.jpg)
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 which led 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 it is still known as
annual 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 interred nearby. In 1986 Wobbly balladeer and storyteller 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.
.jpg)
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 marched last year as part of our Coalition to Cancel the
ICE Contract in McHenry County campaign.
.jpg)
This
year May Day is a Sunday and Tree of Life will combine elements of U.U.
Flower Communion, the traditional ritual Spring observations
including a May Pole dance with social justice nods the revived
labor movement. I won’t be able to frolic
around the May Pole, but I will be decked out in my traditional red
and black. I won’t be able to
make it to Chicago for the annual immigration/labor march, to wreath laying at
the Martyrs monument, or to a May Day birthday party for Mother Jones
at the Irish American Cultural Center.
.jpg)
Instead,
the Murfin clan will gather in Crystal Lake to observe May birthdays,
early Mother’s Day, and play time together for great-granddaughter
Sienna and granddaughter Matilda.
I will probably sing The Internationale and Solidarity
Forever anyway.
Back
at my last Chicago march in 2017 I channeled
my 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.
.jpg)
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
No comments:
Post a Comment