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An 1886 engraving of the Haymarket massacre.
May Day is celebrated in more than 90 countries around the world as International Workers' Day, with large-scale marches and protests, in honor of the struggles of the working class. But not in the country where it began, the United States of Amnesia.
The history of May Day has its origins in the summer of 1884 when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions decided to launch a nationwide movement to secure an eight-hour workday and called for May 1, 1886 to be the beginning of this campaign.
On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers staged a nationwide march demanding the creation of the eight-hour workday. Chicago was the epicenter of the protests as they were scheduled to go on for days.
Eventually, the protests turned violent when the police attacked picketing workers on May 3, killing one person and injuring several, at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, an event which led the next day to a bloodier confrontation between police and demonstrators in Haymarket Square.
What happened at Haymarket Square is an event of immense historical significance in its own right.
More than 170 policemen carrying rifles attacked those that had gathered at Haymarket Square to protest police brutality, even though the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, had given permission for the meeting.
Ironically enough, most of the people had already left the protest meeting when the police attacked in an attempt to disperse the crowd. But during the confrontation, someone threw a dynamite bomb. The police panicked and opened fire in return. After the explosion and the subsequent gun fire, four workers and seven policemen were dead and dozens injured.
The next day, martial law was declared in Chicago and other parts of the country. Immediately thereafter, scores of labor leaders were rounded up, and eight men, most of them German-born, were eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in a highly controversial trial in which no solid evidence was presented linking them to the bombing of May 4 at Haymarket Square.
The Haymarket Affair also led to an explosion in xenophobia and started the first "Red Scare" in the United States, courtesy of big business and the government.
Additionally, it led to a much more reformist labor movement with the birth to the American Federation of Labor whose first and longest-serving president, Samuel Gompers, was a core capitalist and had no interest in uniting the working class.
In the years following the dramatic events of 1886, the labor movement in the US would experience a series of ups and downs, all while American capitalism continued to operate on the basis of a brutal economy, down to this very day.
The "Red Scare" resurfaced in the late 1910s, with industrialists branding union members as "anti-American radicals," all while anti-union violence became a widespread practice until well into the mid-20th century.
In celebrating May Day in 2021, we must keep alive the memory of the early struggles of the working-class movement for a better future. We must draw strength and inspiration from the accomplishments of the labor movement through time in order to challenge more effectively the brutality of today's capitalist socioeconomic order.
Indeed, the struggle against neoliberal capitalism requires a well-organized working-class movement that hasn't succumbed to the form of historical amnesia imposed by the powers that be. For as Milan Kundera once put it, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
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May Day is celebrated in more than 90 countries around the world as International Workers' Day, with large-scale marches and protests, in honor of the struggles of the working class. But not in the country where it began, the United States of Amnesia.
The history of May Day has its origins in the summer of 1884 when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions decided to launch a nationwide movement to secure an eight-hour workday and called for May 1, 1886 to be the beginning of this campaign.
On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers staged a nationwide march demanding the creation of the eight-hour workday. Chicago was the epicenter of the protests as they were scheduled to go on for days.
Eventually, the protests turned violent when the police attacked picketing workers on May 3, killing one person and injuring several, at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, an event which led the next day to a bloodier confrontation between police and demonstrators in Haymarket Square.
What happened at Haymarket Square is an event of immense historical significance in its own right.
More than 170 policemen carrying rifles attacked those that had gathered at Haymarket Square to protest police brutality, even though the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, had given permission for the meeting.
Ironically enough, most of the people had already left the protest meeting when the police attacked in an attempt to disperse the crowd. But during the confrontation, someone threw a dynamite bomb. The police panicked and opened fire in return. After the explosion and the subsequent gun fire, four workers and seven policemen were dead and dozens injured.
The next day, martial law was declared in Chicago and other parts of the country. Immediately thereafter, scores of labor leaders were rounded up, and eight men, most of them German-born, were eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in a highly controversial trial in which no solid evidence was presented linking them to the bombing of May 4 at Haymarket Square.
The Haymarket Affair also led to an explosion in xenophobia and started the first "Red Scare" in the United States, courtesy of big business and the government.
Additionally, it led to a much more reformist labor movement with the birth to the American Federation of Labor whose first and longest-serving president, Samuel Gompers, was a core capitalist and had no interest in uniting the working class.
In the years following the dramatic events of 1886, the labor movement in the US would experience a series of ups and downs, all while American capitalism continued to operate on the basis of a brutal economy, down to this very day.
The "Red Scare" resurfaced in the late 1910s, with industrialists branding union members as "anti-American radicals," all while anti-union violence became a widespread practice until well into the mid-20th century.
In celebrating May Day in 2021, we must keep alive the memory of the early struggles of the working-class movement for a better future. We must draw strength and inspiration from the accomplishments of the labor movement through time in order to challenge more effectively the brutality of today's capitalist socioeconomic order.
Indeed, the struggle against neoliberal capitalism requires a well-organized working-class movement that hasn't succumbed to the form of historical amnesia imposed by the powers that be. For as Milan Kundera once put it, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
May Day is celebrated in more than 90 countries around the world as International Workers' Day, with large-scale marches and protests, in honor of the struggles of the working class. But not in the country where it began, the United States of Amnesia.
The history of May Day has its origins in the summer of 1884 when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions decided to launch a nationwide movement to secure an eight-hour workday and called for May 1, 1886 to be the beginning of this campaign.
On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers staged a nationwide march demanding the creation of the eight-hour workday. Chicago was the epicenter of the protests as they were scheduled to go on for days.
Eventually, the protests turned violent when the police attacked picketing workers on May 3, killing one person and injuring several, at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, an event which led the next day to a bloodier confrontation between police and demonstrators in Haymarket Square.
What happened at Haymarket Square is an event of immense historical significance in its own right.
More than 170 policemen carrying rifles attacked those that had gathered at Haymarket Square to protest police brutality, even though the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, had given permission for the meeting.
Ironically enough, most of the people had already left the protest meeting when the police attacked in an attempt to disperse the crowd. But during the confrontation, someone threw a dynamite bomb. The police panicked and opened fire in return. After the explosion and the subsequent gun fire, four workers and seven policemen were dead and dozens injured.
The next day, martial law was declared in Chicago and other parts of the country. Immediately thereafter, scores of labor leaders were rounded up, and eight men, most of them German-born, were eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in a highly controversial trial in which no solid evidence was presented linking them to the bombing of May 4 at Haymarket Square.
The Haymarket Affair also led to an explosion in xenophobia and started the first "Red Scare" in the United States, courtesy of big business and the government.
Additionally, it led to a much more reformist labor movement with the birth to the American Federation of Labor whose first and longest-serving president, Samuel Gompers, was a core capitalist and had no interest in uniting the working class.
In the years following the dramatic events of 1886, the labor movement in the US would experience a series of ups and downs, all while American capitalism continued to operate on the basis of a brutal economy, down to this very day.
The "Red Scare" resurfaced in the late 1910s, with industrialists branding union members as "anti-American radicals," all while anti-union violence became a widespread practice until well into the mid-20th century.
In celebrating May Day in 2021, we must keep alive the memory of the early struggles of the working-class movement for a better future. We must draw strength and inspiration from the accomplishments of the labor movement through time in order to challenge more effectively the brutality of today's capitalist socioeconomic order.
Indeed, the struggle against neoliberal capitalism requires a well-organized working-class movement that hasn't succumbed to the form of historical amnesia imposed by the powers that be. For as Milan Kundera once put it, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee said that "continued uncertainty" caused by the president's policies could reduce manufacturing investments by nearly half a trillion dollars by the end of this decade.
US President Donald Trump's tariff whiplash has already harmed domestic manufacturing and could continue to do so through at least the end of this decade to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars, a report published Monday by congressional Democrats on a key economic committee warned.
The Joint Economic Committee (JEC)-Minority said that recent data belied Trump's claim that his global trade war would boost domestic manufacturing, pointing to the 37,000 manufacturing jobs lost since the president announced his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April.
"Hiring in the manufacturing sector has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade," the Democrats on the committee wrote. "In addition, many experts have noted that in and of itself, the uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."
"Based on both US business investment projections and economic analyses of the UK in the aftermath of Brexit, the Joint Economic Committee-Minority calculates that a similarly prolonged period of uncertainty in the US could result in an average of 13% less manufacturing investment per year, amounting to approximately $490 billion in foregone investment by 2029," the report states.
"The uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."
"Although businesses have received additional clarity on reciprocal tariff rates in recent days, uncertainty over outstanding negotiations is likely to continue to delay long-term investments and pricing decisions," the publication adds. "Furthermore, even if the uncertainty about the US economy were to end tomorrow, evidence suggests that the uncertainty that businesses have already faced in recent months would still have long-term consequences for the manufacturing sector."
According to the JEC Democrats, the Trump administration has made nearly 100 different tariff policy decisions since April—"including threats, delays, and reversals"—creating uncertainty and insecurity in markets and economies around the world. It's not just manufacturing and markets—economic data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that businesses in some sectors are passing the costs of Trump's tariffs on to consumers.
As the new JEC minority report notes:
As independent research has shown, businesses are less likely to make long-term investments when they face high uncertainty about future policies and economic conditions. For manufacturers, decisions to expand production—which often entail major, irreversible investments in equipment and new facilities that typically take years to complete—require an especially high degree of confidence that these expenses will pay off. This barrier, along with other factors, makes manufacturing the sector most likely to see its growth affected by trade policy uncertainty, as noted recently by analysts at Goldman Sachs.
"Strengthening American manufacturing is critical to the future of our economy and our national security," Joint Economic Committee Ranking Member Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a statement Monday. "While President Trump promised that he would expand our manufacturing sector, this report shows that, instead, the chaos and uncertainty created by his tariffs has placed a burden on American manufacturers that could weigh our country down for years to come."
"Congressman Bresnahan didn't just vote to gut Pennsylvania hospitals. He looked out for his own bottom line before doing it," said one advocate.
Congressman Rob Bresnahan, a Republican who campaigned on banning stock trading by lawmakers only to make at least 626 stock trades since taking office in January, was under scrutiny Monday for a particular sale he made just before he voted for the largest Medicaid cut in US history.
Soon after a report showed that 10 rural hospitals in Bresnahan's state of Pennsylvania were at risk of being shut down, the congressman sold between $100,001 and $250,000 in bonds issued by the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The New York Times reported on the sale a month after it was revealed that Bresnahan sold up to $15,000 of stock he held in Centene Corporation, the largest Medicaid provider in the country. When President Donald Trump signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law last month, Centene's stock plummeted by 40%.
Bresnahan repeatedly said he would not vote to cut the safety net before he voted in favor of the bill.
The law is expected to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, with 10-15 million people projected to lose health coverage through the safety net program, according to one recent analysis. More than 700 hospitals, particularly those in rural areas, are likely to close due to a loss of Medicaid funding.
"His prolific stock trading is more than just a broken promise," said Cousin. "It's political malpractice and a scandal of his own making."
The economic justice group Unrig the Economy said that despite Bresnahan's introduction of a bill in May to bar members of Congress from buying and selling stocks—with the caveat that they could keep stocks they held before starting their terms in a blind trust—the congressman is "the one doing the selling... out of Pennsylvania hospitals."
"Congressman Bresnahan didn't just vote to gut Pennsylvania hospitals. He looked out for his own bottom line before doing it," said Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal. "Hospitals across Pennsylvania could close thanks to his vote, forcing families to drive long distances and experience longer wait times for critical care."
"Not everyone has a secret helicopter they can use whenever they want," added Tal, referring to recent reports that the multi-millionaire congressman owns a helicopter worth as much as $1.5 million, which he purchased through a limited liability company he set up.
Eli Cousin, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Times that Bresnahan's stock trading "will define his time in Washington and be a major reason why he will lose his seat."
"His prolific stock trading is more than just a broken promise," said Cousin. "It's political malpractice and a scandal of his own making."
"If troops or federal agents violate our rights, they must be held accountable," the ACLU said.
As President Donald Trump escalates the US military occupation of Washington, DC—including by importing hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops and allowing others to start carrying guns on missions in the nation's capital—the ACLU on Monday reminded his administration that federal forces are constitutionally obligated to protect, not violate, residents' rights.
"With additional state National Guard troops deploying to DC as untrained federal law enforcement agents perform local police duties in city streets, the American Civil Liberties Union is issuing a stark reminder to all federal and military officials that—no matter what uniform they wear or what authority they claim—they are bound by the US Constitution and all federal and local laws," the group said in a statement.
Over the weekend, the Republican governors of Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia announced that they are deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to join the 800 DC guardsmen and women recently activated by Trump, who also asserted federal control over the city's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
Sending military troops and heavily-armed federal agents to patrol the streets and scare vulnerable communities does not make us safer.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) August 18, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Trump dubiously declared a public safety emergency in a city where violent crime is down 26% from a year ago, when it was at its second-lowest level since 1966, according to official statistics. Critics have noted that Trump's crackdown isn't just targeting criminals, but also unhoused and mentally ill people, who have had their homes destroyed and property taken.
Contradicting assurances from military officials, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the newly deployed troops may be ordered to start carrying firearms. This, along with the president's vow to let police "do whatever the hell they want" to reduce crime in the city and other statements, have raised serious concerns of possible abuses.
"Through his manufactured emergency, President Trump is engaging in dangerous political theater to expand his power and sow fear in our communities," ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi said Monday. "Sending heavily armed federal agents and National Guard troops from hundreds of miles away into our nation's capital is unnecessary, inflammatory, and puts people's rights at high risk of being violated."
Shamsi stressed that "federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, due process, and safeguards against unlawful searches and seizures. If troops or federal agents violate our rights, they must be held accountable."
On Friday, the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration to block its order asserting federal authority over the MPD, arguing the move violated the Home Rule Act. U.S. Attorney General Bondi subsequently rescinded her order to replace DC Police Chief Pamela Smith with Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole.
Also on Friday, a group of House Democrats introduced a resolution to terminate Trump's emergency declaration.
The deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops onto our streets is a brazen abuse of power meant to create fear in the District.Join us in the fight for statehood to give D.C. residents the same guardrails against federal overreach as other states: dcstatehoodnow.org
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— ACLU of the District of Columbia (@aclu-dc.bsky.social) August 18, 2025 at 7:23 AM
ACLU of DC executive director Monica Hopkins argued Monday that there is a way to curb Trump's "brazen abuse of power" in the District.
"We need the nation to join us in the fight for statehood so that DC residents are treated like those in every other state and have the same guardrails against federal overreach," she said.