May, bitch.

Sunday May 11th is Mother’s day! according to my Slingshot Mother’s Day was declared as an anti-war holiday by Julia Ward Howe.

for the month of May we here at Kisses, Bitch. (whether or not the other contributers know this) will be focusing on relationships with our mothers. interviews, articles, complaints, conversations about your mother, on your mother’s activism, or about your own motherhood are the main topic. as well as discussions on why Mother’s Day would be an anti-war holiday.
my sister (tiger crush, who knows this right now as she reads this) and i will be interviewing our own mother.

to kick things off, i’ll tell you a little bit about my own mother. she was an abortion advicate, taught sex ed and worked on counsling hotlines for 15 years. much of my childhood she was in school or working and for about 3 years i almost never saw her. there was a period of time where she worked at the minnesota children’s museum. this was pretty much awesome because i got to go there all the time and wonder around by myself (i was always a loner) and i also got lots of books and toys from the gift shop. everynow and then she’d need to make a sample of something made from one of the arts and crafts kits and we’d get to do art projects together. i developed a love of long car rides when my mother worked nights on hotlines and we would go to pick her up or drop her off at midnight, i remember laying in the backseat watching the stairs and streetlamps (both in texas and minnesota, when/if we had a car), feeling the car move, sometimes when we got there my dad would throw a rock at her window. sometimes i got to be at work with her, she would be on the phone in the other room and i would play computer games or color in her anatomy books. while i feel that my sister and brother were more involved in raising me early on, my relationship with my mother has molded me the most in who i am fundamentally- in both good and bad ways. what about you???

[note, this was partically inspired by the For Your Own Good zine, a British zine about mothers and daughters and eating disorders and their relationships, unfortunately grrrlzines.net doesn't have current info on where to get the zine and i can't find it anywhere on the internet and i have no idea what happened to my own copy, but blame my ex-boyfriends. and my mother.]

Mayday

when talking to people about Mayday there’s some confusion. generally, people think i’m talking about some pegan holiday. the rest, don’t know what i’m talking about at all.

if you’ve read much history of the United States, you know that there was a time in our country when children as young as 4 worked, when people worked 12 or more hour days on average, when there was no weekend, no safety regulations for factories, no fire escapes in factories, no accountibility of companies for the treatment of their workers. the 8hr day, the weekend, most factory safety regulations and the end of child labor were brought to us by the Labor Movement (aka. working anarchists, unionists, communists and socialists who protested, wrote pamphlets, educated their coworkers and spoke out publicly against these injustices).

Mayday was choosen as the International Workers’ Holiday. May 1st 1886 marked the beginning of a national strike for the 8 hour work day. May 4th 1886 was the day of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, where a bomb was thrown by an unknown person and police shot into a crowd of strikers and supports killing several people. 8 anarchists were arrested in conjunction with the demonstration, strike and bomb that was thrown. I read about this case in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and in Emma Goldman’s autobiography Living my Life. Four of the anarchists, including revolutionary Albert Parsons, were hung, 3 were later aquitted (as i said there was no evidence) and one killed himself in his prison cell with a bomb he made out of a cigar.
Mayday is not only a day to comemorate what the struggle of unionists, the labor party and the Haymarket Martyrs for the 8 hour day, but a day to protest the continuation of capitalism, war and the explotation of workers, and a day to celebrate the 8 hour day and all the advances we’ve made in worker’s rights and human rights.

Mayday parades are full of street theater, roller girls, unionists, anarchists, bike gangs, puppet and mask theater, immigrant rights blocks, etc etc etc. Mayday festivals combine the pegan aspects of fertility ceremonies and may poles with political discussions, teach ins and flyering. Concerts raise money for unions, labor and anarchist organizations. Workshops and conferences and teach ins and protests happen all around the world.

Chicago Mayday, in Haymarket Square- you can see the Haymarket Statue!!!!

in the 60’s and 70’s here in America, Mayday protests surrounded the Veitnam War and imperalism. in recent years they’ve had a similar theme with the war in Iraq and American Occupation. these past 2 years immigrant rights marches around the USA have been on Mayday.

more pictures of Mayday festivals

future Maydays?? we’ll celebrate equal pay for equal work, protest the state of fear we live in, celebrate immigrants rights and some day the end of all domination.