This year labor, community, and socialist organizations are working together to bring International Workers Day back to Maine. Maine DSA member Bluebird sets the stage with some of the history behind the most important date on the working class’s calendar.

Every year on May 1, the vast majority of countries around the world celebrate Labor Day, but the United States is not one of them.

Why do so many countries celebrate Labor Day on May 1?

May 1 marks the beginning of a general strike in the United States which occurred in 1886. The strike culminated in what is commonly referred to as the Haymarket Affair.

What is the Haymarket Affair?

The Haymarket Affair was a series of events that transpired on May 4, 1886. During a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, an anonymous individual threw a bomb, likely in response to the police killing two attendees of a peaceful rally that happened in Chicago’s West Side the previous day. Following the explosion of the bomb at the Haymarket rally, Chicago police fired on workers, killing four and injuring at least 70. The police were so trigger happy that they even managed to kill seven of their own by friendly fire.

Following the Haymarket Square incident, eight anarchists, some of whom were not even present when the aforementioned events transpired, were arrested and charged with conspiracy. The rally’s speakers, August Spies, Albert Parsons, and Samuel Fielden were among those arrested and charged.

At their trial, the Haymarket Eight were sentenced to death by hanging. Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted the death sentences of the defendants who requested it, but four of the defendants refused to request clemency on the grounds that they had committed no crime and had been wrongfully convicted.

In the aftermath of the Haymarket Affair, May 1 became a common day for workers in the United States to hold rallies and demonstrations commemorating the 1886 strike, honor the Haymarket martyrs, and reaffirm the working class’ struggle for emancipation.

In 1889, when the world’s largest socialist and labor parties founded the Second International, the American Federation of Labor suggested that May 1 be the date when the various constituent organizations of the Second International should hold an international day of protest, in explicit reference to the Chicago protests. When the Second International held its second congress in 1891, May 1 protests were formalized into an annual event known as “International Workers Day”—also commonly called May Day.

In spite of its international recognition and in spite of its American origins, the United States does not officially celebrate International Workers Day, instead celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday of September. This is because the government of the United States was concerned by the example of the Haymarket martyrs and growing radicalism of the US labor movement in the wake of events like the 1894 Pullman Strike. Thus, in 1894, the first Monday of September was made the official “non-political” Labor Day in the US by the decree of the country’s highest political institutions—particularly at the recommendation of then-President Grover Cleveland.

So what purpose is there in making a point of celebrating International Workers Day? While the September Labor Day is still sentimentally important, it is neither the chosen day of the American working class, nor the chosen day of the international working class, who overwhelmingly celebrates International Workers Day rather than a different Labor Day. Whereas the September Labor Day celebrates an abstracted version of the American working class, International Workers Day celebrates the real struggle of the working class and those who have given their lives in the struggle for worker power. And we owe it to our martyrs that we not forget them.

Despite official hostility, the story of May Day has survived and inspired generations of working-class organizers ever since 1886. For instance, on May 1, 2006, several million immigrant workers all over the US walked off their jobs and marched in cities large and small in what was the largest coordinated strike action in more than half a century. This year, Maine DSA is working with a coalition of labor and community organizations to bring the traditions of May Day back to Maine as the working class faces a concerted attack from Trump and his billionaire quislings.