May Day: Let the Voice of the People be Heard

"Let the voice of the people be heard." These were the last words of Albert Parsons, hanged for his alleged part in the Haymarket Rebellion. Parsons never finished the rest of his speech.

The Haymarket Rebellion, which began on May 1, 1886, was just one part of a coordinated effort for worker's rights. The events at Haymarket Square in Chicago came to symbolize the actions of that time. The trials of Parsons and his co-defendants drew international attention to the events. A few years later, in 1889 with the founding of the second Marxist International Congress, May Day was established as a day of action by the proletariat. The idea was that the workers of the world would engage in protests and confrontations to force better working conditions.

Such talk today is slandered as communism. For today we live in a capitalists' paradise. No rights for the worker, downward wage pressure created by outsourcing, declining union membership (you remember unions, "the people who brought you the weekend") are all symptomatic of the anemic state of the worker. While May Day is mostly celebrated in countries outside the U.S. as a type of workers' holiday most Americans have no idea that there is any significance to the day and certainly are unaware of its origins in this country.

The invisible hand of the market will take care of you only in the sense that it will crush you. Every raise in the wage of the worker, every increase in benefits or health care is seen as a theft from the bottom line. To those who control the purse, workers are just so much raw materials. Hence the term, "human resources."

Today on this May Day, let us honor the memory of those who have fought for all of us. For every worker who ever threw a wooden shoe into the machinery of oppression, this day is for you. Get out the monkey wrenches, put on the gas masks, pick up a rock and remember Haymarket. Let the voice of the people be heard!


This column was originally published on May 1, 2008. Since that time we've had bailouts for banks but calls for union concessions. Unemployment is at its highest levels in decades but off shore tax havens are commonplace for the transnational corporations that are downsizing and outsourcing their labor. The grist is still being churned by the mill.