May Day 2020

Capitalism is failing.

Millions of us can’t pay our rent, buy groceries
or get the tests or treatment we need.

Medical facilities are underfunded and overwhelmed.

Those of us who still have jobs must risk
our lives for each paycheck.

Prisons and detention centers have become
COVID-19 death camps packed with demographics

deemed expendable.

Factories, warehouses and meat processing
plants have become sites of active contagion,

presenting the virus an opportunity to hitchhike
on corporate supply lines.

Under these conditions, capitalists are demanding
a return to business as usual

while governments introduce even more
surveillance and control.

It’s never been clearer that this system
prioritizes profits over human life.

As politicians conjure
trillions of dollars out of thin air

and massive factories
are repurposed on a whim,

it’s obvious that the problem isn’t scarcity.

It’s distribution.

Rather than petitioning for better management,
we need to take things into our own hands.

The greatest power we have is our ability
to refuse to keep this system running.

All around the world, people are starting
to learn how to do this.

Workers are walking off the job.

Prisoners are organizing hunger strikes, rioting
and launching daring escapes.

Millions of tenants are withholding their
rent, in a collective action that could become

the first global rent strike in history.

Let’s use May Day to take stock of the historic
moment we find ourselves in, and redouble

our efforts in the weeks and months to come.

Help those in need.

Defend the unemployed, front-line workers,
health care workers, prisoners

and everyone threatened with eviction.

Organize and fight like there’s no tomorrow.

Nothing is going back to normal.