Our third Youngstown May Day Festival was held April 29-30, 2023.

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Highlights included:

 

The Mahoning-Trumbull Workers Memorial Ceremony honoring workers fallen on the jobsite, a ceremony co-sponsored by the Workers United and the AFL-CIO. This solemn occasion honors the historical roots of May Day as a struggle for worker’s rights and remembers that workplace safety is still an ongoing concern for people in our Valley and beyond.

 

The weekend’s speakers and roundtables included: Community concerns about SOBE Energy, How to Support East Palestine and Fight Norfolk Southern’s negligence, local author and historian Sean Posey on the history of popular resistance to the railroad companies from the Great Railroad strike of 1877 to East Palestine, a talk on NE Ohio labor history and the contemporary Starbucks Organizing campaign, a round table on bodily autonomy and the right to gender-affirming care and reproductive health, a round table on contemporary work to end mass incarceration, and more.

 

Musical performances included Ruby Jean Hornsby, Miss Dreadful, Danny McMaster, Jonathan Blackshire, Crash the Great, DIndig0Forest, Tom Cvetkovich, Evan Bloom, and Gary Taneri.