Happy Labor Day

[central scrutinizer]

Worldwide, May 1 is the day to honor working people. How many Americans know that this date was chosen to honor American heroes who gave their lives in the struggle for fair pay and working conditions? For those of you who do not know your American history, and it is understandable since most schools do not teach labor history, I urge you to research the events that surrounding the Haymarket Square, Chicago, May 1, 1886 rally. The events actually took place over several days with first the protesters, then the police getting the upper hand. As usual, the industrialists and the government sided against the unionists and used this incident to set back labor rights for years. The fact that several union leaders were hanged after a kangaroo court found them guilty turned them into martyrs in the eyes of working people worldwide and May 1 became a day to honor organized labor. Of course, if you lived through the Cold War, you may remember May 1 as the day when the Soviets paraded their military in front of the Kremlin and God forbid that Americans would have anything to do with THAT day.

Here is a start:

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/haymarket.htm

http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/timeline/haymarket.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ichihtml/hayhome.html

Through much of the 1870's and 1880's Chicago was a leading center of labor activism and radical thought. Early in 1886 labor unions were beginning a movement for an eight-hour day. Union activists called a one day general strike in Chicago. On May 1 many Chicago workers struck for shorter hours. An active group of radicals and anarchists became involved in the campaign. Two days later a shooting and one death occurred during a riot at the McCormick Reaper plant when police tangled with the strikers.

Haymarket Martyrs - Chicago Public Library Special Collections and preservation DivisionOn May 4 events reached a tragic climax at Haymarket Square, an open market near Des Plaines Ave. and Randolph St., where a protest meeting was called to denounce the events of the preceding day at the McCormick Works. Speakers exhorted the crowd from a wagon which was used for a makeshift stage. Mayor Carter Harrison joined the crowd briefly, then left, believing everything was orderly. Toward the end of this meeting, while police were undertaking to disperse the crowd, a bomb was exploded. Policeman Mathias J. Degan died almost instantly and seven other officers died later.

The following day, under the direction of State's Attorney Julius Grinnel, police began a fierce roundup of radicals, agitators and labor leaders, siezing records and closing socialist and labor press offices. Eight men were finally brought to trial for conspiracy.

Despite the fact that the bomb thrower was never identified, and none of these eight could be connected with the crime, Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of them and the eighth was given fifteen years in prison. The court held that the "inflammatory speeches and publications" of these eight incited the actions of the mob. The Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts upheld the verdict.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html

Many Americans were outraged at the verdicts, but legal appeals failed. Two death sentences were commuted, but on November 11, 1887, four defendants were hanged in the Cook County jail; one committed suicide. Hundreds of thousands turned out for the funeral procession of the five dead men. In 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld granted the three imprisoned defendants absolute pardon, citing the lack of evidence against them and the unfairness of the trial.

Inspired by the American movement for a shorter workday, socialists and unionists around the world began celebrating May 1, or “May Day,” as an international workers' holiday. In the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries officially adopted it. The Haymarket tragedy is remembered throughout the world in speeches, murals, and monuments. American observance was strongest in the decade before World War I. During the Cold War, many Americans saw May Day as a Communist holiday, and President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as “Loyalty Day” in 1955. Interest in Haymarket revived somewhat in the 1980s.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. A day recognised world wide

which is why I am so pissed on this day, every year, because the business-owned government decreed an entirely different day to be OUR Labor Day, and as if that wasn't enought the prick in the WH decided to make it a fascist celebration called Loyalty Day a few years ago.

Yeah. Happy Labor Day.