‘The First of May became the international festival of the working-class movement when the Second International in 1889 called for a simultaneous international workers’ demonstration…’
THE last week of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Roman Pontiff was also the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust (20-27 April 2025) as proclaimed by the American Chief Executive to remember the six million Jewish men, women, and children plus the Roma and Sinti, peoples of Slavic and Polish ancestry, persons with disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, persons targeted based on their sexual orientation, and countless other innocent victims of the genocidal Nazi regime and their collaborators. In this context, remembrance entails investigating and swiftly punishing all anti-Semitic discrimination.
Before Pope Francis left Earth, the Superpower observed the 160th anniversary of the first successful assassination of a president of the United States of America: “After four long, tumultuous years, the end of the Civil War was in sight. President Lincoln was known for his love of attending live theater, and even though he arrived late that evening, the production came to a halt when the orchestra played ‘Hail to the Chief’ and the audience took to its feet and cheered. Sadly, what was to be an evening of celebration and respite turned into one of the most solemn moments in White House history.”
[https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-white-house-1600-sessions/remembering-president-lincoln-160th-anniversary]
The dastardly deed of 14 April 1865 was perpetrated by John Wilkes Booth and a conspiracy of sympathizers of the defeated Confederate States of America. The heinous crime was news to a global audience, and in the week that Honest Abe was buried, the International Workingmen’s Association wrote to the new President of the United States: “After a tremendous civil war…Yours, Sir, has become the task to uproot by the law what has been felled by the sword, to preside over the arduous work of political reconstruction and social regeneration. A profound sense of your great mission will save you from any compromise with stern duties. You will never forget that to initiate the new era of the emancipation of labor, the American people devolved the responsibilities of leadership upon two men of labor—the one Abraham Lincoln, the other Andrew Johnson.” [Address by the Central Council, London, written between May 2 and 9, 1865]
Three months before the assassination, the International Workingmen’s Association had presented to US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams in London a letter for the President of USA: “The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.” [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm]
Incidentally, Lincoln was the first president from the Grand Old Party, and Donald J. Trump is the 19th who had ordered that the flag of USA be flown at half-staff at the White House, upon all public buildings and grounds, all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government for the Bishop of Rome.
Be that as it may, this late, lamented Patriarch of the West was buried last 26 April 2025 and we recall his words pertinent to this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day (May 1) and World Day for Safety and Health at Work (April 28):
1. “It is vital to remember that AI is but a pale reflection of humanity—it is crafted by human minds, trained on human-generated material, responsive to human input, and sustained through human labor.” [Antiqua Et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. Addressed to the Dicasteries For The Doctrine Of The Faith and For Culture And Education]
2. “There is no trade union without workers, and there are no free workers without trade unions. We live in an era that, despite technological advances—and sometimes precisely because of that perverse system defined as technocracy—has to some extent disappointed expectations of justice in the labor sphere.” [Address Of His Holiness Pope Francis to Managers and Delegates Of The Italian General Confederation Of Labor, Paul VI Audience Hall, 19 December 2022]
3. “It is shocking and disturbing that in today’s economies, whose productive activities rely on technological innovations, so much so that we talk about the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, the employment of children in work activities persists in every part of the world. This endangers their health and their mental and physical well-being, and deprives them of the right to education and to live their childhood with joy and serenity.” [https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2021/november/documents/20211119-conferenza-lavorominorile.html]
4. “How can we fail to note the ethical confusion present in the world of labor? The inhumane treatment meted out to many male and female laborers; inadequate pay for work done; the scourge of job insecurity; the excessive number of accident-related deaths, often the result of a mentality that chooses quick profit over a secure workplace…” [Message Of His Holiness Pope Francis For The Seventh World Day of the Poor, 19 November 2023]
The First of May became the international festival of the working-class movement when the Second International in 1889 called for a simultaneous international workers’ demonstration (in favor of a law to limit the working day to eight hours) on 01 May 1890. [https://jacobin.com/2017/05/the-birth-of-a-holiday] The festival from the outset had carried the slogans of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) as well as “shorter hours and higher wages” plus “Universal and Direct Suffrage.”
These principles should animate Filipino voters this summer.
