Miami celebrates May Day
Miami, FL- About 50 people waving flags and banners gathered at the Torch of Friendship, May 1, to celebrate International Workers Day. Members of various South Florida progressive, socialist and anarchist organizations joined together for this event, which included speeches and a brief march down busy Biscayne Boulevard.
Activists from the Green Party and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) were among the speakers who addressed the crowd.
Didier Ortiz, from Broward County Green Party, spoke out against capitalist corruption. “The rich capitalists, they are all united – they don't care about religion, or morals or politics. All they care about it getting more money. And they want to get it at the expense of all of us, our lives, and our labor. So we too need to be united and fight against them!”
The people listening cheered and waved banners that read “Support workers!” and “Time to unite!”
“We stand here today in recognition that the system we are being forced to live in right now is rotten from the inside-out,” said Cassia Laham of FRSO. “We recognize that this same system is responsible for the slaughter of thousands abroad by the U.S. military machine. And we know the only way to defeat it is to struggle together in unity!”
The gathering was put on by One Struggle, Miami Autonomy and Solidarity and Broward Green Party. It was also meant to show solidarity with the NATO 3, three activists who have been sentenced to five to eight years in prison for protesting at the NATO summit in Chicago in 2012. The activists were entrapped by undercover cops and charged with phony ‘terrorism’ charges in Illinois. The imprisoning of these three young men is another example of the systematic oppression by the U.S. government of anti-war and solidarity activists.
The Anti-War 23, Midwest activists who were involved in organizing the protest at the 2008 Republic National Convention, have also been targets of government repression since 2008. These activists' homes were raided and their freedoms jeopardized with phony charges based on lies. The recently unsealed documents reveal the lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go in order to attempt to silence the anti-war and solidarity activists in this country.