I am a Canadian. This means that I get the first Monday of September off to have one last barbecue of the summer. In theory, I get this day off because the labour movement is something to commemorate, equal in its importance to families and to the birthday of the last British monarch of the 19th century. They just laboured so hard, so the government rewarded workers with a day off just to be nice. But why is it in September? Was Jim Labour, the founder of the movement, born ambiguously at the beginning of September? Is it to give children one last day of freedom before school starts and isn’t actually associated with labour at all? Most countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, celebrate their Labour day (International Workers’ day) on or around May 1st. So what is North America’s deal?
The biggest irony is that International Workers day has its roots in the labour movement of the United States, even though they would spell it differently. Labour day in both Canada and the US was originally commemorated in the spring as well, but was moved to September. It began as an acknowledgement of the Haymarket affair when union strikers were fighting for an eight hour work day, down from around 10 to 16 hours or so. Starting on May 1st, 1886, Chicago union workers began what was to be a lengthy peaceful protest. On May 3rd, the police opened fire on the protesters for no documented reason. May 4th, the strikers thought that maybe police brutality was a bad thing, and decided to protest that too. The mayor of Chicago at the time went to observe the protest, and confirmed that they were peaceful until… well, the police showed up. Once the cops arrived, somebody threw a bomb (nobody knows who) that killed a police officer, and then a riot broke out. A bunch of people died; it wasn’t particularly pretty.
Because aesthetics are important in American politics, they had a trial for the throwing of the bomb that instigated the riot. Unfortunately for reality, of the eight defendants, only two were actually present at the rally when the bomb went off. Seven of them ended up being sentenced to death, while the eighth got 15 years in prison. Four were hanged, one committed suicide the night before his execution, and the remaining three were pardoned in 1893 when I guess they realized that a jury that admitted prejudice against the defendants, an openly hostile judge, and no evidence whatsoever probably means that this was a gross miscarriage of ‘justice’. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that five of them were immigrants too. I’m sure that had nothing to do with it though.
What the defendants had in common was a political inclination toward anarchism. The anarchists were the de facto terrorists of the day and an anarchist even went on to successfully assassinate the American president in 1901. Even the “failing New York Times” produced very pro-police and anti-labour articles denouncing the violent ways of anarchism in response to the Chicago protests. However, much like terrorists today, anarchists served better as bogeymen rather than legitimate interlocutors on abuses of power, and those benefiting from those abuses preferred to focus on the frightening veneer of anarchism rather than an ideology that fought for the eight hour work day, the end of child labour, and fair wages.
This brings us back to Labour day. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland sent in the military to crush more striking workers, and at least 26 people died. With no anarchists to blame this time, Cleveland knew he had to do something, and it certainly wasn’t going to be better labour standards, so he gave the people a national holiday. Despite workers’ established connection to May 1st, Cleveland picked the first Monday of September. While this day is ostensibly linked to the celebration of workers done by the then mostly defunct Knights of Labor, Cleveland didn’t want any association with the Haymarket Affair because he was worried that its connection to anarchists, socialists, and communists might encourage further, radical labour action. Who wants more progress than an eight hour work day, anyway?
In what is surely the largest coincidence of all time, Canada implemented its own Labour day on the first Monday of September in the exact same year. Those Knights of Labour sure were successful, just not in providing a day of international worker solidarity with most other countries of the world. While some of this is sarcastic speculation on my part, and I’m sure the Knights of Labour were huge in the development of the labour movement (they were linked to the fight for the eight hour work day and the Haymarket Affair), the reality is that a solid percentage of the world celebrates their Labour day on May 1st to commemorate the political crushing of a labour movement under the guise of “both sides” rhetoric on a continent that actively tries to sweep that history under the rug.
Today, anarchists are still used as bogeymen to scare pearl-clutching citizens away from progressive movements being brutalized by the police. It is somewhat funny that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Rather than thanking God for Friday, workers really ought to be thanking Marx and the anarchists that fought and died for their right to a weekend – anarchists that were murdered by the State just for being anarchists. But we don’t. We barbecue in September instead.
Happy International Workers’ Day!
Blog for Chumps 
If history is nothing but narrative, then the only truth is what is happening now in our immediate vicinity. All else is spin.
I’d like to think that the past has something to teach us, but our access to facts of the past is looking ever more dubious. Whose version of history should I believe? Anyone’s?
I once tried to talk to a very old woman about world events before I was born. She couldn’t remember anything. She hadn’t been paying attention at the time. I once knew a man who had been in the Korean War. He didn’t want to talk about it.
There are anarchist boards on Tor if you want to know how these people actually think. And if you can stomach Tor. Some of the people on onion sites are absolute scum.
The ‘spin’ of this blog is sourced by sites like history.com and CNN; far from radical leftist deviations from historical reality. This is pretty well documented stuff. While I appreciate that history is often written by the dominant narrative of the time, the dominant narrative today is often hostile to anarchist perspectives. Hence why I chose mainstream sources: to show that even within the circles that don’t take anarchist philosophy seriously, the history of this event is pretty cut and dried.
And considering my politics are most closely aligned with anarchism, I can speak for myself. You’re welcome to read Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Noam Chomsky, George Orwell, Emma Goldman, or like, a bunch of others, if you’d like to know how “these people” think. Emma Goldman is a contemporary of the Haymarket Affair, and wrote about it at length if you’re interested in learning about the event from someone closely involved rather than through historical narrative.
Here in Greater Vancouver (my lifelong home), I’ve observed over the last few decades the strong work ethic exceptionally practiced by new immigrants, and migrants, is demonstrably notable in the produce harvesting sector. It’s one of typically hump-busting work that almost all post second or third generation Canadians won’t tolerate for themselves. Observing them, I even feel a bit guilty; considering it from a purely human(e) perspective, I don’t see why they should have to toil so for minimal pay and not also I. Migrant farm laborers work very hard and should be treated humanely, including regular access to Covid-19 vaccination and proper workplace protection, but too often aren’t.
While I don’t favor Canada-based businesses exporting labor abroad at low wages while there are unemployed Canadians who want that work, I can imagine migrant farm workers being fifty to a hundred percent more productive than their born-and-reared-here Canadian counterparts. Albeit, I anticipate that if they (as citizens) resided here for a number of decades, their strong work ethics and higher-than-average productivity, unfortunately, would gradually diminishes as these motivated laborers’ descendant generations’ young people become accustomed to the relatively easier Western way of work. One can already witness this effect in such youth getting caught up in much of our overall urban/suburban liberal culture — e.g. attire, lingo, nightlife, as well as work. I’ve also found that ‘Canadian values’ assimilation often means the unfortunate acquisition of a distasteful yet strong sense of entitlement.
So you’re saying you trust designated mainstream sources of information?
It’s okay. We can’t all be anti-authority all the time.
Me, I presume everything people say is false until proven otherwise by physical evidence. This works very well for me. If you tell me the sky is blue, I won’t believe you without looking up first. Especially at night.
I’m going to assume this comment refers to my previous comment rather than to fgsjr2015’s post.
I’m reading accusations of hypocrisy here, but I’ll try to avoid misinterpretation and assume you’re not making ad hominem attacks. I will try to respond with an understanding of good faith.
I trust mainstream media to be mainstream media. You can’t be anti-authority without knowing what the authority is actually saying, so I always try to consume mainstream news in addition to all the other outlets I follow (to be clear, my mainstream staple is the CBC, not CNN, since as stated, I’m Canadian). I provided a contemporaneous anarchist account in my comment (Emma Goldman) as well as the contemporaneous, very pro-police NYT articles that I hyperlink in the blog itself, so I assure you I have multiple sources confirming these events.
Mainstream news is subject to things like libel laws and fact-checking processes that make its publications fairly useful. Mainstream news also has access to powerful figures that local, independent sources don’t (you’re not going to see Justin Trudeau interviewed in the Tyee, for instance). The issue with mainstream sources isn’t that they’re going to objectively lie to their readers, it’s that they will produce their material with a certain spin. That’s what I thought you were initially referring to. Consuming news intelligently has always been less about what you read, but how you read it. Asking questions about whose voices are being heard is important (Is it someone who will profit from the news being spun a certain way? Is it someone directly impacted by events or someone in an ivory tower? What credentials do they have?). What kind of questions are being asked? What are the answers leaving out? Noam Chomsky, who literally wrote the book on media criticism, said that if he could only read one newspaper for the rest of his life, he would choose the NYT: another anarchist choosing a mainstream source. At least I’m in good company!
My choice to use mainstream sources, which I guess I didn’t make clear enough earlier, was to use sources whose spin would not be seen to be biased in favour of anarchism. If I had used Emma Goldman’s writings, for instance, then there would be potential accusations of bias. I wanted to avoid that. You’re welcome to click through my hyperlinked sources to apply your own critical analysis to their content; I’m sure you could probably even find some issues, but those issues would very likely not have any impact on my general thesis here.
Lastly, I think it’s important to address your final comment. I’m concerned that you don’t actually apply the same evidentiary standards across the board, despite your comment about the night sky. In previous blogs on this site, even, your comments have not been in line with the physical evidence that I have observed (such as your views on harm reduction; I’ve worked in addiction for years, and what I’ve seen is not in line with your views). You’re asking for physical evidence of an event that happened almost 150 years ago over a digital medium. I’m reading this to mean that it doesn’t matter what evidence I present, you are not going to change your perspective. This worries me because you’ve been a longtime follower of this blog and I appreciate that continuity, but I interpret this behaviour as quite dogmatic.
I hope I have responded respectfully and adequately. Maybe in response, you could tell me, for the sake of argument, what aspect of your life would be upended if you were to accept this telling of historical events? If this account is true, what becomes challenged or threatened?
Like so many other people, I have grown weary of Facebook specifically and much of general social media. The physical (and often identity) disconnect, through which the ugliest of comments can be and often are made without consequence for the aggressor, is largely at the heart of the matter.
What I find indispensable about social media in general, however, is that it has enabled far greater information freedom (for example, on corporate environmental degradation and destruction) than that allowed by what had been a rigidly gatekept news and information virtual monopoly held by the pre-2000 electronic and print mainstream news-media.
If not for the widely accessible Facebook, I seriously doubt that Greta Thunberg’s pre-pandemic formidable climate change movement, for example, would’ve been able to regularly form on such a congruently colossal scale. (And I’m saying all of this as someone whose own Facebook account was inexplicably “Disabled” two years ago.)
While I don’t know his opinion of social media, in an interview with the online National Observer (posted Feb.12, 2019) Noam Chomsky noted that while there are stories published about man-made global warming, “It’s as if … there’s a kind of a tunnel vision — the science reporters are occasionally saying ‘look, this is a catastrophe,’ but then the regular [non-environmental pro-fossil fuel] coverage simply disregards it.”
Though it may have been a couple decades late when it comes to countering climate change through multiple massive intercontinental demonstrations, I believe that progressive movements like environmentalism were made far more effective by the unprecedented informative and organizational abilities made widely available by no-fee social media platforms, notably Facebook.
Great post. Thanks. Sharing.
Thanks. Reading.
Not seeing the reply button under what I want to reply to. Don’t know why that is. Not trying to be a jerk on purpose here.
OP: My previous comments may contradict your experience, but they’re prompted by my own experience. I’m not asking you to believe me, I’m just saying. I went through a do-gooder period and got disillusioned by what I saw. But back to the topic at hand…
Effects 150 years ago may or may not impact us today. But the narratives about those events determine the politics we live under. Until we embrace the fact that we simply don’t know what happened that long ago, we will be at the mercy of narratives.
I have long noticed that the most truthful part of any newspaper is the corrections section. Yeah, they get caught in lies. Yeah, they get sued. Yeah, they retract, in much less column space than the original falsehood. And the fact that it happens repeatedly tells us all we need to know about accountability. A punishment that fails to deter is not a meaningful consequence. Now if the corrections were on the front page in bold headlines, that might mean something.
Once, when I was young, someone told me all history is a lie. I laughed at him. Years later, it occurs to me: if people lie to the masses about things that I – and some of the masses – can personally verify as lies, why should I believe what they say about things that happened before I was born? If I could track this guy down, I’d apologize to him.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
By the way, I wouldn’t believe in Gell-Mann amnesia if I hadn’t observed it myself. I open the paper, think “I was there. It didn’t happen that way.” I turn the page, read, think “I’ve done that. It doesn’t work that way.” Several times in my life.
I doubt all history except archaeology. I don’t presume it’s all a lie, but I don’t presume any of it’s true either. I doubt all news except where I’ve seen physical evidence. If I see smashed windows and looted stores, I believe that windows were smashed and stores were looted. I don’t presume to know who did it, but I accept that something along those lines happened the previous night.
Authority is as authority does, What authority does is claim to have the right to say what truth is, and demand you believe without question. Anything that does that to me, I reject. Narratives are tools of authority. He who controls the narrative controls society – or at least thinks he does.
In my experience, sometimes government does good, and sometimes it does bad. Just like everybody else. My main gripe is they demand trust, and I don’t do trust. Government? Anarchy? I’ve got no dog in that fight.
It’s all good! The comments section (and a few other areas of this site) aren’t really done in a way that I’m happy with either. WordPress is not the most intuitive when it comes to making things easy, and if there is a way to make it more clear, I don’t have the IT skills to make that happen.
There are organizations that devote themselves to media accountability. FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), Politifact, and Canadaland all, to one degree or another, report on the reporting of others. Going down the rabbit hole of, “Well, are these groups impervious to error or poor judgment? If not, then they aren’t adequate information centres either!” gets into an endless loop that ultimately ends in solipsistic disconnection from one’s community. Trust has to exist at some point.
This is a blog. You have a blog. Blogs are typically about opinions, and informed opinions need to have their information coming from somewhere. Learning and development come from the input of others, and yes deception exists in the world, but trust is a pretty necessary part of life. If there was a sign on a frozen lake that said, “Danger! Thin ice!” and the only way you’re going to trust that is if you go out ice skating to see for yourself, that’s a pretty big risk. I understand trust can be betrayed and can be difficult to build back up again, but it sounds very lonely to be disconnected from the world around you.
You didn’t specifically answer the question that I posed, but if I were to hazard a guess: would you say that if you were to accept these historical events as valid, the safety of being closed off from the world would be threatened? The vulnerable risk of opening yourself up to trust? Please let me know if I am off-base, but that seemed to be the main theme I interpreted in your response.
Yeah, I need to get blogging again. Stuff keeps coming up.
I’ve got trust issues. I can’t deny it. If it were possible to close oneself off from the world, that would all be moot, But it’s not possible, so manage the risks. I’ll go downtown after riots, but not during them.
I’m not one of those people who put plywood over their windows, but I understand their point of view and don’t mock them. Especially those who live downtown. I would ask why they choose to live downtown knowing what they know, but that’s their call.
There is a sane America and there is an insane America. The distinction is geographical. There are sane places and insane places.
I don’t believe in safety. Safety is a fantasy. I believe in calculated risk, managed risk, backup plans and above all, empirical positivism.
I don’t believe in panic. That’s the flip side of the fantasy of safety. People try to make you anxious so they can sell you a “solution.” Often the solution is worse than the risk. I used to run antivirus, now I run Linux. One of these things is a racket and a scam, the other doesn’t charge any money.
I choose my own fears. That way no one can stampede me, and no one can gaslight me.
It sounds like self-control is really important to you – being in charge of your own life.