May Day 2017 (and past)

In 1971, May Day spilled over into the rest of the month and remains a largely ignored part of American history.  On May 3, 1971, after nearly two weeks of intense antiwar protest in Washington, DC (ranging from a half-million-person march to large-scale sit-ins outside the Selective Service, Justice Department, and other government agencies) some 25,000 young people set out to do something brash and extraordinary: disrupt the basic functioning of the federal government through nonviolent action. They called themselves the Mayday Tribe, and their slogan was as succinct as it was ambitious: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”.   The Nixon administration was not happy (Nixon’s White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called it “potentially a real threat”).  An elaborate tactical manual distributed in advance detailed twenty-one key bridges and traffic circles for protesters to block.   Welcomed to join in the Mayday Tribe protest (and even encouraged and thanked) were thousands of gays.  That men would openly admit they were homosexuals and even protest was something new.  

Under direct presidential orders, Attorney General John Mitchell mobilized the National Guard and thousands of troops from the Army and the Marines to join the Washington, DC police in rounding up everyone suspected of participating in the protest. As one protester noted, “Anyone and everyone who looked at all freaky was scooped up off the street.” Gay men were targeted in some instances.  One gay man recalled being trapped as a group of angry men circled around him:  "I was punched and hit and felt blood run down my face.  They called me a faggot and I fell to the ground feeling kicks to my body."  A staggering number of people— more than 7,000—were locked up before the day was over, in what remains one of the largest mass arrests in US history.