Lexo
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წევრი No.: 149
რეგისტრ.: 20-June 01
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#61037 · 1 May 2002, 09:30 · · პროფილი · პირადი მიმოწერა · ჩატი
Gilocavt mshromelta saertashoriso solidarobis dges. Me piradad ar mainteresebs tu vin daacesa es dgesascauli, me vfiqrob rom mshromelebs (anu mat vinc mushaobs, da ara marto mushebs) unda hqondet calke dgesascauli. Ratomac ara 1 Maisi? Ai riti daicko es kvelaferi (bodishi rom teqsti Inglisur enazea):
The celebration of Mayday as a working class holiday evolved from the struggle for the eight-hour day in the 1880's. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886.
The resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal. With workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders. Revolutionaries believed that the struggle for an eight-hour day would evolve into a struggle to overthrow capital.
By April 1886 hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power, had joined a fledgling trade union, the Knights of Labor. The heart of the movement was in Chicago, organised primarily by the revolutionary International Working Men's Association.
Workers there had been agitating for an 8-hour day for months and, on the eve of May 1st, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill, as they took to the streets to demand universal adoption of the 8-hour day.
By May 1st the movement had already won gains for many Chicago clothing cutters, shoemakers, and packinghouse workers. But on May 3rd police fired into a crowd of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four and wounding many.
Angered by the state violence and murderous police, a group of anarchists, led by August Spies & Albert Parsons, called on workers to arm themselves & participate in a massive protest demonstration in Haymarket Square the following evening. The meeting proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on the platform, the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only a few hundred people remaining.
It was then that 180 cops marched into the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. As the speakers climbed down from the platform, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring seventy. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one worker and injuring many others.
Although it was never determined who threw the bomb, a reign of terror swept over Chicago. The press and the pulpit called for revenge, insisting the bomb was the work of socialists and anarchists. Meeting halls, union offices, printing works and private homes were raided.
All known socialists and anarchists were rounded up. Even many individuals ignorant of the meaning of socialism and anarchism were arrested and tortured. "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards" was the public statement of Julius Grinnell, the state's attorney. Eight of Chicago's most active anarchists were charged with accessories to murder.
In a spectacular show trial which opened on June 21st 1886, a kangaroo court found all eight guilty, despite a lack of evidence connecting any of them to the bomb-thrower (only one was even present at the meeting, and he was on the speakers' platform), and they were sentenced to death. Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11th, 1887. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison.
250,000 people lined Chicago's street during Parson's funeral procession to express their outrage at this gross miscarriage of justice. The campaign to free Neebe, Schwab and Fielden continued.
On June 26th 1893 Governor Altgeld set them free. He made it clear he was not granting the pardon because he thought the men had suffered enough, but because they were innocent of the crime for which they had been tried. They and the hanged men had been the victims of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge".
For revolutionaries and workers everywhere, Haymarket became a symbol of the struggle for a new world. In Paris in 1889 the founding congress of the Second International declared May 1st an international working class holiday in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs and the red flag became the symbol of the blood of working class martyrs in their battle for workers rights.
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