Hope everyone had a great May Day!
It's so nice that we all get the day off work. Back in 1886 there was not a 40 hour work week. Cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Milwaulkee and others were host to demonstrations on May 1st. Workers were angry, 10 hours/day, 6 hours/week of hard labor was a normal expectation. At 6PM the police went to protect some scabs who were working at the McCormick factory as they left work. The real employees were gathered outside the building to express their disgust for the lack of class solidarity shown by the filthy scabs. The police got bored and went ahead and shot 4 of the workers outside. Apparently, this was a totally out of the ordinary thing to have happen back then. A riot broke out. Someone threw a bomb, and afterwards 15 of the organizers and their associates were rounded up and given as a blood offering to the god of capitalism. It's suspected the anonymous bomb thrower was an infiltrator working for the police, an effective technique still used against radicals today.
So, it's kind of strange we don't celebrate May Day here as an official government holiday. Even stranger, most people don't even know what the fuck you're talking about when you wish them a happy May Day. I wonder why an event of such historical significance is so easily erased from common knowledge? So next time you work a 80 hour week, think of all the baby boomers who didn't have to work those kind of hours, got to own their homes, sleep in a few days a week, and have health insurance because of all the protections their great grandparents in the labor movement won them.
Sucks they used it all up. I guess that just the way it goes. There's no more money left to pay us.
Wikipedia:Haymarket Affair May Day History: The Haymarket Riot Encyclopedia of Chicago: Haymarket and May Day
