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International Workers Day
May. 1st, 2002 09:52 amHappy May Day, my favorite holiday of the year. I’ll be celebrating by getting drunk and doing karaoke at our annual work party. Whoo-hoo. Here’s what I wrote for Rainbow as our official statement a few years ago. There are some parts I wouldn't mind re-writing, but what do you want from me? It’s a holiday, I’m not gonna sit in front of a computer.
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Rainbow Grocery Cooperative is closed every May 1 in honor of International Workers Day. As a worker-run business, we do this to show solidarity with the labor movement and to acknowledge the struggles, ideas and martyrs that have made it possible for a place like us to exist. We also reaffirm our commitment and responsibility to the movement by workers everywhere to gain control of our workplaces and lives.
At Rainbow many would argue that how we work is as important as what we sell. As a collectively-run store, we operate without bosses and with a minimum of hierarchy. Each member has the ability to work out their own working conditions within their own department and an equal vote in our big general meetings which must approve any substantial change in economic or business practices. We are committed to working out our problems together.
The image most Americans probably associate with May Day, if they have one at all, is that of tanks and missiles rolling down Red Square past Soviet Communist Party generals and bureaucrats. It's easy to be unaware that the reason that May 1 is celebrated as International Workers Day is because of what happened to the labor movement in the United States in 1886.
As part of the agitation for the 8-hour workday, and the attempt of industrial laborers to gain some control of their conditions of life and work, labor unions called strikes across the country to begin on May 1 1886. At the time, workers, including children, frequently worked 10-14 hour days, six days a week. Chicago was a national center for the 8-hour day movement (as well as an ideological center for the organized working class) and the workers there succeeded in shutting down the railroads and most industry, with more workers joining the strike each day. On May 3 police fired into a crowd of strikers who were fighting with scabs, killing 4 and wounding many.
Workers called for a rally the next night at Haymarket Square. Peaceful until the police moved in at the conclusion to disperse it, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring many. The police then began firing into the crowd killing a striker and wounding so many people that according to one account the square was "littered with bodies, both of civilians and police".
The enemies of organized labor took advantage of this situation right away. Although there was no evidence of who threw the bomb, the police immediately arrested 8 anarchist labor organizers who were convicted (five sentenced to hang) despite the fact that only one was even in attendance at the rally and he was on-stage speaking when the bomb went off.
This was the beginning of the first major "Red Scare" in U.S. history, with police and vigilantes attacking, arresting, deporting, blacklisting and killing many labor organizers and union members in order to destroy the labor movement. Like the Palmer Raids after World War I and the McCarthy period in the Fifties, forces of reaction also attempted to split the workers movements by villainizing certain ideologies and whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-foreign sentiment. As an ongoing theme in U.S. history it is a lesson we can not forget.
In response to the original Haymarket events, workers around the world expressed their solidarity and rage. Though not replacing all that was lost, this solidarity was a victory and is the reason we celebrate International Workers Day. May Day is a reminder that some of us will not give up in the fight for economic. political and social justice
i
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Rainbow Grocery Cooperative is closed every May 1 in honor of International Workers Day. As a worker-run business, we do this to show solidarity with the labor movement and to acknowledge the struggles, ideas and martyrs that have made it possible for a place like us to exist. We also reaffirm our commitment and responsibility to the movement by workers everywhere to gain control of our workplaces and lives.
At Rainbow many would argue that how we work is as important as what we sell. As a collectively-run store, we operate without bosses and with a minimum of hierarchy. Each member has the ability to work out their own working conditions within their own department and an equal vote in our big general meetings which must approve any substantial change in economic or business practices. We are committed to working out our problems together.
The image most Americans probably associate with May Day, if they have one at all, is that of tanks and missiles rolling down Red Square past Soviet Communist Party generals and bureaucrats. It's easy to be unaware that the reason that May 1 is celebrated as International Workers Day is because of what happened to the labor movement in the United States in 1886.
As part of the agitation for the 8-hour workday, and the attempt of industrial laborers to gain some control of their conditions of life and work, labor unions called strikes across the country to begin on May 1 1886. At the time, workers, including children, frequently worked 10-14 hour days, six days a week. Chicago was a national center for the 8-hour day movement (as well as an ideological center for the organized working class) and the workers there succeeded in shutting down the railroads and most industry, with more workers joining the strike each day. On May 3 police fired into a crowd of strikers who were fighting with scabs, killing 4 and wounding many.
Workers called for a rally the next night at Haymarket Square. Peaceful until the police moved in at the conclusion to disperse it, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring many. The police then began firing into the crowd killing a striker and wounding so many people that according to one account the square was "littered with bodies, both of civilians and police".
The enemies of organized labor took advantage of this situation right away. Although there was no evidence of who threw the bomb, the police immediately arrested 8 anarchist labor organizers who were convicted (five sentenced to hang) despite the fact that only one was even in attendance at the rally and he was on-stage speaking when the bomb went off.
This was the beginning of the first major "Red Scare" in U.S. history, with police and vigilantes attacking, arresting, deporting, blacklisting and killing many labor organizers and union members in order to destroy the labor movement. Like the Palmer Raids after World War I and the McCarthy period in the Fifties, forces of reaction also attempted to split the workers movements by villainizing certain ideologies and whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-foreign sentiment. As an ongoing theme in U.S. history it is a lesson we can not forget.
In response to the original Haymarket events, workers around the world expressed their solidarity and rage. Though not replacing all that was lost, this solidarity was a victory and is the reason we celebrate International Workers Day. May Day is a reminder that some of us will not give up in the fight for economic. political and social justice
i
