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Today, March 1, 2015, is May Day, which is also known as International Workers’ Day. May Day’s origins date back to May 1, 1886. It was on this day that 200,000 U.S. workers protested across the country. Their goal was an eight-hour workday and some of the protests turned violent. This became known as the Haymarket affair and it was declared a holiday by the International Socialist Conference three years later, reports Time. The holiday spread to the rest of the world, while never quite picking up steam in America. Instead, we have Labor Day, which takes place in September. This is likely due...

'tis mayday...good grief

May DayDate When Celebrated: Always May 1st May Day, the first of May is celebrated around the world. It has a number of meanings. In many other countries it is a celebration of spring and the coming of summer. It is celebrated with many spring flowers, many of them blooming right in your own backyard. To communist and socialist countries, it is a celebration for the workers. In many countries it is celebrated as part of a one to three day holiday. Of particular note, it is not a national holiday in the United States, except in Hawaii where...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia staged a huge May Day parade on Moscow's Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era on Thursday, with workers holding banners proclaiming support for President Vladimir Putin after the seizure of territory from neighboring Ukraine. Thousands of trade unionists marched with Russian flags and flags of Putin's ruling United Russia party onto the giant square beneath the Kremlin walls, past the red granite mausoleum of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin. Many banners displayed traditional slogans for the annual workers' holiday, like: "Peace, Labour, May". But others were more directly political, alluding to the...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Thousands of people arrived in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday for the annual May Day marches supporting immigrant rights. This year's march is themed, "Keeping families together," emphasizing the goal of ending deportations that split parents from their children. Other issues brought forward included increasing the federal minimum wage and immigrant worker rights. "It's the day that we remind the American public and the government that there's a great debt to our community," said Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "We work hard in every single industry, yet we...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Annual May Day marches are scheduled to take place Thursday in downtown Los Angeles. The demonstrations are a show of support for immigrants who aren’t in the United States legally. Marchers plan to urge Congress to pass legislation overhauling the immigration system by putting an end to deportations that divide families. The event typically causes a major traffic tie-up throughout downtown. The march itself will begin at 10 a.m. starting at the Chinatown Gateway, winding through the downtown area and ending at the Metropolitan Detention Center at 535 N. Alameda St., where a rally will be...

MOSCOW, May 01. /ITAR-TASS/. More than 100 thousand people are taking part in the May Day demonstration of trade unions in the centre of Moscow, the press service of the city’s main interior department reports. “The festive procession of trade unions from Vasilyevsky Spusk down Tverskaya Street has begun in the Russian capital,” the police department said. Who is taking part The column of the procession participants is led by Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, head of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FITUR) Mikhail Shnakov, head of the Moscow Trade Union Federation Sergei Chernov. Young people and students...

Russian workers will parade on Red Square on May 1 for the first time since 1991, organisers said on Tuesday, the latest Soviet tradition to be revived as a wave of patriotism sweeps the country. "Crimea has returned to Russia and the trade unions are returning to the Red Square!" said Sergei Chernov, president of Moscow's trade union federation told a news conference. International Workers Day, or May Day, was a key date in the Soviet calendar, instituted after the Bolshevik Revolution. The celebrations became increasingly elaborate in the later years of the USSR, with party bosses presiding over ranks...

Germans will find any reason to celebrate, so before the anarchy on May 1st can begin, they like to bid the evil spirits of winter goodbye by dressing up as witches and warlocks and dance around bonfires. Walpurgisnacht, the night from April 30th to May 1st takes its name from Saint Walburga, a Catholic Saint, whose feast day is celebrated on May 1st. She was was known as the protector against sorcery and witchcraft. Traditionally, it is the night when witches would gather together on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz mountain range in central Germany, and celebrate...

One of the perennial problems faced by the left is the inclination to either devolve into myopic, sectarian bands, or to remain so diffuse and broad in its appeal that it doesn’t accomplish much of anything. The latter tendency can be seen in the evolution of movements like Occupy Wall Street, which never quite formulated a cogent agenda, despite rendering aid to distressed victims of Hurricane Sandy this past year. Although, even this operation didn’t proceed quite as smoothly or as transparently as one would expect from an organization that ostensibly has no defined hierarchical structure. The message emblazoned upon...

Dick Durbin Defends Commies and Socialists at May Day Rally (Video) Posted by Jim Hoft on Thursday, May 2, 2013, 11:07 AM Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke at the Chicago May Day rally yesterday in Chicago. After his speech Durbin defended the communists and socialists at the leftist event. Rebel Pundit interviewed him: Rebelpundit: There is a large contingent of Communist Party USA, anarchists, international socialist groups here today that you just spoke to… Durbin: How do you know that? Rebelpundit: Because I’ve filmed them all day, and you just spoke to them, so I’d like to ask about your...

While covering a May Day rally in Manhattan’s Union Square on Wednesday, NBC New York reporter Ida Siegal was cornered and asked if her network planned to show the communist imagery the protesters were displaying. Hilarity ensued when Siegal immediately became defensive, denying she had seen any communist imagery and asking of the “Hammer-and-Sickle” flags: “What do they represent?” “You guys are with channel 4 news,” the videographer noted while addressing Siegal and her production team. “Are you guys going to show any of the people with Hammer and Sickle flags?” “I haven’t seen any of those flags,” Siegal replied...

On Wednesday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) joined nearly two thousand trade unionists, open communists, socialists, anarchists and illegal aliens at Chicago's May Day march and rally...

Police arrested more than a dozen people and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray after apparent anarchists and May Day marchers converged in downtown Seattle, throwing pipes, fireworks and rocks, lighting flares and sparking confrontations with officers. Protesters met at Seattle Central Community College at the busy intersection of Broadway and Pine Street and then spilled into the street, blocking traffic.

We're now getting reports of group smashing windows @ Broadway/Pine business. #SeaMayDay See more, including pictures at link.

The British government sought on Tuesday to limit the information it would disclose at a planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the K.G.B. who succumbed to radiation poisoning in London more than six years ago. The coroner hearing the case said that it may now be postponed. “Due to the complexity of the investigation which necessarily precedes the hearings,” the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, said, “it may not be possible to adhere” to the planned May 1 start date for the hearings. The inquest would be the first — and probably the only...

Internal Military Emails Reveal Details On bin Laden's Burial November 21, 2012 WASHINGTON – Internal emails among senior U.S. military officers indicate that no sailors watched Usama bin Laden's burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson and traditional Islamic procedures were followed during the ceremony. The emails, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily blacked out, but are the first public disclosure of government information about the Al Qaeda leader's death. The emails were released Wednesday by the Defense Department. Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011, by a Navy SEAL team...

  This is just downright amazing and frankly I'm surprised this video slipped under the radar. Here, a man who was born and lived for decades in the Soviet Union successfully converts an Occupier to Capitalism, to understand Israel's side of the Middle East conflict, and to pro-American ideals all within a 15 minute time frame. He even thanks the man afterwards. Give props where they're due, at least the Occupier was willing to hear the man out without screaming in his face, unlike almost every single one of them.  The video was shot during the May Day protests in...

One of the hallmarks of demonstrations organized by the left-as anyone who lives in this city can attest-is a consistently muddled message-or assemblage of messages-which often has little bearing on the theme ostensibly animating the protest movement in question. I’m not sure if the occupiers displaying the words of anti-USSR, Marxist Polish philosopher-turned anti-Marxist Solidarity activist-Leszek Kolakowski appreciate their import-considering the number of CCCP t-shirts and Soviet flags I saw displayed throughout May Day, I doubt most of them do. However, the Kolakowski quote did strike an ironic note when juxtaposed against the sea of slogans chanted by protesters this...