May Day

In France, it is the day when people buy a small bunch of muguet or Lilly of the Valley to give to a loved one. It is also la fete des travailleurs or Day of the Workers. Incidentally, the first such day took place in this country in the late 1880s at a McCormick plant in Chicago struck by the workers demanding an eight-hour work day.

As they do every year, the main Unions march in all the cities of France, their number being the greatest in Paris. This year, several Unions marched together, in a show of unity against the policies of the current government. Their demands are, like here, for increased salaries but also for legalization of the illegal workers in France. The "paper-less ones" . Mostly from Africa. 5,000 of those illegals marched at the head of the largest French Union in Paris today. A small portion of the ones in the country.

In addition to reporting today's events, French TV was showing newsreels of the events of May 1968 when France was paralyzed by an increasing number of strikes which eventually stopped the country dead in its tracks. Pure and simple. And what should be, must be, remembered is that it all started with the demand from a small student Union on one of the University of Paris campus for the right for male students to visit the female students dormitories at night...After all, French women had received the right to take The Pill in a law enacted the year before in view of the large number of abortions, which were illegal then.

Happy May Day!