Organizers in Olympia’s activist community have invited the public to Sylvester Park to help plan for the annual May Day celebrations.
Sylvester Park, Olympia directions
-
2:00pm
Share ideas, dreams, and visions for May Day in Olympia. There will also be music, a really free market, and free food.
Whose Streets?
Ancient Tradition
May Day (on May 1st) is an ancient Northern Hemisphere spring festival, often a public holiday.
May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.
As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint’s Day. In the twentieth and continuing into the twenty-first century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.
May Day was also celebrated by some early European settlers of the American continent. In some parts of the United States, May Baskets are made. These are small baskets usually filled with flowers or treats and left at someone’s doorstep. The giver rings the bell and runs away. The person receiving the basket tries to catch the fleeing giver. If they catch the person, a kiss is exchanged.
Modern May Day ceremonies in the U.S. vary greatly from region to region and many unite both the holiday’s “Green Root” (pagan) and “Red Root” (labor) traditions.
May 1st is also recognized in the U.S. as Law Day.
International Workers Day
International Workers’ Day (also known as May Day) is a celebration of the international labor movement. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many other countries.
International Workers’ Day commemorates the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The police there were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when, according to some accounts, an unidentified person threw a bomb at them. The police reacted by shooting unarmed workers, killing dozens of demonstrators and several of their own officers. Reliable witnesses testified all the pistol flashes came from the center of the street where the police were standing, and none from the crowd. Moreover, initial newspaper reports made no mention of firing by civilians. A telegraph pole at the scene was filled with bullet holes, all coming from the direction of the police.
In 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International’s second congress in 1891.
Subsequently, the May Day Riots of 1894 occurred. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on “all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace.” The congress made it “mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.”
In many countries, the working classes sought to make May Day an official holiday, and their efforts largely succeeded. May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs, usually at dawn. May Day has been an important official holiday in countries such as the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.
In the United States and Canada, however, the official holiday for workers is Labor Day in September. This day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who organized the first parade in New York City. After the Haymarket Massacre, US President Grover Cleveland feared that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the affair. Thus he moved in 1887 to support the Labor Day that the Knights supported.
In 1955, the Catholic Church dedicated May 1 to “Saint Joseph The Worker”. The Catholic Church considers Saint Joseph the patron saint of (among others) workers and craftsmen.
Far-right governments have traditionally sought to repress the message behind International Workers’ Day, with fascist governments in Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain abolishing the workers’ holiday. The 1st of May, in the US, is celebrated as Loyalty Day.
Haymarket Memorial
Haymarket Archives
