May Day!

Cerena and Griffin, two DSA labor leaders from Houston and DC, join us to discuss the meaning and history of May Day for the socialist and labor movements and how, in this disorganizing time, we can still organize towards higher worker militancy and struggle to fight the right and capital.  

This year, our May Day demands are NO WAR, ABOLISH ICE, TAX THE RICH! Now, over 150 DSA chapters are doing something for May Day — we hope your local DSA is too. 

This site shows May Day actions all over the country — find yours! 

Here is a chapter toolkit for May Day, including a socialist night school module on May Day and the General Strike from NPEC! 

Become a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Sign up to receive NPEC's newsletter, Red Letter. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi, comrades, and welcome to CLASS, the podcast of Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Education Committee, or NPEC. My name is Michaela, and I'm the current chair of NPEC and a member of North New Jersey DSA. Today I'll be speaking with Serena M. Griffin, two DSA national leaders, on the meaning of May 1st or May Day for socialists and the labor movement. Before we dive in, a reminder that class is available on all major podcast platforms. Please consider becoming a DSA member by following the link in the podcast description. You can also send us a message about the episode and sign up for Red Letter and PEC's monthly newsletter using the provided links. May 1st, May Day, International Workers' Day, Labor Day. This day has great significance to socialists worldwide and to the labor movement historically in almost every country but the United States. But the events that precipitated May Day as a modern marker of working class political radicalism and a celebration of the international workers' movement occurred here. In fact, the violent details of the first few days of May 1886 and the threat of an organized militant working class to the industrial and political ruling classes that the clashes and aftermath signified sparked a long anti-communist backlash in the US. This backlash included the erasure of May Day here and replacing it with American Labor Day in September. So, lucky for socialists, we get two Labor Days. The Haymarket Affair in Chicago was a violent confrontation between the police and workers striking citywide for an eight-hour working day, part of a national general strike that started on May 1, 1886. That day was chosen by the National Labor Federation as the deadline for a change to the maximum hours law. The unions prepared workers to strike, and then they hit the streets right on schedule. In Chicago, the crowds of strikers and their community supporters marching with them numbered around 80,000, which, according to the census and estimating from the industrialized sectors who were most likely to heed the call, was between 7 and 15% of the city's entire population, which matched up with the national statistics of strikers. Chicagoans continued to strike for several days. On May 3rd, a large picket formed to stop scab labor in front of a machinery works, and the picket line was fired upon by the police. Several people died, including two machinists, and at a rally the following day at the same site, a bomb was thrown into the crowd that killed a cop. Scores of labor activists were arrested that day, and later four were executed on charges of conspiracy, anarchism, and murder. Another died by suicide to avoid being killed at the hands of the state, and others faced life sentences, but there was never any solid evidence that anyone arrested or executed threw that bomb, and no one knows for sure to this day who actually threw it. The bloody miscarriage of justice ignited both an anti-communist fuse and a fierce recommitment of the labor movement to its cause, which continued organizing around the demand for an eight-hour day. Mayday continued to be a strike day the next couple of years, and in 1889, the Socialist International adopted May 1, 1890, as the day for a great international demonstration for the eight-hour day demand and to honor the workers who died during the Haymarket affair, both during the demonstrations and afterwards. And thereafter, the idea of a general strike started to become synonymous with Mayday worldwide, even if most people in the United States may not have realized that until recently. But that's starting to change. Here to talk with us about what's changing and the role of the modern socialist movement here in the U.S. in making that change are Serena and Griffin. Serena is a member of Houston DSA and a member of DSA's National Political Committee, which is our convention-elected national leadership. Griffin is a member of Metro DC DSA and is one of DSA's National Labor Commission elected co-chairs. Welcome, Serena and Griffin.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Hey, excited to be speaking with you.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

All right, so for both of you, this is the first question that we ask everyone when they first get on the podcast is how and why did you become a socialist? And how and why did you join DSA? Griffin, if you want to, you can take this one first.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, I think I uh became a socialist towards the end of middle school or the beginning of high school. I don't remember exactly where I was at the time, but I remember having a moment where I thought to myself, why does homelessness exist? And then I Googled this question. And uh the internet at the time was maybe slightly different, and our search engines worked better, and it led me to reading lots of essays about homelessness, but also kind of like moral philosophy. Uh, and I think some of the kind of like intuitions or feelings I had about how we should try to make our society fairer started then for me. And then in high school, I had a history teacher who I got along really well with. And I remember his human geography class was the you know class that I most enjoyed, really opened up my mind to thinking about places other than where I lived. And at the end of the year, he gave me the book Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, which is about the domestic effects of US foreign policy over the course of the Cold War, where the, you know, wars that the United States government had carried out all over Southeast Asia and Latin America, you know, had consequences that made our lives worse at home, sometimes up to and including violent attacks against Americans that you know we could predict as a pattern because when you bomb and kill people, it upsets them. Uh and after that uh point, I started reading a lot of Noam Chomsky, and I was excited by the first Bernie Sanders campaign. And at that point, I became a socialist. I joined DSA in uh 2017, shortly after the uh first Trump administration's inauguration, helped along the way by a particular center-left comedy audio show. And then I've kind of been an active member ever since then.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

All right. So lots of threads, and you you think you feel retrospectively that you became a socialist or that started for you when you became curious about why homelessness existed, and then it kind of solidified from there. Out of curiosity, did you have a moment where you realized that homelessness at home was connected to warfare and like US involvement and war abroad? Was there like ever that moment for you, or did that take more development like later on?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't um know that I ever kind of connected those two issues explicitly in a way that was like an epiphany for me, but I remember paying a lot of attention to and being kind of like stunned at the Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA's PRISM program and like the you know um boundless, warrantless surveillance of Americans' electronic communications really aggravated me and seemed kind of beyond the pale. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Unfortunately, the socialist movement can't really claim Edward Snowden as one of their own, but you know, takes all kinds sometimes. Um Serena, how about you? When did you become a socialist or feel that you did? And then how did you join DSA and when?

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Yeah, so hi, my name's Serena. I'm excited to be here. Um I would say I had a similar sort of intuition around high school and middle school as with Griffin. Um, just growing up um with parents who are Filipino and um who I didn't really get to know as my parents growing up because they spent so much time working during my childhood until we moved to Texas. Um, I felt very acutely aware that there um exists some sort of inequality in the world. Um, going to public school and meeting people who are meeting parents who are more involved in their children's lives. Um, and also my parents also being um first generation um or migrants from the Philippines, um, coming from the Philippines explicitly to work and to live and to make like a better life for their kids in the US. Uh I felt very acutely that you know this inequality that I saw not just around me was also just everywhere. Um I never really got to explore that until I got to college and I learned a little bit more about the decolonial movement in the Philippines and just really interrogating why do I exist in this very moment? Uh I had a lot of questions about my family's upbringing, like why the US in particular, um, and why do they talk about why am I so lucky in this country when all around me I see inequality? And I think around that time I was starting to make the connection. I had developed the language for it, going into an international relations major at ET, um, understanding what imperialism is, and like actually being able to write about immigration patterns and like really, at least through an academic lens, like understanding um who I am and um sort of what heritage and intergenerational like trauma that I've inherited. Towards being a socialist, though, I joined DSA around 2018. And this was also in the middle of Trump's first term. I gravitated towards DSA through YDSA in particular. We had a chapter at UT Austin, and they had a really cool table with a big old Bernie Sanders cutout. And at the time, I was like very cursorily aware of this Bernie Sanders guy. Uh, but I was also extremely mad at the fact that there is no real left opposition in Texas. And at the time, we really just had like the sad excuse of Beto Auroric, who was, from what I remember, was kind of giving me, gave me like a no-bottle-like hope. I'm not a millennial, but it was very much like, is this the best that the left has to offer all just platitudes in Texas? Because at the time we were seeing mass deportations, just fascism on the rise. And it wasn't enough that Democrats in Texas in particular, all they had to offer was platitudes. So I ended up joining DSA and really putting into action um a lot of the things I learned growing up, um, understanding the world and how I exist in this world. Um and yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

So it sounds like there was a sort of early awakening, but a lot of kind of um uh frustration with the fact there didn't seem to be a channel until the YDSA table just appeared before you, um, which is of course great commercial for YDSA. Any people uh in high school or college who are listening, you know, you can always start your own chapter or find one um if there is one in your area. So this actually brings us to like the next stage, because if you both joined in part because of like a sense things are going on around me that feel unfair, unjust, in unequal, I feel socialist. Like what then brought you into the labor movement? Because both of you are here in part, Serena, you're a nurse working as a rank and file nurse. And then Griffin, you've been a staffer for UAW and been involved in labor for a while. So what was the thing that kind of made you decide, like, okay, I'm gonna commit myself to the labor movement on the socialist side? Serena, do you want to start off?

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Yeah. So around the same time that I joined YDSA, I also became an undergraduate student worker through our sustainability department. A lot of what I did was research on environmental justice topics and presenting across classes and developing curriculum. Uh, it was very academic, but that's really through where I learned about um the Texas State Employees Union. Um that also like converging with some of my earlier mentors in DSA in particular, also being members of this same union. Um, that's when I think me being part of the labor movement was less of like um just a thought or something that I can participate that brings good to the world, but um really just being part of a movement that is much bigger than myself. Um so I think around a year after I joined um TSU specifically, I think I engaged, yeah, I engaged in um a couple campaigns. I supported uh grad student workers organizing at the time. Uh, and then when COVID hit, we launched a petition action demanding that our president delay uh forcing us to go back to in-person classes. Um, and around the same time, we were also supporting um a janitor who died while working on campus. And um I guess at the time, I think I was developing really a sense of that this work that I'm doing organizing as a socialist and explicitly um within the labor movement is something that I can't just stop doing as soon as I leave college. Um and that's how I ended up becoming a nurse. Um, I mentioned earlier that both of my parents are nurses, uh, but my mom in particular, uh, she worked at a public sector hospital in Brooklyn, New York. And that's when she joined her first union. And um growing up, going into college, she always talked my ear off about how nursing's a good job and you can get a pension out of it. And um, the union that I have is so great. And it was kind of like, you know, I think that's a really good thing and all, but maybe I want to do something else. Um, maybe I want to go into labor law, actually. Um but uh when COVID hit, I had the realization that I didn't just want to be like not necessarily on the sidelines, but a supporting character in the labor movement. I wanted to be in the front lines. And so now I'm about over a year into my career as a nurse and currently rebuilding an ASME local from the ground up that has been trusted by our international.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

Wow. So that really is the front lines.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

You've like thrown yourself right there. And I bet your mom is just like, ha ha, I told you. Yes. Griffin, what about you? How did you get involved in the labor movement after or during your sort of your development as a socialist?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah, I think um I was compelled by a lot of the rhetoric from the Bernie Sanders campaigns centering unions and talking about the power of workers organizing at their workplace. Um, I basically didn't learn what a union was in the course of my public education in Virginia and you know what a union was until I was like 21 years old. Um perhaps there's a couple of sessions I just didn't pay attention to, but I actually think it just wasn't a big feature of like the curriculum, and it wasn't a thing, at least, that was present around where I lived. It's a like relatively low union density state, although that hasn't been the case throughout history, and there are still a couple of places where there's um a lot of um, you know, local union members and presence. And when I was at the University of Virginia and part of the YDSA chapter there, I remember one of the first things we did is that it had been revealed that the hospital system attached to the university um was taking people to court over very small, unpaid bills. And in some cases, this meant that they were taking their own employees who had come to get care, people who worked in the healthcare system, nurses, to court over like$12 that they hadn't yet paid, which was just like the most offensive thing ever, you know. If you think about it, probably not a good way to get back twelve dollars either. Yeah. And I remember that being a really formative moment just about how you know greedy corporations can be and how it's a constant fight between bosses and employees. And we had a little press conference for that. Um as I was leaving University of Virginia, there was a really nascent effort that hadn't yet really gotten off the ground or gone public to try to organize employees at the university who uh didn't have a union that some of the people in our chapter were involved in talking to people about. And then I kind of figured that I wanted to try out labor organizing after graduation. The thinking in my head being that uh, you know, probably getting into labor organizing is not something that you do later in life so easily that it lends itself to being relatively younger, maybe because of the schedule and kind of pace of life that it requires. And then also personally, because I wanted to know if I had, having been convinced of the importance of building unions, the you know, personal disposition or what it took to be, you know, any good at helping people form unions, thinking of myself as a relatively shy person, would I be able to, you know, talk to and work with strangers on a daily basis? And if anyone else thinks of themselves that way, they should know that uh, you know, people who are quieter or more reserved sometimes make some of the best organizers because it's a lot about listening and asking questions.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

All right. That's interesting because also um, you know, this is a little inside baseball, but of course, uh, you're well known as being one of the best uh convention chairs that we ever were ever able to get whenever we have our convention. So you really use that uh that quiet, measured presence to the advantage of the entire organization. And we're very grateful for that. So both of you got involved in the labor movement relatively young, right? Um, you know, kind of as like, this is what I'm gonna do after college. Um, and I'm, you know, now Griffin, you are the chair of the National Labor Commission, one of the one of the two co-chairs. And Serena, um, you know, as one of our national political committee uh leaders, you have sort of joined the NLC and especially like building up our uh presence and our approach to May Day um this year, as well as committing ourselves to Mayday 2028 as like this kind of horizon that we're going for. And we can talk a little bit about what that means uh for us, like kind of on the what we've committed ourselves to as an organization. But for either of you, do you have um kind of any sense of when you realize like Mayday was important um for you yourselves, or did it take kind of, you know, this impetus towards Mayday that DSA has currently kind of seized more recently? Um so maybe you could speak both of you about like what Mayday means to you, or like, you know, what you kind of see as being the significance of Mayday. Obviously, we're pretty distant from the initial activities that kind of started May. Mayday, right? We're over 140 years later or so. Um, but to the extent that it's it's meaningful now, like what is what does that entail? So, Griffin, why don't you start?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah, and I I I should say I I have a story as well about how I quote unquote got into labor workising that's related to May Day, how I learned about May Day. I basically learned about May Day, you know, in the course of the couple months after I uh joined DSA, during which time I was, you know, going to meetings and meeting new people and reading all sorts of things. I think other people can kind of think back to when they first became uh socialist or considered themselves uh politically active or joined DSA, and it's kind of heady and exciting. And at the time I was working at uh car wash in between going to school, where you know, people from my high school happened to work. And uh some of my friends in my grade had worked there longer after high school, and we were paid like uh, you know, 725. And all things considered, it was actually a pretty chill job because people tipped well, it is basically like an automated car wash, and you kind of just had to be the person who opened it up and made sure nothing broke and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

I actually always thought it'd be kind of fun to work at a car wash, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

I think yeah, yeah. I mean, it was kind of fun, especially when there were like two of us. I think the thing that is not necessarily like immediately obvious to people is that there are a lot of like workplace injuries that come with it. Like one time there was a former employee who came by to say hello and he had lost a finger when it great had crushed his hand. And I think that sort of thing is pretty common. And I know like in the last decade, there's been some kind of prominent campaigns in the media to informally organize uh people who work at car washes as workers because it's a you know um place to work that doesn't automatically come with lots of protections and you don't have a ton of structural power. But oftentimes the people know each other are connected to the community can, you know, mobilize goodwill. In my particular case, I didn't get connected to any of the community or mobilize goodwill. But on the night of the night before May 1st, I thought, you know, I'm sitting here when cars aren't here, I'm reading the ABCs of socialism by Jacobin. This absentee owner who only comes here every two weeks up from Virginia Beach isn't paying my friends enough, but we keep the place open. I'm gonna go on strike tomorrow morning. What do I need to do to go on strike? You know, what makes what makes a strike legal? You know, I'm perusing the NLRB website. I type up a little letter. I learn that apparently you can strike over economic demands, and that makes it legal. And so I um type up in a Word document that I'm going on strike over pay. I send a text message in the group chat of my friends at probably literally midnight. Hey, do you guys want to go on strike in the morning? Again, bad idea. Don't do this. I walk up in the morning, not in my uniform. The owner happens to be there. I hand him the letter. He says, What the hell is going on? Fuck off, get out of here. I say, Don't talk to me like that. And then I drive down to Richmond for a May Day celebration, at which there's a really nice interfaith gathering in the morning, and then later in the day, a rally that the newly formed DSA chapter is going to, at which there were also some Maoists in military fatigues and a right-wing provocateur who was putting a camera in people's faces and got someone to throw coffee on them. It's a very like 2017 moment. But I feel like in that story, there's a negative lesson, which is like, you know, our power comes from our numbers. You got to be talking to people and building trusting relationships ahead of time. You can't take action on your own. And I thought I really had this in the bag because, you know, I'd gotten fired over something that was protected concerted activity. And a couple weeks later, when the NLRB agent called me because I had dutifully submitted an online, you know, uh complaint. He said, Okay, great. Well, do you have any evidence that someone took action alongside you? And then I just kind of had an out-of-body experience where I had realized I was the stupidest person in the world. But in this, and and you know, I tell this story to to people I'm organizing with sometimes, like at the bar, just because it's kind of funny in it. Like um, I use it to make me feel good about myself in terms of how far I think I might have come since then.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

As I would say that that's a very radicalizing Mayday story.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

It radicalized you into not being such a dumbass in the future.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Exactly. Exactly. But basically, everything in that story, you want to do the opposite, and then you'll have a great time getting people to organize together to, you know, make demands of their boss.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Incredible. Yeah, that's so great. And I definitely want to hear more about how that lesson taught you a lot about what neck needed to happen then the following May Day, and maybe all of the May Days after that. But Serena, did you have any probably nothing like that, I would assume. Um, but um, any kind of like personal May Day realizations, or was like what was the kind of thing that made you realize like this is meaningful to me?

SPEAKER_03 27:15

That was an incredible story, Griffin, by the way. I'm keeping that in the back of my mind whenever I fumble an organizing conversation. Um but I think for a while in DSA and YDSA, May Day has been just kind of an academic exercise and like learning history. And whenever I did see it kind of play out in the streets with demonstrations, it was kind of your usual suspects on the left uh doing uh some sort of small demonstration. I think at the time Red Guard Sauston was a thing. So it to me, there wasn't really any sort of political significance beyond just what I learned about the history and the eight-day workday and the weekend and so on and so forth. But after Sean Fain made the call for May Day 2028 for contracts across unions to be lined up for that specific day, I thought, wow, history is happening kind of right now, I think. And at first I was very skeptical, um, knowing what the labor movement is, and especially coming from Texas, where um for as long as I've like been in the Texas A Employees Union, and for as long as um like many of my mentors in Texas DSA chapters have been involved in their unions, it's really hard just even organizing people into some sort of concerted action. And that was around the time where I think the tides were turning, really. I think whenever we start thinking about a general strike or the labor movement taking real militant action. So I think around that time was when May Day became kind of more material in my mind. And it wasn't also fast forward to um around convention time where I think a lot of us in DSA and a lot of my mentors really took seriously the question of can we actually do this? Can we actually heed Sean Vane's call for a general strike on May Day, 2028? And I think we took the right approach in just kind of looking at that and saying, fuck it, we ball, basically, because I think that was a really good approach because so many of our members in DSA are already rank and file members of their unions, putting forward or taking leadership within their unions, uh, organizing within reform caucuses, bringing workplace democracy, truly workplace democracy, from the shop floor um all the way to their union locals. And it felt like there was that rebuilding of that militant labor movement that was key in all of these strikes in American history that I've read about. And now looking back, um, I it still feels very far away, May Day 2028. But looking at what's developing right now with our May Day work, we have 98 chapters participating in some sort of May Day action in Houston. Our chapter organized is working on organizing three different rallies across three different places in Houston, which is amazing and covers a lot of areas that are left out whenever we organized around downtown. Um and these are also areas that are represented by a lot of our immigrant neighbors. So a lot of what Mayday to me is not just the labor movement putting forward economic demands, wresting the means of production from the catalysts. But this is, it's also been colored with really immigrant justice in particular, um, which hits very close to home for a lot of folks in Houston, but also echoing to the day of action in Minneapolis, where it wasn't exactly a general strike, but this mass action around a reckoning that it's really screwed up, that 5,000 ICE agents can descend upon a city with no democratic accountability. And I think May Day is at least coming up, is not just a reckoning with our economic system, but also a reckoning with the lack of democracy in our country. And I think that's a really important reckoning. And I look forward to organizing around the sort of demands that come out of these May Day actions and putting them, putting this energy into durable organization. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

So thank you for that. I think this gets to a couple of things. One is that, like, for a long time, I think that May Day is so abstract, like for a lot of people in the United States, because it's not our Labor Day, quote unquote, and it doesn't have that same um immediate history um that it does in other countries where they have, you know, essentially adopted that day for the workers and recognized it. But DSA is currently in coalition with lots of other organizations, including major unions, in May Day Strong, which is hopefully something that could potentially endure, you know, longer as a way to bring forward these kinds of current demands, because before it was an eight-hour workday, which was an international demand. First it was 10 hours, if anyone's read Capital, now, and then it was eight hours, right? The eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep, eight hours to do what you will was a rallying cry that was resonated all over the world among industrialized workers. But as mentioned before in the introduction, it wasn't actually every worker because a lot of workers were not part of the organized labor movement at the time, right? And um even though there were a lot of industrialized workers, including immigrants, like, you know, that time in particular, 18 middle 1886 or so, like the late 19th century, tons of immigrants were there specifically to work in in factories and in um kind of like manufacture. And so immigrants were really a huge part of um striking, you know, both in Chicago as well as all over the country wherever there were these factories. Um so I think it's really not just like kind of resident of the past, but obviously extremely important now to think about that, right? You know, to think about immigrants as part of the workforce, but also as part of the wider, you know, United States community. And the demands currently, right, are tax the rich, abolish ice, no war. Those are the three main demands of May Day. But as you mentioned, Serena, it's like, can we go on general strike? Like what, like what is so maybe we could talk a bit about like what is a general strike? I mean, because one of the things that's pretty important to note is that there's people who are kind of like online calling for a general strike, you know, with uh, you know, form that you fill out, like with a QR code and it's like sign up for the general strike, which is like, okay, well, that's not adequate. But then how else is it gonna happen without this sort of like organization, whenever the labor movement itself is kind of at a a place where there's not a high density? Um, those are some some questions we might want to think about, but maybe to begin, like, what's a general strike? What does it require? And what do we have now and what do we still need? Griffin, do you have thoughts about this? Uh, since you, of course, have so much experience going on really successful general strikes as a as a as a one-person union.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Yeah, of course, of course. There's like a number of historical general strikes in American history that based on where our labor movement is right now, and overall statistics like number of workers who are in unions, we might not have the sense that US labor history is very radical, but really at points it was like some of the most violent and militant in the world. And one of the things that I think is um important to keep in mind is that a lot of the general strikes throughout US history, whether that's the hay market strikes or the cross-country railroad strikes or the Seattle general strike after World War One or the big strikes during like the second half of the Great Depression, where there were these external conditions that also were part of motivating people to take action. Like in the late 1800s, there was a recession or a depression every couple years for like two decades. And so people's ability to like buy food was just always up in the air. And farmers were also self-organizing in the scale of like hundreds of thousands across the country because these price changes meant that, you know, at the end of the season when they would go to buy, you know, new seeds and equipment for the next year of farming, their, you know, balance sheet would be zero dollars. And so they were just kind of in a state of peonage. And after, you know, World War I, people had come back from the war and we're seeing that workers in the US still weren't getting a fair share in the depression. A quarter of the country was unemployed. And I think that's a factor that's also kind of present recently in the ICE and you know, DHS occupation of Minneapolis that's really useful to hone in on when we think about how can specifically union-led mass mobilizations against the policies of the government happen. There were, you know, sympathy rallies and have been on the 30th of January and since then across the country, but none of them have kind of taken on the scale or like the level of organization, because one of the like just real underlying factors that made people go outside of where they lived and talk to their neighbors and do things together was just the fact that there were six ICE agents for every local police officer in the city. And without that kind of like really acute in your face on a daily basis crisis, I don't think you end up in a situation where one in ten people are in a rapid response network in Minneapolis. I think the other factors that are useful to consider that are probably through lines in the other episodes of uh huge kind of like citywide strikes in US history are groups of, you know, organized radicals well placed in their unions and workplaces. That's, you know, true in Minneapolis, where people have been longtime progressive union leaders were coordinating and kind of brought together the community coalition that said, we're all gonna go out on this day. Uh and it was true, you know, in the sit-down strikes in the Great Depression, uh, or the longshoremen strikes in San Francisco or the Toledo strikes, groups of radicals coming together with a plan. I think another variable that is probably true of many of these cases is a conflict that's about basic rights and people's dignity. In the case of Minneapolis, that's the freedom to be out and about without fearing that you're constantly being surveilled or that you're gonna be snatched up or killed, and that you're gonna have to, you know, get in harm's way to protect your neighbor or a family member. Um, and in 1886, it was we would like some free time, uh, because we, you know, deserve to have time to spend with friends and families and take up hobbies and relax and you know do what we will. Uh have a choice. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And so, and another factor I think is just like uh particularly influential in terms of size or part of the local economy group of workers leading the way that draws the rest of the community into the struggle. Like in the case of the um Minneapolis Teamsters strike, about which many of us have read the Farrell Dobbs book. You know, it was the fact that it was truckers who bring stuff into the city and take stuff out of the city. Without it, there's no basic goods. And that also puts them in a position then working with other organized workers to, you know, set up a system where a council of union leaders and workers are kind of managing the affairs of the city for a period of time, which is also a you know system of self-organization that appears when class struggle gets really high in a particular place. Uh, and so I think those are those are kind of like some patterns of factors that general strikes in the United States have taken on.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Yeah. And um, so just to to clarify too, you're like distinguishing between the groups of radicals within unions that are just, you know, kind of like the ones that might push more militancy in their unions. But then there's also the factor of the logistics or the the sort of nodes of the labor movement. So like the truckers being, you know, in that in that famous uh strike of Minneapolis, the truckers being like able to really put their weight on on the levers of of capital and then bring other people along and kind of organize that way. So that's kind of a micro-macro relationship there. Serena, um, love to hear what you think about this question of the general strike and and kind of what it needs and maybe where we're we're lacking or where we can grow, of course. You know, like opportunity always can lurk, um, but seems far away, or like seems maybe potentially like, wow, could we do that?

SPEAKER_03 42:05

Um I have less of an academic perspective or just kind of big picture perspective to offer. I think Griffin pretty much covered that part. Uh, but I recently spoke with a mom and organizer who was very visibly the face of protecting public education here in Houston. And I conjure her up because she, her story could really just be anyone's story being politicized, being on survival mode for their entire life, and then being part of a very politicizing moment. And for her, it was the state takeover of Houston Independent School District. And I think this does speak very clearly to external factors being a ri really uh important variable in bringing people towards action. But with her in particular, uh knowing her over the years since the takeover happened, I think she's developed a voice and she's now a leader of an organization called Young Monarchs, where it's her, her kids, parents, and her kids' schools all coming all together and bringing a whole community together, all ages, to talk through what's going on in the world. And this is primarily speaking to ICE agents, uh stopping by schools. And I think what she's done and how she's become and developed as a leader is really what I imagine all of our leading roles and participants in a future general strike would embody. It's not just, you know, just one singular political moment. I think it's really important for us to, as we develop politically from these junctures, from these crises, to take ownership of the role of like mentorship and really raising new generations of radicals for maydays to come. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

I I just want to also note the name Young Monarchs is so cool. It reminds me of the Young Lords, but I'm imagining the monarchs is like butterflies and not actual kings. Um that actually so what I'm hearing you say is that it's about people being radicalized kind of where they're at and then committing to action and then having a critical mass of those people kind of ready to go is going to be very important. Um, I I would agree. I would say it actually kind of intersects with what you were saying, Griffin, which is that there's these crises that arise, but not everyone recognizes them as crises, especially when they're isolated, especially when people are so isolated, right? Like um when they don't actually have uh relationships in their communities, but that's changing too, because what we saw in Minneapolis is it was both people who had those relationships that were able to sort of urge them on, but then people were willingly joining to put themselves on the line for people that they didn't know, you know, like it's like that sort of outward ripple, I think, is like that happens, but it really does, I think, take um the recognition of a crisis. And in some ways, it's not that it there has to be a DSA member standing right there in order to recognize it or something, but it's more like what are the things that you can actually see that will then allow people to um put themselves at risk because that's really what a strike is. It's a risk that people put themselves out there in order to collectively try to transform the conditions that they're that they're demanding, right? Like to to get an eight-hour day. That is such an interesting single demand, too, because now, of course, we take it so for granted that that's the standard working day that people died literally to get that for us, right? Like to or to get that standard for us, even though now it's kind of been washed away by late capitalism. You know, people are like, oh no, you know, you don't really have a fixed working day. That's a myth. Or, you know, what do you what do you think this is? Um so I I really do think that all of what you just said is so important to think about it in relation to this rising protest movement, right? That we're seeing because it's Minneapolis had like this huge, localized, very inspiring protest. But then we also have these more regular protests called No Kings, um, that is kind of organized around obviously protest against the Trump administration that has many different factors, many different demands, um, many, many different people from the sort of standard liberal, maybe even a person who wouldn't even identify as liberal or something, but they're just sick of the Trump administration, to participation by socialists. So, what about this? Like, how does that fit in in your view? Because it's like the protest movement in the United States is also something that is in many ways disconnect, it can be disconnected from any transformative change. But over time, you know, like we've kind of this is kind of what we're trained to do is like go out into the streets. Like that's the thing that we do. We vote, we go out into the streets. We vote, we go out into the streets. So maybe speak to that. Um, Serena, what do you think? Like, you know, as far as protest, like the protest movement goes, like what does that do? Especially because not everyone is going to be part of a union or or part of like a sort of like organized coalition, but they can always go out into the street.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

So let me try to answer this. So Minneapolis is a very interesting case to me because I don't think a whole lot of commentary around or analysis around how uh 100,000 Minnesotans went out on the streets came to be. And I think we need to kind of do uh rewind to 2020, COVID, and in particular uh the Black Lives Matter protests. And I think this is my analysis, anyways, that protest movement, in particular in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was shot, was a sort of, it was definitely a reckoning moment, but also I guess the spark for a lot of working class Minneapolis residents to see themselves as part of this broader protest movement demanding the abolition of police. And I think this also goes to really the importance, broadly speaking, of social justice movements out on the streets, politicizing really whatever crises of capital brings forth. And I'll also connect this to the protest movement in Houston shortly after October 7th happened. And I think that was most likely a lot of the protests that were organized were just as comparable to a lot of the George Floyd protests that occurred here in Houston. And from these protests came organizers in different places across Houston. Also, from these protests came more focused and disciplined demands for boycotts and also organizers who are leading campaigns for boycotts. And in particular, we have now an arms embargo campaign in Houston that has built off this protest movement and is bringing people closer into action, thinking clearly about what it will take to win an arms embargo. So that being said, yeah, there is really important role for social movements to play within thinking about a general strike, because again, union density is very low. And realistically thinking about really who runs our economy, we're also going to like have to think about um how do we organize immigrants in our workplaces. These two labor movements and social movements, I think, should be in conversation with each other.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Yeah. And I think I think probably through the Mayday strong coalition, some of those things are starting to happen. The thing that really struck me about what you just said is that there's kind of almost like a genealogy of protests, like probably starting, you know, maybe recently around the juncture of COVID and George Floyd, you know, I think that it was something like 25% of adult people, adult people, adults, um, went out and protest and took part in at least one protest during that period. And even though it did not result, and of course the right and Democrats are very quick to say it didn't result in in what they wanted, you know, police ended up increasing, blah, blah, blah. It did train people or like, you know, kind of start this spark, like you said, of giving people the impetus to go out and express themselves in collective action whenever there was a problem. Now, what the right and Democrats, of course, want us to do is either forget about it, right? Or like, you know, stay at home, or only do it in like a very specific kind of way. And of course, definitely not do like a real general strike, you know, not a real one, not one that's going to actually bring the economy to its knees. But I think, you know, I like to hear what Griffin has to say, but this conversation that maybe needs to just become more active, maybe it needs to intensify or learn from each other, like from the labor movement and social movements, is is kind of maybe not starting, but like starting back up or like, you know, starting to kind of like percolate around things like Mayday, right? Like that the like Mayday can be like this sort of, I don't know, rallying point. And then between Maydays, you can have these um continued conversations potentially. Griffin, uh, thoughts about the role of street protest or or just protest generally in in May Day?

SPEAKER_00 52:43

Yeah, I think people who have workplace organizing experience will be familiar with the idea that if your coworker doesn't think that it's possible to win, or if they think that the thing that you're asking them to do isn't connected to the goal, they're just gonna be less likely to take part because in their head they're doing, you know, a rational calculation of how they want to spend their time. And people want to spend their time on stuff that they think matters. And I think, you know, particularly as like the new generation of people who have become active socialists over the course of the last decade, we might be a little protested out in a way that almost means that we're kind of like missing the significance of the moment. But it's a really good question for like the anecdote Serena gave about the person she knows in relation to the you know, significance of general strikes, like what would get you to go out and do something if someone asks you to do it. Like, that's kind of the question we need to be thinking about in terms of how to make a general strike happen. And when it comes to kicking ice out of your city now or decreasing the amount of ice operations going on, we now basically have empirical evidence that if there's a certain amount of like ice watch and big protests, that that just means they like do less operations and abduct less people. And you could credibly ask people to take part in that because there's a pattern that you know has been, you know, tracked exactly. It works. And that hasn't necessarily been the case for lots of the protests that we've all been a part of through the you know, waves of protests over the course of the last decade. We've watched the genocide unfold. The policy of our government in terms of militarily supplying Israel hasn't really changed despite hundreds of thousands, millions of people over the course of almost a thousand days taking to the streets and expressing sympathy with the Palestinian people, similarly with the protests inspired by the people who have been killed as a result of police violence. But I think right now, with uh, for example, No Kings, there's just a lot of energy about people who weren't paying attention before or thought things were going okay, who now have just kind of totally shifted the way many of us became socialists 10 years ago. And it's a real opportunity to, at the very least, go and chat with those people and bring our own signs as a way to like politicize what's going on, never mind kind of like trying to officially engage engage with the quote unquote movement. And I feel like my mom is an example. She went to the last No Kings and she texted me in the middle of the day, and she was like, Unions in North Carolina, let's talk about it. And then five minutes later, she was like, May 1, May 1st, International Workers' Day. And I was like, Yeah, what's up? You know, like I'm gonna recruit my mom to DSA. And the, you know, in terms of like opinion polling right now, like 60% of people support abolishing I 60% of people support ending US arms shipments to Israel, which was not the case two and a half years ago. 60% of people have always supported Medicare for all. So we should really feel like the wind is at our sails. And I think in the same way that having organized radicals was like a key component of previous general strikes, like the more organized we are, the more we can take advantage of the moment and also kind of like steer what the demands are. You know, lots of people kind of bulk at the signage and the branding that says hands off NATO, in addition to like, you know, hands off Congress or hands off women's rights. And I agree, you know, I think we need to kind of very actively take apart NATO, but we don't get to a place where people are hearing us out if we don't show up and chat with people. And, you know, ideally we would all be going out with the same signage and clipboards and signing people up as DSA members on the spot because people want an avenue to fight back. And the No Kings protests, you know, in particular, are just an opportunity for us to go and have organizing conversations with people.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

Yeah, no, that's I think that's kind of the consensus, right? Which is that, you know, we should, as DSA, like be open and and clear and approachable. And one of the big ways we can do that, of course, is by really having um a strong presence in guiding, I think, the Mayday agenda, you know, um, like I said, tax the rich, abolish ice, no war. Those are all three things that have popular consensus around, you know, um, the people maybe even can like see the connections between some of those things already. They just don't necessarily have anyone to talk to about them, um, or like, you know, anyone to kind of urge them on. And that brings us to the comment that we are actually like, you know, a big part of this Mayday strong coalition. And we have a variety of different things. I can say that NPEC developed um some Mayday political education. Obviously, we're putting out this beautiful podcast that's going to come out on Monday, but we um made like a kind of Mayday and General Strike uh socialist night school that chapters can put on. We'll put a link to that in the show notes, um, as along with the chapter toolkit, which is, you know, a kind of variety of different things that ever every chapter can do. And um, both of you have been involved in kind of like shaping the approach to Mayday that DSA is taking. So maybe you could finish this out with talking a little bit about what people should expect on May 1st, wherever they're at, or, you know, anything that you feel has been like a great kind of thing that you've learned or or kind of come about since we've been working on Mayday very intentionally. Because as Serena had mentioned before, like Mayday always seemed a little bit like a side quest or something, um, as like, you know, DSA. Like it was, I always remember it being like, uh, are we gonna do anything for Mayday? Like it was like, uh-oh, it's like, you know, April 25th, like are we gonna do anything for Mayday? And this year it's been very much like a, oh yeah, like here are the plans for May Day. Like we actually have them like far enough ahead of time, which to me, it's like that's a simple thing in some ways. Like it's like, oh, we're suddenly paying attention, but it's actually resulted, in at least in my observation, in quite a lot of stuff. Um, so maybe you could talk about maybe some of your favorite stuff, maybe some of the things that you're gonna be doing on May Day. I'm gonna be in Louisville hanging out with Louisville DSA and canvassing for some socialist candidates there. Um, that's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

So Serena, want to speak to that? So this coming May Day, um, I did mention that Houston DSA is organizing three different rallies across three different areas of Houston. Um, I will be speaking and attending a rally that will be organized closer to the center of the city uh where most of our unions or union leaders will be participating in. So I'm a little bit excited about it, not as excited as I am about the other three rallies that Eastern DSA is organizing. But I think it's very significant that we're able to even just use May Day as a day where we can all come together and demand similar things, and in particular, getting rid of ICE from our city. And I'm really looking forward to this day, just broadly speaking, for people who are participating to not necessarily be disappointed that this isn't a general strike, but to see it as a jumping point where they're seeing others realize their own agency and politics as it exists today, where capitalists and bought-up politicians are really intent on taking away working people's agencies. And also people, attendees of these rallies themselves, seeing themselves as people who can further carry out the sort of agenda and the demands that we've demanded this one day out of 2026 and onwards, because at the end of the day, this is a lifetime-long struggle against capital, against imperialism, and Mayday today for this year, anyways, will just be one galvanizing moment um before the next one.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

2027, then 2028, and beyond. Griffin, what do you think? What's what's your what are your big plans and what are the what are the plans of others potentially?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Yeah, I people should know that, you know, um the National Political Committee of DSA and the National Labor Commission have been really working on May Day as a priority for the whole organization for a couple months. It's earlier, Serena had said that 98 chapters have plans for May Day that we know of. Probably the number is more because it's our one holiday per year. But a cool part of that as well is that 68 chapters have affiliated with the May Day Strong Coalition, which is led by a couple of unions that came together in response to Sean Fain's call to line up contracts across the country to make 2028 about workers' demands. And by participating in the local May Day Strong coalitions, DSA members leading their chapters, doing labor work who are themselves, union members active in their unions, have an opportunity to, you know, meet, form relationships with, talk politics with union leaders and members in their area. And that matters, you know, to go back to like how did we become interested in the labor movement? Why did lots of socialists arrive at the conclusion that unions matter a lot? Because they're long-lasting institutions of workers that, you know, in terms of people and resources, can be used to advance politics in the workplace and outside the workplace. And I think it'll be really important that people reflect on what mattered uh in terms of activating people for this May Day. What do people seem to care most about? And how can we try to not just resist what's happening in terms of the real democratic backsliding across the country and our government kind of being pillaged as it gets harder for people to live day-to-day? But what do we want to affirmatively, positively fight for and win? And I think, you know, for example, we're seeing US government support for Israel as it continues to genocide Palestinians and annex parts of Lebanon and attack Iran, becoming a defining issue in democratic primaries. Similarly, you know, Amazon is a huge corporate target that's degrading, you know, working conditions in multiple industries that affect multiple of the biggest unions in the country. It's going to take the whole labor movement to take down Amazon and get Amazon workers a seat at the table. How does that argument get made, trickle up? How does the where does the pressure come from? Probably through, you know, local union members and organizers frontizing and talking about what's the most important thing we can do right now with our unions, with each other to fight back. One other thing I'll just say is that we have uh some really excellent signs made by DSA comrades that people should print out with their chapters and take to actions. They say, strike for democracy, abolish ice. We can't afford the capitalist class, solidarity has no borders, and no at war with Iran, no money for Israel. They're very simple, but they're in DSA red, and I think they're quite striking and will really stand out in the crowd.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:06

We'll definitely put a link to those in the show notes for people to be able to print. And I know that um some of the things that chapters are doing to build up are like art builds and like sign making uh events. Um, so if you're listening to this and um you have the idea that your chapter might be doing something for Mayday showing up, you can always um maybe, you know, float the idea of doing an art build this week and um, you know, getting some of those signs made. So thanks so much, Serena and Griffin, for showing up today. And thank you, as always, to our production crew, Emma, Michael, and Tim, who put all this together. Class is a podcast of DSA's National Political Education Committee, or NPEC, which works to expand the knowledge of DSA members and non members in the service of winning the struggle for socialism and democracy. You can find out more about NPEC by searching for us online or following us on social media, but the best way to find out what Our committees up to is by signing up for Red Letter and Hex Monthly Newsletter. And if you aren't already, you can become a DSA member by following the link in the podcast description. Okay, until next time, solidarity.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:31

Stehe auf dem Brüdergenos, an essential Volksar und Wild, wer mit Lüge und Schmutz sich verbindet, wer das Volk und den Frieden besteht, wer die Fakten des Friedes entzündet, hat sein eigenes Leben verspielt. An der Ostfahrt, an der Weichse, an der Wolda, an der Spring, stehe Waffen höhergenossen, aus des Leben sankeist aus mir