May Day, also known as International Workers Day, is a Communist holiday widely celebrated by people who become very angry when similarities between their agenda and Communism are pointed out. It’s also being observed with gusto by what remains of Occupy Wall Street, which is much less shy about embracing Marxism that most other divisions of the American Left.
Occupy decided to mark the day with riots and a “general strike,” in which they called for people to avoid shopping, going to school, or banking, in addition to staying away from work. In other words, after three years of grinding unemployment, and just days after a dismally flat first-quarter GDP report that presaged an even worse Q2, they want you to demonstrate solidarity with workers by destroying jobs.
As goofy as that sounds, it’s not really much of a stretch from mainstream liberal thought, which has embraced a curious disconnect between “jobs” and “employers.” It’s a conventional leftist assumption that the former can exist, in plentiful supply, without the latter earning those evil “profits.” Jobs are seen as a resource that exists outside of capitalism, rather than a product of capitalism. The destructive, and frequently bloody, quest of the Left is to build a society where the poor can prosper, while the rich do not: the search for a rising tide that does not lift the largest boats.
In the likely event that you disregard the call for a general strike and solider on to your job, Occupy is going to make May 1 as miserable as possible for you. Breitbart.com reports that Occupy San Francisco kicked off its “Black Bloc” riot early, after abandoning grandiose plans to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge:
A crowd of about 50 protestors gathered at San Francisco’s Dolores Park, most wearing the now familiar black masks of the Black Bloc. Police were stationed at the perimeter but made no attempt to break up the gathering mob of mask wearing hoodlums. Then the group left the park and broke windows, threw garbage cans and painted anarchist symbols on street signs, businesses and cars in the area of Mission and 16th Street. The group was shouting “F**k the police” and “Here, piggy piggy!” They were met by a phalanx of riot police, who caused the group to scatter.
Gosh, they’re just like the Tea Party, aren’t they? At least, that’s what the media used to tell us. Incessantly.
You’ll be seeing more of these “Black Bloc” characters as we draw closer to the election. Anarchy is the handmaiden of socialism, and masked anarchists will be very useful for creating the kind of chaos that helps the more respectable leftist candidates sell a message of Big Government control.
It has been noted that Occupy is long on complaints, and painfully short on solutions. This is a feature of the movement, not a glitch. It’s what makes them useful to the “mainstream” political operators who will step in to profit from the disruptions they cause, and harness the passions they unleash.
“Every day should be strike day,” the website organizing the May Day action declared. “They’ve stolen our lives. They’ve stolen our health. They’re taking over every inch of our cities and pushing us nowhere. If there is anything we have learned from the last six months it is this: May 1st isn’t the only day for striking, and isn’t only a day for workers. April 30th kicks off a string of actions in the Bay Area against all who would take our lives from us.”
Imagine the sheer pandemonium that would result if they got their wish, and every day brought a massive general strike. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it – just read up on the news from Europe, where general strikes occur with distressing frequency. Picture something like that hitting a massive, fast-moving, highly interconnected American economy larger than all of Europe combined, and already tottering on the brink of a double-dip recession. You would hear plenty of “solutions” proposed after a crisis like that… and none of them would involve greater individual liberty.
