There’s something about May Day that still does it for me.
Jaded as I am about many of the current leftist political formations in the U.S.—particularly when it comes to the ritualized dilutions of identity politics and political nuance–I still find myself drawn to the basic message of the big ol’ General Strike.
As I re-examine the May Day poster circulated by Dignidad Rebelde two years ago at a peak of revolutionary revival, there is something very material, very real, very primal about its messaging: “TOMA LAS CALLES” and “Ni Trabajo, Ni Escuela, Ni Compras, Ni Actividades Bancarias” (“Take the Streets” and “No Work, No School, No Shopping, No Banking”).
I’m ambivalent, of course. In thinking about the post-Occupy landscape of New Left movements and their linkage to the radical origins of May Day, I feel a faint nostalgia and sense of loss. Behind me are the days of organizing against gentrification or police occupation or wage theft …and ahead? After all is said and done, where has endless critique taken
Into this downward spiral, I wonder:
- Where am I in this new swirl of discombobulated movement activity?
- How did I survive a traumatic auto-immunological assault on my midbrain, the torture of endless head pounding, and a dragnet that nearly sucked me into a suicidal black hole?
- How did I survive the soul-crushing loneliness wrought by my positionality as a sick and queer working-class second-generation immigrant with roots in the global south?
These questions have plagued me in such a way that they challenge my pursuit of an impermanence-appreciating dharmic temporality. I become lost in this haze of old wounds and a pessimism about the future. And as another May Day rolls along, I am made aware of the stark reality: I have become another one of those revolutionaries who’ve receded into the shadows. The disaffected New York City leftist.
But maybe there’s room to hope. After all, May Day has something to it, something that captivates my often-schismatic and contradicatory personas and sensibilities. Being a bit older and weighed down by a baggage of pain-induced awareness, I appreciate the simplicity of a call to take the streets and stop working. In a city like Gotham, it’s simple…yet complicated.
In a time when political questions around space have commanded the public imagination, when neoliberal gentrification has turned neighborhoods into war zones, and when Facebook event invites have become poor substitutes for wheat pasting and door-knocking …there’s just something about an event that does the damn job of bringing workers, immigrants, students, and the unemployed together into the same physical space.
In an alienating metropolis like New York, where “business as usual” equates to postmodern isolation, there’s something powerful in simply standing our ground, together, in a space we can claim.
Two Years ago at Union Square
After all, how often to the disparate groups of the NYC Left physically congregate, separated as they are by ideologies, positionalities, boroughs and neighborhoods? For all its ugly shortcomings, I think my slight nostalgia for old labor politics stems from a basic appreciation of taking the streets.
And although many rallies at Union Square are admittedly redundant and stale, I appreciate the importance of such convergence. Even if only temporarily, the centrifugal machine-logic of the city is arrested as otherwise far-flung people chant, commiserate, gossip, and bullshit.
Even when the chants become repetitive to the point of irrelevance, it is the very real, material gathering of people that sparks possibility. For who knows what will spark the next revolutionary moment?
I might have become disillusioned with many things, but I also understand that the ongoing capitalist wreckage won’t be stalemated by cynicism. Neither will it be arrested by an imprisoned imagination or a blasé mentality. And it most certainly won’t happen with business as usual.
Pigs protecting the heart of the heart of capitalism: Wall Street.
Decolonize Chris! 