Voces de la Frontera’s annual May 1st
March is for worker rights and focuses on immigration reform while referencing
itself to the historic May 1st marches in the past.
The story begins in 1886 when the Knights of
Labor – a national labor union – campaigned for the eight-hour day. In Chicago two demonstrations resulted in
police violence. A demonstration of
workers, mostly immigrants from Germany, at Chicago’s Haymarket, between Desplaines
and Halsted Streets, resulted in several being killed. Although the workers had a permit for the
public meeting, those thought to have organized the meeting were indicted and
convicted of murder. Four were executed
by the state of Illinois. Those indicted and convicted are called the Haymarket
Martyrs and have been memorialized in May 1st marches since the 1890’s
mostly in Europe and Latin America.
A few days after the ‘Haymarket,’ a group of
Polish workers in Milwaukee gathered at St. Stanislaus Church to march to the
Bay View Rolling Mills to demand an eight-hour day. The marchers were met with gunfire from the
Wisconsin National Guard and several workers were killed. This event in labor history
is chronicled as the Bay View Massacre.
The Milwaukee confrontation is not well known, but Milwaukee workers
remember and so do the immigrant workers of Voces de la Frontera remember as
they march on May 1st for immigration reform and the rights of all
workers.
The above is a brief review of the events
that are memorialized in the May 1st Marches since the 1890’s. The next postings will provide a more
detailed account of the “Haymarket Riot” and the “Bay View Massacre,” starting Tuesday,
April 16th and for successive Tuesdays.
The story is related from the point of view
of a trip to England to learn more about Samuel Fielden, an Immigrant from
England and one of the “Haymarket Martyrs.” Again, a new posting will be made every
Tuesday starting on April 16th .
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