Bring the Spring!

Just a brief reminder:

You cannot expect mainstream media to portray us as anything but adversaries. We found each other in the streets. May Day in Olympia was a success in ways that the structures of our society simply cannot describe. We hope that our tribe experienced the same, throughout the planet.

May Day

An Explanation of our Intentions

May Day is just around the corner, and already the police and the corporate media are spreading fear and slandering radicals. Thus we thought it might be beneficial to explain ourselves, and to explain what we are hoping to create on May Day:

What we want is not a riot but a festival. We are building a community of resistance. We are everywhere: we are your friends and neighborhoods, your classmates and co-workers. If we break the law by dancing in the streets, by shutting down a bank, by assembling without “permits”, it is to show each other and ourselves that another world is always possible, that through our collective power the terms of this imposed reality can be changed, the dead spaces of commerce can come alive with life and music. We are on the side of spring: of all that is green and blooming, of all that celebrates a free existence. If we stand against and denounce the banks, the police, the bosses, the politicians, and the corporate media, it is because they all seek to impose and maintain the regime of coldness and control, the empire death drive of the dollar and the clock. The violence we can expect on May Day is the violence of the police, who cannot afford to tolerate any crack in the status quo that benefits them and their owners, and who have shown time and time again their willingness to deploy the baton and pepper spray on anyone that steps out of line.

Our weapons are our joy, our music, our solidarity. Please pass this statement on to your friends and allies, and join us in the streets!

For a Commune without borders, for a Festival without end
-The Partisans of Spring

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May Day Schedule of Events and Actions Set

http://www.facebook.com/events/268941793243050/

Join us this May 1st, 2013 In Olympia, WA for a day of joyous celebration and international solidarity! Come out and enjoy the company of our beautiful community in a festival of resistance!

12:00 pm Sylvester Park: Reclaim The Commons Festival
All day family friendly festival
List of Festivities:
-May Pole
-Food
-May Games
-Story Telling
-Face-Painting and Garland Making
-Seed Bomb Making
-Crafting and Art
-Dérive (to drift about with no particular destination)
-Sudden Acts of Spontaneity
-Celebrations of Spring, Love and Fertility
– Food!
– Games; sack race, three legged race, hula hooping ect.
– Live music and poetry
– Face painting
Bring your costumes, bring your friends and family and bring the fun!

2:00 pm Shut Down the Banks Party

4:00 pm Festive Street Party
location TBA

6:00pm May Day March
4th and water st. Olympia, Wa
Link here…http://www.facebook.com/events/443209392428944/?ref=2

May Day artwork

one thing we love about may day is the different styles of artwork, all components of this one day, come together. much like the diversity of tactics that we employ, these radically different styles of artwork run parallel to each other.

May Day: A Graphic History of Protest

May Day: A Graphic History of Protest

We find that graphic novels are an effective way to get certain messages out to a larger audience. Often, there is more liberty to get messages across under the radar via graphic novels than via text-only media. This particular graphic novel addresses the history of May Day in Canada. You can order the book at the above link, and you can check out the people responsible for it here: http://graphichistorycollective.wordpress.com/

#OPMAYDAY

greetings, citizens of the world, we are anonymous. we have come forward today to bring you a message: spring is coming.
with the wane of the strong show of global solidarity that is the occupy movement, we aim to prick consciences from complacency into action.
we aim to take some time to reflect on dissent and solidarity. we aim to take just a day to commemorate what it means to stand shoulder to shoulder with the grand jury resisters, to stand with the brooklyn protestors, to stand with the demonstrators in india, to show support for anti-fascist movement in greece. we aim to celebrate our solidarity as a social bond that stands above the social bondage imposed upon us by authoritarian institutions.
with the strength of our togetherness, we intend to make a public showing of solidarity. we will laugh in the face of totalitarian control, and we will celebrate our diversity of tactics in our struggle. if there’s one thing we have learned from the past couple years, it is this – when we join hands, the powers that be tremble. we are bound by an invisible thread of communication already: the internet. from the deep web to facebook, we are communicating with one another with ease, sharing ideologies and plans, ambitions and emotions, books and media. pictures of cats.
we are reddit. we are 4chan. we are the pirate bay. we are facebook, and tumblr, and twitter.
we are anonymous.
this may day, we urge you to rekindle that spirit of september 17, 2011. we urge you to celebrate our precious unity, which will serve us well in any forseeable future. we ask you to merge the ancient festive roots of may day with the urgency of the more contemporary struggles that may day represents throughout the world. everywhere, everyday people like us are reminded on this day, that we have made a difference in the past, and we will continue to make a difference well into the future.
stop this video for just a moment and look outside, wherever you are. take just a moment to marvel at this rich and beautiful earth. this world is a shared home to us. to all of us. our lives are not meant to be basic survival and sustenance. to live life to the fullest is our birthright. no bank, no government, no police officer, no credit card, no scrap of paper or chunk of shiny rock should ever be able to take this away from us. you may think it madness, but we believe that a show, not of force, but a show of being is precisely what we need now. we are not resting on our laurels. we are not patting ourselves on the back. we will reclaim our streets, our communities, our world. we will dance. madly. our joy and celebration in the face of ever-increasing oppression will itself be an act of defiance.
a few years ago, our brothers and sisters in the middle east sparked a global revolution with the arab spring, a chain reaction of everyday people like us standing up for these simple human liberties that are the birthright of all people. let us continue. let us end the winter of our discontent, and make it glorious by the radiant sun of our solidarity.
spring is coming.
we are anonymous.
we are legion.
we do not forgive.
we do not forget.
expect us.

What is May Day?

You can find a quick read on the history and importance of May Day here,
http://www.midnightnotes.org/mayday/
A version easier to print here,
http://libcom.org/history/incomplete-true-authentic-wonderful-history-may-day-peter-linebaugh
For more extensive reading on the American and “red” history of May Day, specifically in Chicago, we highly recommend this book, Death in the Haymarket:
http://jamesgreenworks.com/