How Will You Observe May Day?

The title of this post may seem rather senseless to most of you, for in all likelihood you have no plans to observe May Day at all. But there are people in countries around the world who will be observing May Day with great earnestness. 

In the U.S., May Day in the past was often observed with May Day baskets of flowers hung on the doorknobs of family/friends and with dances around a Maypole—but I won’t be writing any more about that. (If you want to reflect on that type of May Day observance, click here.)

Observing May Day in 1967

On May 1, 1967, I had lived in Japan exactly eight months. Even though it was a Monday, since it was an unofficial holiday in Japan, June and I had the day off from language school where we were students. That gave me the chance to see May Day observed as I had never seen it observed before.

The mission house into which my family and I moved in September 1966 was 20-minutes by foot from the Yoyogi National Stadium that was part of the venue for the 1964—and the 2020—Olympics. On that May Day, I decided to walk over there and see what was going on.

Before reaching the Stadium, I encountered masses of people—largely blue-color laborers—holding rallies and protesting what they considered injustices in Japanese, and world, society.

While the rallies were mostly related to domestic labor issues, there were also protests against the Vietnam War and against the presence of U.S. bases in Okinawa which were supporting that war. There were also appeals / demands that Okinawa be returned to Japan.

I don’t think I saw one other gaijin (foreigner) at those May Day rallies, and I was later told by gaijin friends that I was foolish for going there as I might have been accosted/injured. But it was a most interesting experience, and I am still glad that I learned some about that type of May Day then.

International May Day 2022

Although I didn’t know it then, in many countries around the world May Day is also known as International Workers' Day or Labour Day. The reason for May 1 being chosen as a day of advocacy for workers of the world goes back to 1886.

Two years earlier, a convention held by the organization of labor unions that later took the name American Federation of Labor (AFL) unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which an eight-hour workday would become standard.

On that fateful Saturday, thousands of workers went on a general strike in support of the eight-hour workday, and rallies were held throughout the United States. The strike in Chicago led to the deadly Haymarket Riot on May 4.

Because of those events in Chicago, a few years later in Europe, advocates for laborers there and across the world chose May 1 as International Workers' Day. It is now a public holiday in some 80 countries around the world.

Here is a link to a 4½-minute video showing how six countries (beginning, interestingly, with Ukraine and including Russia and France) observed International May Day in 2017.  

And here is a link to a 2-minute video titled “Join the 2022 International May Day Online Rally this May 1!” It is by David North, an American Marxist theoretician who serves as the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States.

SEP opposes both “the ruthless imperialist ambitions of NATO,” and “rejects the national chauvinism with which the Putin regime defends its desperate invasion of Ukraine.” The online May Day rally will also be advocating for greater equality for the workers of the world.

Despite strong opposition to socialism by many USAmericans, why shouldn’t we, especially those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, be more concerned about the suffering and even exploited workers of the world?

Let’s observe May Day this year by at least giving some thoughtful consideration to how we might help working people struggling because of low-paying jobs that are inadequate for meeting their basic needs.

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** For a closely related viewpoint, I encourage you to read Celebrating Labor Rights, on May Day and Beyond, an article by Adam Russell Taylor in the May 2022 issue of Sojourners magazine. 

“The Tragedy at Buffalo”: Reflections on McKinley’s Assassination

William McKinley was the third U.S. President to be assassinated—in just 36 years (plus a few months). He was shot 120 years ago on September 6 and died eight days later. What was behind that tragic event?  

Pres. McKinley shot on 9/6/1901

The Making of Pres. McKinley

William McKinley, Jr., was born in Ohio in January 1843. When he was still 18, he enlisted as a private in the Civil War—and 36 years later became the last President to have fought in that horrendous war.

Mustered out of the army in 1865, McKinley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives just eleven years later. After six terms in the House, he served as the Governor of Ohio for two two-year terms.

In the presidential election of 1896, Republican McKinley defeated Democrat / Populist William Jennings Bryan and became the 25^th POTUS. Four years later, he was re-elected by defeating Bryan for the second time with 51.6% of the popular vote, up slightly from 1896.

McKinley’s election was due, in large part, to the financial support he received from the wealthy industrialists of the country. Bryan was the “commoner,” who had the support of the working class but with limited resources. The moneyed class won the elections for McKinley.

In his classic bestselling book, A People’s History of the United States (1980; rev. ed., 2003), Howard Zinn wrote that in 1896 “the corporations and the press mobilized” for McKinley “in the first massive use of money in an election campaign” (p. 295).

McKinley’s Presidency

McKinley’s support by the wealthy paid good returns for them. Early in the second year of his presidency, the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Three years before McKinley’s re-election in 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt as the Vice-President, the latter wrote to a friend, “I should welcome any war, for I think this country needs one.” And, indeed, that very next year (1898) the Spanish-American War began, and Roosevelt was a hero in it.

John Jay, McKinley’s Secretary of State, called it "a splendid little war," partly because it propelled the United States into a world power—with world markets. Indeed, under McKinley’s presidency in 1898, the American Empire emerged.*

Zinn quotes the (in)famous Emma Goldman writing a few years later that “the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists” (p. 321).**

Indeed, the “military-industrial complex” was a reality far before Pres. Eisenhower used that term sixty years ago in January 1961.

Shortly after the brief war with Spain ended, the Philippine-American War started in February 1899 and was still in progress when McKinley was shot and killed.

McKinley’s Assassination

Leon Czolgosz was a Polish-American who, by the time he was 28 years old, believed, probably for good reason, that there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality that allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor.

Early in September 1901, Czolgosz traveled from Michigan to Buffalo, New York, where the President was attending the Pan-American Exposition (a World’s Fair). There he shot McKinley twice at point-blank range.

Czolgosz had clearly been influenced by the fiery, anarchist rhetoric of Goldman (1869~1940). But just as Nat Turner had misused the words of the Bible (see my 8/25 blog post), he misused the words of Goldman, who advocated dramatic social change, but not violence.

Even before McKinley died on Sept. 12, Goldman was arrested and charged with conspiracy. She denied any direct connection with the assassin and was released two weeks later. On Oct. 6 she wrote a powerful essay titled “The Tragedy at Buffalo.”

Goldman stated clearly, “I do not advocate violence,” but wrote in forceful opposition to “economic slavery, social superiority, inequality, exploitation, and war.” And she concluded that her heart went out to Czolgosz “in deep sympathy, and to all the victims of a system of inequality.”

At the end of October, Czolgosz was executed by electric chair—and Goldman continued advocating for the people Czolgosz cared about so deeply and sought to help in an extremely misguided manner.

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* “American Empire, 1898~2018,” my 1/15/18 blog post, elaborates this matter.

** Zinn wrote “Emma,” a play about Goldman that was first performed in 1977. I found Zinn’s play quite informative and of considerable interest. 

The Discovery of Columbus

As today is Columbus Day, think with me for a couple of minutes about the discovery of Columbus. Usually, the emphasis is upon what Columbus discovered, but let’s think about the aboriginal people's discovery of Columbus on their land.

In 1493, Columbus established the first permanent European settlement in what came to be known as the West Indies on an island he called La Isla Española, a name translated into English as Hispaniola. But as Bob Corbett of Webster University points out, “Columbus did not discover a lost or unknown land. There was a flourishing civilization of native Americans” already there. Those “Indians” discovered Columbus and the other Spaniards invading their land. 

Hispaniola was inhabited by as many as 500,000 aboriginal Tainos in 1493. (Some estimate a much greater population.) According to Corbett, by 1507 the number of Tainos had shrunk to around 60,000, and by 1531 the number was down to 600. The discovery of Columbus was bad news for the native Americans.

In my previous blog article, I wrote about Hispanics. That term comes from Hispania, the name given by the Romans to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain, Portugal, etc.). Then Hispaniola, as mentioned, was the name given to the island now occupied by the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

As we honor the Hispanics in this country, as we should, perhaps we need even more to honor and to affirm the personhood of all the indigenous peoples of Central and Latin America who were exploited and mistreated in many ways by the Europeans (Hispanics) who colonized the many countries in the Americas where Spanish (or Portuguese) is now spoken.

Spanish (or Portuguese) is spoken in the Latin American countries due to colonialization. Thus, as we work against the mistreatment of Hispanics in American society, we realize that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, their ancestors mistreated the aboriginal peoples in what is now Central and South America—just as most of us are descendants of Europeans who mistreated the aboriginal peoples of what is now North America.

Except for the Native Americans and the descendants of those who were once slaves, most of the people in all of the Americas today are descendants of people with blood on their hands. And it all began with the discovery of Columbus.

For those of us who are Christians, Columbus’s “missionary” zeal is one of the saddest aspects of his discovery. According to what he wrote, spreading Christianity was one of the main motives for his voyages to the “new world.” But what we see in him, as in too much of the missionary activity through the centuries, is the corruption of Christianity by power and greed. Christianity can never be wedded to political or economic interests without being corrupted.