Cleveland: May Day honors housing defenders

This year May Day in Cleveland focused on the struggle for housing, featuring representatives from the United Residents of Euclid Beach. UREB is a multinational organization of homeowners and tenants who live in the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Park that abuts Euclid Beach park to the west and Wildwood park to the east. 

Their right to live in their homes has been threatened by the purchase of the trailer park land by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, which plans to displace trailer park residents and use the land to combine the two parks.

In an open letter to the Land Conservancy from August 2022, UREB insisted:  “The only people who should be deciding what happens to Euclid Beach Mobile Home Park are the residents of Euclid Beach Mobile Home Park.”

At the “Picnic and Workers Assembly,” held in Euclid Beach park, people heard from UREB representative Anthony Beard, along with a range of speakers representing many local class struggles. Some talks described the history of May Day, International Workers Day.

Movement activists were able to socialize and get to know one another. The event was hosted by the InterReligious Task Force on Central America and Colombia, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Northeast Ohio Worker Center. Over 20 organizations, including Black Lives Matter Cleveland, Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance, Workers World Party, and Planned Parenthood, endorsed.

-Report and photo by Martha Grevatt