International Workers’ Day, also known as Labour Day in some places, is a celebration of labourers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labour movement, socialists, communists and anarchists and occurs every year on May Day, 1 May, an European spring holiday since the late 19th and early 20th century.The date was chosen for International Workers’ Day by the Second International, a pan-national organization of socialist and communist political parties, to commemorate the Haymarket affair, which occurred in Chicago on 4 May 1886. The events were triggered off during a labor rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more. Find out more about May Day along with language activities here.
The struggle for better labour conditions has been long and alive. What is often neglected in textbooks and the media is the impact women have made in labor history despite the numerous roles women have played to organize, unionize, rally, document, and inspire workers to fight for justice. Relevant sources and material follow below.
“Bread and Roses” is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song by James Oppenheim. It is commonly associated with the successful textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Super-clean, super-smooth, super-white seem to have become a common routine, if not an obsession, for most of us. We meticulously apply our toothpaste and scrub with no second thoughts. However, apart from the damage we may cause to the top layer of our skin, we also cause serious damage to the environment. Why is that? It is because of microbeads, the tiny polyethylene particles contained in exfoliating products. Furthermore, our synthetic fabric clothes seem to add to the problem because of the microfibers they contain.
Watch the following videos to see how this is happening. Complete the missing information as you watch.
A)
Microbeads are found in … and …
Their size is less than … milimetre.
Water treatment plants are not … to filter them out.
Microbeads … organic pollutants in the water and they form toxins.
Click here to go to a news.google.com/newspapers page. Scroll to the middle of the page to find the article titled «May Day» which was published in The Age, 1 May, 1981. You can decrease or enlarge the page by clicking on the magnifying button.
Read the article and do the following tasks:
A) Match the words with their definition:
tenuous to allow
inciting summarizing
institution to start, to open
to grant fixture
to launch urging
outlining weak,questionable
B) Answer the questions
Why was the International Workers’ Day first held?
Where and when did the International Workers’ Day first begin?
Who organized the march?
What happened during the march?
Why were four union leaders arrested and hanged?
Why do we celebrate the International Workers’ Day?
C) True or False?
In many countries May Day is an official out of work day for the citizens.
Australia was a pioneer in allowing 8 hours work a day.
In Australia the 8 hours work demand started by people working in Melbourne’s Parliament.
In Australia the 8 hours work demand started with a strike.
D) Answer briefly
How does the writer explain the “more casual approach” to celebrating May Day in Australia?
How did “stubbornness” help workers in Australia establish 8 hours work a day?
Answers
A)
tenuous weak,questionable
inciting urging
institution fixture
to grant to allow
to launch to start, to open
outlining summarizing
B)
It was a demostration aiming to establish 8 hours work a day.
It began in Chicago on 1 May 1886.
The march was organized by American and Canadian trade union leaders.
Six workers were shot dead by the police.
They were accused of causing violence and political subversion.
To honor and commemorate the 1886 workers’ struggle and sacrifice to establish an eight-hour work day.
C)
True
True
False
True
D) (suggested answers)
The writer thinks that May Day in Australia isn’t celebrated in a solemn way, because labor rights were won easily.
They collectively stopped working and made it clear that they would not go back to work until their demands were met. This attitude made the emloyers give in.
These exercises are my personal work aiming to provide esl/efl practice for use at home or in the classroom. They are not for commercial use. If you happen to like them, please do not redistribute, but rather suggest a link back to this page.
May Day is an old festival going back in ancient times, when the time of fertility and the start of summer were celebrated. The name of this month is believed to have come from Maia, the Roman goddess of spring and growth, who was in turn named after the Greek word “μαία”, which means nurse or mother.
Feasts to honor spring gods and flowers and welcome summer were held by the Greeks, the Romans,the Celts, the Medieval England and evolved and spread around the world. They all somehow referred to the victory of life over death which the new flowers and greenery symbolised.
This symbolic day was selected to honor the Labor Movement and commemorate the events that took place during the Haymarket Riot in Chicago on May 4, 1886, when laborers campaigned for an eight-hour-long workday.
For further reading about this day follow the links below.
The United Nations Organisation has set 23 April as World Book Day to promote reading and immersion to world literature. In the United Kingdom, the day is instead recognised on the first Thursday in March.
The day was selected because it is the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, and the birth of Maurice Druon, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness, some of the most influential writers in the world literature.
English Language Day at the UN is also celebrated on 23 April, the birthday date of William Shakespeare, as a day of honour for one of the two working languages of the United Nations Secretariat (the other one being French).
Prompted by this day, I would like to present two poems of one of the most important Greek poets, C.P.Cavafy. The Greek EFL learners will have a chance to experience what our language and literature feels like in English, while the rest of my kind guests here will get to know or recollect these great poems.
I selected the particular poems for various reasons; “Ithaca” is probably the most renowned of the poet’s work, while “The City” happens to be among my favourite ones. Then it is the poet himself; first C.P.Cavafy spoke English and had actually spent some years in Britain and secondly he died on April 29, 1933, a date quite close to the World Book Day.
For me, all of Cavafy’s poetry stands out thanks to the constant subtle presence of irony, the word used with its ancient meaning, that of tragic irony, and his clean-cut language that astonishes with its fullness and candour. “Ithaca” resumes into an unexpectedly tranquil feeling of reconciliation with one’s life, while “The City” conveys the exact opposite. From the very first moment I had read this poem back in my teenage years, I deeply felt the profound, irreversible realisation of the bold truth that the poet and every man some time in their life grasp: it is not the city, the country or the place that moulds our lives, but our choices and the way we have ruined them.
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind – as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey. Without her you wouldn’t have set out. She has nothing to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
from C.P. Cavafy’s Collected Poems (Hogarth Press, 1975), trs. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
Ithaca by C.P.Cavafy (with Sean Connery & Vangelis)
The City
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
Do you know how stamps are made? Watch this video and find out.
All letters and parcels along with their accompanying stamps are properly stamped before they leave the post office. Would you like to make your own stamper? Here’s a super easy tutorial.
What about getting this stamper down to work to create your own piece of art?
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