May 1, 1933 Union Square, NYC

May 1 is a day of celebration around the world, Feast of St. Joseph, beginning of month to honor Mary, the Mother of God, Worker rights day around the world, a day for marches and parades, especially military parades around the world.

May 1, 1933 the first issues of the Catholic Worker, was sold for a ‘penny a copy’ at the rally in Union Square. On May 1, 1965 Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement gave a speech at a antiwar rally in Union Square in New York. The names of the countries might have changed but her words ring true for this May Day. A research article about this speech can be found at DOROTHY DAY, UNION SQUARE SPEECH. I will let the cry of this May Day speech speak for itself.

“It is not just Vietnam, it is South Africa, it is Nigeria, the Congo, Indonesia, all of Latin America. It is not just the pictures of all the women and children who have been burnt alive in Vietnam, or the men who have been tortured, and died. It is not just the headless victims of the war in Colombia. It is not just the words of Cardinal Spellman and Archbishop Hannan. It is the fact that whether we like it or not, we are Americans. It is indeed our country, right or wrong, as the Cardinal said in another context. We are warm and fed and secure (aside from occasional muggings and murders amongst us). We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world. Scripture tells us that the picture of judgment presented to us by Jesus is of Dives sitting and feasting with his friends while Lazarus sat hungry at the gate, the dogs, the scavengers of the East, licking his sores. We are the Dives. Woe to the rich! We are the rich. The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war. We cannot repeat this enough.”

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