Poster of the Week

May 1st, 2012 A Day Without the 99% 

No Work – No School – No Housework – No Shopping 

 Take the Streets on Tuesday! 

CSPG’s Poster of the Week Celebrates May Day and supports the 2012 General Strike organized by the Occupy Movement.

Eric Drooker
Occupy May Day 
Digital Image
2012

The celebration of May Day as a labor holiday marked by parades and red flags began on May 1, 1886. Behind the campaign was the universal adoption of the 8-hour working day, an improvement on the recent fight for a ten-hour day. In Chicago, the center of the movement, workers had been agitating for an 8-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. In a notorious riot that followed (the Haymarket massacre) the 8-hour movement failed, but the Chicago events figured prominently in the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. Ever since, May Day has been celebrated globally as the international workers’ holiday.

For May Day 2012, Occupy is organizing the first truly nationwide General Strike in U.S. history. Building on the international celebration of May Day, past General Strikes in U.S. cities like Seattle and Oakland, the recent May 1st Day Without An Immigrant demonstrations, the national general strikes in Spain this year, and the on-going student strike in Quebec, the Occupy Movement has called for A Day Without the 99% on May 1st, 2012. This in and of itself is a tremendous victory. For the first time, workers, students, immigrants, and the unemployed from 135 U.S. cities will stand together for economic justice. 

To find events in your city: 
http://occupywallst.org/article/may-day/

http://www.occupymay1st.org/2012/04/21/nationwide-general-strike/

Poster of the Week

In light of the escalating attacks against immigrants and workers, from Arizona to Wisconsin, CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week shows how these issues were combined over 35 years ago. After years of keeping their demands and demonstrations separate, May 1, 2011 will see the joining of immigrant rights and labor rights groups in demonstrations from Los Angeles to New York.

International Workers Day
Peace Press
Offset, 1975
Los Angeles, California

By demanding Jobs For All, End Deportations, U.S. Out Of Indochina & Puerto Rico this 36 year old poster links the same issues facing us today: lack of jobs, scapegoating immigrants and foreign wars. And Puerto Rico continues to be the last remaining U.S. colony.

The poster was printed at Peace Press, an anti-war Los Angeles print collective which will be the subject of an exhibition premiering September 2011 at the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach. Peace Press Graphics 1967 – 1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change is part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. The exhibition and catalogue are a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the University Art Museum at CSULB.

History of May Day as Worker’s Labor Day
May Day as a worker’s labor day, began in 1886, in Chicago, as a movement for the universal adoption of the eight-hour working day. (Workers had secured a limit of ten hours to the working day only a few decades earlier.) In Chicago, the center of the movement, workers had been agitating for an eight-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. In a notorious riot that followed (the Haymarket massacre) the 8-hour movement failed, but the Chicago events figured prominently in the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. May Day has been marked ever since by parades, red flags, and an affirmation of union power and pride. Ironically, this Chicago-born holiday is celebrated more internationally than in the United States.

Poster(s) of the Week

Primero de Mayo de 1947
[May Day 1947 Only a conscious, united, and honest labor movement can successfully defend the interests of the workers, and help Mexico prosper.]
Pablo O'Higgins; Alberto Beltrán; Taller de Gráfica Popular
Linocut, 1947
Mexico City, Mexico

The celebration of May Day as a labor holiday marked by parades and red flags began on May 1, 1886. Behind the campaign was the universal adoption of the 8-hour working day, an improvement on the recent fight for a ten-hour day. In Chicago, the center of the movement, workers had been agitating for an 8-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. In a notorious riot that followed (the Haymarket massacre) the 8-hour movement failed, but the Chicago events figured prominently in the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. Ever since, May Day has been celebrated globally as the international workers’ holiday.

May Day 2006
Ami Motevelli
Self-Help Graphics and Art
Silkscreen, 2006
Los Angeles, California

On December 16, 2005, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act by a vote of 239 to 182—92% of Republicans supporting, 82% of Democrats opposing. This bill would not only have made it harder for legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens, but have made it a felony for anyone—including clergy, teachers or healthcare workers, to assist the undocumented in any way. It also called for the construction of a wall across up to 400 miles of the US-Mexico border.

The passage of HR 4437 was the catalyst for some of the largest protest demonstrations in US history, including the March 25, 2006 demonstration in Los Angeles where more than 1 million people took to the streets, and the May 1, 2006 “A Day Without Immigrants” when millions protested in cities across the country, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. There were school walkouts, street demonstrations, and a one-day boycott of all businesses to demonstrate the buying power of immigrants. The above poster was produced for the Los Angeles march. Following the unprecedented street demonstrations, the Senate passed a much more moderate bill, S. 2611.

In April 2010, the most repressive anti-immigrant legislation in the country was passed in Arizona. Boycotts of the state have started. On May 1, 2010, an immigrant rights march will be held in Washington, D.C.