MayDay in Berkeley (photos)

edgy photos from Berkeley Mayday worth a second look

typical cop over-c-i-l-l

the following text was handed out to a couple hundred passers-by during the Berkeley Mayday celebration.


MAYDAY!

May 1st is International Workers' Day--a day to celebrate our resistance to capitalism and strengthen the struggle for a world that is alive and free of wage-slavery, exploitation, and classes.

MayDay was declared in 1889 by the First International (before the tragic split between the marxists and anarchists) in commemoration of anti-capitalist rebels killed in the fight for the eight-hour work-day in the United States. Because of its explicitly radical heritage, Mayday in America has been suppressed and replaced by Labor Day, a politically vacuous (and for most wage-slaves, unpaid) “holiday” celebrating work under capitalism instead of collective revolt against capitalism.

Today--one hundred and fourteen years since MayDay's inception--we confront a capitalist system that is increasingly totalitarian and global in scope, armed to the teeth, and ridden with crisis. For all the vaunted prosperity and freedom that capitalism is said to afford, the overwhelming majority of humanity work constantly (most at stupid, soul-destroying, socially harmful jobs) and stay a step or two ahead of the bill collector--if they’re “lucky.” Tens of millions of others are consigned to lives of abject poverty, hunger, and misery. Capital degrades not only human life: increasingly the ecological balance upon which all life-forms depend is threatened by its insatiable need to turn the world into money. Forests are clear-cut, toxins spewed into the water and air, vast stretches of land is rendered uninhabitable--all in the service of capital‘s “bottom line.”

Profits are the life-blood of this system; like a vampire, capital must constantly replenish itself with surplus value sucked from living labor or else it will die. Capital organizes society, and our lives, to maximize profits and all considerations--social, cultural, environmental etc.--take a back-seat to this quest. Physical space, and in particular urban space, under capitalism is colonized by the imperatives of commodity production and circulation. With the exception of a few under-funded public facilities such as parks and libraries, little of life in the city isn’t designed and ordered to facilitate exchange. Buildings that can’t realize sufficient value in the market stand empty while people sleep in the streets. Vacant lots that can’t find a buyer are caged-off, “no trespassing“ signs prominently displayed, and neglected. That which can’t be justified in market terms must be fought for tooth-and-nail. Truly public spaces that encourage free human interaction outside the logic of business are invariably declared illegal. Under capitalism, life is little more than buying and selling commodities--not the least of which is labor power.

In America this estrangement and privatization of life is more advanced than anywhere else in the world. This is both the cause and effect of the deteriorating conditions that working class people--waged and unwaged--face here.

Propagandists would have us believe that the relative affluence obtained by white workers in 1950s and 60s America represents capitalism’s true nature, but it was merely a brief moment in the history of a global system of exploitation. The US post-World War boom, which was said to have vindicated capitalism, lasted from 1945 to 1973 and came to end as declining rates of profit compelled US elites to tear-up the social compact between capital and labor that held sway for (only) thirty years. Since the early 70s, union-busting, massive social cutbacks, capital flight, de-regulation, and increased police powers have been the order of the day; so, too, have been declining real wages, huge increases in extreme poverty, homelessness, and an explosion in the numbers in prison and under penal control.

The “booming” economy of the mid to late-90s was supposed to prove that US capitalism was still strong and able to deliver the goods, but most working class and poor people in the Bay Area (and elsewhere) never experienced the prosperity as it was glowingly depicted on TV. For most of us, the “boom,” instead of being a respite from declining living conditions, meant astronomical rents, long work-weeks, indebtedness, and endless “new economy” hype. And now they say the good days are over!

In the face of the current crisis of profitability afflicting the US (and global) economy, the American ruling class is pulling out the stops to preserve its dominance, at home and abroad. Its strategy operates on two fronts simultaneously. On one front, they seek to expand US capital's footing abroad through "endless" war. These invasions and massacres, dressed up in the language of “human rights,” it is hoped will ratchet up its position vis a vis other capitalist powers, secure increased power over the flow of oil, and lay the basis for a new expansion. The other front is directly waged against the working class in the US, through mass lay-offs, reduced wage-bills, increased productivity, and draconian social cut-backs.

This moment in history places in sharp relief what was always the essential character of capitalist social relations: that the fulfillment of our needs are incidental, at best, to the demands of the profit system. Capitalist logic has always reduced the inhabitants of the planet to raw materials, and as the screws tighten even more on our lives, it becomes clear that our demands for a better world must transcend the entire profit system. Anything less will be absorbed back into the present setup, only to strengthen it. A return to the “New Deal” style of capitalism is now as much an impossibility as the bosses “handing over the keys to the factory.” The stakes are as high for those in power to remain as they are for us to dismantle their reign.

INSANE DIALECTICAL POSSE
Noclass2003 [at] hotmail.com

While riding my bicycle up Durant the evening of May 1, I was surprised to be confronted at the Ellsworth intersection by what appeared to be a military occupation force of about 20 police in riot dress. Their manner was threatening, harsh and mean as one officer blocked others and me from crossing the street in the pedestrian lane on a green light. I felt intimidated and demanded to know why they were there and by what authority he was blocking my right to cross the street.

On the far side of the intersection, I could see a small crowd carrying Earth flags and moving away up Ellsworth. Another person on the corner said they were breaking up a May Day parade. The confronting officer replied, “Get off the street or I’ll hit you with my stick,” which he waved menacingly in front of me. They continued to block other people and my freedom of movement, and refused to answer why they were still there. They maintained a bullying stance.

I by then had become inwardly terrified, my blood curdled, and a deep revulsion of militaristic occupational forces acting against civilians on the street here in America rose to a peak. I had my share of military force in World War II as an aerial gunner on a B-24, and for one year as a POW in Nazi prison camps. The scenes came flooding back of Warmacht guards shouting “Rous Mitt” as they broke up our baseball game crowd and other violations of their petty security rules. My sense of victimization surged as I equated this show of military force with my World War II experiences, the U.S. wars against small countries, Sept. 11 and the invasion of Iraq — all of which involved threatening of civilians.

The scene got more ridiculous as I continued to demand them to disband and stop blocking the street. An order was shouted and they all like automatons did an about face and assembled into a two-abreast column. The column headed south and, with a sharp command, turned west on Durant toward the stalled traffic. Simultaneously, one of the apparent commanders walked to within five feet of where I was standing and threw down a smoke grenade, and then several more 15 feet down Durant.

The point of this protest letter is that the Berkeley Police Department, the mayor and City Council need to review their training for crowd control and their policies for appropriate show of military force. One shoe does not fit all circumstances. At the point I came in on the May Day parade breakup there appeared to be no cause for the threat of “I’ll hit you with my stick.” (I have his badge number and name.) However, let us forgive, forget and rid our society and the world from the clutches of the “military mind.”

Ken Norwood