There were red carnations everywhere, a tradition of the European workers movement for May Day. There were flags waving with the wind--red and black of anarcho-syndicalism, green of the ecology movement. There were banners--an impressive, twenty-foot one stating "Put our money where it matters. A living wage. Let's get our priorities straight" and one which proclaimed the reason for the protest "Baltimore supports May Day. International Workers Day."

On May 1, 50 primarily student activists, gathered in front of the Eisenhower Library on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University announcing their intent to make May Day, celebrated around the world as International Workers Day, an annual event in Baltimore, Maryland. The event was sponsored by the Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN), Baltimore Peace Action Network (BPAN), Coalition Against Global Exploitation (CAGE), Communist Party of Maryland, and Student Labor Action Committee (SLAC) at Hopkins.

The speakers recalled labor history. Kay Dellinger of CAGE gave an overview of the origins of May Day and the struggle for the eight-hour working day. The high point of this movement was the May Day strikes in 1886, particularly the moment in Chicago when 80,000 protested. The international workers movement proclaimed May Day as a day of celebration in 1889.

Jeff Bigelow of American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) elaborated on the details of 1886. At a protest in Chicago's Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown by an unknown individual into a police contingent resulting in seven deaths from the bomb and the police response. Eight anarchists were charged and convicted of murder. Four of these were hanged in 1887, though there was no evidence against them. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld publicly recognized this with the pardoning of the remaining prisoners. (For an account see Jeremy Brecher's Strike pp 53-68).

Johns Hopkins history professor Paul Kramer noted how the official labor movement in the United States distanced itself from May Day. He told the story of the origins of the Labor Day celebration in the U.S. In 1894, railroad workers struck in support of the workers of the company town established for the Pullman Place Car Company. Their union representatives, members of the American Railway Union, had been fired for organizing so they struck. Eugene Debs led a nation-wide strike in support of the Pullman workers, but federal troops crushed the strike. Professor Kramer noted that afterwards President Grover Cleveland established Labor Day as a holiday.But today, Kramer said, "we are here to take back part of the international workers struggle."

Long-time labor activist and Communist Party member Les Bayless reported that "one million workers were in the streets of France and Cuba today." He added a personal note recalling how after he was released from prison for property destruction as an anti-Vietnam War activist, he got a job in a hospital, got involved in union organizing, and was promptly fired. He said that he learned from this experience that the problem is not particular, "but the system." As former staff for the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees local which represents the cafeteria workers at Johns Hopkins, Bayless brought "thanks to the JHU students who have supported [them] in their struggle."

Max Obuszewski of the Baltimore Peace Action Network related the current living wage compaign at Hopkins to past campus struggles: the admittance of African-Americans and women to the university and the struggle for divestment of JHU funds from companies operating in South Africa in the 1980s. Obuszewski also recounted that Hopkins is the recipient of large grants for military research ($400 million), particularly at its Applied Physics Lab, relating such expenditures to misplaced priorities of the U.S. government. The recent increase in the military budget of $48 billion, an amount greater than the entire military budget of any other nation-state, should instead be allotted to needed social programs, Obuszewski said.

Why should a protest announcing an annual celebration of International Workers Day in Baltimore take place at Johns Hopkins University? The Student Labor Action Committee (SLAC) has had an ongoing campaign for a "living wage" for all university connected workers. Hopkins is the largest private employer in Baltimore. SLAC had demonstrated earlier, on April 3rd. On that day about 60 students staged a spirited demonstration giving warning to the university that they were back "Two, four, six, eight, we want justice we can't wait" was one of the chants that echoed off Garland Hall, the Johns Hopkins University Administration Building.

Two years ago, in March, students locked themselves in Garland Hall in a 17-day protest for a living wage for JHU workers. Then, the student activists won a commitment from Hopkins to implement a living wage for permanent workers and to address the issue of poverty in Baltimore. Students returned April 3rd because contractual workers still do not receive a living wage at Hopkins.

The living wage movement, now nation-wide, began in Baltimore in 1994 when BUILD (Baltimore United for Independent Leadership Development) and the public workers union, AFSCME, won a city ordinance requiring companies with service contracts with the city to pay their workers a living wage. A "living wage" is identified as an amount that brings a family of four above the poverty line. Currently, Baltimore City sets the wage at $8.20 per hour. By July, this will increase to $8.50. However, as student speaker Maha Jafri noted, contractors with JHU will be paying only $7.75.

Gideon Mann, a graduate student in computer science speaking at the rally,said that Hopkins professes a concern to work to eliminate poverty in Baltimore, yet around the Hospital on Wolfe Street it has leveled "100s of homes, 13 churches, and many community buildings."

History professor Paul Kramer addressed the crowd asking "if Hopkins can recognize academic work, then what about the hard work of those who cut the lawns, make sandwiches, clean toilets, guard parking lots, who day by day make the university run?" Kramer said that the wages of the contractual workers needs to be indexed with the cost of living. A "living wage" he emphasized, "is not alive if it doesn't grow."

Senior Katy Gall read from a letter by administrator James McGill, Vice-President for Finance and Administration--who said the University "could not prudently allow part of its expenditure base to be determined by others outside the University who, obviously, do not have the responsibility for the University's overall academic and financial health. While the University, under President Brody's leadership, has made significant advances in raising the salaries of its lowest paid workers and contract employees, we cannot be sure what the future will bring either in terms of resource needs to sustain the academic excellence of Hopkins or the availability of revenues to achieve that objective. Therefore, we cannot agree to tie salaries to the living wage index."

Kenny Ringgold representing the state-wide citizens group Progressive Maryland spoke. He praised the students for working for the living wage and noted that living wage campaigns which have been enacted in 81 cities and counties around the United States. Progressive Maryland plans to make the State of Maryland the place where the first state-wide living wage is enacted. Ringgold told IndyMedia that state legislation for the living wage died in committee even though it had the support of nine committee members. However, he also said it looks as though Montgomery County will soon enact a $10.44 per hour wage for service contractors in April. Then, the target will be Prince George's County in a county to county strategy.

IndyMedia reporters talked to Katy Gall, a senior history major who has been involved in the campaign since 1999. She was one of the students locked-down in March 2000.

Indymedia: Last year, students at Harvard University won a living wage. What is the significance of this victory?

Gall: I'd say first of all that students at Harvard didn't win a living wage. They've been successful at spinning their campaign as victorious -- which they should, because they did something important and won some concessions. I think that sometimes they say "we won" a little too much -- it causes some confusion. In fact, the situation at Harvard after their sit-in ended was very similar to the situation at Hopkins: raises for some workers, and promises to meet in the future. While the Harvard sit-in did result in some workers getting raises to $10.63, that can't really be called a living wage. What distinguishes a living wage from a simple pay-raise is indexation: in other words, the wage needs to keep pace with inflation every year. At Hopkins, our agreement with the administration resulted in raises throughout the institution. On the Homewood campus, no direct employee makes less than $8.20 an hour, which is the same amount as the Baltimore living wage. But we're not going around proclaiming victory because there's no indexation, and we have always argued that non-direct employees and people working at the hospital should be just as much a part of the picture. Getting Hopkins to acknowledge responsibility for these groups of workers has been one of our successes. When the campaign began in 1995, they gave SLAC information about less than a hundred workers and said "these are the only people whose wages we have any control over." At [a recent] meeting we had with them, they gave us the same information for thousands of workers. To us, this says that we're at least making progress in getting the "suits" here at Homewood to feel accountable for poverty wages.

IndyMedia: What does SLAC plan to do next in the campaign?

Gall: The clock runs out on our sit-in agreement as of July 1st. By that date, all the wage increases should have been implemented. All indications are that this is the case. However, it doesn't end there for us: our goal is always an "indexed" living wage, with raises tied to cost-of-living adjustments. For six years now, the administration has been telling SLAC that it "can't commit to an external wage index" - but that's crap and they know it. They signed an agreement stating that they recognize the right of every Hopkins worker to live in dignity, and that wages are an essential ingredient to that. So it's our job to hold them to that. Presently, we hope to organize a public forum with the administration on these issues. Their response has been to change the focus of the forum to issues of poverty in Baltimore. We are still negotiating. It will likely occur in September.

Labor Day this year is September 2nd. We can expect SLAC and the other groups sponsoring the May Day event to be organizing over the summer to make the links between the 19th century demand for the 8-hour day and the 21st century demand for the "living wage." In the spirit of May Day, we may look to see red carnations everywhere on the Hopkins campus, if not Baltimore City as a whole, on Labor Day with the numbers of protesters reaching into the hundreds.