Text and photographs by Justin Goh

The gamble did not pay off. You cannot have less than 3 000 people protesting more than 5 issues and call yourself a May Day Mobilization. I overheard one organizing member tell someone to look through the stack of signs and "...choose whatever you feel strongly about" Five groups organised different rallies throughout the cause of the day. From the ungodly hour of 8.00am in the morning protesting began their speel outside the Chicago Board of Trade. This group than marched to meet with another that was protesting Day Labor. Together they marched down what a sun-times internet edition commentary called "...the same route of an 1886 march for the eight-hour workday." In the same way that the sun-times article has missed the point of May Day -the march is but one of the most significant events in the history of the labor movement- so have the protesters lost sight of the significance of protesting on this day. Give them any reason to ignore an event and they will. To their credit the organizers where well prepared. The marchers had the nessecary signs and the chanting was strong and for the most part organized. To be able to get all the protesters moving on time to meet at the scheduled location must have been quite a feat. But the numbers simply didn't justify the coverage they would have got if they united together. A lot of the people I spoke to had a number of issues there were protesting about and all of them seemed sympathetic to the labor movement, day lobor and global capitiaism. Could they have made a concerted effort to decide on one meeting place and one cause? Maybe not. I think if they just had marched down one route and shown their solidarity as unified protest that would have been enough to cause more than what the Chicago Chief of police chief of patrol John Richardson called "...basically just a traffic problem"

Action May Day! Foto galerie 1 and 2