May Day in Kingston was awesome this year! More than 100 people came out for a fun barbecue with awesome dance music at noon.  The sun came out just as we lit up the bbq!  At 1pm we took to the streets for a spirited march through downtown Kingston with stops for speeches from various grassroots groups about their ongoing struggles against colonialism, poverty and environmental destruction.  Clearly the Kingston Police hate fun, because they tried all along to shut us down, and issued a few tickets (for a noise violation, apparently, and blocking traffic).  All in all, though, it was a fun and successful International Workers Day. 

The march was organized by a group of anarchists, and we promoted way more than we usually do for our events, especially with “old-school” methods like flyering mailboxes, schools and businesses and putting up a lot of posters all over the neighbourhoods surrounding our meet-up point.  For the first time in recent memory, folks showed up who had heard about the event via this kind of non-Internet outreach and joined our “usual suspects” to celebrate anti-capitalist resistance and eat some free food.  We're left feeling inspired and stoked to organize more fun, open, social events like this in Kingston. Although the cops were more aggressive than usual, which is a thing for us to watch out for and strategize around,they didn't stop us from taking the streets with a spirit of playfulness as well as righteous rage.

<(A)3