May Day - Traditional Holiday, International Workers' Day

- May 1 celebration in San Jose, Calif.
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- What is May Day? For the most part, the opposite of capitalism. NPR, April 30, 2022.

May Day, celebrated by workers across the globe as International Labor Day, falls on May 1. But you'd be forgiven if that's news to you. While the day traces its origins to an American laborers' fight for a shorter work day, the U.S. does not officially recognize International Labor Day. Like other countries that mark Labor Days on different dates, the U.S. and Canada celebrate their Labor Day in September. The History Of America's Fight For Fair Labor: U.S. resistance to celebrate International Labor Day — also called International Workers' Day — in May stems from a resistance to emboldening worldwide working-class unity, historians say.

"The ruling class did not want to have a very active labor force connected internationally," said Peter Linebaugh, author of The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day. "The principle of national patriotism was used against the principle of working-class unity or trade union unity." That hasn't stopped American workers from commemorating the day, which in recent years has ranged from marching for labor rights to reading literature about Marxism. "The meaning of that day keeps changing," Linebaugh said. Before we consider how May Day has evolved in the U.S., let's dive into how it all began.



- Children dance around a maypole to celebrate May Day in England.

- The traditional May Day is an ancient European export: If you instead associate May Day with baskets of flowers, dancing around maypoles, or simply, the start of summer, those May Day celebrations recall the holiday's much earlier origins. Before May Day was adopted as a day to champion workers, its roots belonged to pagan tradition. The springtime tradition was inherited from pagan tribes in Ireland and Scandinavia, said Linebaugh, borrowing ancient Roman practices celebrating the Earth's flowering season. When the first Europeans came to North America and erected a maypole in Quincy, Mass., they imbibed copious amounts of beer and danced with the Indigenous people, he said.

"The Puritans of Boston put an end to it by military force," Linebaugh said. "And yet this tradition of May Day as a time of dancing and play and pleasure persisted right into many parts of the U.S. today." At the end of the day, no matter your version of May Day, it remains a time meant to celebrate togetherness. Inevitably, history shows, that May Day comradery has been met with suppression. -May Day in America has bloody origins: May Day in America was born out of the 8-hour workday movement in 19th-century Chicago. At the time, as the capitalist system gained a foothold in industrial-era America, working-class conditions had worsened. A 16-hour shift wasn't unusual for workers at the time...
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/30/1095729592/what-is-may-day-history



- Haymarket Affair, 1886 engraving- the most widely reproduced image of the Haymarket massacre. It shows Methodist pastor Samuel Fielden speaking, the bomb exploding, and the riot beginning simultaneously; in reality, Fielden had finished speaking before the explosion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers'_Day