New Haven Register (Connecticut), May 2, 2008, Friday

Copyright 2008 New Haven

New Haven Register (Connecticut)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

May 2, 2008, Friday

SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS

HEADLINE: May Day brings crowds to Green

BYLINE: Maria Garriga, New Haven Register, Conn.

BODY:

May 2--NEW HAVEN -- International Workers' Day traditions merged with ancient spring rites of May Day on the Green Thursday. By 1 p.m., hundreds had circulated through a cluster of booths near the fluttering ribbons of the maypole.

Jeff Spalter, 36, of Hamden, stopped juggling pins long enough to say that, while he supported workers' rights and human rights celebrated by the day, he also planned to dance around the maypole to celebrate spring.

"Both days to me are the same thing. It's not separate," said Spalter.

May Day celebrates workers' fight for the eight-hour work day, but it is not officially recognized in the United States. In Europe, people celebrate the labor holiday along with the religious May Day as the harbinger of the planting and the season of fertility.

The May Day Cultural Committee here says it does not endorse candidates or political parties, but does promote a political culture of peace. Frank Panzarella, one of the event organizers, said May Day should be seen in a broad context.

"It's a day about grass-roots democracy," Panzarella said.

New Haven activists have held the Workers' Day fair for 22 years, and for the past three years have followed it with a march to support rights for immigrant laborers, he said.

Labor Historian Jefferson Cowie, a professor at Cornell University, said International Workers' Day originated in Chicago after a series of labor strikes for an eight-hour work day in 1886, followed by the execution of movement leaders after police died during a demonstration at Haymarket Square. "The evidence was thin to nonexistent," Cowie said.

While the rest of the world celebrates Workers' Day because of the Chicago incident, Americans celebrate workers on Labor Day in September. President Grover Cleveland declared the holiday. "To give a fig leaf to labor he declared Labor Day in September. He never would've done it if he hadn't need to shore up that political support," Cowie said.

On the New Haven Green, musicians took to the stage with their guitars and poets shouted out their verses.

Labor leaders gave workshops in one tent, while activists for a variety of causes set up booths, including among others the Green Party, the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty and Planned Parenthood.

Pro-immigrant banners read: "No Immigrant Left Behind," and "We are the product of NAFTA," the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement that has gradually wiped out tariffs between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Advocates for immigrants have said the treaty resulted in a massive influx of suddenly unemployed Mexican immigrants seeking jobs in the United States.

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LOAD-DATE: May 2, 2008