Friends, Thank you for all of your participation this past week in our Earth Day to May Day 2021 activities, many of which we hosted in collaboration with our labor, climate justice and local grassroots partners. As this week comes to a close, we want to take a moment to recognize workers–on all days but especially today–as we honor International Workers' Day, also known as "May Day." International Workers' Day was adopted by labor organizations around the world to commemorate the 1886 mass strike of U.S. workers for an 8-hour workday and the murderous repression of those who had helped lead it. At the Labor Network for Sustainability, we also recognize the importance of May Day as a pathway to achieve our vision of workers making a living on a living planet. From a March 26, 2012 Common Dreams Op-Ed by LNS Senior Strategic Advisor and Co-Founder Jeremy Brecher, "While climate denialism is still rife in the U.S., the rest of the world recognizes the existential threat of catastrophic climate change and the necessity of converting the world’s economy to a climate-safe basis. The labor movement in the rest of the world is committed to the economic transformation necessary to save the Earth’s climate. That transformation can be the core of an emerging global program to create a secure economic and environmental future for all by putting the world’s people to work transforming the world’s economy to a low-pollution, climate-friendly, sustainable basis. "May Day has been an international labor holiday for more than a century. But for millennia it has been a day for the celebration of nature. This May Day can be an opportunity to draw the two together to represent the common global interest in creating work for all reconstructing the global economy to protect rather than destroy the Earth."
As we did with Earth Day, where we reflected on labor's role in the first celebration of Earth Day from LNS President and Founder Joe Uehlein's piece, "Earth Day, Labor and Me," we're grateful to experience May Day as an important occasion to honor workers and the planet on which we serve. |
