Ottawa International Workers’ Day actions planned throughout May
By The Leveller Staff
Local anarchist collective, Punch Up Collective, announced a month of International Workers’ Day (IWD) actions and events, starting on the first of the month with a celebratory march. Ottawa-based labour unions, and social justice and international solidarity groups have endorsed and organized events throughout the month.
It’s not all protests and public actions, as groups have organized music and board game nights, a book launch and a panel discussion so far. Punch Up Collective informed The Leveller that more actions are coming soon and will be announced on the new May Day Ottawa webpage.
In the press release, the collective connects the day’s roots in labour struggles to current environmental, economic and political crises. IWD, also referred to as May Day, began by commemorating a general strike called by U.S. labour unions on May 1st, 1886 and the ensuing state repression of Chicago anarchists four days into it.
Punch Up includes atrocities happening in Palestine, and by no coincidence, concludes the month-long events with a protest against the CANSEC weapons fair on May 28. Hosted by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, CANSEC is sponsored by, and exhibits, companies engaged in the arms trade of Israel during its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, according to lead protest organizers, Peace Brigades International – Canada. Connecting local labour struggles to international solidarity campaigns is not new, as The Leveller recently reported on years of multiple unions rallying in support of human rights for Palestinians.
May Day events in Ottawa had various themes centred around the common struggle against the exploitation of all working people internationally. The local Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)’s union of panhandlers and street workers organized most of the IWD events throughout the 2000s. Saint Paul University professor Matthew McLennan wrote on two major May Day events in 2006, when actions took place at Rideau Centre after security assaulted a panhandler, and in 2007 at Ottawa City Hall after then-mayor Larry O’Brien compared panhandlers to pigeons.
In the 2010s, Ottawa labour unions and community organizations formed Solidarity Against Austerity (SAS), which opposed the privatization of public services as well as organized local May Day actions. In 2012, hundreds gathered for a march at Confederation Park, where the Occupy Ottawa encampment had been evicted months earlier.
Following the 2012 Quebec student strike, May Day momentum grew to thousands of participants when student unions at uOttawa and Carleton marched separately from their respective universities. Their marches grew and snaked through the city until they merged as a larger protest at the busy downtown intersection of Bank St. and Somerset St. The rally ended at the Prime Minister’s Office, with speeches and music, opposing Stephen Harper’s policies that SAS compiled on their May Day blog, from anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant rhetoric to cuts to public sector services and jobs.
While a global public health crisis hit Ottawa in 2020, the IWW launched digital May Days with speeches, panels and music streamed over their Twitch channel. The next in-person May Day event in 2022 was a rally held by the Ontario Federation of Labour at the courthouse on Elgin St. With a provincial election being held the following month, the focus of speeches turned away from building workers’ power and into a campaign for the Ontario New Democratic Party, which subsequently lost 7 seats in provincial parliament and 10% of the popular vote.
Since anarchists and IWD have a history spanning over a century, it’s timely that working-class collective power and action is a focus of post-election organizing. As the Punch Up Collective has pointed out, May Day in Ottawa hasn’t only been a single day, but various events spanning weeks after the first of the month. 2025 promises to bring back this tradition with celebrations and actions for an entire month of May Days.
