May Day became a labor holiday in 1886, when police opened fire on a peaceful picket line during a general strike for the 8 hour day. It became a labor holiday in memorial to the four anarchist labor leaders who were hung for their participation, for the one who killed himself with a dynamite blasting cap, for the countless more who spent years in prison all so that workers across the world would not have to sacrifice seeing their families in order to feed them.

On this day we commemorate all our martyrs, the lives and freedom lost in pursuit of a world free from exploitation and oppression, of a world where a worker’s value is more than merely what they produce, where humanity is valued more than productivity and where labor is entitled to all it creates.

But we are here 130 years after the Haymarket riots, not to commemorate a long dead past but to celebrate a living tradition of active resistance against the sovereignty of capital.

I am, as I believe many of us are, sick to death of passivity in the face of the tyranny of the wealthy few. I am not a student radical at a posh university looking towards a future in the democratic party or a cushy job managing an NGO. My politics will not soften with graduation. I am a highschool dropout, I am a sex worker. I am a rank and file union member. I am a simple woman and I am here with a simple message, it is time for us to organize and to fight back.

We are past the point where we can make nice with the powerful, as every right and protection won by the last great wave of the labor movement crumbles as a sand dune into the sea, we must admit that no election, no mild mannered wheedling, no woowoo good vibes bullshit will save us from the dire future we face. However in the face of these deteriorating conditions, a spark of hope remains, and that hope is the same hope that our predecessors knew in 1886. Working class rank and file organization is, as it always has been, our only hope and direct action our only possible weapon against the capitalist class who would grind us into dust if it would increase their margin of profit by a dime. So I ask you, fellow workers, to unite with me to kill what is killing us, not at some distant future “proper historical moment” but in the here and now.

Thank you.