Emily M’s Reviews > Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day > Status Update

While the history can be kinda hard to follow from the speeches alone, pausing and googling turns up SO many interesting stories!

Today: Catherine and Edward Despard, an inter-racial couple who were abolitionists in favor of the commons, as well as full democracy for all and Irish independence. After Edward's final arrest, Catherine also campaigned for prison reform. They need a movie, even if it would be sad!

“Truly, in one way or another the immigrants had been dispossessed, not only from their present means of production, but from their past subsistence (commons) in the lands of their origin. Furthermore, the soldiers attacking the Chicago workers had learned how to kill in the Indian wars and to expropriate the indigenous peoples from their communal systems.”

"It never took any multicultural brilliance to discern that the actual fundaments of the USA are threefold: a) it was robbed from the indigenous peoples, b) its swamps were drained...and fields prepared by African slaves, and c) the railroads, factories, and mines were built and run by immigrants... The ruling class...knew its duty to keep these three, if not fighting one another, then separated."

Man, if you haven’t heard of Constance Markievicz - look her up! She was the daughter of an English landlord, married a Polish count…and still decided her place was in the literal front lines of the struggle for Irish liberation and women’s suffrage! Iconic.

Tecumseh: “The only way to stop this evil is for the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right to the land, as it was at first, and should be now…No tribe has the right to sell…Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

“The slogans of the eight-hour movement are still useful: No Masters, No Slaves!…Vive la Commune! The means of life belong to all! Liberty without equality is a lie! Agitate! Organize! Educate!…One…went back to the biblical communism of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1526 - War to the palace, peace to the cottage, death to luxurious idleness.”

OFC the US in the 1950s tried to rebrand May 1 as “law day”
🙄

"Lucy Parsons, widowed by [the Haymarket riot's aftermath]...encouraged English workers to make May Day an international holiday...Both the Knights of Labor and the Second International officially adopted the day. Bismark...outlawed May Day. President Grover Cleveland announced that the first Monday in September would be Labor Day in America...Huge numbers were out of work, and they began marching."

“To the history of May Day, there is a Green side and there is a Red side…Green is a relationship to the earth and what grows there. Red is a relationship to other people and the blood spilt there among…Green is creation of desire; Red is class struggle. May Day is both.”