Peace, Land, and Bread: Providence celebrates May Day

"We are here to share one simple truth: Workers make the world run so workers should run the world."

Providence knows how to celebrate May Day, with at least three events happening, one after another, from noon until 7 pm.

The first event, May Day: Remembrance & Resurgence, happened in the shadow of the Roger Williams statue in Prospect Terrace on Congdon Street. (Prospect Terrace owes its existence, in part, to the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a work program for the unemployed created as part of FDR’s New Deal.)

“International Workers’ Day was created to commemorate the 1886 general strike in favor of an eight-hour work week,” said Adit Sabnis, Organizing Director of the Graduate Labor Organization (GLO) at Brown University, who also acted as emcee for the event, introducing more than a dozen speakers. “That was workers fighting for their dignity and for something that we now take for granted - the eight-hour workday. The workers were targeted by the government, attacked, and persecuted. That general strike started on May 1st, and to commemorate the groundwork they laid for us, we celebrate International Workers’ Day or May Day.”

Sabnis continued:

“We have reached very unprecedented times with the current federal administration. But the lessons of May Day serve to remind us of who, ultimately, has the power.

“I like to keep in mind the fight for $15. I remember hearing about this 10 years ago, yet the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 cents an hour. However, when workers took matters into their own hands, came together, unionized, and fought for their contracts, they ultimately got the better pay and conditions. Workers made that happen. The people made that happen. Not the politicians.

“That’s what makes this moment so important. We need to ask ourselves, "ow can we confront fascism and authoritarianism and win? How did Crazy Horse keep his people’s indigenous land for as long as he did? When the government segregated our schools and left Black Americans and people of color zero resources, how did Bobby Seale help launch America’s first free school meal program for children? How did workers fight for their dignity when the government denied them their rightful support? They came to together, cared for one another, unified, and took back the power that the authoritarian structures held over them.

“This federal administration is powerful, but we’ve seen where the real power lies, right? It’s with us when we’re unified. Fascism relies on division -separating vulnerable communities, and scapegoating them - whether it’s immigrants, trans individuals, or even our colleagues in comrades in Gaza. It’s not lost on me, as a higher ed worker myself, that every single university and institute of higher education in Gaza is no longer standing. Whether it’s Mahmoud Khalil or Rasha Alawieh disappeared off the streets or the mass deportation of people to a concentration camp in El Salvador with zero due process, fascism is hoping it can break our unity with one another - and it’s up to us to stand up for one another, to have each other’s backs, and make sure that we are the ones keeping each other safe.

“In that spirit, let’s get organized together. Each organization represented here today will have a different set of skills, institutional knowledge, and resources, and different stories about how this administration has impacted them and ways we can fight back. So let’s get connected. Let’s figure out how we can help each other, get plugged into each other’s networks, and make sure we can continue to have each other’s backs beyond today.

“From the belly of the beast and when the world is dark, it’s our job to be the beacon of light that can’t be diminished. Today is just the first step. I’m going to ask that we use today to turn our light into a spark that will only grow from here. Let’s start building our united front here today. How does that sound?”

Here’s the video, including all speakers:

---

The second event, May Day: No More Business as Usual, began at Providence City Hall at 3 pm. I was late to the event but caught up with them as they rallied outside Textron’s world headquarters on Westminster Street. Textron is one of the leading weapons manufacturers in the world. The Providence Workers’ Defense organized the event and included speakers from PrYSM, the George Wiley Center, and more.

Providence Worker’s Defense sent the following press release ( I adjusted some of the wording):

“Since May 1, 1886 [this day] has been celebrated globally by billions of working-class people. Providence Worker’s Defense, local organizations, and people continue this tradition of revolutionary militancy with a rally and march in Providence. The call for May 1 is Land, Peace, and Bread. The rally and march called for an end to capitalism, genocide, and occupation, land and housing for all workers, and freedom for all class war prisoners.

“We answer the call and challenge of the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza as well as the call of our people.

“We the General Federation of Trade Unions In Gaza address this call to you on the eve of International Workers’ Day affirming that the struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism.” - Basheer Al-Sisi, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza City of Gaza, Occupied Palestine.

“Women & nonbinary people of color have been holding the work of care for generations, caring for our families, our neighbors, our lands, and ourselves. Capitalism tries to divorce from all these, but it is in caring for each other and caring for our environment where our true power and liberation lies.” - Justice Gaines, SistaFire, Providence.

“Providence Worker’s Defense is a working-class organization formed to increase militancy and solidarity in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence Worker’s Defense believes and organizes around these principles and values: Land for the people, homes for all; Peace, an end to the war on the working class everywhere; Bread for all, and dignified and good work controlled by the working class. We don’t believe there is an electoral path to liberation, but that the party system is just two teams playing in the same stadium. May 1 is a global workers’ holiday and demonstration. We will assert our part in joining working class movements around the world.”

---

The Party of Socialism and Liberation organized the third May Day rally of the day, gathering at the Providence City Hall at 5:30 pm. The event featured speakers from PVD CORE, a caucus within the Providence Teachers’ Union; UFCW Local 328, the union of Seven Stars workers, the first Starbucks union in Rhode Island at One Financial Place, and unionized library workers.

“We are gathered here today to commemorate International Workers’ Day,” said Yosan, a proud organizer and a union member in Brown University’s Graduate Labor Organization, an organizer in Brown University’s Palestine Solidarity Caucus, and an organizer in the Party for Socialism and Liberation, who emceed the event. “All around the world, people are taking to the streets to stand up to the injustices we face under the system dominated by millionaires and billionaires. The working class does all of the work. Without our labor, nothing in this world would function. All the bankers and CEOs do is sit back and collect profits while dreaming up new ways to exploit us.

Yosan continued:

“Why should we let them exploit us without a fight? Why should there be any billionaires at all? We are here to share one simple truth: Workers make the world run so workers should run the world.

“Today it’s important that we acknowledge the roots of International Workers’ Day as the ruling class attempts to dilute and erase our radical history. On May 4th, 1886 thousands of workers held a demonstration in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois to demand that local and federal authorities uphold the eight-hour workday. In response, the Chicago police attacked protestors, and martial law was established across the country the very next morning. In response, every union across the country was banned.

“Sounds like a lot with what’s happening today.

“The government’s repressive response revealed just how influential the labor movement was as it created points of unity around the class struggle that connected multiple sectors of society. The labor movement in the U.S. was rapidly growing. Workers were forming unions throughout the country, organizing to stop the exploitation of their labor and to change the cruel and dangerous conditions they were forced to toil under. After the Haymarket affair, labor leaders and workers were brutalized, surveilled, and punished by the state, but this historic moment led to the establishment of May Day, now celebrated every year on May 1st to honor the victims of exploitation, to remember the rich history of our labor organizing, and to underscore the importance and necessity for fighting for our collective liberation.

“More than a century later, the landscape of labor today has transformed. We live in a highly globalized world where all companies depend on hundreds of thousands of workers to create, move, and sell everything across oceans, borders, and nations. Despite this geographic distance, this globalization has connected us as siblings in the international working class. Class and labor issues, now more than ever, are being connected in new ways and we must be ready to respond to this moment. This May Day the Trump Administration is trying to destroy our rights on all fronts. Trump is conducting mass layoffs of public sector workers and gutting every program that serves the common good or helps working-class people survive.

“Trump is trampling on civil liberties like due process and free speech through his war on immigrants and crack down on student protestors who oppose the genocide in Gaza. He is making it easier for corporations to destroy our environment.

“We need to understand that these attacks are part of a single project to expand the wealth and power of the billionaire class. If we want to win, we need to build one united movement to fight back. We need to defeat the attacks from the Trump Administration, but we also can’t go back to the status quo. It’s getting harder and harder for working people to make ends meet and live a decent life. No matter who is in office, people have continued to live paycheck to paycheck while our tax dollars are sent overseas to massacre thousands of people in Gaza and around the world.

“We need to build our vision of the future. We need to build a life where people can live comfortably in their homes and communities. A future where our people have homes, education, and healthcare. A future where our people are no longer crushed by the boots of U.S. Imperialism and state power here and abroad. A future with dignity for all.”