Throughout the day today, the DK Anti-Capitalist Group is presenting the sights and sounds of International Workers day, a holiday almost universally celebrated by the working people with the rather lone exception of the US. Contrary to the Cold War propaganda by which most Americans remain fully disinformed decades later, almost no MayDay celebrations involve trucks bearing missiles and stodgy apparatchik gerontocracies on podiums. Instead, we'll be taking a look at International Workers Day the way working people actually create and experience it all over the world. ~AG
Below the fold, International Workers Day in Istanbul.
After decades of violent suppression, in 2010 Turkish workers were able to enjoy a peaceful and celebratory International Workers Day in historically and symbolically significant Taksim Square:
There was conflict year after year over the venue of the observance as workers had not been allowed to celebrate May 1 in Taksim Square since 1977, when 37 people were killed when unidentified perpetrators opened fire on the public on what has come to be known as “Bloody May 1.” For labor unions, celebrations in Taksim have great symbolic importance because of what happened in 1977.
2010 in Taksim Square:
After the 1980 coup, all International Workers Day celebrations were deemed illegal by the Turkish authorities. However, despite brutal repression, the Turkish working classes refused to surrender, refused to be broken, and "1 Mayis" became an annual flash-point in the struggle of the Turkish people for political liberty and social and economic justice.
The international aspect of Workers Day and the workers movement is emblemized by the assembled Turkish workers singing the Italian partisan song "Bella Ciao".