Happy May Day

By Kathy G.

Depiction of Chicago's Haymarket protest, 1886

Today is May 1, May Day. In much of the world, this day -- sometimes known as International Workers Day, or Labor Day -- is a day that honors and celebrates workers and the achievements of the labor movement. Here in the U.S., we also celebrate Labor Day, but our version occurs on the first Monday in September. And too often America's Labor Day is treated as little more than an apolitical day of rest, in contrast to May Day in other countries, which is celebrated in a manner that is far more political and explicitly pro-organized labor. But the irony is that May Day began to commemorate an important episode in American history: the Haymarket affair.

The Haymarket incident occurred in my adopted home town of Chicago on May 4, 1886. Following three days of protests and a general strike by labor groups calling for an eight-hour workday, a rally was held in Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb exploded, police opened fire on the crowd, and apparently some in the crowd fired back.  A number of people were killed, including at least seven cops and four civilians. Eight anarchists, most of them German immigrants, were prosecuted for murder. Following a trial that many believed was a travesty, seven of them were sentenced to death, though only five ended up going to the gallows. The remaining three defendants were eventually pardoned.

Thereafter, Haymarket became a rallying cry for socialists, anarchists, and labor activists around the world. Emma Goldman, for example, credited her reading about the Haymarket affair with having a profound affect on her political views and helping draw her to anarchism. In 1889, a resolution was adopted by the Second International to make May 1, 1890, a day of demonstration for the eight-hour work day. That date was chosen in honor of the Haymarket martyrs. Many countries eventually adopted May 1 as a national holiday honoring workers, but not America. Uncomfortable with the radical associations of that date, Congress in 1894 deemed that the first Monday in September would henceforth be a legal holiday known as Labor Day.

And apparently, it wasn't enough for America to turn its back on the vibrant,radical, internationalist vision May Day represents and create a poor, largely depoliticized substitute (Labor Day) in its stead. We've also attempted to co-opt May 1 so that it serves an entirely different public purpose. Wikipedia notes:

the U.S. Congress designated May 1 as Loyalty Day in 1958 due to the day's appropriation by the Soviet Union.

And as if one right-wing holiday on May 1 wasn't enough for you, how about adding a second one?

Law Day was created in the late 1950s, by the American Bar Association to draw attention to both the principles and practice of law and justice, and to distract attention from International Workers Day. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day by proclamation in 1958. . . . Law Day has been resurrected by President George W. Bush.

To this day, the Haymarket affair remains a source of some controversy. In 2004, the Chicago Park District, as part of its plan to rename nine local parks in honor of Chicago women, chose Lucy Parsons as one of the honorees. Parsons was a woman of color, a labor organizer, and the wife of Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket defendants who went to the gallows. The local policeman's union strongly protested this choice, but the parks commission prevailed, and there is now a park named in her honor at 4712 West Belmont Avenue.

I suspect that, for the most part, the kind of people who are reading this blog know the history of May Day and Haymarket all too well. But I'm writing about it anyway, not only because it bears repeating but because I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of otherwise well-informed liberal/left types are totally unaware of this history. There are lots of reasons for this, not least because, as HIstorical Agent and Rustbelt Intellectual have noted, teaching about the American labor movement is a difficult task. I think American schools in general do a pretty lousy job of educating students about labor history. I don't remember labor-oriented topics ever coming up in the A.P. American history course I took in high school. What I've learned about the subject myself came from bits and pieces in women's and African-American history courses I took in college, and also my own independent reading.

I will close this May Day post by urging you to check out these two recent pieces by a writer who is one of my heroes, Barbara Ehrenreich. They concern a very interesting movement that has begun among truckers, who are organizing to protest the price of diesel fuel. The truckers, says Ehrenreich:

are owner-operators, meaning they are also businesspeople, and they can’t break even with current fuel costs. They want the government to release its fuel reserves. They want an investigation into oil company profits and government subsidies of the oil companies. Of the drivers I talked to, all were acutely aware that the government had found, in the course of a weekend, $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns, while their own businesses are in a tailspin.

Barbara sees this movement as an example of "small-d democratic fundamentalism: We own the government, we pay for it, and now it better do something for us." She calls the protests a "shining example of defiance of the face of economic assault."  It's inspiring to see that this kind of defiance is alive and well, and getting organized to boot. The spirit of May Day lives.

Comments

[Yuri Rennenkampf]

Ah yes, the "vibrant,radical, internationalist vision (that) May Day represents". Some of us who are perhaps a bit older and of European origin remember that vibrant vision displayed so well by the jackbooted legions of the Soviet Union on parade through Red Square and that fine internationalist Brezhnev looking down upon them so benevolently.

I think I'd rather have the American "poor, largely depoliticized substitute".

[Kathy G.]

Yuri, I don't blame someone who grew up in the Soviet Union for reacting as you did to my post. Communism was an evil system and American society was and is far, far preferable in every way.

But I don't think those are the only two options. There's also European-style social democracy, and that's what I'd like to see in America. In most European countries, yes, you have strong democracies, human rights, and markets, but you also have strong unions, regulations that protect workers and consumers, a comprehensive safety net, and taxes and social policies that are strongly redistributive. Not to mention some pretty kickass May Day celebrations!

[gordon]

It's a pity that E.Wilson's "To the Finland Station" isn't part of every high school reading list for modern history.

And as far as the "jackbooted legions of the Soviet Union" are concerned, I think you have got them mixed up with the jackbooted legions of the German Nazis.

[ripley]

I don't blame someone who grew up under the Soviet system from having that response. But neither do I blame people who suffered in the mines in Virginia, or the mills of Lowell, from thinking that workers' control of the means of production might be more appealing than what they had.

I don't know that we can say "communism is an evil system" when we've never had communism. The soviet state-socialist system was susceptible to corruption from within (as are all systems) as well as being faced from the beginning with incredible hostility from all sides (unlike the beginning of capitalism), including invasion.

Evil was done in the name of communism. So was it done in the name of many ideologies, religions and worldviews.

I don't find the tenets of communism (basically, although of course there are quite a few to choose from!) to be particularly evil compared to the tenets of a lot of other worldviews. Whether it is workable, or under what conditions, is a different story.

[Mark L.]

"I think American schools in general do a pretty lousy job of educating students about labor history."

I can't speak to schools in general, but I'm happy to say that our local H.S. uses Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States' and another "alternate" text (the name escapes me at the moment) in non-AP classes. They may not go very deeply into labor history, but at least it's there.

I haven't been in a union in over 25 years, but I think the U.S. has gone *way* too far in favoring corporations over workers (and consumers too, for that matter).

[Corvus9]

Huh. I had read about the Haymarket riots in a college class on the history of the American working class, but I didn't know that May Day sprang out of it.

Also, Lucy Parsons wasn't just a your "average" woman of color. She had Mexican, Native American, and African ancestry, and was likely born a slave. That's like a threefer, or a fourfer.

And Albert was a former Confederate soldier. Weird, huh? (He was 13 at the time he joined up.)