MADSA Joins May Day/International Workers Day Actions

We joined Atlanta Jobs With Justice and the Georgia AFL/CIO in Rev. James Orange Park April 30, to commemorate Workers’ Memorial Day honoring workers killed or injured on the job and build for the next day’s May Day rally and action at City Hall.

At top, MADSA’s Ian Fletcher, people’s historian, recalls for us the origins of May Day/International Workers’ Day. Background, center: MADSA chair Milt Tambor. Wearing signs: Three of the MADSA members and friends who brought to life heroes and heroines of U.S. labor history (left to right): Cesar Chavez (Adrian Bernal), Albert Parsons (David Christian), and Lucy Parsons (Jaira Burke). Others not shown portrayed Big Bill Haywood (Michael Lavender), Mother Jones (Heather Gray), Joe Hill (Georgia Slim, a.k.a Cullen Brown, of the band I Want Whiskey), Eugene Victor Debs (Walter Reeves), A. Phillip Randolph (Edward Young), and Dorothy Bolden (Pat Sauls). At right, blue shirt: Barbara Joye coordinated the history project. Photo: Reid Freeman Jenkins

Our contingent enthusiastically joined many other organizations at the May 1 rally led by Atl. JwJ and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, to call for a minimum of $15/hr for Atlanta city workers, sanctuary for immigrants, a Community Benefits Agreement for the Turner Field neighborhoods, and other demands for dignity and human rights. After the rally we swarmed into the City Council meeting, where dozens of us spoke out in the “public comment” section of the agenda. Photos: Barbara Joye, Reid Freeman Jenkins