We Americans have no idea that American labor union members in Chicago fought and died for the right to work no more than an 8-hour day, and their sacrifice is remembered the world over and commemorated on May Day. A policeman died, too – but although he may have been there to protect strikers and strikebreakers from each other, he was identified with the kind of thugs corporations send to break up labor disputes. Actually, several policement and an unknown number of workers died, all told.
Utah Phillips speaking at the Haymarket Martyr’s Memorial for the 100th anniversary
We Americans have almost completely forgotten (or were never taught) that labor activists and shaggy anarchists rallied at Haymarket Square in Chicago in response to a previous “incident” where 2 striking workers at Chicago’s McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant were killed in a scuffle with police and strikebreakers at the end of the workday. This was on May 4, 1886, several days after the May Day rallies organized by labor unions, where in Chicago alone 80,000 people turned out to march.
A policeman was killed at the end of the mostly-peaceful rally by a pipe bomb thrown by someone in the crowd, and the police began firing wildly in response, wounding mostly each other in the darkness. Some in the crowd also fired back; in the end, 8 policemen and at least 4 workers died from gunfire, with many more wounded.
After a celebrated trial and many appeals, eventually 4 men were executed, rather horribly, after singing the Marseillaise (which was the trade union anthem)5 at the gallows. A fifth man had committed suicide in his prison cell the night before, also rather horribly. 2 others had their sentences commuted to life in prison, and the eighth man was given a sentence of 15 years. A ninth man was charged, but had escaped to Europe. Several of the convicted workers were German, or of German descent.
The actual “bomb-throwing anarchist” was never identified; the 8 convicted men were organizers or connected to the rally one way or the other.
We Americans have mostly forgotten, but a few remember; after it had been vandalized many times over the years, the Weathermen blew up a commemorative statue to the policeman who was killed in the Haymarket riot. Twice. Eventually the statue was rebuilt a third time and moved into a more secure location in the courtyard of the Chicago Police Academy. The empty pedestal from the previous location (it was moved several times) continued to be an anarchist landmark (and target of vandalism) until it was finally removed.
Apparently, the Haymarket massacre and its significance is still remembered locally by certain people, as only yesterday I happened to notice a custom license plate that was an abbreviated reference to “Haymrkt.” There are fresh flowers left at the Martyr’s Memorial in Forest Park to this day.
I didn’t become aware of this, and of the reason why the US celebrates these struggles and martyrdoms on Labor Day in September, while the rest of the world celebrates them on May Day, until I got involved in Second Life. A German woman I met inworld always throws a May Day party, and she plays a lot of rabble-rousing, Red Lefty anthems and rousing pro-labor rock tunes by people like Billy Bragg. I was shocked to find out that Chicago, and something called the Haymarket Massacre, is important to trade unionists the world over as a galvanizing and historic moment in the international movement. When she found out I lived near Chicago, she was deeply moved and told me all about how important the martyrs’ sacrifice was to her personally and to all Red Lefty Socialist Communist Labor Union types.
I was… surprised and not a little embarassed to be so ignorant of my own country’s history.
Labor Day as a legal holiday was originally to commemorate the struggle for the right to work an 8-hour day, but it got detached, by the politicians that rushed it through Congress, from the international May Day holiday and moved to September. The original date in May celebrated by most international labor movements was deemed to have “negative associations” with the violence (and radicalism) of the earlier Haymarket Affair. Let’s remember that, America — if we’re lucky enough to have a full-time job, that is.
America used to have a proud history of good old fashioned Lefty activism, complete with a bunch of great protest songs. This history has been mostly forgotten. Socialism has been conflated with liberalism while both systems of thought were demonized by the Right – to the point that “liberal” has become a dirty word, and even the word “progressive” is becoming a target for eliminationist rhetoric. Unfortunately, the “bards” of the old movement are getting pretty old – think Pete Seeger or Utah Phillips.
So who will sing the protest songs when they are gone?
The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) was a demonstration and unrest that took place on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at the Haymarket Square[3] in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of striking workers. An unknown person threw a bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers, mostly from friendly fire, and an unknown number of civilians.[4][5] In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were tried for murder. Four men were convicted and executed, and one committed suicide in prison, although the prosecution conceded none of the defendants had thrown the bomb.
The Haymarket affair is generally considered significant for the origin of international May Day observances for workers.[6][7] In popular literature, this event inspired the caricature of “a bomb-throwing anarchist.” The causes of the incident are still controversial. The deeply polarized attitudes separating business and working class people in late 19th-century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. The site of the incident was designated a Chicago Landmark on March 25, 1992.[8] The Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument in nearby Forest Park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark on February 18, 1997.[2]
via Haymarket affair – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UPDATE: WEIRD! I swear I didn’t read digby’s post about Haymarket before starting this one.
