councilor.org
| Source | News for Social Justice Action |
| Date | 05/05/04/20:49 |
| This speech was delivered at a rally and march in Santa Cruz on May Day and
at an International Workers Day event on May 3 at SEIU Local 715 in San Jose. The event was organized by the SEIU Local 715 Latin oand African American Caucuse and the Local's Civil and Human rights Committee. It was warmly received by the particpants at both events. Fred ------------------------------------- MAY DAY: BORN IN THE USA May 1&3, 2005 Fred Hirsch When it comes to International Workers' Day, May Day, workers have been treated like mushrooms, kept in the dar and covered with manure. Even observing May Day has been considered "UnAmerican." They said it was a Russian Holiday or Communist Holiday. The FBI called it a Chinese holiday. Under Herbert Hoover, it was "Child Health Day." In the 50s it was renamed "Loyalty Day, " and "Law Day." Instead of militant marches and picket lines they wanted us to have picnics in the park and forget that May Day was born in the USA in the struggle for the eight hour day. They bury the truth that mostly immigrant workers who, suffering intolerable hours, took their demands to the streets and were met by deadly police state force and violence. Right after the Civil War, in 1866, the National Labor Union made the first countrywide demand for an eight hour day. It was immediately picked up in Geneva by Karl Marx's International Workingmen's Association as a demand of the "Workers of the World." With workdays of 10, 12, 14 and 16 hours, the eight hour day was seen as the starting point to improve workers' lives. It was the imperative basic step of our working class to organize. In 1884 the Knights of Labor demanded an eight hour day and, within two years membership grew from 200,000 to 700,000. So, too, with the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions which swelled and reorganized as the AFL, with a visionary Preamble: "A struggle is going on in the nations of the world between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between capital and labor which must grow in intensity from year to year and work disastrous results to the toiling millions of all nations if not combined for mutual protection and benefit." A song rang out across the country: We mean to make things over We're sure that God has willed it We're tired of toil for naught And we mean to have eight hours But bare enough to live on; never We're summoning our forces from An hour for thought Shipyard, shop and mill We want to feel the sunshine: we 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest Want to smell the flowers 8 hours for what we will! In those two years 600,000 workers struck 1572 times, and on May 1, 1886 about half a million workers hit the streets with parades and picket lines. Over 80,000 demonstrated in Chicago, winning the 8 hour day for 45,000 packing house, construction and clerical workers and reduced hours for 90,000 others. The Chicago Tribune threatened, "A communist carcass for every lamp post," and the workers chanted "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." On May 3 police attacked an eight hour strike at McCormick Reaper Co. killing six workers. Bilingual leaflets brought out 4000 in the rain to protest at Haymarket Square the next day. By 10:00 PM with about 200 protesters left, 170 cops marched on them. A bomb was thrown killing one cop and fatally wounding six others. The cops opened fire at the workers, killing six and wounding many others. A police reign of terror was unleashed against trade unionists, "foreigners" and radicals. The majority of workers were immigrants. Homes were broken into, meetings invaded and presses smashed. The Illinois Attorney General said: "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards." One nonconforming editor, wrote: "Corrupt judges and police who are slaves of monopoly are now dragging citizens to prison by the wholesale." The Albany Law Journal called for, "a check upon immigration", for deportations and better equipment for the police to protect property from being "at the mercy of a few long-haired, wild eyed, bad smelling... reckless foreign wretches." Those arrested were beaten, tortured and bribed to build evidence for an indictment. Eight men, seven from the Central Labor Union were charged with conspiracy and murder. The jury was openly stacked. Headlines screamed for hanging. One courageous judge said, "The evidence was pure fabrication (by)...terrorized innocent men (facing) torture if they refused to swear to anything desired." Ideas were on trial, not deeds. None of those charged had anything to do with the bomb or the violence. Only two were at Haymarket Square at the time, yet seven were condemned to death. The prosecutor told the jury: "These men have been selected and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them...Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and you save our institutions and our society." Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, of African, Mexican and Native American origins, who had been run out of Texas by the Ku Klux Klan with her husband, Albert Parsons, campaigned relentlessly for the defense. The work of Lucy Parsons, more than any other person, brought the case into the national and international spotlight. Her speeches and organizing made the Haymarket Affair a global working class call to action. After AFL founder, Sam Gompers said, "Labor must do its best to maintain justice for the radicals or find itself denied the rights of free men." He appealed to the governor. The sentences of Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe were commuted to life imprisonment. Proclaiming their innocence, Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer were to be legally lynched on November 11, 1887. Lucy Gonzalez Parsons brought her two young children to see their father the day he was to be hanged. The jailers denied their visit. Instead, the two children and Lucy were stripped naked and thrown, into a cold jail cell until the gallows trap was sprung. Imagine: the beautiful Black - Bronze Lucy, ogled by the jailers while sheltering her trembling children as the lynchers' knot murders her husband. Imagine the fire in her eyes! Before the hangman did his deed, August Spies' shouted: "You may strangle this voice, but there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." No major paper opposed the trial or verdict. Burial sites were refused. The city denied funeral marchers the right to have flags, speeches or music other than dirges. In defiance, five hundred thousand people, more than half the population of Chicago, lined the streets to honor the fallen martyrs. The Red Scare and anti-immigrant hysteria after the Haymarket Affair was said to have set back the eight-hour day movement. Actually, the bomb, evidently thrown by a police agent, and its aftermath, set off a global chain of events seen as the beginning of the modern labor movement. In 1888 the AFL honored the Haymarket events by targeting May , 1890 for actions to win the eight-hour day. Gompers sent a delegate to the International Workingmen's Congress in Paris asking for simultaneous international May Day actions for the eight hour day. That Congress agreed and added to the eight hour demand, the struggle for peace between workers of all nations, and the vision of socialism. On International Workers' Day, 1890, marches and strikes took place across the USA, in Europe, and even in Australia, with 1000 shearers who marched in Queensland. Chicago saw over 30,000 marchers from more than 100 unions, led by the Carpenters Union and the Socialist Labor Party. Two of the Carpenters signs were "We Live by Labor Not By War" and "Abolish Wage Slavery." The largest demonstration, with a half million workers, was organized in London by Evelyn Aveling Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, the father of communism. The New York World saw it as "Labor's Emancipation Day," one of the most powerful labor demonstrations in history. More than ten thousand marched in Los Angeles, led by Carpenters and Plumbers. Bay Area building trades workers won an agreement for the eight hour day. The San Jose Mercury said, "There was no disturbance, no strikes, no discord on Mayday in the whole state of California." The Santa Cruz Sentinel wanted boss-worker cooperation and railed against "blatherskites...loud mouthed and red-handed anarchists who are doing all they can to arouse and keep up a spirit of warfare between capital and labor." May Day actions won eight hours for many thousands of workers and shortened the work day for many thousands more. Sam Gompers wrote: "Agitation for the Eight-Hour Movement has given courage and hope to the working people...against the encroachments of the employing classes. Every trade and labor union of the country has vastly increased its membership." Chicago was the Silicon Valley of its day. It had new industry and vast unearned wealth, amid devastating poverty. The workers, mostly immigrants, were desperate to survive and willing to struggle. The Eight-Hour Movement gave them a concrete cause. They joined the unions and made them tools to shook the pillars of class power. While our militant heritage has been suppressed in our country, it is honored and celebrated by workers in almost every corner of the globe. Workers from abroad know more about May Day than those educated here. In Mexico City the streets are traditionally filled with marching workers every May Day. Even the newspapers shut down. In Mexico's Palace of Justice a Diego Rivera mural depicts the Haymarket scene and the martyr's portraits. In the Phillipines, the biggest union is named after May Day. Australian workers have celebrated every May Day but two since 1890 - Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia, Iraq, India, China, South Africa - we are everywhere! The Chicago Martyrs have had a stunning influence. We still fight for shorter hours, better conditions, health care and security. But to live to the example of Lucy Gonzalez Parsons who was, to the Chicago police, "more dangerous than a thousand rioters," we have to shake our labor movement out of business as usual . We have to create a vision of a future free of military aggression and institutionalized poverty, a future in which we welcome immigrants with amnesty. We have to revive the class conscious truth that our enemy is corporate America, not the working people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, or of any other nation and, with that truth, build global worker solidarity and unity. Let 2005 begin to witness the truth August Spies spoke on the gallows. Its strength demands repetition: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are strangling today." The hangman interrupted the last words of Albert Parsons: "Let the voice of the people be heard." In 2005 let the power of our voice be heard ending preemptive wars for U.S. imperial domination, ending the Iraq occupation - and in Albert Parson's own words, give voice to his vision of: "the right of toilers to the free and equal use of the tools of production and the right of the producers to their product....socialism." Let us rebuild our unions to fulfill the vision of August Spies as he defied his legal lynch-mob in court: "If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement - the movement from which the downtrodden millions who toil and live in want and misery - the wage slaves - expect salvation - if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out...." To truly honor May Day , the hanged martyrs and the work of Lucy Gonzalez Parsons - we have to be part of that fire. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho