It
May Day!
This year I will forego the detailed
history of the day. Those who have
been around this joint for a while
have seen it. If not check
this out. Suffice it to say that
this is officially celebrated as
Labor Day in almost every country except the United States, where the whole thing began in commemoration of the of a Chicago eight hour day
strike that lead to a police attack
on a protest rally on May 4 where a bomb was thrown, probably by an agent provocateur in 1886. That led to the trial of eight labor leaders, mostly immigrant German anarchists. Four were hung, one committed suicide in
his jail cell during the trial, and the other four were
sentenced to prison and were
ultimately pardoned by Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld.
Samuel Gompers proposed that
the event be commemorated on May 1 at a meeting of the Socialist International in Paris. Originally meant to be a one-and-done world-wide protest it was
so successful that it became an annual
celebration of Labor. In Mexico annual strike and marches was for many year known as Día de
los Mártires de Chicago. By the 20th Century anarchists, socialists,
and Communists all celebrated the
day and labor unions adopted it. Most countries observe it now as an official
Labor holiday.
Here
in the States where a September date was picked to disassociate Labor Day from radicalism militants continued to
observe May Day anyway until the Red
Scare repression after World War
I and the McCarthy Era persecutions in post-World War II years into the 1950s.
Over the last decades both radicals and the mainstream Labor movement have revived commemorations, especially
in Chicago. And May Day has also become
a major event for the immigration
justice movement spreading from California
to major marches across the country
every year. Often the Labor and
immigration observances merge.
As
an old Wobbly—member of the Industrial Workers of the World—May Day
has been personal to me. In 1970 or so
Wobblies led a march from the empty
pedestal of a monument to the
police killed in 1886—the pedestal was empty because the statue kept getting
bombed—carrying a life-size statue
of Louis Ling, the youngest of the
Haymarket defendants who blew his head
off biting on a blasting cap, through the Loop. We marched on sidewalks obeying traffic
signals but the heavy police presence that accompanied us tied up downtown
traffic for hours.
Four
or five years later the IWW along with the Illinois
Labor History Society and other groups held a Six Hour Day rally on the site of the speakers’ wagon in the
Haymarket, the first celebration there in decades. I ran off flyers on the printing press
I operated at Diezgen Corp. Studs
Terkel acted as master of
ceremonies, Win Stracke sang, and
IWW Fellow Workers Fred W. Thompson
and Carlos Cortez were featured speakers.
Other
years I participated in the annual gatherings and wreath laying at the Haymarket
Memorial in Forest Home Cemetery. That included visits to the graves of the
many labor leaders, anarchists, Socialist, and Communists who wanted to be buried
nearby. In 1986 Wobbly balladeer and Story Teller Utah Philips was featured for the centennial of the
Haymarket Affair,
After
we moved to Crystal Lake in the mid-‘80s there were many years that I could not
afford to take an unpaid day off to go down to Chicago or the cemetery unless
May Day fell on a weekend. But around
1990 I was invited to lead a May Day service
at a small start-up Unitarian
Universalist labor congregation that met at the UE (United Electrical
Workers) hall. Afterwards I visited the then newly erected Haymarket Monument on the site of the
original speakers’ wagon. The statue had
been built and placed by the Chicago
Federation of Labor, which was warming
to its more radical roots, and had
support of the City government. That
somewhat blustery day, the Haymarket
was virtually empty. My wife and I missed a small ceremony held
that year, but I proudly got my picture
taken with the sculpture.
In
2017 I got down to Chicago for the largest May Day March in Chicago since the Great Depression. One of the March co-sponsors, the Illinois
Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, claimed 20,000 participants. That seemed about right. I came down with Sue Reckenthaler, then the Social
Justice Chair of Tree of Life
Unitarian Universalist Congregation. There
was a large, festive rally at Union Park
west of the Loop followed by a long march to the Daley Center Plaza where another rally was being held.
Little
did I know then that it would be the next-to-last long march I would ever be
able to make. After my gallbladder tried
to kill me which led to afib causing shortness of breath and then painful
deterioration of a knee, I can
barely make two laps around Woodstock
Square where I will be marching today.
I’ll
be there for the Coalition to End the
ICE Contract in McHenry County rally and march Honor Immigrants - Cancel ICE from 2 to 3:30 pm. I hope to see you there. I will be the dude in the red shirt, black scarf, and straw cowboy hat.
Back
at my last Chicago march in 2017 I channeled
by inner Carl Sandberg to answer
those progressives who approved of immigrant rights marches on
May First but clucked their tongues and wrung their hands that
militant leftists would “damage the cause” by showing up at demonstrations with red or black flags and a
chip on their shoulder.
It Ain’t May I Day
May 1, 2017
It ain’t May I Day, Bub!
No, siree.
It’s get the hell out of our way
May Day,
beg no damn pardon
May Day,
get your paws off of her
May Day,
leave those kids alone
May Day,
all hands on deck
May Day,
we and us and ours
May Day,
five finger fist
May Day,
We win,
May Day
Venceremos,
May Day,
Get it now?
—Patrick
Murfin
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