Chicago, red flags were flying. One Hundred workers rallied at the site where almost a century ago workers shed their blood in the struggle for the eight hour day which marked the birth of May Day–International Workers Day. In the corner of the square stands a stone monument erected by the capitalists in memory of their cops killed protecting the profits of the owning class. Clenched fists filled the air as the people stepped on this monument to the rule of capital, tying on flags and banners until the old grey stone was a blaze of red.
At the New Jersey headquarters of Research Cottrell Inc., the company responsible for the murder of 51 workers at a West Virginia construction site, a delegation of workers ran a red flag up the company flag pole. They posted a notice on the door which began: “It is fitting that on our way to celebrate International Workers Day, a working class holiday you rich bastards have always hated, we should stop here to express our hatred of you and the outrageous incident you are responsible for.”
It was May Day 1978 and across the country from Atlanta to Seattle, from Hawaii to Boston, the red banner of the working class was flying. In Gastonia, North Carolina workers caravaned to the old Loray Mill, the site of the Gastonia Textile Strike in 1929. In Detroit 80 workers, Black, white, Latino and Arab, veterans, youth and students held a militant three mile march to a rally under the shadow of the Rouge Plant. Afterwards a car caravan went to the site where 4 workers killed in the hunger march of 1932 were buried. An auto worker from the Chrysler Sterling plant gave a moving speech there and several older workers who remembered the hunger march said they were glad to see May Day celebrated again.
All in all, in 24 cities, workers held militant marches and rallies. They were sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party, National United Workers Organization, Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The banners read: Stand Up and Fight, We’re Tired of Being Driven Down, Pushed Around and Sold Out! Workers Unite to Lead the Fight Against All Oppression! Down With the System of Wage Slavery!
Fighters from some of the sharpest battles of the past year joined together in common cause. In Oakland, California, many fighters from the International Hotel eviction battle, including one 80 year old tenant who was very sick but said he just couldn’t miss May Day, joined a powerful rally and march of 400.
Across the country, from the struggle against the police murder of Joe Torres in Houston, Texas, to the tremendous three and a half month long strike of the coal miners, people summed up the lessons and advances from these battles and talked about the future. All this raised sharp questions about what is the road forward.
How can the working class step forward to change its own conditions and to play a powerful role in shaping society as a whole? Do we limit ourselves to fighting year after year just to keep our heads above water in a cesspool that gets deeper every year? Or do we forge a movement of our class that will hit at every evil of the capitalist system to get at the cause behind them all and eventually sweep away the capitalist system of wage slavery once and for all?
This was an important question addressed in the coalfields in a speech by the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Bob Avakian. This rally of 50 people in Madison, West Virginia, District 17, was also addressed by a member of the Miners Right To Strike Committee. The atmosphere was tense. Earlier that week the Chief of Police had threatened to arrest the first person to speak at the rally. Screaming and red in the face, he told a delegation of workers, “If we let this get started, who knows where it will stop.” The rally went ahead.
The guy from the Miners’ Committee spoke to the need for the workers to take up the fight against all the misery the capitalists bring down on the people: unemployment, oppression of national minorities, the threat of a new world war. In city after city, members of the National United Workers Organization brought home the same theme.
In Cincinnati, the May Day march began at the site where the National Guard Headquarters was set up during the massive rebellions in the ghettos in 1968. The choice of the march signified the determination of the working class- to stand with all the oppressed people of the world in struggle against the capitalists.
The international struggle of the working class was brought out sharply this year. On May Day the workers declared that they are part of a single worldwide working class, with a common cause and a common future. It was in this spirit that the workers proclaimed their stand on May Day: Down With U.S. and Soviet War Moves! From Palestine to Africa to Panama–U.S. Imperialists Out! Support the Just Struggles of the People of the World!
In many cities, speakers from the African Liberation Support Committee spoke about the just struggles of the African people for liberation and the struggle against the oppression of Black people here in the U.S. The Iranian Student Association also spoke in many cities, about the growing movement in Iran against the fascist Shah and pointed to the inspiration U.S. workers’ struggles such as the miners’ strike give to workers worldwide.
Around the world millions of workers took to the streets on this, the International Workers Day. In Istanbul, Turkey over 100,000 defied authorities and demonstrated in Taksim Square where Turkish police murdered 34 people at a May Day rally last year.
In Santiago Chile, the military dictatorship said that the only assembly they would tolerate was for a speech by President Pinochet at the junta headquarters. Hundreds defied the fascists and marched on Plaza Bulnes, in the heart of downtown Santiago, chanting “Liberty, liberty.” 200 were clubbed and arrested. One man said, “Young people like my son will not accept a police state in Chile. I am proud he was arrested.”
This year as several thousand workers in the U.S. extended our hands to our fellow workers in other countries, there was a spirit of confidence that in the years to come there would be millions of American workers taking to the streets on May Day.
In recent years May Day has been revived in the U.S. The Revolutionary Communist Party has played an important role in rebuilding the tradition of May Day in this country and this year at May Day, the speakers from the RCP were a high point in the celebrations. In a lively way speakers from the RCP showed how the communists do not have any interests apart from the working class as a whole, but while joining in the battles the workers are waging today, proudly, openly and confidently stand for the historic goal of our class: revolution and the elimination of exploitation of man by man.
The revolutionary spirit and the strong sense of the historic mission of the working class in all the May Day demonstrations this year was even stronger than in past years. This reflected an important victory in a struggle inside the Revolutionary Communist Party against a group of opportunists called the Jarvis/Bergman clique.
This bunch gave a time worn, dead end answer to the question of which way forward for the workers’ struggle. They did not think that workers were capable of lifting their heads to see beyond today’s struggles to a bigger goal, a broader struggle–as if there was no more to life than daily bread. They opposed the slogan “Workers Unite to Lead the Fight Against All Oppression,” in favor of “more immediate” and less “idealistic” themes.
The character of this year’s May Day celebrations was a living rebuke to these people and a clear example of the fact that the defeat of these condescending would-be saviours is a victory for the workers. In some areas of the country where this clique was able to do some damage to the Party before meeting defeat, the May Day celebrations were smaller this year, but workers and Party members were glad to be rid of them and their influence. Their defeat cleared the way for a united May Day across the country which was more politically conscious, more powerful in its message than before.
This year, May Day was taken out in a bold way as workers went out broadly in the plants and communities and put May Day on the agenda. In San Francisco, in one hiring hall, the union hacks tried to kick out the workers leafletting for May Day, but the rank and file workers in the union hall voted unanimously for them to stay and talk about May Day.
Sound trucks wound through the hollers in the coalfields, stopping for mini-rallies and leafletting and a number of workers came to May Day from reading the leaflets. In the auto plants in Detroit there was a lot of discussion and struggle about whether or not to take up building for May Day in the midst of union elections. Members of Auto Workers United to Fight (affiliated with the NUWO) struggled hard to point out that you can’t limit yourself to cleaning up the junk in your own back yard when you are living in a huge garbage clump that’s producing new refuse every day. In Seattle, Washington, a colorful march wound through the downtown are to the beat of drums. As the march passed one restaurant several workers came running out with clenched fists raised.
Compared to the millions of workers in this country the number of people celebrating May Day this year were relatively small, but just about everyone who saw or heard about the demonstrations had something to say about May Day and many expressed interest and support.
The few thousands who celebrated this year did not speak simply for themselves–they spoke to the hopes and dreams of all the workers, the real interests of our class as a whole and to the great potential of the workers to lead the people in turning the world rightside up. People left the May Day demonstrations this year to go back into the midst of the many battles they and their fellow workers are waging throughout the year. They left with a spirit of confidence and a better understanding of how to build a movement today toward the future that May Day represents.