On May Day—Friday, May 1—a fairly small gathering celebrated International Worker’s Day with a rally at Alameda City Hall. A coalition of groups and supportive individuals heard speeches, chanted, and carried signs before marching across Tilden Way and the Miller-Sweeney Bridge across Fruitvale Avenue to join a rally at Fruitvale Plaza in Oakland.
[1]Co-organized by Bay Resistance PODS and Alameda Families and Friends for Collective Liberation, the event included speakers from the California Nurses Union, the Paden Safe Haven Accountability and Resources Committee, and activists favoring the Save BART Transit Measure. Jamie Brooks from Bay Resistance was the emcee, singing, introducing other speakers, and leading the crowd in several call and responses, happily interrupted by honking motorists.
The walkway in front of the City Hall steps was decorated with proclamations declaring “No Kings [2],” “Free Palestine” and “Make the Polluters Pay.” A key moment was when one speaker helped educate the audience about the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo, which is looking to block the shipment of weapon parts to Israel by FedEx from the Oakland Airport.
[3]The core of the group were protesters who frequently gather at City Hall and on nearby street corners, expressing dissatisfaction over the current administration and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) activity, and urging the preservation of democracy. The organizers were well prepared and supplied attendees with materials to make signs, whistles for the walk, and background information and suggestions for how to join their groups and bolster their efforts. In many ways, this May Day demonstration overlapped with and was energized by the same leaders and citizens who have helped to plan the popular “No Kings” rallies that also are staged in front of City Hall.
May Day has a myriad of meanings in the political sense. It’s recognized as International Workers’ Day or Labor Day in more than 80 countries across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. It commemorates a general strike in the United States that led to the Haymarket Riots in Chicago in 1886, and during the Cold War marked demonstrations of military might in Red Square by what was then the Soviet Union.
[4]Aside from politics, May Day is a time to rejoice in the arrival of spring by dancing around a decorated May Pole, a tradition that has been around for centuries around the world.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players [5], a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected] [6]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane [7].