This is not a day or year like any other. That’s because many nations are in the midst of economic recession and failure, and it is workers world wide who are suffering from layoffs and mass firings in almost every sector of the global economy. While labor is depressed, capital is aggregating to itself bigger and larger shares of national and global wealth, as governments rush to bail out banks and investment firms, but only if they are too big to fail. Under the amended rules of capitalism, corporations, especially in the financial sector, can scam, steal and hustle virtually everyone. And when the economy tumbles and falls, the government bails them out with public moneys.
Under such a system, capital can never lose, but workers can, and they are. Lost jobs, foreclosed homes, families broken and shattered. This is one hell of a May Day, but it’s the one that globalized capital has brought us. Only if labor is truly globalized can it fight for, and demand, its fair share from the ravages of capitalism. Let that be our mission for May Day and for tomorrow. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
