May Day 2021 – International Workers’ Day!
By Martha Grevatt posted on May 4, 2021
May Day began in the U.S. in 1884 after labor federations called for worker strikes and protests for the eight-hour day. 400,000 workers answered the call countrywide on May 1, 1886. That year eight worker organizers, some immigrants, were arrested and framed for the May 4 bombing of a Haymarket Square rally in Chicago. Five were sentenced to death; four were executed and a fifth died in his cell. An 1889 international socialist conference declared May 1 International Workers Day, in part to honor the Haymarket Martyrs. The day was revitalized in the U.S. in 2005 by the Black-led Million Worker March, and in 2006 by the Latinx immigrant workers’ mass strike. In 2021 the day was commemorated around the world; Workers World Party helped organize a number of actions across the U.S.
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International Workers Day, May 1, is celebrated by tens of millions of people around the world. Its radical history emerged from the Haymarket Square resistance and the massacre that followed in 1886.
May Day was revived as a workers’ day by the immigrant rights movement in the United States in 2009. As the labor movement continues to blossom in the U.S., more and more people here now recognize International Workers Day, or “May Day.” Thousands of workers joined May Day events around the country this year despite the limitations presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
New York City
NYC, May 1. Fired Amazon worker Christian Smalls leads a rally in front of Jeff Bezos’s apartment in Manhattan. Liberation photo
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