By Chris Mahin
Holidays are important. Whether joyous celebration or solemn
remembrance, each one conveys some meaning or teaches some lesson.
When we celebrate a particular holiday -- or decide not to -- each
of us says something about who we are and what we believe.
For the downsized and the dispossessed, one holiday stands above
all others. It is the only one observed by victims of capitalism
the world over: International Labor Day, observed on May 1 -- May
Day.
May Day began in America. The story of how it began needs to told;
it is a tale of how dramatic changes in the economy created a new
class of people. It is the story of how men and women of different
nationalities, born in different parts of the world, stepped
forward to lead a new class of poor people and were willing to pay
a terrible price for that decision. Above all else, May Day is
about the absolute necessity of the unity of the poor -- white and
black, male and female, immigrant and native-born.
The story begins in Chicago. By the 1880s, Chicago was the fastest
growing city in the world. Something new had been introduced into
the economy -- steam power. The introduction of this new
productive force led to a gigantic expansion of industry and
created a new class -- the modern industrial working class. In
Chicago, this new class included people from all over the world,
as immigrants flooded into the city.
In the factories of that era, the pay was low, the hours were long
and the conditions terribly unsafe.
On May 1, 1886, workers throughout the United States engaged in a
massive strike to demand the eight-hour day. Chicago was the
strike's center. On May 4, a rally was held at Haymarket Square in
Chicago to protest a police attack on a group of strikers. As this
peaceful rally was winding to a close, 176 cops moved in to
forcibly disperse the crowd. Someone threw a bomb. It killed one
police officer instantly and wounded many others. The police
opened fire, killing many participants in the rally.
A wave of hysteria followed. Hundreds of workers were arrested.
The police broke into meeting halls, newspaper offices and even
private homes without warrants. Suspects were beaten and even
tortured.
The extent of the hysteria can be measured by comments published
in the respectable Albany Law Journal just 11 days after the
Haymarket tragedy. The Journal called for "a check upon
immigration, a power of deportation, a better equipment of the
police, a prompter and severer dealing with disorder" and
denounced Chicago's union leaders as "a few long-haired, wild-
eyed, bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless foreign wretches, who
never did an honest hour's work in their lives." The Journal
declared: "This state of things almost justifies the resort to the
vigilance committee and lynch law. ... It seems that the penal law
of Illinois would warrant treating all these godless fiends as
murderers, and we hope they will be so treated and extirpated from
the face of the earth."
In June 1886, several leaders of the Chicago union movement were
put on trial, charged with being accessories to murder at
Haymarket Square and with a general conspiracy to murder.
Most of the defendants had not even been present when the
Haymarket bomb was thrown, but that didn't matter. They were
revolutionary leaders and Chicago's capitalists wanted their
blood.
The trial opened on June 21, 1886, with only seven of the eight
defendants in the courtroom. All seven had been born or raised
outside the United States. Chicago's newspapers had noted the
foreign roots of most of the defendants and denounced them as
"European assassins" and "foreign barbarians." But just as jury
selection began, the eighth defendant entered the courtroom.
Albert Parsons was a native-born American. He had escaped the
police roundup completely and had been living safely in Wisconsin,
but bravely returned to stand trial with his innocent immigrant
comrades.
Tried before a biased judge and jury, the defendants never had a
chance. They were convicted; seven were sentenced to hang. (An
eighth was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor.)
At that point, many people thought the case was closed, but they
had not reckoned with Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, the wife of Albert
Parsons and a leader of the Chicago labor movement in her own
right. While the case was being unsuccessfully appealed, Lucy
Parsons took her two small children and travelled across the
United States, speaking to anyone she could about the case. In
almost a year, she spoke to about 200,000 people in 16 states. Her
heartfelt eloquence helped spark a movement to stop the
executions.
Despite worldwide protests, five of the Haymarket defendants were
killed by the state of Illinois in November 1887. On the morning
of the execution of her husband, Lucy Parsons was arrested and
locked with her children in a cell for attempting to see her
husband one last time.
On July 14, 1889, at the International Labor Congress in Paris, a
delegate from the American Federation of Labor proposed that the
Congress adopt May 1 as International Labor Day and a day to
remember the "Martyrs of Chicago." This was accepted. Ever since,
May 1 has been a day for the workers of the entire world to march
in unison.
Holidays do teach lessons; May Day teaches many. The Haymarket
Affair shows that America's tiny handful of rulers will throw away
all pretense of democracy once the stability of their rule is
challenged by vast changes in the economy. It shows that they will
make scapegoats out of the immigrant workers. It shows they will
do anything to hold on to their rule.
But Haymarket also shows us the weapon that a new class created by
vast changes in the economy can wield against its rulers: unity.
Perhaps the lesson of May Day can be summed up best in the words
of Haymarket defendant Oscar Neebe. The last words of his
autobiography read simply: "I call on all workingmen or working
women of all nationalities and all countries to unite and down
with your oppressors."
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This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition),
Vol. 24 No. 5/ May, 1997; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL
60654; Email: pt@noc.org; http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html
Feel free to reproduce and use unless marked as copyrighted. The
PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers.
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