Article and Photo by By Sheri Levisay - The Argus Leader, May 2, 2007

It's hard to get people to a rally about workers rights on a beautiful 70-degree day in Sioux Falls.

In fact, it's hard to get people interested on any day in Sioux Falls, said Mike Beaver, one of the organizers of a May Day Rally on Tuesday at Van Eps Park.

"People don't care," Beaver said.

But six people did care enough to show up near the Minnehaha County Courthouse, trickling in between 4 and 5 p.m.

The majority of them are active with the Industrial Workers of the World, "a solidarity union interested in immigrants rights, both legal and illegal," Beaver said.

Some of them looked the part. Beaver wore a T-shirt saying, "Not my president." Various piercings, tattoos, red-streaked hair. One smoked a cigar, another a pipe. One carried a police-style riot shield.

Travis Stuckey, another organizer, showed up a bit late. "It's the first time I've ever worked on May Day," he said.

He had passed out Spanish-language pamphlets at bus stops, near the John Morrell plant and other places where Hispanic workers were likely to gather.

As the activists waited, the discussion wandered from Cinco de Mayo to using cell phones to tell what time it is ("Man, you're paying $40 a month for a watch") to a new kind of dog food that reduces poop, then turned to the U.S. economy.

"There's maybe 20 years max before this country falls into the Third World" if we don't recover manufacturing jobs, Stuckey opined.

About 5:15, Stuckey went to his vehicle to pull out signs and literature. Chris Huska of Act Now to Stop War & End Racism exchanged pamphlets with Stuckey.

When they stood near Minnesota Avenue with signs, there were a few honks - hard to tell whether in accord or in anger.

None of the immigrants the group was trying to help showed up. But South Dakota's low pay and dearth of unions will keep these activists passing out workers rights pamphlets.

"It's needed here quite a bit," Beaver said. 

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By richard myers  - rtmyers@h2net.net

Happy Labor Day. In Denver, this will be a day of Wobbly laboring- a little organizing for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who are coming to the mile-high ciudad. There's a labor concert in Lafayette on September 14th. Immigrant workers in Denver hope to reprise their May Day success on September 30, and i'm one member of the outreach committee. It looks like an entire weekend of laboring.

Denver Wobs are in a curious historical circumstance, at least compared to recent decades when a regional director of the AFL-CIO lectured strikers to ignore the radicals among them. (In one example i was present at said lecture; the strikers later lost that strike.)

How times have changed. Today Wobblies are respected participants in Denver's vibrant Jobs With Justice coalition, and ATU bus drivers recently paid tribute on their website to a "Wobbly" who, in some small way, helped them to win their strike. It's even more exhilarating than discovering the AFL-CIO selling "I'm a little Wobbly" T-shirts for children.

While checking for emails relating to ongoing actions, i've encountered an article from the AFL-CIO website which gives me an OMFG moment. The article's title enticingly inquires: Labor Day-A Poor Cousin to May Day?

Perhaps i should resist the temptation to clinically appraise this missive by the AFL-CIO. It isn't exactly ground-breaking that someone speaking for the staid old federation publicly utters the word "proletarian," especially when they're quoting someone else. Yet this article was written by an "AFL-CIO managing editor," and i believe it is noteworthy that a federation long intent on legitimizing the global power of the United States, collaborating with the CIA to subvert radical unionism in Latin America and elsewhere, and willfully adopting September's Labor Day as a bulwark against the radicalism that May Day represents, should markedly change its own interpretation of May Day (see the AFL-CIO article, below.)

The article admits, "the symbolism of May Day-working people challenging corporate power-still causes fear among the top elite." And, "...just when you think historical events are just that-they come back stronger than ever."

I take issue with a couple of points. Describing May Day 2006 as a day that "...hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters took to the streets..." is a curious example of a labor organization downplaying the numbers in an action by working people. I marched- and saw the photos. Across the country, there were millions.

Is the AFL-CIO embarrassed that Labor Day parades have been cancelled (in Denver, for example) for lack of interest, yet an upstart mass movement of mostly un-organized working folk dares to appropriate entire city boulevards as the cops watch helplessly?

For those of us known to describe the AFL philosophy as selling labor peace to the bosses for the life of the contract, there is no marked sea change in the tendencies of mainstream labor. In a federation that derives financial benefit from business activities- selling insurance and issuing credit cards- the ethic of business unionism undoubtedly remains intact. More specifically, the AFL-CIO writer sees promise not so much in massive organizing, but in "political action on the way to the November elections."

Such tactics may endear labor officials to elected leaders in a pale imitation of their corporate counterparts, but they have brought mainstream labor to the present crisis. Ties to the Democratic Party are more albatross than auspicious fortune. At the merging of the AFL and the CIO, one in three workers in the U.S. was organized. Today it is fewer than one in ten. Union dues should build unions, not line the pockets of politicians.

Meanwhile paychecks diminish, prices rise, and pensions disappear. Union members remain isolated due to organization by craft, and workers are sometimes forced to cross picket lines or be fired. Unions compete for members, and membership raids are all too common.

Borders are barriers to workers, but not to corporations. Jobs are off-shored, visas bring guest workers, and working people have no say in the immigration policy that directly affects their jobs.

AFL-CIO constituent unions may describe themselves as "international," but cross-border ties between the AFL-CIO and foreign unions either remain an illusion or are prone to fail due to AFL-CIO control issues. We live in a global Enron economy, and workers of the world are uptight.

In such times, one cannot help but wonder what crisis mentality- or dare we hope? what spark of awareness- globalization and the AFL-CIO / CTW split may have wrought upon mainstream labor. Forgive us if we're prone to snatching at snippets. In "Labor Day-A Poor Cousin to May Day?" the first sentence that caught my eye includes this observation: "the radical origins of May Day are not contested." There is no immediate distancing to unequivocally protect a respectable mainstream federation from the "R" word. This suggests that, in the opinion of at least one important AFL-CIO writer, the federation may have become comfortable with- indeed may even value- the idea of radical unionism.

And then there's the conclusion to the article, which suggests a rough equivalence between the September holiday sanctioned by the conservative AFL-CIO bureaucracy and the U.S. government, and May Day- the International Labor Day, celebrated by mainstream labor organizations everywhere in this globalized world except in the United States. OMFG.

Let us hope it is more than a spark. But let us also observe whether, next May Day, the AFL-CIO seeks to bask in the bright shining light cast by a real mass movement.

The writer was a member, officer, steward, and safety rep in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for 33 years, and served briefly as an executive delegate to the Denver Area Labor Federation. He first joined the Industrial Workers of the World as a dual-carder in 1991.

Labor Day-A Poor Cousin to May Day?
Labor Day is more than just a Monday holiday marking the end of summer.

At least it should be. For many of us in the union movement, it's a time to hold Labor Day picnics and rallies and often, as this election year, move full-speed ahead in political action on the way to the November elections. It's also a time to reflect on the sacrifices of those U.S. workers who came before us-especially those who lost their lives in the fight for justice at the workplace.

While the radical origins of May Day are not contested, as labor historian David Montgomery notes:

Labor Day is more a complicated affair.

Only the United States celebrates Labor Day in September. Elsewhere around the globe, nations honor workers on May 1-May Day.

And that historical quirk is no accident.

Ironically, "May Day" was founded by U.S. workers-and taken away from them as a day to celebrate by a federal government fearful of the wave of large demonstrations for the eight-hour day and massive strikes for justice on the railroads, in the mines and factories that had begun in 1877.

Such an action may seem quaint now. But the symbolism of May Day-working people challenging corporate power-still causes fear among the top elite.

Just ask George W. Bush and the Republican extremists in Congress.

In 2003, Bush proclaimed May 1 as "Loyalty Day" when U.S. citizens should express allegiance to our nation and its founding ideals, we resolve to ensure that the blessings of liberty endure and extend for generations to come.

That same year, Congress, designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day."

Proclaimed Bush: