International Unemployment Day (March 6, 1930) was a coordinated international campaign of marches and demonstrations, marked by hundreds of thousands of people in major cities around the world taking to the streets to protest mass unemployment associated with the Great Depression. The Unemployment Day marches, organized by the Communist International and coordinated by its various member parties, resulted in two deaths of protestors in Berlin, injuries at events in Vienna and the Basque city of Bilbao, and less violent outcomes in London and Sydney.
In the United States, full-scale riots erupted in New York City and Detroit when thousands of baton-wielding police attacked tens of thousands of marchers. A total of 30 American cities in all saw mass demonstrations as part of the March 6 campaign, including Boston, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Seattle.
By 1930, the economic boom of the 1920s was a mere memory, replaced by a stock market crash and severe contraction of the interlocked capitalist economies of the world. Unemployment became a mass phenomenon, and social services for those affected were minimal.
The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) in Moscow was preoccupied with the worsening economic crisis from its outset, and identified escalating unemployment as capitalism's potentially most inflammatory flaw. A proposal was made in ECCI to establish March 6, 1930, as an "international day" of protest against unemployment, a decision taken at ECCI's session of January 16. The campaign was further developed by a conference of representatives of Communist parties held in Berlin on January 31, held under the auspices of the West European Bureau of the Comintern.