Minneapolis celebrates 50 years of May Day

NINA MOINI: Today, May 1, is also worldwide known as May Day. It's a day that commemorates workers' rights and achievements. And in Minneapolis, it's a colorful community celebration that's been around for 50 years now. Joining me now to talk about May Day's history in Minneapolis and the celebrations happening this weekend are Sandy Spieler, the founder of May Day Minneapolis. Thanks for being here, Sandy.

SANDY SPIELER: Thank you. Yeah, thanks.

NINA MOINI: And we're also glad to be joined by Sofia Padilla, co-executive director of Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts. She's helping organize part of this year's festivities. Thank you as well, Sofia.

SOFIA PADILLA: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

NINA MOINI: Well, Sandy, I want to take it back to 50 years ago. I mean, that is really something. What led you to create that first May Day celebration in Minneapolis?

SANDY SPIELER: Well, it was a couple of things, really. The Vietnam War had been raging, and with the raging of the Vietnam War, there was a great divide between people. And we simply wanted people to get out of their houses at the end of winter and come together, and we just felt like one of the most radical things we could do, or even as a form of protest, is to bring people together, and to bring people together in a way that recognized our common humanity.

We also wanted to bridge together two different neighborhoods that we lived amongst. One was the Phillips neighborhood, and the other the Powderhorn neighborhood, which sometimes seemed like it had a big divide of Lake Street between the two.

NINA MOINI: OK. That's a good perspective. That's good context. Thank you. So 50 years later, Sofia, for people who haven't been, can you just describe the spectacle that is May Day in Minneapolis? It's really one of a kind, I think.

SOFIA PADILLA: Yes, oh my gosh. Well, it has different components, and one is the parade that starts on 28th and crosses through Bloomington all the way to Powderhorn Park. And then the second component is the ceremony that happens right inside Powderhorn Park by the lake in the ceremony site that has been happening for the 50 years. Yeah. So it's a historical important celebration to bring people together, like Sandy said. And they are both happening this year, and other things as well around the Park.

NINA MOINI: Tons and tons of people show up. And Sandy, when you mentioned the very first May Day celebration and the Vietnam War, it made me think of how politics intersects with worker's rights, whether it be local policy or international policy. Do you feel like May Day has evolved in that way, or has it always sort of been about something bigger?

SANDY SPIELER: From the beginning, we recognized two important roots of May Day. One, we call the green root of May Day, which is the coming of spring in the northern hemisphere, and the incredible, beautiful, always fomenting power of the change bringing of the seasons and how much joy that brings and necessity into the growing of everything, the sustenance.

And the other root of May Day is the red root of May Day, which is celebrated as the workers' rights around the world, and actually started in Chicago as a garment worker strike. And so we always talk about the twining of these two roots, the change bringing of people's hands, hearts, and minds together with the change bringing of the Earth, and that together, it is the wholeness of our community.

NINA MOINI: And that sort of leads to the Tree of Life Ceremony, which is a big deal. Can you describe what that is and its significance?

SANDY SPIELER: Yeah. The Tree of Life Ceremony started from the very beginning, where we came into the park, and we raised a puppet. In that year, probably we had more influence up from a maypole, the twining there, you have it, of streamers together on a pole.

But as time went on, more and more we brought in the voices of the community for community meeting about six weeks to two months before May Day, and then one month before May Day, a couple of weeks before May Day, where we would ask people what's happening in their own lives and in the world and what is affecting them, what is making them just so happy and what is really, really making them weep, dragging them down. And what is the responsibility that we can have?

And out of that, the team of people-- that were the artists that gathered-- would listen in and then suggest a storyline or a theme for the particular year. And then we would have a second community meeting where it was like, does this resonate with what we said? Does this make sense? How can it be deepened? And I think that the Tree of Life Ceremony really holds that voice of what people said.

And in this year, which is actually the first time that we've held a community meeting in-- well, since 2019, because of everything that's gone down and In the Heart of the Beast Theater saying that they were no longer going to hold May Day and the scrambling for, how can this happen? So this year, solidly, the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts is sponsoring the ceremony. And there, at Semilla, we held the community meeting, and a month later, a second community meeting.

NINA MOINI: OK. And Sofia, what is the mission of Semilla Center. How does it fit in here?

SOFIA PADILLA: Well, the mission of Semilla Center is exactly to bring our community together and make beauty and make a better world through art. We are an arts center, and all our activities are free and available to the public in both English and Spanish.

A big chunk of our work is with the Latino community, but we also serve-- everybody is welcome in our center. So we are super proud and happy to be kind of guiding this and supporting this May Day ceremony-- May Day in general, and May Day Ceremony, especially-- this year and welcoming our community to it. Like Sandy said, listening to the community with the community meetings and their ideas, that's how we created this year's ceremony.

NINA MOINI: Is there anything specific that they told you they really wanted that people can expect this weekend?

SOFIA PADILLA: Yeah. People talked a lot about the rubble. So I would say a big theme of this year is the rubble. And what does the rubble mean? Where does the rubble go? What do we do with the rubble? How do we build ourselves as a community around the rubble, on top of the rubble, clearing the rubble?

NINA MOINI: Sure.

SOFIA PADILLA: Sandy, do you want to add anything to that?

NINA MOINI: Yeah. What do you all mean by rubble, I wonder, Sandy?

SANDY SPIELER: Well, I mean, if you look around, both in the world at the piles of rubble that are coming out of the immense violence that we're seeing in the world, but even in our own neighborhood right here, just like a block and a half away from where we're building everything, there is a pile of rubble that was put there when unhomed people were taken off of that piece of land and big piles of concrete put there.

NINA MOINI: So it's symbolic. It's symbolic for the things that are going on in the world and continuing on. And also that spring just means newness for a lot of people, so there is a lot of hope there. I want to thank you both. I wish we had more time. We do have to go, but I appreciate Sofia, Sandy, appreciate you both so much. Wishing you all the best with the May Day celebrations this weekend.

SANDY SPIELER: Right. And Happy May Day, everybody.

NINA MOINI: Happy May Day. Take care. That was Sandy Spieler, the founder of May Day Minneapolis, and Sofia Padilla, co-executive director of the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts.