Occupy Wall Street on May Day
6 05 2012May Day Slideshow ↓(click photo)
For decades, workers in Europe, South America and China have been celebrated with an official holiday on May Day.
The United States, however, has not followed suit. (Britain and Canada have tried to wash out the holiday’s leftist hues.) Even though the day’s origins date to a riot in Chicago in 1886 known as the Haymarket massacre, labor is celebrated in the United States in early September.
Socialists and trade union movements have long used May Day as a protest day. And on May 1, the Occupy movement hoped to bring numerous cities to a standstill in commemoration of International Workers Day.
That did not happen. However, in New York the protests continued into the wee hours of the next day, with about 2,000 marchers gathering at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza on Water Street after dark and several hundred returning to Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street’s former home base, after midnight.
The police said that 34 people were arrested and another 52 issued desk appearance tickets for lesser offenses by the end of a day that also included pickets, marches and rallies in Midtown, Union Square, Washington Square Park and on the Lower East Side.
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I find it interesting that there is a constant police presence during every Occupy Wall St event. The police presence is most likely adding to their publicity rather than detracting from it