““Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!” -Slogan of the Eight Hour Day Movement”
CHICAGO May 1, 2020- Workers at Amazon, Target and other major retailers are striking today, to demand better care and pay. They have been asked —rather, coerced— into working during this pandemic, by a corporate and state elite who say some people are more expendable than others. These workers are acting in the long tradition of American and international solidarity that has brought us the rights we have in our working lives and waking lives.
Surely it is no mistake that these actions are taking place today, May 1st... May Day. As Peter Linebaugh details in his work of history and imagination, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, May 1st has a rich history of spring renewal rites, celebrations of nature and festivals of working people and their movements.
In the era of monopoly domination of the late 19th century, workers fought back against the same kind of forces we all face today: domination of bodies, resources and time. It was the last of these in particular that held special organizing power in the form of the Eight Hour Work Day movement.
According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, “ On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day.” From April 25 to May 4 workers held demonstrations in Chicago and across the country, responded to by monopolists, states, and the police by repressive violence and a reign of misinformation, show trials and terror. On May 4th, after Cyrus McCormick’s reaper company and the police bloodily repressed a strike, there was a gathering of people in Haymarket Square, Chicago, to hear speakers on the Eight Hour Day, Socialism, Anarchism and workers rights.
The following travesty was precipitated by the police ordering the crowd to disperse and an unknown person throwing a pipe bomb into the crowd. Scores of people, demonstrators and police alike, were killed or injured. And in the wake of this violent melee, the state, corporations and the press made a campaign of propaganda and terror, reaching without evidence or civil procedure for a scapegoat and a menace. Eventually eight men were rounded up and charged with conspiracy for the bombing. With outlets like the Chicago Tribune explicitly publishing calls for guilty verdicts, 7 of the accused were convicted, with 2 sentences commuted and 5 dying: 4 by hanging and 1 by suicide in his cell. The trial and executions have long been characterized by scholars as gross miscarriages of justice and have inspired millions to fight for the universal application of the rights that are so officially cherished by the United States.
The names of the Haymarket Scapegoats, the Haymarket Accused, the Haymarket Martyrs are:
George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar Neebe, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab, August Spies.
Further Reading
Haymarket Revisited, By William Adelman
The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, By Peter Linebaugh