Is anyone celebrating May Day?

Is anyone here doing something today? Well, you probably will not be on to answer if you are, but I should ask anyway...

Does anyone know why we have this holiday, and what it represents?

 

Well it's Worker's Day over here in Brazil and everybody gets the day off. There are probably unions commemorating the day but I'm not participating.

 

Worker's day here, and I'm cursing the day it was created. Everything is closed, and I barely have anything to eat at home :c

 

This May Day, many of my friends are going on strike again.

Fox News though it would be a good idea to compare them to the Soviets.

Eh, you would be working more then eight hours a day and all seven days of the week without us anarchists creating it. At the cost of our lives, no less. You can go a day without food.

This day marks the day we invented the weekend and gave you time to play at the end of the day.

 

Oh, today's May Day?

Brb listening to the Flobots song.

[video=youtube;7zDW0GROnt8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zDW0GROnt8[/video]

 

[video=youtube;kCbD8nsxcd8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCbD8nsxcd8[/video]

It's the first of May, first of May. Outdoor fucking starts today.

 

I didn't even know there was a May Day until today.

 

I believe, and don't quote me on it, that Mayday is a sort of equivalent to All Saint's Day in November. Yesterday (April 30th), or today is Walpurgisnacht which is an old Germanic (and sometimes Pagan?) festival akin to Hallowe'en if I recall correctly, and is named after Saint Walburga who was canonised on that date, also it is celebrated as the first day of Summer. In addition, it seems to be linked with a festival in Roman times devoted to Flora, and also to the old Celtic festival of Beltane, which also has a famous counterpart, Samhain.

Really, it's an old Spring festival, which like so many other dates of note, were somewhat Christianised.

 

This.

I'm guessing it's some big protest day?

Well, there's some kind of movement at my school right now. They're basically protesting the budget cuts that are going to be happening around the campus. I've been hearing about the cuts for weeks now because of my Journalism class and the school is planning to shut it down. However, during my class this morning, a group of protesters came into the building where my class was and started marching, chanting, banging on the doors, and hitting pots and pans.

Apparently, it was some organized walk out. No one in my class seemed to go though, not even out of curiousness. It wasn't until after class was over that I went to see what was going on. By that time, campus security showed up to handle with them. I understand that they have the right to protest, and I understand why they are doing this, but they were really getting out of hand. They should have kept outside, not come into the building and disrupt the classes that were going on. They just make themselves look dumb. If anything, this made me a bit unsympathetic to them.

 

Not doing anything (though I did know about today), but my paycheck still isn't in and it was supposed to be five days ago. :L

And we don't need labor unions, no sir.

 

Took me 10 seconds to get it.

Heeeheeh :>

 

If I was back home, sorta (I'd rarely go to any of the festivities but my family usually got together), but since it was mainly an excuse to drink a lot and I'm working today, no, I'm not gonna celebrate it this year. I'll imagine that I have my graduation cap on, though.

 

Going to a concert tonight.

 

To be more accurate, Walpurgisnacht is exactly six months after Hallowe'en, and I believe they are somehow linked.

Good on your for knowing your stuff.

It is, due to the Haymarket affair of 1886.

As I said earlier, tons of my friends are striking today because of it.

While I agree (because they are just as bad as governments) it is probably not for the same reasons. Labor unions allow workers to become more organized and become acting competitors like corporations, and not being organized is the main complaint about the Occupy protests.

The liberals say, "Corporations are in bed with the government, so we need more government!"

I fail to see the effectiveness in that plan.

And even then they are extremely hazy on how to get more government or what specifically they want the government to do. It seems rather faith-based really.

Others say, "We need labor unions to go on strike and keep this kind of thing from happening!"

But that will simply create yet another entity vying for government and corporate control, only creating more problems and making those who happen to be in the unions happier for it.

What is your solution?

 

... I was being sarcastic, actually, hah. I am pro-union. I don't know much about the actual executions of unions given how few there are since Taft-Hartley, and that I've not really gotten into history (though A People's History of the United States is on my reading list), but I think the general idea behind a union is sound: workers collaborate amongst themselves, and later with their employer, to ensure fair conditions, solidarity being a (if not the) driving force.

 

Oh? Well, workers' unions can quickly become monopolies just as much as corporations, to the tune of becoming governments themselves. They are extremely dangerous if the state falls because they will stand and still retain their power. They are meant to counter state and corporate interests, but they can easily become the oppressors.

Monopolies of any kind are bad for the individual if he does not join the monopoly.

And you should not trust a history of one nation for union history. Read up on general economics, specifically Austrian economics for insights that will apply to all nations. It becomes less worth your time to have a history lesson when you can study the incentives that would bring about the history and then predict how things will go when given a hypothetical situation instead. It is far better and more important to understand the why than to know the how.

 

They can become corporations. There's always the choice not to. Be a little more optimistic, it's fun.