Into the Streets, May 1st!*

You may not have noticed, especially if you don't live in a big city in the US, but yesterday was May Day.

France, like most European countries, has designated May 1 as Labor Day, and people celebrate it with great gusto. (Too bad "Real Americans" wouldn't even consider celebrating May Day, given its roots in Pagan rituals and its present identity as the Christmas of International Socialism. They forget that once upon a time, Tea Party-like populists played a big role in the advent of the modern-day holiday.) Anyway, like I was saying, great gusto:

As you can tell, Paris is a particularly exciting place to be on May First. All the major labor unions and dozens of other groups mobilize their members and enlist as many people as possible to march in what the French call a "cortège," or a parading group. Starting in the morning, different groups assemble at different parts of the city and steadily converge on Place de la République, from which a collective cortège eventually departs.

While everyone's waiting to get in line in the cortège, they engage in all sorts of musicking, dancing, and general frolicking.

Even non-Anarchists and -Socialists participate in the tradition of buying sprigs of muguet (Lily of the Valley), which are supposed to bring good luck and happiness all year. (We participated.) One of the labor unions referred to this tradition in a slickly-designed poster which also emphasizes some of the issues at the forefront of demonstrators' minds, namely the rising retirement age, unemployment, and wealth inequality:


Another major controversy addressed by a large proportion of participants was the status of sans-papiers, or undocumented immigrants. Supporters of immigrants' rights came out in force to insist on the humanitarian dimension of this challenging and divisive issue. We watched the group below pass by the café where we had lunch on their way to join the masses at République.

As much as we would have liked to have followed the cortège to its conclusion, we ultimately had to get back to the apartment so Gladis could collect her bags and head to the airport. But all that demonstrating in support of social and economic justice was hard to leave behind. Couldn't May Day come more than once a year?

* This post's title comes from a protest song I once studied in a Music and Politics class. The text was written by Alfred Hayes in 1934 and set to music by various modernist composers for a song competition. Aaron Copland won, but my favorite setting was by Hans Eisler.