MAY 1 or MAY DAY

FROM BANGLADESH TO EUROPE ANGRY
WORKERS RALLY IN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS

www.csmonitor.com - In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a raucous crowd descended on the city center with signs and drums, chanting and waving banners demanding the death penalty for the owner of a factory where more than 400 people died in a building collapse last week.In Jakarta, Indonesia, some of the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching through the city came dressed as ants - complete with bright red outfits and antennae - to depict the exploitation of workers. And in Greece, trains, buses, and ferries sat vacant and hospitals nearly empty as thousands of public sector employees walked off the job in a one-day strike.
Each year, May 1, better known as May Day, is marked with labor rallies and strikes around the world. And this year's holiday came at a particularly prescient moment in many parts of the world. 

From Europe, where the bite of austerity has left many facing down unemployment and reduced benefits, to South and Southeast Asia, a region cluttered with precariously-built factories similar to the one that collapsed last week in Bangladesh, demonstrators gathered to vent outrage and demand reform. In Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, workers rallied for higher wages and safer working conditions. In Manila, Philipines, where labor unions are banned, workers marched to demand the right to organize. And in Hong Kong, thousands turned out in support of striking dock workers, calling for wages that would help close the income gap between the country’s rich and its poor. 
In Greece, where the government recently announced that it would lay off 180,000 civil servants over the next two years a strike shut down public transit across Athens.  And in France, which saw unemployment rose again last month, marchers carried banners reading, “Where are the real socialists in our government?”

Ryan Lenora Brown, correspondent from CSMonitor, explains that May 1 is a national holiday in some 80 countries around the world, and its ties to labor advocacy date back to 1886, when American police killed 10 protestors at a rally for an eight-hour workday in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. International socialist organizations and labor unions declared it a day of commemoration and action soon after. "Ironically, however, May Day is not celebrated in the United States. In the early 1890s, fearing the “socialist” overtones of the holiday, President Grover Cleveland quickly declared an alternate holiday, beginning the American tradition of celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday of September," Miss Brown adds. In the Bhagavad-gītā, Sri Krishna described very clearly karma, akarma and vikarma. 

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

The living entity has to work for his livelihood because that is the law of material nature, and if he does not act according to his prescribed duties, he transgresses the law of nature and binds himself more and more to the cycle of birth and death. ... Actions that free one from the cycle of birth and death are called akarma. ... Ordinary men wish to perform good work in order to be recognized and achieve some higher status of life in this world or in heaven, but more advanced men want to be free altogether from the actions and reactions of work. Intelligent men well know that both good and bad work equally bind one to the material miseries. Consequently they seek that work which will free them from the reactions of both good and bad work. 

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
Śrī Īśopaniṣad
Iso mantra 2
http://vedabase.com/en/iso
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/