May 1st is no longer (only) a left-wing event.
The beatification of John Paul II and the death of Bin Laden open the date for the Church and the USA.
A brilliant move by Pope Benedict XVI, who undoubtedly, to consummate his act on Sunday the 1st, acted with the cunning mind of Joseph Ratzinger – himself, before becoming Supreme Pontiff. After all, there could be no better date for the Church's interests than the beatification of the anti-communist John Paul II on the same day that all the leftists in the world unite around the traditional May 1st protests – a holiday in much of the developed Western world. Marked in history as the day of a widespread general strike in Chicago in 1886, for better working conditions and shorter working hours, brutally repressed, May 1st becomes, from this year onwards, also a day of celebration for Catholics. It is the moment when the most popular and media-savvy pope in history was canonized, just six years after his death. Starting this year, while the leftists whom John Paul defeated were holding marches across Europe, Catholics were holding vigils in the Vatican. These gatherings of the Church around the mythical John Paul II are likely to spread in the coming years, creating a global counterpoint to the traditional May Day events.
But for the United States, in particular, May 1st has taken on a new meaning. More than just a reminder of the suppressed strikes in Chicago, it has become the day the country avenged itself on its public enemy number one, the terrorist Osama Bin Laden. From now on, Americans can also take to the streets, happily, to say that, on that date, they have the corpse of a murderer to display.
As can be seen, in the twenty-four hours of May 1st, 2011, the character of May 1st that remains in history gained new meanings, breaking the monopoly that the left had over it.