Florida Panhandle May Day
Submitted on Wed, 06/29/2005 - 2:12am
By Scott Satterwhite - Industrial Worker, June 2005
For the first time in a long time, local activists in Pensacola held major demonstrations on May Day, the international labor holiday. The story told most often is what happened at the rally, how many people were arrested, and who got beat up by the cops. While that is important, the story least told is how the event came to happen.Pensacola is a small town in the Florida Panhandle with a generally conservative political slant. More like Alabama than Miami, as the local saying goes. However, there has almost always been resistance, from the days of the first invaders, to the abolition movement, anti-war movements, civil rights, gay rights, the fight for reproductive freedom, etc. Pensacola was even the site of one of the largest industrial strikes in Florida history.
This is true all over, I'm sure; it's just that people rarely hear about this because “we” don't own the newspapers that write most small town history. Or American history, for that matter.But there had not been a May Day demonstration in Pensacola for some time.
I would be remiss if I didn't remind readers that nearly a year ago, Pensacola was hit by one of the worst hurricanes in recent history. Almost a year after Hurricane Ivan, the area is still in recovery. Visitors still remark about how devastating the destruction looks nine months later.
While the storm showed no favoritism, indiscriminately destroying mansions and shotgun shacks, it wouldn't take much sense to know which would be repaired first. The “haves” are not only rebuilding their lives, but rebuilding the entire city with new condos, new houses and high rise apartments on the beach. The “have nots” are living in beat-up houses with tarps, trailers rented by FEMA, on their friends' couches, jail for some, and the streets for many.
The class war has been declared in Pensacola, and right now we aren't doing so hot. Those who can make a buck off the devastation are doing it. Working-class homeowners who can't afford to rebuild are selling their homes cheap to companies that will rebuild them and resell them for double the pre-hurricane worth.
People who had good jobs before the storm find that those jobs were blown away with the roofs of their employers. Unemployment insurance only lasts so long, and the “decent wages” (a relative term) they used to enjoy have dropped to minimum wage.
Cheap housing is gone, and temporary FEMA assistance has dried up. With nearly every aspect of Pensacolians' lives still defined in some way by the hurricane's aftermath, activists have had their work cut out for them.
Soon after a peace group announced that there would be a May Day anti-war demonstration in Pensacola an anonymous flier hit the streets. The flier read: “On May First, 1886, passionate and committed workers ... demanded transformation of the society that was killing and exploiting them.
|Around the world that struggle is continued and re-invented by small groups and mass organizations, non-violent activists, freedom fighters, socialists, communists, anarchists, people with eyes open to the pain of the world, ready to act and learn. ...
|The U.S. military is extracting and destroying the best parts of our lives for profit, leaving behind nuclear wastelands, graveyards, broken minds, broken hearts, and broken bodies, from Elgin to Iraq, ... from Harlem to Afghanistan.
"It will take more than government grants, blue tarps, and new roofs, houses, and condos for the rich to make this city whole. The elites must answer for the anger, pain and suffering they have caused, for all that they have stolen. Make them answer..."
In a matter of days, this flier was all over the city. Pensacola has an ordinance against fliers in public spaces, but like most similar ordinances it is selectively enforced. Anti-war fliers are torn down by the city, while yard sale and lost dog fliers are left alone.Ten days before the rally, a young woman (and former Wobbly) was hassled by the police late at night for posting these fliers downtown. She was told she would be arrested if she didn't get in the police car, point out every May Day flier, and tear them down. She refused, stating that the officers had no right to arrest her for violation of city ordinance. They could ticket her but she could not be legally arrested. After an illegal search, the officers backed down and released the young woman without arrest or fine.
The next day, a note appeared at the cafe where the IWW meets (and several Wobblies work) asking for help in this "free speech fight." Soon other Wobblies took up the fight, posting the fliers in public spaces. The flier was translated by two Spanish-speaking members and posted throughout the county and in various spots downtown.Another flier was made to ridicule the "post no bills" selective enforcement that read "LOST CAT (with the IWW's 'Sabot Kitty' pictured below), goes by the name 'MAY DAY'; if found please bring to ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION on MAY 1st at NOON."
On May Day, a Wobbly brought giant red and black flags for people to carry in the demonstration. Another person brought little cardboard Sabot Kitties with IWW-type slogans, which were later posted around town.
People stood around with anti-war signs, red and black flags, and talked about their life and their thoughts with the person standing next to them. While some people drove by bewildered at the sea of red and black flags in downtown Pensacola, a small few hurled insults. But the great majority of people honked their horns in support of the May Day demonstration. They gave the large crowd that gathered the "thumbs up," thanked us for being there, some thanked us for remembering May Day, and a few even got out of their cars and joined the protest.Pensacola's first May Day demonstration in some time lasted for two hours, with participation by social justice and anti-war groups, Vets for Peace, and the newly chartered IWW Pensacola General Membership Branch.
Over a dozen Wobblies participated in the event. As the bosses and landlords tighten their screws on the workers here, we are getting more organized. Our numbers are growing. As the Curtis Mayfield song goes, "People Get Ready."