‘We are workers and we have power!’
The following talk was given at the May Day Union Square rally in New York City on May 1, 2021.
Clarissa, WAAR speaker.
Hi! My name is Clarissa and I’m with the Workers Assembly Against Racism, WAAR.
I want to thank our comrades in Bessemer, Alabama, who worked tirelessly to begin a union drive at their Amazon warehouse, a victory in itself. Although the vote was a “no,” this does not mean we have lost against [Jeff] Bezos and his empire – willing to spend $10,000 a DAY to union bust.
It simply means what we already knew: that our capitalist oppressors will stop at nothing to try and snuff out the revolution. The capitalists and gatekeepers of our happiness and security are terrified. What these pigs don’t realize, however, is that their fear is like oxygen to our collective fire it makes our power grow and we become stronger!
May Day 2021 – International Workers’ Day!
By Martha Grevatt posted on May 4, 2021
May Day began in the U.S. in 1884 after labor federations called for worker strikes and protests for the eight-hour day. 400,000 workers answered the call countrywide on May 1, 1886. That year eight worker organizers, some immigrants, were arrested and framed for the May 4 bombing of a Haymarket Square rally in Chicago. Five were sentenced to death; four were executed and a fifth died in his cell. An 1889 international socialist conference declared May 1 International Workers Day, in part to honor the Haymarket Martyrs. The day was revitalized in the U.S. in 2005 by the Black-led Million Worker March, and in 2006 by the Latinx immigrant workers’ mass strike. In 2021 the day was commemorated around the world; Workers World Party helped organize a number of actions across the U.S.
64 10 minutes read
International Workers Day, May 1, is celebrated by tens of millions of people around the world. Its radical history emerged from the Haymarket Square resistance and the massacre that followed in 1886.
May Day was revived as a workers’ day by the immigrant rights movement in the United States in 2009. As the labor movement continues to blossom in the U.S., more and more people here now recognize International Workers Day, or “May Day.” Thousands of workers joined May Day events around the country this year despite the limitations presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
New York City
NYC, May 1. Fired Amazon worker Christian Smalls leads a rally in front of Jeff Bezos’s apartment in Manhattan. Liberation photo
0 2 minutes read Liberation photo.
On April 28, over 50 home healthcare workers and their supporters gathered outside of the Lower Manhattan offices of the Chinese-American Planning Committee in New York City to protest a long history of wage theft and poor working conditions, including a 24-hour workday with little rest.
The protest was primarily organized by CPC workers and the Chinese Staff and Workers Association and attended by the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Workers Assembly Against Racism, the Asian American Feminist Collective, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
The action communicated the threefold demands of the workers: to immediately pay back stolen wages, institute 12-hour split shifts for home health workers, and to apologize to the women who have been exploited by these unfair labor practices.
WAAR on Chauvin verdicts: ‘We’ll accept nothing less than police abolition’
April 20 protest, New York City
WW PHOTO: Nathaniel Chase
The following statement was issued on April 20 by the Workers Assembly Against Racism, based in New York City.
One killer cop in jail does nothing to address the violence and trauma that materially fills the experience of Black, Brown, and working people at the hands of our bloated, militarized police force.
Derek Chauvin is a tool of white supremacy, along with policing and incarceration as a whole. Although we’re witnessing this tool’s public “punishment,” we cannot accept these court proceedings as the threatrical interpretation of “justice” that the state so fervently desires.