May Day, like Casey Neil sings, is a time to "harken the future and remember the past." Most of us do remember a bit of the pagan history of the holiday (Beltane fertility rituals being as popular as they are). But few Earth First!ers knew the other part of the history of May 1 - it's prominent role in first the American and then the international anarchist and labor movements. By understanding the dual history of the day, it's celebration of Earth and community loving cultures, we can use it as an emblem of a the future that Earth First! should harken.
The international May Day holiday originated on May 1, 1886 when workers throughout the US engaged in a massive strike to demand the eight-hour work day. At the strikes center in Chicago, police attacked strikers without provocation (sound familiar?). Three days later, on May 4, a rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square protested the police abuse. The rally, predictably, was met with further police violence. When the cops tried to forcibly break it up, a bomb was thrown into a throng of police, injuring seven cops and killing one.
Hysteria ensued.A wave of repressive measures attempted to destroy the growing labor and anarchist movements. In June, eight leaders of the union movement, most of whom were not present when the bomb was thrown, were put on trial for general conspiracy to murder. All were convicted, five hung.
In 1889, the International Labor Congress declared May 1 international labor day, a day to remember the martyrs of Chicago. Today it is a day to celebrate the revoulationary potential of a united working class.
May 1, May Day and Beltane, can be used to symbolize a growing trend within Earth First! to combine the philosophy of Deep Ecology and the practice of working class anarchism. At the risk of turning blasphemous, the coalescing theoretical underpinnings of this trend bear strong resemblance to the philsophy of social ecology. Social ecology holds that the cultural structures of hiearchy are models for the secondary hiearchy of human over nature. Through the lens of social ecology, restructuring or demoloshing social hiearchy is a truly radical environmental act.
For many years, it's been a trusim among Earth First!ers that the movement embodies the philosophy of Deep Ecology. Similiarly, there is a movement that might be said to best embody social ecology, the environmental justice movement. In the late '90s, federal studies began to document a phenomena that some had long been aware of: the dispropriate sighting of hazardous waste facilities in low income communities and communities of color. Additionally, environmental enforcement in such communities is outlandishly lower. For example, Environmental Protection Agency penalties are 500 percent higher in white communities and cleanup of hazardous sites is 12 to 42 percent slower in communities of color. Such information formed the base of a network of activists outraged by the injustice.
As a relatively young movement, the environmental justice movement is in a formulative stage. Coalitions with the movement can feed the hunger among the new generations of Earth First! activists for campaigns that address the inequities of social hiearchies. Likewise, Earth First!ers can steer the movement towards the radical politics and biocentric philosophy that, if lacking, will make environmental justice no more than the ultimate "Not In My Backyard" phenomena.
There is a place in biocentrism for concern about the oppression of humans. Our fear of anthropocentrism has prevented us from exploring that arena. Environmental justice gives us the chance to seize it.