A Historian Reflecting on May Day and the Pandemic
Published by Bare Life Review
Long before I decided to become a historian, taking part in May Day always made me think historically. The commemoration of the workers’ rally in Chicago on May 4, 1886, the “holiday of the proletariat,” has long had that historic ring. Writing on the celebrations in 1890, Friedrich Engels described the rally-turned-riot “epoch-making… in its universal character, which made it the first International action of the militant working class.”
I felt this universal character the first time I marched in the May Day Parade, a hundred odd years later, in the Tehran of early 2000s. The day is an official holiday in Iran and has been a source of conflict between the ruling Islamists and the left ever since the regime was founded in 1979. Showing up at a Tehran May Day rally in those years made me feel a strong connection both with the recent Iranian history as well as the longer history of global working-class action. Thousands of workers and socialists turned out on the streets, just as people did in Paris, Manila, and Beijing. For an afternoon, it felt like our isolated Islamic Republic was connected to the broader world.
May Day Without Crowds
