{"id":821,"date":"2009-05-01T12:07:47","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T17:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/?p=821"},"modified":"2009-05-01T12:07:47","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T17:07:47","slug":"happy-may-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/happy-may-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy May Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-822\" title=\"iwwdrawingsmlr\" src=\"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/iwwdrawingsmlr-201x300.gif\" alt=\"iwwdrawingsmlr\" width=\"135\" height=\"203\" \/>Today is May 1st, recognized in many places around the world as International Workers Day.\u00a0 It <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iww.org\/projects\/mayday\/origins.shtml\">traces its roots<\/a> back to May 1st, 1886, when workers demanding an 8-hour work day walked out en-masse.\u00a0 The police crackdown at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago two days later led to the Haymarket affair in where eight anarchists were eventually convicted of murder in a show trial.\u00a0 Four of them were hung to death.<\/p>\n<p>In Montreal, there is a long history of protest and artistic activism on May Day.\u00a0 Sadly, there is also a history of police repression.\u00a0 In 2008, for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montrealmirror.com\/2009\/043009\/news1.html\">police cracked down<\/a> on a mostly peaceful anti-capitalist march moments after it began.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmaq.net\/node\/32553\">This year&#8217;s march<\/a> happens in the shadow of that event and also just a few months after the <a href=\"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/16\/police-brutalize-anti-police-brutality-demonstration-again\/\">anti-police brutality march<\/a> which ended, unfortunately, in police brutality and rioting.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the march will begin today at 5:30pm in Cabot Square, leaving at 6:30pm for the Caisse des depots et placements in Old Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>May Day also kicks off the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anarchistbookfair.ca\/en\/node\/13\">Festival of Anarchy<\/a> which now includes a theatre festival, arts exhibits, workshops, a squat (more on this in a few week) and of course the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anarchistbookfair.ca\/en\/\">Anarchist Bookfair<\/a>.\u00a0 The festival lasts until May 31st.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/chezstella.org\/\">Stella<\/a>, the sex workers advocacy group, is hoping that workers&#8217; rights will someday be extended to sex workers as well and in hopes of making this happen, they will be launching the latest edition of their ConStellation magazine tonight at Academy, 4445 St-Laurent, as part of a party thrown by Cirque de Boudoir.\u00a0\u00a0 The event starts at 9pm, costs $15 at the door (free for sex workers) and features DJ Frigid, Plastik Patrik and the Dead Doll dancers.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few years, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iwc-cti.ca\/\">Immigrant Workers&#8217; Centre<\/a> in Cote-des-Neiges has hosted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iwc-cti.ca\/en\/campaigns\/mayworks\">MayWorks<\/a> an artistic celebration of workers&#8217; rights.\u00a0 This year is no different, except that the event will happen a week later on Saturday, May 9th starting at 5:30pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is May 1st, recognized in many places around the world as International Workers Day.\u00a0 It traces its roots back to May 1st, 1886, when workers demanding an 8-hour work day walked out en-masse.\u00a0 The police crackdown at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago two days later led to the Haymarket affair in where eight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,36,3,118],"tags":[292,296,297,291,11,294,293,295],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community-issues","category-general","category-performance","tag-anti-capitalist-march","tag-festival-of-anarchy","tag-immigrant-workers-centre","tag-may-day","tag-montreal","tag-origins","tag-police-repression","tag-stella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}