Today is May Day. “So what?” many might say without realizing May Day in Minneapolis is indeed a special holiday.

May Day is one holiday unlike others in that it is growing in significance every year.

Along with signifying the last days of class and a number of pagan festivals, May Day has particular significance to the socially conscious.

May 1 commemorates the day the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions demanded a national eight-hour work day in 1884. The Haymarket Riot of 1886 and the May Day Riots of 1894 and 1919 signified the rise of a united workers’ rights movement and successes.

Myriad events are taking place in Minneapolis on May 1. National Day Without an Immigrant Community Rally will take place in Powderhorn Park to raise consciousness about immigrant issues. Flyers will be distributed and students from Augsburg, Hamline, Macalester, St. Thomas and St. Catherine buoy the event with participation.

This year the Minneapolis May Day Parade will be held May 7. The Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater will employ giant moving puppets. One can expect anything in the parade, from old women pushing shopping carts filled with flowers, to silent war protestors dressed in black, to 10-foot-tall bicycles and twirling forest worshippers.

Punks, neo-hippies, straightedgers and people from all walks of life and backgrounds will line the streets to march.

What will be missing, however, is the corporate sponsorship that desecrates other holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. May Day is a day of anti-corporatism and anti-materialism. In other words, it’s what a holiday should be: A mix of diverse groups of people dancing in the streets and celebrating the arrival of warmer months and progressive, positive attitudes.