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May 1 is known as International Labor Day. Manifestation arose from the workers’ struggle to demand and secure their rights, freedoms and working and living conditions.
“There will come a time when our silence will be stronger than the voice you are muffling today”. These were the last words of August Spies, one of the four innocent workers who were executed after a bomb exploded in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May 1886, killing eight of the main leaders of the workers’ movement. The crime “for which Spies and his comrades were being convicted was being militants in the struggle that the workers had undertaken for their rights and the 8-hour work.
May 1 is a celebration established in memory of the martyrdom in Haymarket Square and to commemorate and celebrate International Workers’ Solidarity Day.
The history of violence in the United States in the 1880s showed that employers would use their arsenal, from the courts to the police. While the killings in one of the main squares of Chicago, showed how much the situation had worsened. But the efforts of the workers for the 8-hour working day in 1880 showed their determination.
The movement began in 1884, when the Federation of Organized Markets and the Workers’ Union (the predecessor of the American Federation of Workers) drafted a resolution stating that “as of May 1, 1886, working hours for all workers should be eight hours.”
On May 1, 1886 over 200,000 workers, gathered in central Chicago Square, would begin strikes to demand their rights. While the newspapers would evaluate them as “absurd”. The death of 7 police officers during the protests, which started many days ago, was the cause of the reaction of the Chicago Police to the movement of workers. As a result of a bomb dropped by the police forces, the 8 main leaders of the workers ‘federation were killed, thus turning May into a month of commemoration of the workers’ efforts to win their rights.
Three years after the Chicago event in 1889, the Second Socialist International, held in Paris (France), established the celebration of May 1 as the day of unity, war and solidarity of all the workers of the world. Today, almost 122 years later, May 1st is celebrated worldwide as International Workers’ Solidarity Day.
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