May 1st is recognized as Labor Day in nearly every nation in the world. Despite the USA recognizing the first Monday of September as Labor Day; International Workers Day began unintentionally in the United States.  

 In 1886, workers in Chicago, IL gathered to protest and support the workers of McCormick Machine Plant, striking for an eight hour work day. The location was Haymarket Square, at Randolph and Des Plaines Streets, then a vibrant produce market. 

 The protest started peacefully, but became much more tense as police presence grew. On May 4th, police moved to violently break up the rally. A bomb was thrown by a [still] unknown person at the police present. The police responded with indiscriminate gunfire, and the striking workers returned fire. When the shooting stopped, 7 police and 4 workers were dead and 70 major injuries were reported.  

 The aftermath of the rally, now known as the “Haymarket Affair”, brought death sentences for the seven main organizers of the rally. An eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. No evidence was presented that any of the eight had brought or thrown a bomb. The governor of Illinois at the time, Richard James Ogelsby, was sympathetic and worried that following through with the executions would bring public outcry. He cited the public outcry after the hanging of abolitionist John Brown. However, privately-owned media worked relentlessly to paint the defendants as murderers. At this time, private media redbaited all unionists, progressive activists, and all elected officials left of conservative as “communists” (referring to the Paris Commune of 1871). 

 Ogelsby promised clemency to any of the eight defendants who showed remorse; but none did, as they had not incited or committed violence. At the end, four defendants who received lengthy prison sentences, one died of suicide, and three were executed by hanging.  

 The executions of the organizers of the Haymarket protest disgusted working people worldwide. In 1890, the world gathering of socialist, labor, and Marxist parties, known as the Second International, proposed that May 1st would be designated as “International Workers Day”. The date was chosen by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to commemorate the 1886 Chicago rally in Haymarket Square. 

 The geopolitical events of the 20th Century, namely the prominence of socialist and communist leadership, brought prominence to International Workers Day. In the early decades of the holiday, the intention was a day of protest, strikes, and disruption of capitalism. Beginning with early socialist governments (USSR and Mongolia); expanding working class leadership in Europe and Asia after WW2 (France, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Korea, China, Burma, etc; and growing worldwide in the anti-colonial struggles from Africa to Central and South America (Cuba, Mozambique, Algeria, Nicaragua, Congo, Suriname, Venezuela, etc), May 1 became a sanctioned national holiday with support of workers’ governments. May 1 has been accepted and evolved into a day of jubilant parades and working class reflection. 

 International Workers Day enjoys the rare status of being a holiday celebrated in nearly every nation, yet being devoid of religious origin. As the famous American socialist politician Eugene V. Debbs said “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; for I am a citizen of the world”, the working class is not confined to any national borders. An hourly wage earner in Uzbekistan experiences the same struggles as an hourly wage earner in South Africa, Chile, or Canada. A religiously Muslim factory worker in Sudan shares the same frustrations with resources as a counterpart Catholic in Ireland or a Buddhist in Thailand. Men and women may experience different levels of privilege, but both have the same base avenue for finding resources for their families: selling their time.