contents   inside europa international special mayday 2005 cultur

special living labour’s lost (en) mayday in europe (it) se le rose non bastano (it) almeno salute (it) intelligenze precarie (it) un giorno come tanti altri (it) serpica naro (it) haymarket riot (dt) 1. mai-geschichte(n) (dt) mach mir die lewinsky (dt) 1. 5. 2005 Berlin (dt) international mayday photos

INTRO    | TB. It’s May again, the sun is laughing over meadows and flowers and in the girl’s eyes. Once upon a time May, the 1st of May, was also... I don’t remember... wasn’t it something about... class struggle? about strikes? about protest against expropriation? Yes, I think so. Matter of fact many people still have a glimpse of what the 1st of May once meant, and they go walking on the streets to find it out, somebody with banners and revolutionary phrases, somebody just with a bottle of wine to listen the open air concerts. Of course there are significant differences in the various cities, in the european and in the north and south american cities, the consciousness of civil disobedience in a deteriorating democracy depends on many factors. This special issue about MAYDAY gives a minimal insight into the students’ and gratuates’ minds on behalf: We collected points of view, live experiences, little essays about what the 1st of May means to the contemporary youth. And one thing they all have in common. It is something they still haven’t clear in their minds, in fact it is not only the terrifying ghost of “class consciousness”, the beginning of any rational political thought, it’s more: it is the (very slow) beginning of a historical understanding, the understanding that the middle class itself is becoming obsolete (at least in its traditional, unquestioned actual shape) and the class privileges deriving from a proper school and higher education are vanishing in the enthusiastic technical and geographic expansion of “globalisation”. The Western petit bourgeois with a university degree does not yet dare to conceive himself as the proletarian at the beginning of the 20th century. When he will be humble enough for solidarity with the “lower” classes, when he will be ready to give up, to “betray” his class, when he begins to put social rights before property rights in the most radical way gaining his self esteem from something completely different than status symbols and pay checks, who knows — maybe MAYDAY will be again the hilarious celebration of collective power and pride. The Editor See also the photos of the european and argentinian MAYDAY 2005! MAYDAY LINKS: - may day all around the world - revolutionärer 1. mai berlin 2005 - euromayday 2005 - lei day hawaii