May Day Strong Events in Santa Cruz and Watsonville

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Thursday • May 1 • Several Events
Watsonville City Plaza • 358 Main Street • Watsonville • 4pm • wheelchair accessible
Join UC Workers On Strike • High Street and Bay Drive  • Santa Cruz • 10am • wheelchair accessible
Santa Cruz Solidarity On The Streets • 612 Ocean Street • Santa Cruz • 5pm • wheelchair accessible
Singing  for Justice, Peace & Freedom • RCNV • 612 Ocean Street • Santa Cruz • 6pm • wheelchair accessible

Across the country—from fruit fields in California to classrooms in Chicago, from kitchens in Queens to loading docks in Atlanta—working people are rising up. We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes—public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, housing over homelessness. The May Day Strong Coalition is hosting rallies across the county.

Join our local SURJ contingent at the Worker’s Day of Action in Watsonville (sign up here). We’ll meet before to show up as a group!

Can’t make it to Watsonville? There are several events in Santa Cruz!

  • Join UC Workers on the Strike Line May 1st at 10am! For the past four years, UC has failed to address its staffing crisis. UC’s recent announcement of a hiring freeze is yet another attack and insult to frontline workers. See more details and register here.
  • Santa Cruz Solidarity on the Streets: 5-6pm on Ocean Street on both sidewalks on Ocean Street in front of The Resource Center for Non Violence – 612 Ocean Street (park at County parking lot on Ocean and Water)
  • MayDay! Singing for Justice, Peace & Freedom: Follow up Solidarity on the Streets, also at The Resource Center for Non Violence at 6-8pm. Join song leaders Aileen Vance, Coleen Douglas, Key of Three, Sorella, Threshold Singers, Russell Brutsché. This is a partial benefit for Center for Farmworker Families. Register here.

What is May Day? American unions set May 1st, 1890 as a national day of action for the 8-hour day after the May 1st, 1886 strike by Chicago labor unions for an 8-hour work day with 80,000 people marching up Michigan Avenue in the first mass May Day March. They chanted: “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will.” Our friends at Indivisible San Francisco have a short history here