To mark the global commemoration of workers’ rights yesterday, Occupy Wall Street sent thousands into the streets of Manhattan, with more than 30 protesters being arrested. In Oakland, Calif., occupiers clashed with police using paint-filled balloons and other projectiles.
At Occupy D.C.’s May Day activity, there was a maypole. And a drum circle, party games, history lessons and lectures about anarchism.
It was a lovely, slightly humid, afternoon to spend in Meridian Hill Park. About 3:30, members of Occupy D.C. started filling the hilltop park with signs, bicycles and other demonstration materials. A small stage was erected; a sound system played The Supremes’ “Baby Love,” Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” and other soulful hits of the ’60s and ’70s.
Under the trees on the 15th Street NW side of the park, most protesters lounged in the shade and shared their various gripes about the banking system, U.S. foreign policy and the state of activism. Although Occupy D.C. had said yesterday’s rally was a coordinated effort with labor groups like the Metropolitan Council of the AFL-CIO and the Amalgamated Transit Union, the crowd was made up almost entirely of the full cast of the protesters who became fixed presences at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza last autumn.
Ricky Lehrer, who once kept himself awake for nearly 100 hours in objection to the National Park Service’s ban on camping in McPherson Square, explained that May 1 extends across several movements.
“May Day is solidarity and support for the history of movements,” Lehrer, who interns at the Washington Peace Center, said. “It’s about building community.”
Lacy MacAuley, one of the day’s organizers for Occupy D.C., set up a pair of tabletop games for passersby to attempt. One, called “Inequality Pong,” instructed players to attempt to land a ping-pong ball in a wine glass—the “1 percent”—surrounded by rows of red plastic cups—the “99 percent.”
Paulo Sergio, who took over for MacAuley running the Beer Pong-like game, said he made his living as a security guard at a local branch of PNC Bank. But his source of income didn’t make him hesitate to participate in Occupy activities. “I get paid to survive in life, but I can spread the message,” he said.
At the center of Meridian Hill Park, occupiers gathered around a long pole affixed with red yarn tassels. Some mentioned that park authorities would not permit the protesters to plant a pole in the soil, much of which is being regrown for the spring. As a solution, Jesse Schultz, 60, who has been an activist of one sort or another for many years, held the pole as others grabbed a string and danced in a circle. Members of the D.C. Labor Chorus sang verses of medieval May Day songs. (They would later perform a series of workers-rights’ ballads.)
Mike Basillas also stuck out, having doused himself in deep purple body paint and glitter for the day, along with a collection of plastic bling. He said his get-up was meant to represent what he believes to be high-income earners’ aesthetic taste and that.
“I think the 1 percent is going to try to fuck and screw the middle class,” he said. “I’m trying to join them by wearing glitter and gaudy things. They like glamorous things.”
An anarchist who gave his name only as Scott, out of fear of his employer learning his black-flag leanings, told a crowd of perhaps 20 his vision for statelessness. “It’s left libertarianism,” Scott said. Later, he tried to explain the importance of the day.
“May Day is important because of the struggle for workers’ rights and all other forms of social justice,” he said. “The fight is never-ending, it seems. It’s a struggle against neoliberalism and all the other negative ‘isms’.”
The occupiers bandied about Meridian Hill Park until about 6 p.m. when, joined by a few more labor activists, they marched to the White House. Walking down 14th Street NW, about 250 protesters chanted anti-capitalist slogans and hoisted signs and banners sporting various pro-labor sentiments. Evening rush hour traffic was interrupted, with as many as three lanes of 14th Street, a major thoroughfare, filled up with marchers.
No arrests were reported at either the rally or march.
