May Day 2010 Updates, Pix, Etc.

Here's a couple of photos from the Wellington march that have the AWSM banner in them

There's a report here - http://indymedia.org.nz/article/78529/mayday-2010-wellington

The march was in support of striking workers at JB Hi-Fi, a national music/electronics chain.

Ya, looks pretty sketchy. link to the website?

Dead End, I believe the website states that this photo was taken in Moscow. If I had to guess, their probably apart of the National Bolshevik's. Makes me ill inside.

Avatar-style:

I wonder if there are any May Day events in the US? Doubt it though, specially here in Houston lol

Nothing in London, Ontario.

Didn't you notice the opening post in this thread on an event in Iowa City? I'm sure there are others in a number of the larger cities. Typically, though, these events -- in places where this annual ritual has been taking place for decades -- are dominated by trade union bureaucrats and Stalinists/Maoists/Trots. It's only in places where this isn't the case that there is any significance to such events.

Popped along with Weelers to the London march, missed SF and AF lot but caught Chris Knight and Class War 'executing' David Cameron, Nick Griffin et al.
Midly entertaining. Started pissing rain. Headed home.

Portland just got done with theirs

Chavistas rallied in Caracas, with good ol'Hugo promising to push forward with the 15% minimum wage hike ahead of schedule. Nothing to do with AN elections coming up soon though...

I believe there was also a rank and file leftist march in Maracay. Updates as soon as I have them.

I have no idea how this happened, but in Auckland there was a mayday march of 50,000. Unfortunately it was largely organized by greenpeace in opposition to govt. plans of mining in national parks.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1005/S00013.htm

In any case that's a pretty huge protest by NZs standards.

[After a long while of lurking finally made me an account with you.]

Thought I would place some info on several May Day manifestations which happened in the Netherlands.
http://indymedia.nl/nl/2010/04/66940.shtml (in dutch though)
The biggest (although not big) demonstrations happened in Rotterdam and Nijmegen, during the afternoon and both have seen uncalled for police violence and arrests.

The manifestation in Rotterdam, which was organised by several authoritarian socialist groups (marxist-leninist, stalinist, maoist), counted around 200 people. This manifestation was forbidden at the last moment. People had assembled and where told there by the cops that they were not allowed to have flags, because of the poles in them. When people opposed this and did not want to listen, cops moved in, dispersed the people with battons and dogs and made 13 arrests eventually. 6 people are now still detained. Videofootage: http://www.cineac.tv/index.php?film_ID=4286&reactie=1

The manifestation in Nijmegen was organised by several anarchist, libertarian socialist, anti-authoritarian groups, and was the one I attended (even though I come from Rotterdam).
About 300 people assembled for this one and right from the start it was clear that police was out in force, including the military police, swines on horses and dogs. Initially, in the start of the demo, things were fine (apart from small provocations by plainsclothes cops trying to get in the demo). But after 2 hours or so, when the demo arrived by this employment agency Adecco's building and wanted to stop there for a moment for a speech around deportations of immigrants (Adecco supplies deportation centra with personel), things went sour. Cops on horses were provocating already, and at the moment one lost control over the horse and ran fully into the demo, running over people and falling of herself, it became chaos. Military police moved in and started beating (with battons, horses and fists) us back. Several people got wounded and some arrests were made (it looks like all people arrested in Nijmegen are free now). After this initial clash, they have been constantly been provocating and trying to disperse the demo, which they succeeded in in parts.

The leftover activists, around 75/100 or so, where eventually completely surrounded and moved like cattle to central station to be 'deported' out of Nijmegen.
Some video footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIXyVlWeBak & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK3mcWzqgsk
(The footage is not really close up, but still gives an idea...)

Smoke

That looks severely disturbing. But it's not in Greece.

We received notices of 4 different ones in the usa alone, that we passed on word about in our discussion group and blog, plus there are several more that I see on here and on ABC if one just took the trouble to look for them

WSA May Day statement: http://ideasandaction.info/2010/04/may-day/

Waiting for local reports to come in.

In Northern California alone there were May Day marches and rallies in:

San Francisco

Oakland

San Jose

Santa Rosa

Stockton

Modesto

Some were attended by thousands, and others like SF and SJ had as many as ten thousand.

The bigger ones were stage-managed by unions and their Democratic Party allies. Unlike the spontaneity of the nationwide May Day strike by Latinos in 2006, yesterday's actions were traditional leftist rituals of passivity.

But anarchists in San Francisco had a Reclaim the Streets action in the evening and apparently some bank windows were smashed up. Which definitely would make it the high point of May Day locally.

BBC has the same pic claiming it was the russian antifacists movement known as "antifa" they have now corrected it but I had to have a little laugh to myself in regards to how badly they got that one wrong.

I saw that, what did they correct it to?? Also, how could you mistake those?

They changed it to "members of the banned National Bolshevik Party marching in moscow" or something of the sorts,

but now its back again saying "members of a russian antifacist movement, known as antifa, carry their flags during a rally in moscow"

Wtf is going on?

anyway heres the link, 8th image.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/8656096.stm

It's back to "Members of a banned Russian ultra-nationalist group, the National Bolsheviks, carry their flags during a rally in Moscow."

Maybe it's the NB's trying to muddy the waters, I remember reading that they "officially" reject fascism, and they could be pandering towards (what I think is) a Russian identity forged partially by resistance to Hitler's Germany? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I get all these weird 3rd positionist groups mixed up, which is what I think they are going for.

Copy and paste from an Indymedia post:

Other groups were distroing lit on the way round town, including Solfed who gave away lots of copies of Catalyst.

Numbers were significantly down this year - there was pretty much no publicity from the organisers of the demo. The fact that last years' march was also an anti-racist march opposing the BNP in the Euro elections boosted numbers a good bit too.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14998618

May Day protests in my city led to riot, smashing a few business fronts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU35sV4i3TA

Anarchists marched in La Habana, Cuba for the first time in 50 years. Pics to come.

There were also a number of clashes and arrests in San Salvador, El Salvador.

clashes in Athens:
http://libcom.org/news/athens-may-day-erupts-battles-01052010