Why Mayday should be a national holiday in the United States

The first celibration of May Day as a holiday for workers began in Chicago....

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/haymarket.htm

During the nation-wide strike for the 8-hour workday, which began May 1, 1886, a mass meeting was held in the Chicago haymarket to protest a police action of the previous day in which workers were killed. When police ordered the protest meeting to disperse (peaceful though it was), a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, killing several officers. This became known as the "Haymarket Riot." The 8-Hour Day Movement was destroyed in the nation-wide hysteria which followed.

 

Haymarket Incident

http://rwor.org/a/may1/haymark.htm

century ago, on May 1, 1886, a general strike broke across the United States. Within days it would culminate in the events forever associated with the name Haymarket. In 1889 the founding congress of a new, second, Marxist International named that day, May Day, for worldwide actions of the proletariat.

Through all the twists and explosions of these past hundred years, the tradition of May Day has developed and spread: as a day when class-conscious proletarians of all countries take stock of their situation, make their plans for the year ahead, celebrate proletrian internationalism, and declare their determination to carry their struggle through to the final goal of communism throughout the world.

In many countries, battles rage to proclaim May Day as a day of revolutionary struggle after years where it has been suppressed or gutted by revisionists.

in 1984 the newly formed Revolutionary Internationalist Movement issued its Declaration on May First and since then has called for celebrations and struggle on May First in countries across the planet under unified revolutionary slogans. Today, just as throughout the past century, May Day concentrates in embryo the leaps and prospects of the world revolution.

 

Thanks for the reminder. My union has a huge weekend event for Mayday with various activities involved.

Abner

 

There is a reason why May Day will never be a legal holiday in the United States. And that is because of the holiday's red roots. When the idea of Labor Day was being circulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, May 1 was established as Labor Day by various socialist groups (and later by the Soviet Union itself). That is why U. S. Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September ... in order that the capitalist Labor Day that it be set entirely across the calendar from the socialist Labor Day.

 

There is a reason why May Day will never be a legal holiday in the United States. And that is because of the holiday's red roots. When the idea of Labor Day was being circulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, May 1 was established as Labor Day by various socialist groups (and later by the Soviet Union itself). That is why U. S. Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September ... in order that the capitalist Labor Day that it be set entirely across the calendar from the socialist Labor Day. As a matter of fact, we in the United States also used to have a Loyalty Day in early September.

 

Even our current Labor Day is far too left wing for some people. There are schools and school districts, most in the South I think -- Vanderbilt University is one -- that defiantly start their fall term on Labor Day, making it much more difficult to celebrate as a holiday.

 

Maybe another reason why May Day will never be celebrated as a holiday in the U.S. is all the baggage associated with the former Communist dictatorships custom of parading their military, complete with tanks and missiles, for all their public to see. Their real message wasn't a celebration of the worker, it was a veiled warning to the worker that there was a powerful military and internal security status that would maintain the power of the state above all else.