An excerpt from anarcho-communist Peter Rachleff e-mail on May Day.
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>...Some
would argue (see David Roediger and Franklin Rosemont's HAYMARKET SCRAPBOOK and
David Roediger and Philip Foner, OUR OWN TIME) that May Day began as a pagan
holiday to celebrate the coming of spring and the renewal of life. This is
certainly the core spirit of the annual events organized by the In the Heart of
the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater in Minneapolis. They call this the holiday's
"green" roots.
Others have noted that workers' activities around seasonal hiring and the traditional beginning of the construction season made May Day a pivotal workers' calendar date in workers' lives. French labor historian Michelle Perrot in her path-breaking history of 19th century strikes (LES OUEVRIERS EN GREVE) crunches masses of police file data to conclude that the first of May was the most strike prone day of the year. Building trades unions often struck on that day to establish the wages, work rules, and conditions for the coming season.
May Day clearly has multiple roots, which is probably what makes it such an evocative and symbolic day for labor activists. Most labor historians and activists trace the modern origins of May Day to the Knights of Labor's call for a national general strike on May 1, 1886, to establish the eight hour day as the standard for all United Statesian workers. They had a simple, inspired/inspiring idea -- for all workers to walk off the job on May 1, pledged that none of them would return until all of them had been granted the eight hour day. Hundreds of thousands of workers around the US heeded that strike call in 1886 (see Jeremy Brecher, STRIKE!). Chicago became the center of attention and, within Chicago, the largest factory in the US, the McCormick Harvester Works. There, KofL organizers held a series of rallies and demonstrations urging the largely new immigrant (Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Bohemian, etc.) workforce to put down their tools and join the strike (see the wonderful new book, DEATH IN THE HAYMARKET by James Green).
On the 4th day of the campaign, police broke up a rally, charging that the activists did not have a permit. A bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police, other police opened fire on the crowd, a number died on both sides, and the movement's organizers were arrested and charged with murder. Several were executed. Out of the protests which spread across the world came the tradition of observing May 1 as an international workers' holiday.
Ironically, in the country where the events happened that inspired the holiday, May 1st was erased from the labor movement's calendar. In the 1890s President Grover Cleveland mandated the first Monday in September as "Labor Day" and it was embraced by the relatively conservative leadership of the American Federation of Labor. As this day became a legal holiday, politicians and labor "leaders" discouraged workers from celebrating May Day. Nevertheless, labor activists of all sorts continued to celebrate (see Bruce Nelson, BEYOND THE MARTYRS) and, at times, their ranks and spirits were renewed by new immigrants who brought passionate May Day traditions with them into the United States.
On rare occasions, May Day has continued to serve as a rallying point for workers' militancy in the US. In 1937, for instance, thousands of steelworkers on strike for union recognition at Republic and Bethlehem Steel organized a massive march in South Chicago. As they neared one of the mills, private security guards opened fire, killing a number of strikers. This "Memorial Day Massacre" entered the pantheon of labor commemorations in the ensuing years (see Irving Bernstein, THE TURBULENT YEARS).
Please pardon me for having turned an email into a labor history lecture, but it seems to me to be such an opportune moment for us to investigate and identify the roots of this holiday. It has always been about "protest," albeit often with a celebratory spirit. That the movement for new immigrant rights has selected May Day for its next demonstration is stunningly appropriate. It is also a wonderful opportunity for the rest of us to connect not only with them, but also with our submerged past.
Love and Solidarity, Peter
-- Michael Pugliese