The Mayday Festival May 1, 2005

THE MAYDAY FESTIVAL
Sunday May 1st, 2005
NEW TIME!! 2-6 PM
Tompkins Square Park
Free

Featuring music by;

MC BABA ISREAL {Open Thought Music} Live Hip Hop
THE KIN--Live Rock Band
DJ CHROME {Blackkat} Drum-n-bass
JUBILEE AND CHOCOLATE THAI?Live acoustic duo
DJ SWINGSETT {ism, jazzsoundting} ?Sunny Breaks and House
HUNGRY MARCH BAND?Live 10 Piece March Band
Plus surprise guests

Performances by
MISSY GALORE, GROOVEHOOPS, and others

Art and Body art by
THE GALAXY GIRLS

Special Appearances by
BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH, THE GREEN CIRCUS

Plus info tables, speakers, art and big bad beautiful YOU basking in the sun and music!!

A little background

The Mayday Festival (AKA the 19th Annual Squatters Mayday Celebration) is held yearly in Tompkins Square Park as commemoration of Anarchist founded, international workers holiday, Mayday. The holiday is broadly celebrated in Europe as a commemoration of workers rights, the 8 hour workday, and the anarchist martyrs who died in Chicago the bring about those rights. Mayday also has significance as the ancient pagan celebration of fertility and the coming of spring.

For us here in New York, The Mayday Festival is a celebration of the vibrancy of our neighborhood, our city, and a celebration of our counter-cultural communities. It is also a salute to the victorious squatters of the Lower East Side who have transformed the radical dream, ?Housing is a Human Right?, into 11 buildings of legal, tenant-controlled, affordable housing.

The Mayday Festival is a time for our communities to come together, to celebrate, to plot, to inspire. Let the cheers of Mayday?s crowd be heard throughout the city--Arts and Culture are ALIVE and well in New York!!

The Mayday Event, which has attracted crowds of several thousand people in the past, has been hosted for the last 7 years by local party collective and arts organization, Blackkat (www.blackkat.org). For the last several years the on stage entertainment has been primarily Hip Hop and Dance DJs, plus political speakers, but this year were are trying to expand our lineup to include a live rock band, a live hip-hop act, plus DJs and more circus and festival performers.

Past guests include; Afrika Bamabaataa, DJ Red Alert, Frankie Bones, Lenny Dee, Carlos Soulslinger, Jazzy J and many more.

Also, this year we will have a vegetable oil-powered bus to move the equipment and be using solar power to partially power our amps, in an effort to put to action our forward thinking ideals of sustainability.

We are inviting Circus performers, artists, performance artists, vendors, political organizations, body-painters, acrobats, clowns, break-dancers, etc. to come, bring props, bring costumes, bring energy and PARTICIPATE!

PEACE OUT!!