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Why May Day?

The immigrants striking today are on the leading edge of a struggle faced by all American workers, writes Geov Parrish in today's TomPaine.com, as he gives us the history of May Day.

Most Americans probably do not know that May Day originated in the U.S. on May 1, 1886. It began as a series of general strikes by workers in Chicago and other Midwestern cities for the 8-hour work day. Tragically, police attacked some of the strikers, killing four and injuring over 200. At a demonstration to protest the police riot on May 4, a bomb went off in Chicago's Haymarket Square--the infamous "Haymarket Massacre--that killed eight police officers and wounded 60, and led to death sentences for eight leading strikers. By the end of the decade, May Day was a holiday celebrated by workers and workers' movements in every industrialized country in the world. It is still observed globally, except in the U.S., the country of its birth.

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange . He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net

For many older Americans, "May Day" brings to mind images of phalanxes of Soviet soldiers, goose-stepping through Red Square behind massive tanks, while millions of onlookers obediently cheer. For some, "May Day" is a pagan holiday, Beltane, known more (and loved) for maypoles or other fertility rituals than for political struggles. But May Day, the political version, is an American holiday—one celebrated for the last century everywhere in the world except America, and one whose origins are well worth remembering. Because May Day began as a strike for basic workplace rights we're now in the process of losing. And that strike was largely by immigrant workers, which is exactly what America will see when immigrants and their supporters strike, march and rally across the country on a “National Day of Action for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” on this coming Monday—May Day.

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posted by Annamarie at 9:53 PM