May Day - 2014

May Day 2014 I was sitting at my desk in the Fort Greene observatory. I knew today was an important labor holiday, but I wish that I was working and traveled up to Manhattan's Diamond District so yesterday to my old boss from the Diamond District.

"I wish I could give you a job, but there's no business." said the eighty-two year-old diamond dealer and he was right. No one was walking into the exchange.

"The rich have taken all the money and don't know how to spend it. All they know is how to gather it." I had been an economic major in college.

"I guess you have to blame it on someone." Manny was an old curmudgeon, but I had counted on him for a job since 1989.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you worked all your life and never prepared for a moment like this." He had lived through the tailend of the Greater Recession. People my age had been out of work in the millions.

"I was lucky to have a job with you these last years." I had worked for Manny as a salesman on and off since 1990. There had been some good years. None of those were recent.

"And you can't find another job."

"I only know diamonds and writing."

"And you have never made any money on your books."

"You have that right and now everyone around the world are wage slaves grinding out a subsistent living. Workers have no rights."

"And neither do I."

"It wasn't always that way. Once there was a marriage between labor and capital. Years ago unions protected the workers. Union instituted the forty-hour week, the end to child labor, and other workers’s rights, but since Reagan broke up the Air Controllers Union the GOP has been destroying every aspect of workers' rights."

"The Democrats aren't much better."

"We're on our own." I shrugged and made to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"To the 169 Bar in Chinatown. They have $2 beers."

"Have a good May Day."

I showed him the clenched fist and headed to the subway, thinking that I had belonged to three unions; IBEW for the telephone company, IBT driving taxi in Boston, and the union of drifters.

I believed in the power of labor and every May 1 the workers of the world march to show their solidarity.

Originally the day was a pagan holiday for the first day of spring, although in a different month than the present Julian calendar. Peasants adherents to the old religions danced around the Maypole. The Catholic Church suppressed the practice by naming May the month of Mary.

As a child at parochial school the nuns paraded us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys were dressed in white jackets and slacks. Parents snapped photos of their angelic children with Kodak Brownie cameras.

Years later we abandoned this pious procession to march in the May Day protests against the Cambodian Bombings.

1969-1970.

Washington, Nixon talking to the protesters, four dead at Kent State.

May Day for the Left honored the seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago.

May ,1 1886 was the start date for the eight-hour day. Big business wasn’t happy with this new law and workers staged a series of protests. Anarchists met in Haymarket Square. The gathering was peaceful until someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, killing one officer. In the ensuing violence more died on both sides.

Hence ‘bombing-throwing anarchist’ entered the American lexicon.

The subsequent trial of eight anarchists based the accusations on hearsay. Evidence revealing the involvement of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the bombing didn’t prevent the death sentence for seven of the accused.

Public pressure for leniency forced the governor of Illinois to commute the capital charges against two ‘conspirators’.

On the eve of the execution Louis Lingg offed himself by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth.

The remaining four, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were publicly hung, but not before they sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement.

All eight were exonerated in 1893 and May 1 became a rally day for labor throughout the world, although in the USA it is called Loyalty Day.

Thailand gives the day off to workers, 70% who have decent jobs say they are happy with their present situation. Others are less so.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs I’m taking the day off too.

Sadly it's not by choice.

Power to the people.