Birds of a Feather

It's May Day 2006, and immigrant workers are protesting around the United States. In Mexico, there's a one day boycott underway. It's all exciting and a good dose of direct action for North America. Reforms are overdue and proposals are being hammered out for subsequent action. An interesting development, to say the least, because it seems mostly from the ground up.

Meanwhile, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the lineup is terrific and includes Fats Domino (last reported nationally as being plucked out of the flooded Ninth Ward post-Katrina), Irma Thomas, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, and Bruce Springsteen. The Boss played yesterday and performed a number of jeremiads such as "My City in Ruins" and "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" Hats off to them.

Big protests for the time -- surely we need them even if they may not produce much in immediate pragmatic results. But who knows, maybe they will.

One of the coolest things I've seen on a May Day was a group of anarchists parading through Père-Lechaise Cemetery in Paris, government gendarmes observing amusedly with weapons slung over their shoulders. After a bit, they revved up the sirens and the theater of protest exited as unexpectedly as it had entered. I'm not even sure they'd been protesting anything specific, but it was a joy to see.

With all the tumult and excitement of May Day, it seems almost dreary to point out the Avian Flu tracking map above. It will be even more so next year at this time, when we may see every country on the map colored and enduring the H5N1 epidemic. Given that birds migrate, it seems only a relatively short matter of time. (Source: www.cdc.gov)

Happy May Day!