Open thread for night owls: Occupy May Day

At The Nation, Peter Dreier gives us a history lesson about May Day and then writes:

The Occupy Wall Street movement's success can be measured in part by how public opinion has changed about such issues as corporate profits, widening inequality and excessive executive compensation. By last December, two months after the first occupations at Zuccotti Park, 77 percent of Americans'and 53 percent of Republicans'agreed that 'there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and corporations,' according to a Pew Research Center survey. The Pew study also found that 61 percent of Americans believe that 'the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy' and that 57 percent think that wealthy people don't pay their fair share of taxes. Most of these people won't be found protesting in the streets, but the nation's changing mood clearly influences what candidates for office and elected officials think they need to do to satisfy public opinion.

This year, in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, and in the midst of a presidential election contest, activists from around the country are ramping up the May Day festivities.

Feeling a new wave of anger and activism among their rank-and-file, unions will be taking to the streets this May Day. In Los Angeles, for example, the County Federation of Labor will augment the downtown immigrant rights rally with a series of protest actions led by different unions and their allies. The Teamsters will sponsor a demonstration at a waste sorting facility owned by American Reclamation, which is infamous for treating its immigrant workers like garbage. The action is part of the Teamsters campaign, in partnership with environmental and community groups, to not only organize workers in recycling plants but also to push the city government to regulate waste collection and recycling. UNITE HERE will bring thousands of hotel workers to Long Beach, where they are organizing several nonunion hotels, to rally and collect signatures for a 'living wage' ballot measure. Supported by SEIU, LA's 8,000 unionized janitors, who will be out in force to demand a better contract from the mega-corporations that own the area's office buildings, may announce a county-wide strike on May Day. SEIU's airport workers affiliate will be spending May Day engaged in protest and civil disobedience at Los Angeles International Airport to challenge efforts by major airlines to jeopardize employees health and safety.

In April, a coalition of unions, environmental groups, community organizing networks ' including National People's Action, PICO, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Jobs with Justice, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers, AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America, MoveOn, Unite Here, Common Cause, the Steelworkers union Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Health Care for America Now, the United States Students Association, and others'began a series of protest actions major banks and corporations, and trained close to 100,000 new recruits in civil disobedience tactics.

Greg Mitchell has been live-blogging the Occupy movement for seven months and will be doing the same Tuesday.

An interactive map of May Day activities is here.

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