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Maypole Mayhem

by Melinda Tuhus | May 2, 2006 8:32 am

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Posted to: Arts

The 20th annual May Day celebration on the Green was the most successful ever, in terms of attendance and variety of events. It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect and that it coincided with another massive immigrants’ rights rally, but for most of the afternoon other issues and pastimes held sway.

May Day celebrates two rather divergent holidays. One is International Workers’ Day, which was born out of the struggle in the U.S. for the eight-hour day, and which commemorates the Chicago Haymarket martyrs who were executed when the state cracked down on labor activity —” activity that was conducted in large part by 19th century immigrants. The other is a pagan-y, crunchy granola-y celebration of spring, and every year on May 1st at 4 p.m., Bill Fischer and friends lead a maypole dance.

This year featured a huge Graffiti Wall made out of recycled vinyl panels, part of the RePublic Art project.

There was plenty of music —” sung in Italian, German and English. There was “For Love or Money,” a circus opera “about health care, workers’ rights and the role of Yale New Haven Hospital in our community,” written by Jake Weinstein and performed by Circus Folk.

And there were speeches about the most pressing issues of the day, such as Mark Colville’s talk about his trip last December with a group of pacifists in their unsuccessful attempt to visit prisoners at Guantanamo.

At 5 p.m., peace activist Stephen Kobasa asked everyone on the Green —” several thousand people by that time —” to lie, kneel or sit on the grass as part of a “die-in” to dramatize the tens of thousands of people —” American, but mostly Iraqi —” who have died since the U.S. invasion just over three years ago. Coming back around to the theme of immigrants, Kobasa mentioned that the first American casualty in Iraq was an immigrant who was granted citizenship posthumously.

Then, just about everyone on the Green marched off in a raucous, upbeat parade around downtown streets to the tune of, “S√ɬ≠, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”) and “El Pueblo, Unido, Jam√ɬ°s Ser√ɬ° Vencido!” (“The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”)

Spotted later in the evening at the wrap-up event of the day, a concert by radical folksinger and songwriter David Rovics, May Day co-organizer Paula Panzarella was exhausted but happy. “It was a very good day,” she said. No understatement intended.

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