This Thursday is May Day—also known as International Workers’ Day—and Portland is showing up. From a rally hosted by the Portland Association of Teachers on May 1 to weekend events for the working stiffs who can’t call out, Portlanders have options for how they want to celebrate workers’ rights.
If the day’s title reminds you more of a ribbon-strewn maypole than workers’ rights, you’re not alone. Though May Day emerged out of the tumultuous US labor movement in the late 19th century, it’s far more celebrated internationally than it is in the US. But given the full calendar of events in Portland this year, more and more people seem to be catching on.
What is now known as May Day started as a massive, nationwide general strike on May 1, 1886, in which hundreds of thousands of workers walked off their jobs, demanding an eight-hour workday. In subsequent protests police and workers clashed. Some of these demonstrations—most notably the Haymarket Affair in Chicago—ended in tragedy. Both workers and police were killed, and labor activists were rounded up and punished, some by death…