Workers around the world celebrate May Day

From rural mountainous Nepal to the industrial heartland of Germany, workers took to the streets around the world in largely peaceful May Day demonstrations for labor rights. The crowds of workers swelled to one million across Russia, heeding the rallying call of unions to protest against low wages and poverty on what is recognized as "International Workers' Day." In Germany, trade unionists brought out half a million workers in some 500 demonstrations nationwide in a show of force ahead of labor reform planned by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. French unions, flush with success after defeating a new labor law last month, held large rallies around the country to keep the heat turned on the weakened government to make further concessions. In Spain, workers targeted the rich to underscore their grievances. Several hundred farm laborers briefly occupied the sprawling estate of the Duchess of Alba to protest that 80 percent of European Union farm subsidies go to the 30 largest landowners in the southern Andalusia region. Most rallies across Europe were peaceful, although tensions were evident in Belarus, where about 2,000 opposition supporters marched in Minsk in a show of defiance, days after the authoritarian government of President Alexander Lukashenko tried to stop an unprecedented series of demonstrations by throwing protest leaders in jail. In Turkey, riot police detained 85 people as scuffles erupted in May Day rallies in Istanbul, Elazig and Izmir. In Istanbul, police fired tear gas and pepper spray at demonstrators shouting slogans against the United States and the International Monetary Fund, and detained about 40. About 4,000 anarchists and leftists fought running battles with police in Zurich, Switzerland. Another group of about 100 radicals disrupted a speech by President Moritz Leuenberger and threw fireworks at him, forcing him to flee. Thousands marched in central Athens to protest the war in Iraq and the Greek government's economic policies. Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Latin American revolutionary icon Ernesto (Che) Guevara, was among 6,000 marching to the US Embassy, a traditional target of many Athens protests. A peaceful march in Chile became confrontational when youths overturned barriers in front of the presidential palace and broke shop windows. Police responded with tear gas and water cannon, arresting at least 30 people. Elsewhere in South America, Bolivian President Evo Morales used a May Day speech to announce the nationalization of the country's vast oil and natural gas resources. In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki ordered an immediate boost of 12 percent in the minimum wage for non-farm workers and 11 percent for farm workers, while thousands of workers in Angola demonstrated to press demands for minimum wage negotiations with President Jose Eduardo dos Santos' government. Hundreds of thousands of people joined May Day rallies across Asia, with strong protest rallies reported in the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan and Cambodia. In Indonesia, about 100,000 workers rallied against a planned labor law they say will undermine workers' rights, while workers in Thailand marched to demand a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage. In Japan, tens of thousands gathered in Tokyo to protest against the wealth gap between rich and poor and to call for better working conditions. Thousands of Cambodian workers defied a police ban on demonstrations to join a May Day march into central Phnom Penh. Carrying wreaths and pro-labor posters, some 2,000 demonstrators cheered the murdered union boss Chea Vichea as a "hero of the workers" before marching on the parliament building. The protesters, mostly garment factory workers, were demanding higher wages and a shorter work week. Meanwhile in Mexico, Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos joined the US business boycott staged by Mexican emigrants in the United States and led a protest march to the US Embassy in Mexico City. "We will expel the capitalists from Mexico, including the big US capitalists," Marcos told the rally of some 3,000 people in front of the US mission. Union members in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, smashed bank windows and destroyed property in the city's financial district while protesting against a proposed sales tax. In San Jaun, marchers attacked police with rocks. In addition to the estimated 100,000 people who marched in the general celebratory May Day rally in India, about 4,000 sex workers marched in the capital of the state of West Bengal. The women silently marched through the city's largest red light district of Sonagachi, carrying flash lights and posters saying "we demand social justice" to protest a proposed law that would ban prostitution. The modern celebration of May Day as a working class holiday evolved from the struggle for the eight hour work day in 1886. That year, May 1 saw national strikes in the United States and Canada for an eight hour day called by the Knights of Labor. In Chicago, IL, police attacked striking workers killing six. The next day at a demonstration in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the police brutality, a bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of police killing eight of them. The police arrested eight anarchist trade unionists claiming they threw the bombs. To this day, the subject is still one of controversy. The question remains whether the bomb was thrown by the workers at the police or whether one of the police's own agent provocateurs dropped it in their haste to retreat from charging workers. In what was to become one of the most infamous show trials in the US in the 19th century, the State of Illinois tried the anarchist workingmen for fighting for their rights as much as being the actual bomb throwers. Whether the anarchist workers were guilty or innocent was irrelevant. They were agitators, fomenting revolution and stirring up the working class, and the state felt they had to be taught a lesson. Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engle and Adolph Fischer were found guilty and executed by the State of Illinois. In Paris in 1889 the International Working Men's Association (the First International) declared May 1st an international working class holiday in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs. Ironically, today in the United States–the country that inspired the popular global holiday for workers–few people in the US witness May Day, much less demonstrate any knowledge of the historical origins of their eight hour work day laws.