One hundred and forty years ago, on May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers struck to demand the eight-hour day. The Haymarket rally that followed in Chicago was attacked by police, and four workers were subsequently hanged: August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Albert Parsons. May Day has been associated with the international working class ever since.
Since the first International May Day Online Rally in 2014, the International Committee has issued a central warning at these rallies: The imperialist redivision of the world, driven by the insoluble contradictions of capitalism, is propelling humanity toward global catastrophe. Those warnings have been confirmed.
World war is not a future possibility. It is an unfolding reality. The US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, launched on February 28, is the most explosive expression to date of a worldwide escalation of militarism.
Two interconnected processes predominate. First is the advance of war and, with it, the turn to fascism and dictatorship, and an unrestrained assault on the working class. In the center of world capitalism, Trump, the president of the oligarchs, tears up democratic rights, unleashes the immigration police as an instrument of political terror, and demands that society be reorganized around militarism and repression.
Second is the growing resistance of the international working class. The rally will document the developing struggles of workers and youth across continents and elaborate the program and strategy required to unify these battles into a conscious movement against war, dictatorship and capitalism.
Speakers will include leading representatives of the ICFI and its supporting organizations from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Turkey, Brazil and Russia, along with representatives of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
The rally will feature statements collected from workers and young people on every continent: postal workers, autoworkers, teachers, dockworkers, and students who are entering into struggle and looking for a way forward.
The rally will provide an assessment of this world situation: the history and meaning of the war on Iran; the drive toward dictatorship and the collapse of bourgeois democratic forms; and the accelerating eruption of class struggle internationally.
This rally is not merely a commemoration of the origins of May Day. It is a call to action. The ruling class is organizing society for war abroad and class war at home, and it is doing so with the assistance of the trade union apparatus and all the capitalist parties. The rally will arm workers and youth with a program, a strategy and an international organizational perspective for the fight ahead.
Register now and invite your coworkers and friends to do the same.
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