At a moment when politicians aligned with the MAGA movement are banning books, restricting curriculum, and attacking educators for teaching honest history, May Day offers a powerful example of the kind of story they don’t want told — and the kind of story we must fight to protect and keep telling if we are to build a more just world. In much of the world, May 1 — International Workers’ Day — is recognized as a public holiday — won through generations of struggle and marked by marches, strikes, and mass demonstrations.
May Day is as American as apple pie. The holiday traces back to 1886, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States launched a coordinated movement to reduce working hours from grueling 10–16 hour days to an eight-hour workday. On May 1, workers walked off the job in cities across the country, making one of the largest strikes in U.S. history. Their slogan was “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will.”
Though May Day began in America, celebrating it was suppressed in the USA by governments, while it spread around the world. Today, the 99 percent are reviving May Day, celebrating community solidarity while protesting grotesque income inequality, great injustices to immigrants and people of color, and fighting back against the cruelty of the rule of the wealthy oligarchs and giant corporations.
This year May Day events took place in more than 3,000 cities and towns across the USA. We draw on the spirit of the people of Minneapolis, the stalwarts who organized a “general strike” to get rid of the hated ICE agents infesting their city. There were many May Day events in Westchester on Friday. In Hastings we had about 200 people, more than we expected, and our usual open mic so all could speak was supplemented by chants and lots of singing. You can see lots of pictures on Facebook.
May Day is also getting us ready for the fight back we will need in 2028 to stop Trump from extending his dictatorship. The attack on voting rights, illuminated by several good articles below, is only one of the several directions from which we can expect attacks on the likely victory of Democrats in November. Many years ago, during the great strikes and protests of 1968, the writer John Berger wrote what to me is still a powerful essay on “The Nature of Mass Demonstrations,” In it he wrote, “It would seem that the true function of demonstrations is not to convince the existing State authority to any significant degree. Such an aim is only a convenient rationalization. The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness.” Given the state of the Trump dictatorship and the disasters of war and climate chaos, we need to practice taking ourselves seriously, trying to understand what part we can usefully play in saving the world. May Day and the several “No Kings” protests are a good start, but we need to practice, practice to learn much more.
“ALL OUT FOR MAY DAY” – 2026
(Video) “No School, No Work, No Shopping”: Workers, Immigrants to Lead Thousands of May Day Protests
From Democracy New! [May 1, 2026]
---- As workers around the world rally to mark May Day, International Workers’ Day, we speak with organizers in Los Angeles and Chicago. The May Day Strong coalition here in the United States says 3,000 protests and events are scheduled across the country with organizers calling for “no school, no work, no shopping.” The largest May Day protest in Los Angeles is planned at MacArthur Park. Pedro Trujillo, the coordinator of the Los Angeles May Day Coalition, says the July presence of immigration agents with SWAT gear and armored vehicles in MacArthur Park laid the foundation for a high May Day turnout. ... “We are creating a coalition to resist the tyranny of billionaires in this moment,” adds Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. “Billionaires put a president in place to dismantle democracy, a right-wing Congress to watch it and a right-wing Supreme Court to block us from doing anything about it.” [See the Program]
(Video) “A People’s History of Invisible India”: The Dire State of Worker Rights
From Democracy Now! [May 1, 20206]
---- On International Workers’ Day, we take a look at the state of workers’ rights and freedoms in India, where pressure on fuel supplies from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has deepened the cost-of-living crisis and labor unrest is on the rise. In mid-April, tens of thousands of workers from the industrial hubs around New Delhi blocked roads to demand a fair wage and better working conditions. “Various governments in India and the central government have been trying to dilute labor laws,” says Neha Dixit, an investigative journalist and author based in New Delhi. “And there have been constant protests and strikes against this.” [See the Program]
May Day and the Reclamation of the Jewish Radical Tradition
By Dave Zirin, The Nation [April 30, 2026]
---- May Day is as American as apple pie. And yet, the unions, the media, and the government here either pay it little mind or have actively suppressed its history. This speaks to a country, as articulated so beautifully in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, that has an earthshaking history of class struggle but continues to suffer from the absence of a mass labor or social-democratic party as well as low union density. As a result, there is little public knowledge of the labor struggles that have periodically rocked this country. … Into this May Day mélange of workers’ rights and anti-imperialism steps the Jewish anti-Zionist organizations that have recently broken new ground on the arid US left. Members of these groups tell me that they view May Day as a time not to only cry out against war but also to recall and reclaim the Jewish radical labor tradition with which they identify. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
For many years, Nick Mottern, a CFOW stalwart who emigrated to Northampton, has led a coalition of agitators working to “Ban Killer Drones.” Recently, on Earth Day, he and a team of 120 people protested at the Hancock Drone air force base near Syracuse. Here is a good 6-minute video of the protest, with Nick speaking.
Trita Parsi is a leading expert on Iran, especially the Iran nuclear issues. On his Substack today he posted an amazing video from Iran, aimed at Americans and supporting peace. Much of the video uses AI to put Legos in action. I loved it; perhaps you will too. [Link].
For more than a year we’ve followed the trial and imprisonment of people in the UK who dare to protest the arrest and imprisonment of activists in the group Palestine Action. A similar action took place in Germany last September, and those arrested are now on trial, facing heavy jail time. This article from 972 Magazine (Israel/Palestine) puts the case In the context of the strong German/European pushback against any public support for Palestinian rights.
More than 50 years ago I had the good luck to get involved with a group putting out Radical America magazine. The early efforts of the group were focused on promoting “history from the bottom up.” Jesse Lemisch, a slightly older historian, wrote one of the flagship essays promoting this new approach to US history, “The American Revolution Seen From the Bottom Up,” This week The New York Times published an article about another aspect of Jesse’s work, unknown to me, “How a Radical Historian Saved the Schlock of ’76.” The highly illustrated article reviews his collection of “schlock” from the bicentennial year 1976, when American flags and patriotic imagery was plastered on every thing from paper cups and sugar packets to an “all-American novelty condom.” With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence coming up, would-be collectors may profit from this survey of Jesse’s work.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
Still basking in the spirit of May Day, this week’s musical Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers come from the world of working people. So many to choose from! Here is Billy Bragg with “There is Power in a Union”; Pete Seeger with “Solidarity Forever”; Paul Robeson with, “Joe Hill”; and Marcia Diehl and the New Harmony Sisterhood with “Union Maid.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Truth, Consequences, Climate, and Demand Destruction
By Rebecca Solnit , Meditations in a Time of Emergency [May 3, 2026]
---- The biggest news is always the climate news, and sometimes it’s so big it seems to be incomprehensible, or so terrible it makes people want to shut their eyes to it, and that’s part of how it gets shoved to the side. A couple of weeks ago, a story appeared in many newspapers, once, but with no follow-up about what it means, what our response should be. … Here’s how the Guardian framed it, “The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding ‘very concerning’ as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis.” … The biggest drama of our time is being written in fire and heat, among the systems and places we used to assume were stable enough to treat as background. They’re not any longer, and the great war of our time is against nature itself. The climate movement is a peace movement. But a war, the idiot war in Iran, may unintentionally contribute to our climate goals. [Read More]
The Global War on Terror’s Journey Home: The Collective Trauma of America’s Twenty-First Century Wars
By Andrea Mazzarino, Tom Dispatch [April 30, 2026]
---- America’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been receiving lots of scrutiny right now from journalists and ordinary citizens like me — and for good reason! Detaining people en route to their kids’ schools, in hospitals, or at work shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind these days when I think of “freedom,” “civil rights,” or “America.” Nor should spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild warehouses so that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, can hold people without charges in subhuman conditions. What do you think? In all of this mayhem, it’s easy to overlook new human rights violations because there are so many each day. Violations of the rule of law have become the air Americans breathe. … Instead of a workaday force that makes sure the rules are followed, it’s become an internal police force that bears increasing resemblance to what the United States military has been doing in dozens of other countries around the world as part of the never-ending Global War on Terror (GWOT) that this country has been waging for almost a quarter-century now in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. America’s wars are indeed coming home. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “How U.S. Militarization Is Redefining the Americas: Elastic Borders and Fortress Capitalism,” by Teri Mattson, Code Pink [May 3, 2026] [Link]; and “After El-Fasher” [North Darfur], photographs by Jérôme Tubiana, New York Times [May 3, 2026] [Link].
KILLING THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT
(Video) Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act in “Devastating Blow” to Democracy & Civil Rights: Maya Wiley
From Democracy Now! [April 30, 2026]
---- The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining major provision of the landmark 1965 law that was a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, a majority of justices ruled Wednesday that Louisiana must redraw a congressional map that was designed to create a second majority-Black district in the state, where African Americans have long faced racial segregation and barriers to voting. They said the electoral map “relied too heavily on race,” an interpretation that is set to usher in another wave of redistricting across the South to help Republicans win more seats in Congress. “This is central to whether or not we maintain a multiracial democracy in this country,” says lawyer and civil rights activist Maya Wiley, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She calls Wednesday’s ruling “a free pass to discriminate.” [See the Program]
The US Supreme Court, Race & the Right to Vote
By Majorie Cohn, Consortium News [May 1, 2026]
---- In perhaps its most insidious decision in nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court disemboweled Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the “crown jewel” of the U.S. civil rights movement. The VRA ended Jim Crow-era election procedures that precluded Black people from voting in the South through intimidation, literacy tests and poll taxes. It was part of a system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation meant to restore white supremacy after the end of slavery and the federal, military occupation of the South. Jim Crow lasted from 1877 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. .. “With this decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across this country,” … An analysis conducted by The New York Times last year found that Democrats could lose about 12 majority-minority districts throughout the South if the Court struck down part of the VRA. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Why Is There a Voting Rights Act? A Timeline,” by Audra D. S. Burch, et al., New York Times [April 29, 2026] [Link]; “Republicans Can’t Contain Their Glee Over the Death of the VRA,” by ElieMystal, The Nation [May 2, 2026] [Link]; and “Trump Has No Clue What His Supreme Court Has Just Unleashed,” by Greg Sargent, The New Republic [May 1, 2026] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Palestinian farmers whose livelihoods have been destroyed by Israeli settlers
By Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss [April 29, 2026]
---- Since October 2023, attacks from Israeli settler groups on Palestinian farmers in the West Bank have increased exponentially, both in numbers and in levels of violence. For many farmers, this has represented a severe blow to their livelihood and way of life, but the impact goes beyond farmers themselves: a substantial part of the Palestinian economy and a mainstay of rural families is being disfigured and decimated. At a time when settler pogroms in the countryside have terrorized Palestinians, farmers have been on the frontlines, enduring escalating Israeli violence. According to the Palestine Information Center, Israeli settler groups have carried out more than 8,000 attacks on Palestinians since October 2023. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that Israeli forces have demolished more than 1,000 Palestinian farming structures in the West Bank in 2025 alone. But even those who haven’t still feel the cumulative effect of this assault, reflected in the rising price of agricultural produce. [Read More]
A School Shooting in the Occupied West Bank
By Jasper Diamond Nathaniel, Infinite Jaz [May 3, 2026]
---- Last Tuesday, just after noon, a Jewish settler took up position on a hillside overlooking the Al-Mughayyir Boys’ Secondary School in the central occupied West Bank, searched for a clear line of sight, crouched, aimed his assault rifle at a group of children, and opened fire. In footage from the scene, children can be heard screaming as the shooter pauses, advances several steps down the hill, scans the area, and resumes firing. At one point, he drops to a knee, steadies his aim, and fires more. Minutes earlier, the shooter and his armed companions—a mix of settlers and Israeli soldiers—had been spotted by teachers, who made split-second decisions to attempt to hide or evacuate the children. Fourteen-year-old Aws Hamdi Al-Nassan was part of the latter group. He was shot in the back of the head. By the time teachers ran through a hail of gunfire and reached him, he was dead. … What would happen if this occurred the other way around? If Palestinian militants from the West Bank broke into Israel or a Jewish settlement and shot up a school, killing a child and an adult and wounding four others? Is there any doubt that this would be breaking news in every major outlet of the Western world? No, there is no doubt—it would be an enormous story, as it should be! We should never become numb to children being gunned down. And yet, here we are. The powers-that-be in the “civilized” world have long since accepted that this is who Israel is. [Read More].
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Israel blocked the March of Return. Palestinians marked the Nakba anyway,” By Baker Zoubi, 972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [April 28, 2026][Link]; and “Israel’s New World Order: Nothing But the Threat of Endless Death,” by Andy Worthington, Antiwar.com [April 30, 2026] [Link].
THE FLOTILLA TO GAZA
Israeli Navy Goes 700 Miles to Attack Unarmed Gaza Flotilla Boats Near Greek Waters
By Ann Wright, [May 2, 2026]
---- In the evening of Wednesday, April 29, 2026, Israeli naval forces attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) to Gaza. An unknown number of Israeli military ships went over 700 miles to attack a 54 ship flotilla that was headed for Gaza to attempt to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and bring worldwide attention to the continuing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the destruction and occupation of southern Lebanon and the attacks on Iran. 21 boats were attacked by Israeli naval forces about 80 nautical miles west of the Greek island of Crete in international waters. 179 participants from 33 countries were taken against their will from boats that were damaged by Israeli naval forces and put onto a commercial cargo ship that may arrive at the Israeli port of Ashdod around Saturday, May 2. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Breaking the Siege: Israel’s Illegal Attack on Gaza Flotillas in International Waters,” by Michael Leonardi, Palestine Chronicle [May 2, 2026] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) Sunlight Doesn’t Go Through the Strait of Hormuz: Bill McKibben on Iran Oil Shock & Green Transition
From Democracy Now! [April 30, 2026]
---- We speak with author and activist Bill McKibben about the worsening climate crisis and why the world must rapidly transition to renewable energy in order to stave off the worst impacts. He says the Iran war has exposed the “utter folly” of fossil fuel dependence. “Sunlight has to travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, but none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz,” says McKibben. “That makes it a very appealing alternative, especially now that it’s cheaper than burning coal and gas and oil.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The ‘Age of Electricity’ Is Upon Us,” by Zoya Teirstei, Mother Jones Magazine [April 2026] [Link]; and “Hope is contagious and science is king” [the climate summit in Santa Marta, Colombia], by Jonathan Watts and Fiona Harvey, The Guardian [UK[ [May 1, 2026] [Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Video) Democracy Under Siege [55 minutes]
[FB – Check out this interesting, well-made documentary about the Trump era’s attack on democracy.]
---- Acclaimed editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes offers a razor sharp critique of American political hypocrisy. Can the nation preserve its democratic ideals, or will it fall prey to an authoritarian takeover? [See the Program]
House Approves Three-Year Extension of Warrantless Spy Powers
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [April 29, 2026]
---- The House on Wednesday approved a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which gives the federal government the power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans. The extension passed in a vote of 235-191, a day before its previous extension expires. The bill, in its current form, may not make it through the Senate because it includes a permanent ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Rise of the Vichy Scientists
By Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [May 1, 2026]
---- Too many scientists are willing to collaborate with Trumpism in the mistaken assumption that obedience will save their own necks. … American science is struggling for its life. It’s been under assault since January 2025, and nothing is getting better. We’re soon to be on a death watch. It is unbelievably stupid and insane—flushing away decades of American preeminence in innovation, and for what? No one has adequately explained why the mad men of the Trump administration are so hell-bent on this task. But a question has lingered in my mind for months now: Why would scientific institutions be cozying up to the very people who want to pull them all down? Why do they insist on whitewashing what is happening, helping the perpetrators burnish their credentials? … This is how the dual state in this context operates—science, even in its weakened state, limps along, and the contours of what is science fall under ideological control, while key institutions pretend it’s all business as usual. This, too, is the rise of Vichy science, with many willing to collaborate in the mistaken assumption that obedience and compliance will save their own necks [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Haymarket Affair in Three Monuments
By Peter Cole, Long Haul Magazine [May 2, 2026]
---- Among other legacies, the Haymarket Affair inspired the creation of both US Labor Day (the first Monday in September) and International Labor Day (May 1) The Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano lamented in 1989 that, “No statue has been erected in memory of the martyrs of Chicago in the city of Chicago. Not a statue, not a monolith, not a bronze plaque. Nothing.” Monuments signal what the dominant community believes worth remembering. In Chicago, as in cities worldwide, public art often promotes elitist, white supremacist, and even fascist ideals as opposed to their counterpoints – working-class visions of socialism, anarchism, antifascism, and antiracism. Yet monuments have been and remain sites of struggle. As the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience declares, “Remembering is a form of resistance.” What a community chooses to remember – or “forget” – is vital. Among other legacies, the Haymarket Affair inspired the creation of both US Labor Day (the first Monday in September) and International Labor Day (May 1), the latter celebrated in nearly every country around the world outside the United States. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST – Remembering Stephanie Chernikowski, “Photographer of the ‘Rough Magic’ of Punk New York,” by Alex Williams, The New York Times [May 1, 2026] [Link]; and “The Past is Present: History is Organizing With Us Now,” [May 2, 2026] [Link].
