Join Ithaca CPUSA, Ithaca DSA, the Tompkins County Workers' Center, Ithacans For Just Cause Employment Coalition, the Coalition for Mutual Liberation, the Science Center Union, and PM Press, IWW, Ithaca Tenants Union, Gimme Coffee Union, CJP-JVP, Ithaca Teachers Association, along with community members, local unions, and other progressive organizations, to gather on the Ithaca Commons in celebration of International Workers Day on Wednesday, May 1st 2024. Join us from 4-7pm at the Bernie Milton Pavilion for an afternoon of live music, kids’ activities, speeches, and solidarity. May Day is a drug and alcohol-free, and kid-friendly event. Everyone is welcome!

Music Line up:

4 - 4:30 Bordercholly

5 - 6      Home For Bugs

6 - 7      Open Swim

May Day has roots stretching back to the nineteenth century. On May 1, 1886, organized labor in the U.S. walked out: a general strike of half a million workers demanding an eight-hour day. After the strike was met with bloody repression, unions held demonstrations on that same date in subsequent years. In 1904, the Second International called on its member organizations to “demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, the class demands of the proletariat, and universal peace.”

The language may be old-fashioned, but the ideas are as relevant as ever. May Day is about the struggle to put people before profits, and to build a society based on peace and solidarity rather than greed and violent competition.

That struggle takes root in our workplaces, where at-will employment rules allow employers to impose forced overtime, unpaid call, irregular schedules, and ever-growing demands for productivity on the clock and availability off the clock. It unfolds on our campuses, where right-wing donors flex their checkbooks and university administrations crack down on faculty and students demanding basic human rights. And that struggle for a better world grows with our outrage at our government’s complicity in the deliberate starvation and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Tax revenue that could fund affordable housing, public schools, and community programs in our country gets funneled instead to the weapons manufacturers that supply bombs and fighter jets.

This May Day, we are calling on Common Council to end at-will employment in Ithaca by passing Just Cause Employment Protection—a set of rules that will protect Ithaca workers from arbitrary and abusive termination. We are also calling on our elected representatives and institutions at every level to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a just peace grounded in the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and a budget that invests in our communities instead of subsidizing war profiteers.

We look forward to seeing everyone on May 1st, solidarity forever!