Celebrate Mayday!

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 09:23 PM

Unite and unite and let us all unite/For summer is a come unto day/And whither we are going we all will unite/In the merry morning of May.

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Art Thieme
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 09:15 PM

There hasn't been an 8 hour day in the U.S. since Raegan busted the wimpy white collar and easily broken Air Traffic Controllers Union strike. Ever since unions have become less and less effective here. Terribly sad. All the battles and strikes won and lost --- and martyred workers sincere efforts tossed away and forgotten like so much filthy dishwater.

Good people, it wasn't Socialism the Russians ought to've tossed away. It was totalitarianism !!! Any sane person with a whit of smarts knows that Socialism and Democracy can work well together unless the military and the corporate structure conspire to keep that from happening. It is in the huge best interest of the majority of people that Socialism be chosen and implimented as the way to go. BUT, as Utah Phillips told me once, "If elections could really change anything, they'd be illegal." George Bush, his cohort trillionaires and their military would kill every one of us before allowing that to happen.

May Day is still a good day to sing those old songs though ---and remember. Don't mourn. Organize!!!!!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: masato sakurai
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 09:01 PM

May Day from CHAMBERS'S BOOK of DAYS: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in connection with the Calendar (an electronic reprint of the original: Chambers's Book of Days. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1879).

~Masato

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Hawker
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 07:36 PM

I'll be down Padstow with the Oss!
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 07:32 PM

Looks like both "wings" co-opted May Day and tried to politicize it. When I was a kid, we made May baskets and filled them with candy and left them on the doorstep of people we liked in the nighborhood. A few years ago, we revived May Day at the Museum where I worked, doing dancing around the May Pole and making May baskets to bring home with candy and little gifts. Sounds a lot more fun than Workers Unite!

Jerry

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 06:35 PM

Bennet

You've certainly raised an interesting point about politics and traditions (including American isolationism).

America has Labor Day in September. IMHO the Founding Fathers wouldn't have wanted to have anything to do with left-wing Mayday celebrations. 1 May has workers' rights resonance in continental Europe but hardly any in Britain - except for the people who will be demonstrating against globalisation next week.

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 06:13 PM

Ha ha beat you GUEST

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 06:10 PM

Yes, well, doing it properly means being up at dawn to observe and dance in the sunrise - preferably with a Jack-in-the-green - possibly achieved by not going to bed the night before, and finding a hostelry to open for breakfast. And doing it on 1 May, not the designated Bank Holiday Monday

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 06:01 PM

Hooray!! Hooray!! It's the First of May!
Outside screwing starts today!

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 05:56 PM

Well what we do in England on the night before is to have a bit of a do in the pub, head for the woods,have a bit of a bonfire and a few jars,sing some songs, find a quiet spot (some serious pagans dont bother with a quiet spot) and do the ancient ritual to ensure good crops for the coming (sic) year, have a few more jars,head back for town and then: well ifyouve go any energy left you process around with whatever combination of morris dancing/trade union banner carrying suits you. personally, I feel the occasion is all the better for both. It's us against them, life against death, growth against decay, fun against constraints, relaxes against braces, music against silence, I cant say I do it every year, but I do know that when I do I feel the better for it.Hoist the Maypole!!(That stinking idol, as that boring old twat puritan Stubbes called it). And, in the old saying "Hooray Hooray the First of May/ Outdoor fucking starts today"

Subject: RE: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 05:41 PM

It was the 20th century Johnny come lately leftwing political shenanigans that ruined the 1st May pagan fertility celebrations ....

Subject: Celebrate Mayday!
From: Bennet Zurofsky
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 04:36 PM

A pet project of mine is to try to restore Mayday to its rightful status as the International Workers Day and to celebrate accordingly. Although the celebration of May 1 as a leftist holiday seems to have begun in the U.S. (in connection with the fight for the eight-hour day), its association with Russian Communism seems to have killed it on these shores. The right has even tried to co-opt the day by re-naming it "Law Day" and holding courthouse observances!

The main thing that I have done is to work with the American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark in Haledon, N.J., so that we have now had four annual Mayday festivals featuring music associated with the labor movement. This year, my group, The Solidarity Singers of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council, will not only perform but will also release its first cd, "Solidarity Can't Be Beat!"

If you're in the area, please join us. I would also like to hear about other Mayday events and encourage people to start more of them.

Here's our announcement for the Botto House event:

Celebrate MAYDAY! The International Workers Holiday!

And the NEW CD by the SOLIDARITY SINGERS of the IUC!

SOLIDARITY CAN'T BE BEAT!

The BOTTO HOUSE/AMERICAN LABOR MUSEUM 83 Norwood Street, Haledon, NJ [phone]

MAYDAY FESTIVAL! May 1, 2002 At 7 p.m.

Also appearing: ANNE FEENEY! Mother Jones a/k/a Peggy Orner! YOUNG and YOUNGER! & Paul Robeson a/k/a Marvin Kazembe Jefferson!

This will be the first time that SOLIDARITY CAN'T BE BEAT! will be offered for sale anywhere! ONLY $15.00!

For mail orders send $15.00 to: Bennet Zurofsky; 744 Broad Street, Suite 1807; Newark, N.J. 07102; [phone].

This event is FREE! Refreshments too!

Labor Donated