May Day Was Born in Chicago

ClassWarrior · 08-07-2007, 05:24 PM

Awesome holiday:

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The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886 in Chicago is generally considered to have been an important influence on the origin of international May Day observances for workers.[2] In popular literature this event inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. The site of the riot was designated as a Chicago Landmark on March 25, 1992.[3] It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark on February 18, 1997.

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May Day parade and strikes
In 1886, a convention of The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada set May 1, 1886 as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become law. [4] The FOTLU, and the International Working People's Association (IWPA) began preparing for a general strike. The Knights of Labor opposed the strike.[5] On Saturday May 1, 1886 rallies were held throughout the United States. The largest was in Chicago, where an estimated 90,000 people participated. There were an estimated 10,000 demonstrators in New York and 11,000 in Detroit. Albert Parsons, an Anarchist and founder of the International Working People's Association, with his wife Lucy Parsons and seven children, led people down Michigan Avenue. In the next few days, 350,000 workers nationwide went on strike at 1,200 factories.

On May 3 striking workers met near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant where a fight broke out on the picket lines as replacement workers attempted to cross the picket line. Chicago police intervened and attacked the strikers, killing four, wounding several others and sparking outrage in the city's working community.

Local anarchists distributed fliers calling for a rally at Haymarket Square, then a bustling commercial centre (also called the Haymarket) near the corner of Randolph Street and Des Plaines Street in what was later called Chicago's west Loop. These fliers alleged police had murdered the strikers on behalf of business interests and urged workers to seek justice.

[edit] Rally at Haymarket Square

This 19th century engraving showing exaggerated flames and smoke was published in popular newspapers and magazines during the days and weeks following the Haymarket riot. It also appeared in some history textbooks.The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of May 4. August Spies spoke to the large crowd while standing in an open wagon on Des Plaines Street.[6] According to many witnesses, Spies said he was not there to incite anyone. Meanwhile a large number of on-duty police officers watched from nearby. The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who had stopped by to watch, walked home early. Some time later the police ordered the rally to disperse and began marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon. A bomb was thrown at the police line and exploded, killing policeman Mathias J. Degan.[7] The police immediately opened fire. While several of their number besides Degan appear to have been injured by the bomb, most of the casualties seem to have been caused by bullets. About sixty officers were wounded in the riot, as well as an unknown number of civilians. In all, seven policemen and at least four workers were killed in the riot. There is no accurate count of the latter, as those injured were afraid to seek medical attention for injuries, fearing punishment for their part in the riot.

Eight people connected directly or indirectly with the rally and its anarchist organisers were charged with Degan's murder: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe. Five (Spies, Fischer, Engel, Lingg and Schwab) were German immigrants while a sixth, Neebe, was a U.S. citizen of German descent.

The trial was presided over by Judge Joseph Gary. The defense counsel included Sigmund Zeisler, William Perkins Black, William Foster and Moses Salomon. The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing but argued that the person who had thrown the bomb had been encouraged to do so by the defendants, who as conspirators were therefore equally responsible.

Albert Parsons' brother claimed that there was evidence linking the Pinkertons to the bomb.[11]

The jury returned guilty verdicts for all eight defendants, with death sentences for seven. Neebe received a sentence of 15 years in prison. The sentencing sparked outrage from budding labor and workers movements, resulted in protests around the world, and made the defendants international political celebrities and heroes within labor and radical political circles. Meanwhile, the press published often sensationalized accounts and opinions about the incident, which polarized public reaction. Journalist George Frederic Parsons, for example, wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly articulating the fears of middle-class Americans concerning labor radicalism, asserting that workers had only themselves to blame for their troubles.[12]

Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago in May 1986 during ceremonies commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Haymarket riotThe case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Illinois,[13] then to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the defendants were represented by John Randolph Tucker, Roger Atkinson Pryor, General Benjamin F. Butler and William P. Black. The petition for certiorari was denied.[14]

After the appeals had been exhausted, Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted Fielden's and Schwab's sentences to life in prison. On the eve of his scheduled execution, Lingg committed suicide in his cell using a smuggled dynamite cap which he reportedly held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast blew off half his face and he survived in agony for several hours).

The next day, November 11, 1887, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged together before a public audience. Taken to the gallows in white robes and hoods, they sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement. Family members including Lucy Parsons who attempted to see them for the last time were arrested and searched for bombs. None were found. August Spies was widely quoted as having shouted out, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." Witnesses reported that the condemned did not die when they dropped, but strangled to death slowly, a sight which left the audience visibly shaken.[citation needed]

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In 1889 a commemorative nine-foot bronze statue of a Chicago policeman by sculptor Johannes Gelert was erected in the middle of Haymarket Square with private funds raised by the Union League Club of Chicago. On the 41st anniversary of the riot, May 4, 1927, a streetcar jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument (statements made by the driver suggested this may have been deliberate).

The city moved it to nearby Lincoln Park. During the early 1960s, freeway construction erased about half of the old, run down market square and the statue was moved back to a spot on a newly built outcropping overlooking the freeway, near its original location. In October 1969 it was blown up, repaired by the city and blown up again a year later, reportedly by the Weather Underground.

Mayor Richard J. Daley placed a 24-hour police guard around the statue for two years before it was moved to the enclosed courtyard of Chicago Police academy in 1972. The statue's empty, graffiti-marked pedestal stood in the desolate remains of Haymarket Square for another three decades, where it was known as an anarchist landmark.

On June 1, 2007, the Gelert statue was rededicated at the Chicago Police Headquarters on a new pedestal.

In 1985, scholars doing research for a possible centennial commemoration of the riot were surprised to learn that most of the primary source documentation relating to the incident was not in Chicago, but had been transferred to then-communist East Berlin.

In 1992 the site of the speakers' wagon was marked by a bronze plaque set into the sidewalk, reading:

A decade of strife between labor and industry culminated here in a confrontation that resulted in the tragic death of both workers and policemen. On May 4, 1886, spectators at a labor rally had gathered around the mouth of Crane's Alley. A contingent of police approaching on Des Plaines Street were met by a bomb thrown from just south of the alley. The resultant trial of eight activists gained worldwide attention for the labor movement, and initiated the tradition of "May Day" labor rallies in many cities.

Designated on March 25, 1992
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
On September 14, 2004, Daley and union leaders unveiled a monument by Chicago artist Mary Brogger, a fifteen-foot speakers' wagon sculpture echoing the wagon on which the labor leaders stood in Haymarket Square to champion the eight-hour day. The bronze sculpture, centerpiece of a proposed "Labor Park" there, is meant to symbolize both the assembly at Haymarket and free speech. The planned site was to include an international commemoration wall, sidewalk plaques, a cultural pylon, seating area and banners but a year later work had not yet begun.

"The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."

intangible child · 08-07-2007, 07:42 PM

Wal-Mart's First Lady by Ward Harkavy

Twice in three days last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union members. Her record of supporting collective bargaining, however, is considerably worse than wobbly.

Pity the thousands of unionists at last Tuesday's state Democratic convention who chanted her name, and the hundreds of retired Teamsters at Thursday's luncheon in midtown who had interrupted their Founder's Day meal to hear the corporate litigator turned union-loving Democrat deliver a campaign speech.
village voice > news > Wal-Mart's First Lady by Ward Harkavy

Hillary Clinton Feels Heat Over Wal-Mart Ties

NEW YORK -- With retailer Wal-Martunder fire for its labor and healthcare policies, one Democrat with ties to the company, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, has started feeling her share of the political heat.

Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. And the Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs.

Hillary Clinton had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004, when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation that her time on the board ''was a great experience in every respect."

But in recent months, as the company has become a target for Democratic activists, she has largely steered clear of any mention of Wal-Mart. And late last year, Clinton's reelection campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from Wal-Mart, citing ''serious differences with current company practices."

As Clinton sheds her Arkansas past and looks ahead to a possible 2008 presidential run, the Wal-Mart issue presents an exquisite dilemma: how to reconcile the political demands she faces today with her history at a company many consumers depend upon but many Democratic activists revile.
Hillary Clinton Feels Heat Over Wal-Mart Ties

ClassWarrior · 08-07-2007, 09:28 PM

Put her over the flames. Keep the heat on Hillary Clinton. She is bought and paid for by big business like the rest of them. The only people who will give the common people their rights, are the common people. The common working people must take matters into their own hands and unite and fight against Big Business who is seeking to deprive us of our rights and wage a ruthless and vicious class war against us all! Freedom!!!!! FReedom too ALL PEOPLE!! Freedom to the working people!!!!!!!!!!!!!

indago · 08-08-2007, 06:56 AM

Rosa Luxemburg

What Are the Origins of May Day?
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Written: 1894, First published in Polish in Sprawa Robotnicza
Published: From Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg, tr. Dick Howard (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 315-16.
Online Version: marxists.org April, 2002
Transcribed: http://www.comatonse.com/ultrared/lm_mayday.html
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The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass work stoppage which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea of a proletarian celebration was quickly accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.

The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day 200,000 of them left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented the workers for many years from repeating this [size] demonstration. However in 1888 they renewed their decision and decided that the next celebration would be May 1, 1890.

In the meanwhile, the workers' movement in Europe had grown strong and animated. The most powerful expression of this movement occurred at the International Workers' Congress in 1889. At this Congress, attended by four hundred delegates, it was decided that the eight-hour day must be the first demand. Whereupon the delegate of the French unions, the worker Lavigne from Bordeaux, moved that this demand be expressed in all countries through a universal work stoppage. The delegate of the American workers called attention to the decision of his comrades to strike on May 1, 1890, and the Congress decided on this date for the universal proletarian celebration.

In this case, as thirty years before in Australia, the workers really thought only of a one-time demonstration. The Congress decided that the workers of all lands would demonstrate together for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. No one spoke of a repetition of the holiday for the next years. Naturally no one could predict the lightninglike way in which this idea would succeed and how quickly it would be adopted by the working classes. However, it was enough to celebrate the May Day simply one time in order that everyone understand and feel that May Day must be a yearly and continuing institution [. . .].

The first of May demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. But even after this goal was reached, May Day was not given up. As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.

ClassWarrior · 08-08-2007, 07:14 AM

In the end it doesn't matter where May Day was born, we are all workers. However, Chicago made May Day, what it is today and it wasn't celebrated on a global scale until after the HayMarket riots in Chicago, therefore, it's safe to conclude that May Day was made in Chicago as evidenced here:

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May Day in this regard is called International Workers' Day or Labour Day, and is a commemoration of the execution of the Haymarket martyrs who were arrested after the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, which occurred on May 4 but was the culmination of labor unrest that had begun on May 1. Consequently this May Day became established as an anarchist and socialist holiday, and in this form, May Day has become an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the working class and labor movement. It is somewhat ironic that the country in which this form of May Day originated is also the country in which it is least recognized; in the United States, May Day is officially observed as Loyalty Day.[2]

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International Workers' Day is the commemoration of the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886; in 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle (1889), following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. These were so successful that May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." As the most effective way of demonstrating was by striking, the congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."

May Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Again, we are all workers, no matter where we are all from and have much in common. Funny, how the ruling class here in America, renamed May Day as "Loyalty" Day, when "Loyalty" Day was started by a group of working class Americans who rioted against the establishment. An example of double think or news-speak that George Orwell talked about in his novel 1984. Ignorance is strength, war is peace and freedom is slavery.

Katczinsky · 08-09-2007, 04:33 PM

I must say I didn't know about the "Loyalty Day". That's simply ridiculous.

ClassWarrior · 08-09-2007, 07:53 PM

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I must say I didn't know about the "Loyalty Day". That's simply ridiculous.

Yes it is, but the rich and the powerful, namely, the ruling class, who own and control the government, do not have any loyalty towards this same government or nation yet they want everybody else to have loyalty to this country and government that they themselves are not loyal to. Ironic, isn't it? Loyalty Day was merely a power play by the ruling class to prevent and discourage people from acting as a free people and to think as independent and free thinkers. So, whenever somebody dare speak out, they will be accused of treason and called traitors, yet the same people behind such laws and holidays of "Loyalty Day" have no such loyalty themselves. And the actions of the powerful and rich prove it and we see many of them offshore corporations to prevent paying taxes and keeping themselves and their children out of wars that they themselves have manufactered and started.