Thousands of San Francisco workers rallied yesterday at Civic Center and Embarcadero Plaza in celebration of International Workers’ Day. This year’s celebration marked the 135th anniversary of the official recognition of International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day. The event is commemorated by Chicago laborers who lost their lives fighting for an eight-hour workday.

“It’s called May Day because of a brutal clash at Haymarket Square in the 1890’s, where people were fighting and dying for the eight-hour workday,” Stanford graduate student Clare Chua said. “It is also called International Workers’ Day because it started in the United States, but everyone around the globe began to take notice.”  Multiple political organizations put together the rally at Civic Center, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Bay Resistance, Mission Action, Jobs with Justice, Indivisible and the San Francisco Labor Council. The organizers called for students across all levels of education t...