May Day, Labor History, and This Month’s Display
Happy May Day everyone!
This day has so many meanings. For me I’m usually excited to go to the annual May Day Parade in Minneapolis. It’s also Beltane, spring festival. I also remember in 2006 one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. History, a march for immigrant rights. Similar events happened this year as well.
As part of our monthly Alternative Publishers series we’re highlighting Haymarket Books.
May 1st is International Worker’s Day in most countries around the world, but not widely recognized here in the U.S. This is ironic because the date commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago.
But before we reveal some new materials, here is a quick description of May Day’s origins.
It was a time where the captains of industry ruled and workers had few rights. Police were trying to disperse a peaceful public assembly where workers were on a general strike to demand an eight-hour workday. An unidentified person threw a bomb near the police. The police responded by firing into the group of workers, killing four demonstrators. An active investigation never discovered who threw the bomb. However seven activists labeled anarchists were sentenced to death and one to fifteen years in prison. Over one hundred years later, the US celebrates ‘Labor Day’ in September and has little memory of its origins.
Okay, on to Haymarket Books
“Haymarket Books is a nonprofit, radical book distributor and publisher, a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change. We believe that activists need to take ideas, history, and politics into the many struggles for social justice today. Learning the lessons of past victories, as well as defeats, can arm a new generation of fighters for a better world. As Karl Marx said, “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world; the point however is to change it.”
We take inspiration and courage from our namesakes, the Haymarket Martyrs, who gave their lives fighting for a better world. Their 1886 struggle for the eight-hour day, which gave us May Day, the international workers’ holiday, reminds workers around the world that ordinary people can organize and struggle for their own liberation. These struggles continue today across the globe—struggles against oppression, exploitation, hunger, and poverty.
It was August Spies, one of the Martyrs who was targeted for being an immigrant and an anarchist, who predicted the battles being fought to this day. “If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement,” Spies told the judge, “then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.”
Catalog: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/haymarket/all
On Display at Durland Alternatives Library:
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle : Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “freedom is a constant struggle.”
Also, and related to labor history:
The Big Red Songbook : 250+ IWW Songs & Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture, Second Edition
For those wishing to celebrate labor history with some good old fashioned group songs. These books are the cornerstone of this valuable history – now available at Durland Alternatives Library.
