Detroit May Day Calls for Overturning the Trump Agenda

For Immediate Release

Media Advisory
Tues. April 25, 2017

Event: May Day Detroit 2017, Mon. May 1
Location: Gather at Grand Circus Park at 5:00pm; March at 6:00
Contact: (313) 680-5508
Theme: Overturn the Trump Agenda
FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/371487839911624/
URL: http://www.moratorium-mi.org

Several Detroit-area organizations and activists are hosting a public
rally and march on Mon. May 1 starting at 5:00pm at Grand Circus Park
(Woodward and Adams, downtown) in honor of International Workers' Day,
commonly known as May Day.

These groups include: the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, Michigan
Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI), Michigan
People's Defense Network (MPDN), the Detroit Active and Retired
Employees Association (DAREA), Workers World Party Detroit branch,
along with others.

This holiday was born in the throws of the struggle for the Eight-hour
Day during the 1880s. The movement was led by European immigrant
workers and represented the origins of the unionization of working
people in the United States.

May Day was revived by immigrant workers largely from Latin America in
2006-7. These Days Without Immigrants and mass demonstrations inspired
subsequent mobilizations among other segments of the community
including African Americans, women, youth and Muslims.

This year we are facing monumental crises amid the ascendancy of the
administration of President Donald Trump who has targeted broad
sectors of the working and middle classes through massive budget cuts,
executive orders banning people from Africa and the Middle East, the
imposition of militarism and racism through cabinet appointments and
hate speech against women's rights and civil rights, organized labor
and scientific inquiry.

In this year's May Day we have taken a broad focus encompassing
opposition to the renewed war drive of Trump in Syria, Yemen, Somalia,
North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, etc.; unconditional solidarity
with the immigrant communities in the United States; the raising of
the minimum wage to $15 per hour; support for the struggles of African
American, Latinx, Middle Eastern, Asian and Native peoples for
self-determination and full equality; for a clean and sustainable
environment; total emancipation of women and the end to all gender
oppression; halting police brutality; a regional rapid public
transportation system to get people to work and other places they need
to go; a moratorium on mortgage and property tax foreclosures,
water-shutoffs and utility disconnections as a whole; for the use of
federal hardest hit funds to keep people in their communities and not
tearing them down for profit; an end to all school closings in
Detroit, among other issues.