May Day Video Available for Screenings - Free to DSA Chapters

Illustration by Jos Sances

It’s not too early to begin planning May Day events. 

A lively half hour video documentary on the history of May Day, We Mean to make Things Over, is available for free to DSA chapters. Screening it in April builds knowledge and anticipation for May Day holiday marches, demonstrations and picnics. It underscores the natural connection between socialism and the labor movement and is perfect for co-sponsored screenings.

The video originated in a phone call from Jim Miller, a vice-president of the San Diego City College faculty union, early in 2018.  He asked me if I would be interested in making a presentation to students and faculty about the history of May Day on May 1.

I knew from decades of teaching labor history to City College of San Francisco students that the story behind International Workers Day—officially celebrated in dozens of countries across the world, but not in the country in which it originated—remained largely unknown, even as a revival of interest in the holiday among socialists and union activists had been growing for the past several years.

The San Diego talk went well. So, I tinkered with the lecture/slideshow, improving and presenting it to unions and DSA chapters, until COVID-19 put a halt to in-person events—at which point I decided to expand it into a video that could be used anytime anywhere.

We Mean to make Things Over (its title derived from a line in the nineteenth-century “Eight Hour Song”) had a zoom premiere in 2021 as a rough cut, and in finished form in person at a number of California venues in April 2022 and 2023. It’s now available on the video's website for free use by DSA chapters.

Making We Mean to Make Things Over

I had the great fortune to work with a group of artists and craftspeople who are spectacularly good at what they do, several of whom are fellow DSA members. One is East Bay artist Jos Sances, who provided superb scratchboard drawings (see accompanying artwork). Currently the framed drawings grace the walls of the East Bay DSA office. Los Angeles artist and California DSA state committee member Paul Zappia put Jos's drawings and other images into animated motion.

The multi-talented Elise Bryant, who recently retired as director of the Labor Heritage Foundation and serves as national president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, sang the “Eight Hour Song,” supported by San Francisco's Rockin' Solidarity Labor Chorus and East Bay jazz combo The 300 Club. New York-based Sokio composed original music. And longtime East Bay DSA videomaker and actor Sophie Becker recorded the voiceover narration just before she moved to New York.

These diverse contributions were skillfully stitched together by award-winning documentarian-turned-editor Rick Tejada-Flores. Tejada-Flores began his career as a filmmaker for the United Farm Workers in the 1970s. He was present, camera in hand, at the birth of the now-famous “Si se puede” slogan. He went on to co-direct The Fight in the Fields in the 1990s, among a dozen other nationally distributed PBS feature films.

Animator Paul Zappia noted, “I feel very lucky to have been a part of this project, especially at an exciting time when workers around the country are beginning to understand their power and their right to determine their own livelihoods. The history of these movements is the exact history everyone should be taught across the country—and I hope that those watching can gain a new or renewed sense of hope for the future we have ahead.”

Completion funding was generously donated by the California Federation of Teachers' Labor and Climate Justice Education Committee.

Timing is good

In a moment when celebrating May Day has been making a comeback and the labor movement is flexing its militancy muscles, the timing is good for collaborative screenings of the video, which highlights the socialist origins of the workers’ holiday and traces its connections with organizing for an eight-hour day, general strikes and the struggles of the broader labor movement. DSA chapters interested in co-sponsored events should reach out to nearby unions, especially ones that their members are active in. 

For more information on the video see the We Mean to Make Things Over website. To view it go here.

Fred Glass wrote and directed We Mean to Make Things Over. He is a member of the California DSA State Committee.