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It's May Day! International Workers' Day! When we get together and march with our working brothers and sisters in memory of lost comrades. Sometimes there are sing-alongs! And riots! Let's all hold hands and sing The Internationale, then march on Union Square! Of course, we won't—Americans (outside of some hippies in Minneapolis) don't really celebrate May Day anymore (well, some immigrants do too). Have we forgotten the Haymarket affair already? (Yes.) In 1958, by the way, Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 to be both "Loyalty Day" and "Law Day." Subtlety was not particularly prized then (nor now). President Bush's annual Law Day proclamation always brings tears to our loyal eyes. Now we prepare for Cinco de Mayo, the holiday that celebrates when the Mexicans out-drank the French.
Happy May Day (And Also Law Day)
6:07 PM on Thu May 1 2008
By Pareene
721 views
78 comments
Comments
I'd bet you a dollar that the commies are marching in Union Square right this minute.
"President Bush's annual Law Day proclamation always brings tears to our loyal eyes."
Goggles will reduce tearing from mace, tear gas, and poor diction.
Today would be a good day to try and rid that Spiegelman character of his false consciousness.
That tag just gave me scurvy.
@contradicto: Good thing I've got orange wedges and Lime Rickey standing by for Spiegelman's Saturday Joe Francis beatdown.
@BinkysDream: Shhh... he can hear you. (Probably because I just emailed him your comment! HA!)
@contradicto: I've been consuming enough rum that I was immune.
@BinkysDream: As a special May Day surprise, you and all your pinko mobsters, organizers, fellow travelers, dirty hippies, academics and other subversive types have all won a very special prize! Just send me your location and someone'll be right out to, um, give it to you.
There were hammer and sickle flags on Orchard and Delancey earlier today. Also pickles, big ones in plastic cups.
@Hez: @valarmorghulis: Tequila shots and lime should cover it, right?
Fuck "The Law." (Ooooooooooo).
Fuck May Day.
(Cinco De Mayo is cool).
Today is my Mom's birthday!
I'm going to go out and burn something because that's how we party in my family. Booze and pyrotechnics.
I mentioned nothing of this. OK Gawker?! (insert menacing face here)
@Hez: @ian spiegelman: Yeah, I'm trying to get Rosa over here to help me out with your re-education. I'm not part of the party's regular propaganda wing, because thanks to comrade Hamud's suggestion I just labor on the 20-year irrigation project in the south. Today's my day off for the year!
@Hez: I'm not doing the beatdown anymore... thought I told you?
@ian spiegelman: Downtown NYC... I'll be a walking target Flatiron to Little-China-Ho (my hood)... I double dog dare 'ya!
(Nice Stripes avatar by the way Spiegelman... that man is a God!!!)
Greetings, Comrades, on this joyous occasion.
All revolutionary cadres wish to thank Gawker for its solidarity with the Communist proletarian vanguard and its bringing the principles of historical materialism to the masses.
Your constant efforts to publicly expose the lies of what Comrade Stalin called "rotten liberalism" are invaluable for awakening revolutionary consciousness among the people.
We would also like to thank you for the comprehensive list of ISPs and user names of those Gawker commenters who appear in need of political education. Officers from the Peoples' Friendship Committee will soon visit these individuals at their homes and places of work.
The Party once again commends your revolutionary spirit and of course would like to remind you that Party expects your continued and enthusiastic cooperation.
Yours, in struggle,
Hamud
"The snarkiest* actors on the world stage are always the most historically irrelevant." -Lukács
*revival
@contradicto: if you like that sort of thing. i usually will only drink tequila that doesn't require salt/lemon/lime unless i'm getting it from an ample bust.
@ian spiegelman:
May Day greetings to you, Spiegelman! Never mind sending someone around; I'm on the May Day For Shut-ins Committee, and your nosebleed walk-up is next on my list as soon as I'm done with my Grannies for Gramsci Collective. Like you, they tend not to get out much, sadly.
I'll bring walnut cake and some stuff I can read to you.
@BinkysDream: Your red pals aren't here to help you now, are they? See, that's how the Reds do one of their own. Get you to put it on the line and then they hide out in the dark and watch what happens. You're all alone, comrad!
Well, this starveling doesn't arise from her slumber for less than 10,000 kopecks a day.
@ian spiegelman: Oh, have you hired the Pinkertons?
@ian spiegelman: Everybody, sing! (It's the Spanish version.)
+ Watch video
@rosaluxembourgeoise: Promise me that when we are crotchety old ladies in the nursing home we will start a Grannies for Gramsci group together. We can teach journalling and scrapbooking in the prisons.
@luciluce666: Like I'd hit that hotbed of utopian delusions on May Day? And thanks for the compliment on the avatar, but remember--he was a glorious commie fighter! Who was nailing the fabulous P.J. Soles!
@rosaluxembourgeoise: @rosaluxembourgeoise: A walk-up what kind of suck-ass Manhattanite do you take me for? I live in Queens, with the people. That's why I know what's good for 'em. And we don't do walk-ups here! But we could have cake. While your so-called "masses" starve!
Arriba los pobres del mundo
En pie los esclavos sin pan
alcémonos todos al grito: (en otra versión: y gritemos todos unidos:)
¡Viva la Internacional!
Removamos todas las trabas
que oprimen al proletario, (en otra versión: que nos impiden nuestro bien,)
cambiemos el mundo de base
hundiendo al imperio burgués.
Agrupémonos todos,
en la lucha final,
y se alzan los pueblos
por la Internacional. (Bis)
(Makes a great drinking song).
@SarahHeartburn:
+ Watch video
@AndSheSaid: Ah my old friends. No one cracks a skull like a Pinkerton man!
@SarahHeartburn:
+ Watch video
@valarmorghulis: You rang?
@AndSheSaid: This version is actually rather moving.
+ Watch video
I'm a sucker for these things.
@Hez: 9,808 is my final offer.
@AndSheSaid: @ian spiegelman:
+ Watch video
@ian spiegelman: Aux armes citoyens!
@ian spiegelman: I'm sorry (I've been drinking at work... and that is NOT A JOKE)... don't mean to rid you of your consciousness... I'm just a pirate plundering free prizes.
@ian spiegelman: Oh they're here now. They know when to come to the aid of a comrade in need.
@SarahHeartburn:
+ Watch video
@AndSheSaid: That cheerleader has some hot gams... DAYUM!
@ian spiegelman: Alright, Spiegelman, I knew something was wrong with the IP Comrade Hamud provided me with. We've straightened it out, at present.
I'll be along shortly and we can discuss the dialectics of your apparent anti-fascism and pro-French revolutionary sentiment. I'm most looking forward to it.
And since we're celebrating the fifth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished"
+ Watch video
And 25,000 dockworkers struck to protest the war:
[www.nytimes.com]
@rosaluxembourgeoise: I only approve of that song in the context of French V. Nazi during WW2... representing freedom V. oppression in general... as in, democracy V. disgusting Communism.
@luciluce666: My consciousness is still right where I left it, thank you.
@BinkysDream: Only because they have to make a big show of this phony holiday!
@Hez: Hello ladies care to go somerwhere more...public?
Some of us dirty striking hippies here in Minneapolis had our boss go on vacation the same week he laid off the only other employee, even though our calendar has been posted Out of Office: General Strike since January.
@rosaluxembourgeoise: But you're still always welcome to pop in over here, red.
@AndSheSaid: @AndSheSaid: There's always this
+ Watch video
I love this guy: he is one of the view to navigate earnest and sarcastic perfectly.
Just after the Soviet Union fell, I happened to visit St. Petersburg and found a stationery store selling the best May Day cards ever-- the design and production of which said everything about the friendship between poverty and forced optimism. I bought a ton and have been using them for every occasion, instead of my Pineider stuff...
@SarahHeartburn:
Comrade Sarah, here is a edifying video for this joyous occasion.
Weep while celebrating the revolutionary struggle against fascists and reactionaries everywhere:
+ Watch video
@ian spiegelman:
+ Watch video
@Lucia Toledo: A couple years after the Wall fell, I went to East Berlin with my West German girlfriend--and still have some spray-painted Wall crumblings that were left all over the waste land where the Wall had stood. It was terribly scary. Impoverished, hunched-over zombies everywhere, all gray and warty and selling cigarettes from baskets... apartment buildings that looked like head stones...
And then we went to the site of Hitler's bunker. The East Germans had transformed it into an unmarked trash heap like 30 feet high. We climbed it. And when we got to the top a little German kid in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt climbed up after us, waved a meek little hand and said, "Tag."
Not sure what it all meant, but just thought I'd share.
Dear Rosa, how fortunate that I ran into you here, after a long day of pamphleting and foretelling the ultimate victory of the workers.
I was just wondering if you'd heard anything from the Politburo on my proposal for reducing the capital-gains tax? Comrade Strelnikov dismissed it (and me) rather rudely when I submitted it, but I'm quite certain he didn't even look at the projections for years 6 or beyond.
In any case, your ability to navigate the hallways of power is infinitely superior to mine. So...I don't guess anyone back at the Comintern let slip any hints about when Google stock might hit a peak, now did they? Ideology is so hard for us poor workers to grasp!
@Priam:
+ Watch video
@ian spiegelman:
[www.tudou.com]
@skahammer: Perhaps you can bring it up with Comrade Beria, "The Bloody Dwarf". We all know how well he coped with dissent.
@Priam: "Have a drink/Have a drive/Go out and see what you can find..."
Like the cops, maybe?
@Priam: Can a commie link to a page that handle traffic?!
@ian spiegelman: I prefer Rosa. Comrade Beria always mocks my humble workingman's attire. Also I think I make him feel inferior, since I'm so tall and well-muscled from meeting my daily quotas.
I mean, it would be bourgeois for me to brag, but ask me how many times my collective voted me "Most Likely To Fall Asleep on His Tractor From Fatigue." The looks I get from the women's collective during our bimonthly Glorious Servitude Mixers -- that's something you'd pay a pretty penny for, I'll wager...if the capitalists were to let you have a penny, I mean.
@skahammer:
Comrades Hamud and I are waiting you at the Party office to discuss some fundamental conceptual challenges you appear to be struggling with. Please bring along the Chinese Communist Party documentation we understand you have been reading while driving the Peoples' tractor. Also bring a toothbrush.
In Struggle,
Rosa
@skahammer: if the capitalists were to let you have a penny, I mean. Let me? LET me?! No one lets me have anything. I earns what I take and I take what I earns. It's organic, fella. It's natural. But that's what you red butinskys never seem to get.
Us right-thinking people with our heads screwed on right and two-plus-two equaling four, we don't need anyone to let us do damned thing. Coz we're not asking anyone for anything. We're not cryin' "Mommy, Daddy, where's my piece??" We're out there every day, taki