International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, is a celebration of the international labour movement. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries
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Verily today is May Day, celebrated celebrated in the United States as... crickets. This despite the fact that May Day's labor origins go back to the Chicago Haymarket Massacre. In the spirit of remembering Haymarket, I was curious as to what would happen were I to type in Labor massacre into Google. Here's what I got as top hits (along with Haymarket).
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914...
The massacre resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 25 people... and include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent.
The Everett Massacre (also known as Bloody Sunday) was an armed confrontation between local authorities and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, commonly called "Wobblies". It took place in Everett, Washington on Sunday, November 5, 1916...
At the end of the mayhem, 2 citizen deputies lay dead with 16 or 20 others wounded... The IWW officially listed 5 dead with 27 wounded
The Bay View Massacre (sometimes also referred to as the Bay View Tragedy) was the culmination of events that began on Saturday May 1, 1886 when 7,000 building-trades workers joined with 5,000 Polish laborers who had organized at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to strike against their employers, demanding an eight-hour work day...
They were met by 250 National Guardsmen under order from Republican Governor Jeremiah M. Rusk to "shoot to kill"... Seven people died as a result, including a thirteen-year-old boy
In the Memorial Day massacre of 1937, the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago, on May 30, 1937. The incident took place during the "Little Steel Strike" in the United States... Years later, one of the protesters, Mollie West, recalled a policeman yelling to her that day to, "Get off the field or I'll put a bullet in your back." No police were ever prosecuted.
One of the most interesting, and probably least known events in Louisiana history is the Thibodaux Massacre of 1887, the second most bloody labor dispute in U.S. history... The Knights of Labor scheduled a strike to commence on the 1st of November 1887...
The militia companies sent to the region worked with local judges in evicting strikers from plantations, and provided protection for "scabs" sent in to replace the strikers...
The struggle came to a head when two white picketers were fired upon while at their posts in a black section of town...
Striker´s and their family members were rounded up by vigilantes. Many were told to "run for their lives", before being summarily executed. On the morning of November 23, 1887 anywhere between 30 to 300 black strikers were killed...
Another attempt to organize sugar cane workers in southeast Louisiana would not occur until the 1950´s.
It is admittedly progress in that there haven't been incidents like this in recent United States history.
A question: someday will we also be able to look back on such events as The University of Texas massacre, Columbine, The Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting, and most recently the Boston Marathon bombing - and have the same confidence that we have now that incidents such as are summarized herein are relegated to a past age?