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It’s time for the annual rites of Spring, when socialists, revolutionaries, communists, anarchists, and all other flavors of non capitalism hold annual demonstrations, usually with pertinent and timely themes. Many of socialists are really European style moderates, and some progressives also participate, but among them waiting for their moments to coopt the stage are usually some truly bad actors. The right wing will try to portray the bad actors as making up the whole crowd in an attempt to make the exception the rule and thereby obscure the sometimes very legitimate theme of protest. It happens every Spring.

anging drums and waving flags, tens of thousands of workers marked May Day in European cities Tuesday with a mix of anger and gloom over austerity measures imposed by leaders trying to contain the eurozone’s intractable debt crisis.

Taking the baton from Asia, where unions demanded wage increases as they transformed the day from one celebrating workers rights to one of international protest, workers turned out in droves in Greece, France and Spain, the latest focus of a debt nightmare that has already forced three eurozone countries to seek financial bailouts.

Under a gray, threatening Madrid sky that reflected the national mood, 25-year Adriana Jaime confided she turned out because she speaks three foreign languages and has a masters degree as a translator, but works for what she derided as peanuts and sees her future as grim at best.