Mayday reportback for DC and elsewhere

Video highlights of DC's Mayday march and rally(2m:50s)

Update 5-2-2018:Car attack on Seattle youth jail protesters confirmed by video, second car attack reported by itsgoingdown.org against IWW-GDC picket at Seattle Wendy's

On the 1st of May, DC's annual Mayday march proceeded from Columbia Heights to Malcolm X Park. Expected fascist counterprotesters were a no-show and the entire event was uneventful and mostly family-friendly. It was announced during the DC march that at that time (noon Pacific time) every West Coast port was shut down, and marchers in Milwaulkee descended of the offices of the sheriff over his decision to join ICE's 287(g) program.In Seattle, marchers descended on ICE. The Proud Boys showed up for a countermarch there but abandoned the field after maybe half an hour. In Portland, Oregon police cars were damaged, and a major battle between police and anarchists was fought in Paris.

Here in DC, sights at the march and following rally included "Donald Trump" wearing a crown and a "back to work" sign, various union-themed games, and even a mock guillotine symbolic of the 1789 French Revolution

The IWW (International Workers of the World) or Wobblies made a very strong showing in DC's Mayday march, and their flags were very prominant. This is a strong rebuke to efforts by Jennifer Kerkhoff and other prosecutors to assault the IWW by refusing to drop charges against several alleged IWW members who were allegedly present on Jan 20 2017) at protests against Trump's Inauguration (J20). The IWW is no stranger to this kind of police and prosecutorial persecution. It was founded in 1905, and between 1906 and 1920 there were more than 300 incidents of what the IWW reports as "arrests, trials, assaults, vigilante actions, and other violence."

Between 1949 and 1953 all known IWW members were banned from Federally funded public housing and from holding Federal jobs. This was because former atty General Tom Clark had placed the IWW on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations in 1949. In 1953 former President Truman revoked the executive order imposing those restrictions on members of "subversive" organizations as well as the provisions creating a "loyalty board." What Jennifer Kerkhoff is trying to do today follows in the ugly traditions of WWI era Red Scares, McCarthyism, and the George Bush-era Green Scare.