From The Archives-May Day 2019 -The International
Workers Holiday And Remembrances Of The Haymarket Martyrs
By Lance Lawrence
Sometimes you get an assignment by default and sometimes by your own ignorance, or inability to keep your big mouth shut. That latter is the case here when a few months ago I mentioned that I had seen something about a group called the Haymarket Martyrs, a bunch of freaking anarchists to some fellow writers around the water cooler (that “freaking” the term I used since all I knew, know about live anarchists is the ones that guys like Seth Garth and Frank Jackman report on when they are doing pieces on protests and inevitably a cohort of young people, mostly young anyway, show up in black from head to toe but who generally act okay except when a street fight erupts). They laughed at my ignorance since they were almost all steeped in some left-wing political traditions where I was strictly from journalism school. I had needed a job after graduation and the editor here was looking for a non-left-wing political traditions writer, preferably apolitical. I won.
Greg Green, the editor here told me that the group of mainly immigrant anarchists were framed up by the State of Illinois after a police riot, and more importantly when policemen were killed allegedly by some black hand anarchist groups out to waste cops and the capitalists who hire them. A bunch were executed after bogus trials (and the usual “nobody knows who fired the shots or if it was cross-fire or by other coppers” but that those dead coppers had to be vindicated and so a bunch of immigrants took the fall) and later some were pardoned after the real story could not be suppressed any longer. Greg not only gave me the lowdown on who these guys were (most famously Albert Parsons whose black wife Lucy would go in to struggle mightily to vindicate her husband and do other great work) but for my own learning curve benefit mentioned that I should look into the origins of May Day which were directly related to the Chicago events. That too helped by my big mouth reference to the fact that the only thing I knew about May Day was that it was day when as kids we were given little Papier Marche baskets of candy to celebrate some ancient spring rite, some joyous occasion in any case.
I have hit the highlights of what I learned in that piece about the Martyrs and May Day except it became an important international workers holiday once the Second International, the Socialist International guided by the spirit of international solidarity adopted it as the day of workers’ remembrances, including those anarchists who under later circumstances the socialists would consider “loose cannons.” May Day, short course.
By Lance Lawrence
Sometimes you get an assignment by default and sometimes by your own ignorance, or inability to keep your big mouth shut. That latter is the case here when a few months ago I mentioned that I had seen something about a group called the Haymarket Martyrs, a bunch of freaking anarchists to some fellow writers around the water cooler (that “freaking” the term I used since all I knew, know about live anarchists is the ones that guys like Seth Garth and Frank Jackman report on when they are doing pieces on protests and inevitably a cohort of young people, mostly young anyway, show up in black from head to toe but who generally act okay except when a street fight erupts). They laughed at my ignorance since they were almost all steeped in some left-wing political traditions where I was strictly from journalism school. I had needed a job after graduation and the editor here was looking for a non-left-wing political traditions writer, preferably apolitical. I won.
Greg Green, the editor here told me that the group of mainly immigrant anarchists were framed up by the State of Illinois after a police riot, and more importantly when policemen were killed allegedly by some black hand anarchist groups out to waste cops and the capitalists who hire them. A bunch were executed after bogus trials (and the usual “nobody knows who fired the shots or if it was cross-fire or by other coppers” but that those dead coppers had to be vindicated and so a bunch of immigrants took the fall) and later some were pardoned after the real story could not be suppressed any longer. Greg not only gave me the lowdown on who these guys were (most famously Albert Parsons whose black wife Lucy would go in to struggle mightily to vindicate her husband and do other great work) but for my own learning curve benefit mentioned that I should look into the origins of May Day which were directly related to the Chicago events. That too helped by my big mouth reference to the fact that the only thing I knew about May Day was that it was day when as kids we were given little Papier Marche baskets of candy to celebrate some ancient spring rite, some joyous occasion in any case.
I have hit the highlights of what I learned in that piece about the Martyrs and May Day except it became an important international workers holiday once the Second International, the Socialist International guided by the spirit of international solidarity adopted it as the day of workers’ remembrances, including those anarchists who under later circumstances the socialists would consider “loose cannons.” May Day, short course.
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