May Day and its American martyrs
The true Labor Day across the globe is May 1st, and now that we have a national labor movement alive again in this country called the Occupy Movement, the holiday is being resurrected with a call for a general strike. Alternet's Jacob Remes provides a history...May Day is a beautifully American holiday, one created by American workers, crushed by the American government, incubated abroad, and returned to the United States by immigrant workers.
In an effort to erase the martyrs of Chicago's Haymarket Square Riot in 1886 from the national consciousness, leaders of almost every generation of capitalism that followed have attempted to re-define the day. Even as International Workers Day, and the anniversary of the deadly fight for the 8-hour work day, is celebrated in nearly every other democratic nation on the planet, U.S. presidents (those bludgeoning instruments of Wall Street) have declared the day officially-- and offensively-- "Americanization Day," "Loyalty Day," and "Law Day."
May Day has been suppressed here in concerted fashion, but it lives in the world, and damn it if these immigrants don't keep reviving it. That makes me swell with pride as it was my great-great-grandfather's generation of Midwest-dwelling, first-generation German immigrants that was directly responsible for making the 8-hour work day a reality for much of the world.
posted by CM @ 8:06 PM
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