May Day, or International Workers’ Day, happened on May 1, and it seems to me that we have never been more ready to celebrate it. Gustavus has been celebrating it through the MAYDAY! Peace Conference for thirty-six years. This year’s celebration occurred on May 27, and its theme was “Divestment & Reinvestment: Making Money Count.”

Specifically, it was about the divestment from dirty energy such as fossil fuel and coal. The speakers were diverse and urgent this year, it was truly a wonderful day. If we have any hope of saving our planet, we all must divest from fossil fuels and coal immediately.

I truly applaud Gustavus for this day, as the United States has completely abandoned this workers holiday, centered on marches, protests, and the unity of workers. We are one of the few countries that does not have May Day as a government sanctioned holiday, despite May Day originating in the United States. Ironically, the day celebrating workers’ rights does not give workers the day off.

Instead, we are left with Labor Day (not Laborer Day) meant to celebrate work, rather than to celebrate the worker. This capitalist ideal extends to other holidays in the United States, such as Christmas shopping taking over Christmas and all the other holidays celebrated during the winter season. Christmas shopping has even taken over Thanksgiving through Black Late Afternoon Thursday. As far as I am concerned, Santa Claus is not the victim of Fox New’s “War on Christmas,” but is instead the commander in chief.

Historian Peter Linebaugh tells us that the meaning of May Day originated around agriculture, dance, fertility, and springtime. The first maypole in the land that would become known as the United States was in 1627, in Merrymount, MA.

A colonist named Thomas Morton danced around the maypole with former slaves and indigenous people. This uniting of people across culture was suppressed by the Puritans, but the tradition was kept informally in North and South America.

After the Civil War, people were inspired by the progress that was made, and May 1 was used for people to fight to limit the workday to eight hours. Four people from the movement were shot by the police, leading to protestors organizing a meeting in Chicago.

A stick of dynamite was thrown in the meeting, killing seven people, Following this, trade unions were violently assaulted by the police across the country, including the framing of eight murders, resulting in hangings of four in Chicago. The May Day movement was roused by the brutality against it, and it spread across the world. While May Day is still celebrated officially throughout the world, it was replaced in the late 1800s by Labor Day in the United States to disassociate May Day from the workers.

Despite our social progress throughout history, our world today is facing elements of mass destruction we have never seen before. Whether that be the shadow of mass extinction via climate change, or the looming possibility of nuclear war with a Donald Trump presidency,with a nuclear arsenal which President Obama has committed to put a trillion dollars into over the next thirty years. Despite all of these threats, this May Day, I am left with an overwhelming feeling of hope.

May Day represents the holiday of the people, expressed through protest and dance. There are so many signs of resistance in our country right now. This May Day happens to be the tenth anniversary of the 2006 march where more than 1.5 million people marched on streets in solidarity with worker and immigrant rights here in the United States. This year there are signs all across the country that people are still fighting for their democracy.

Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter are the two greatest examples of May Day’s process working for the people in the present day. Despite the rich getting richer, these movements have managed to break through the multilayered forms of oppression to make noise nationally.

The divestment movement is another example of something that started small, and now is gripping the country. From April 11-18, a group called Democracy Spring protested the money in politics outside the capital, resulting in 1,400 arrests. 36,000 Verizon Wireless workers are currently on strike, the largest strike since the Verizon worker’s 2011 strike.

The other great thing about May Day is that is a global holiday. A chance for us to work with others across the world who are suppressed by the global economy, both economically and culturally. This is a time for us to join hands with others across the world and skip around that silly maypole. If they want to kill you for dancing, then it must be pretty important.