American workers had begun organizing into unions following the Civil War, and by the 1880s many thousands were organized into unions, most notably the Knights of Labor.
In the spring of 1886 workers struck at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago, the factory that made farm equipment including the famous McCormick Reaper made by Cyrus McCormick. The workers on strike demanded an eight-hour workday, at a time when 60-hour workweeks were common. The company locked out the workers and hired strikebreakers, a common practice at the time.
On May 1, 1886, a large May Day parade was held in Chicago, and two days later, a protest outside the McCormick plant resulted in a person being killed.
A mass meeting was called to take place on May 4, to protest what was seen as brutality by the police. The location for the meeting was to be Haymarket Square in Chicago, an open area used for public markets.
At the May 4th meeting a number of radical and anarchist speakers addressed a crowd of approximately 1,500 people. The meeting was peaceful, but the mood became confrontational when the police tried to disperse the crowd.
As scuffles broke out, a powerful bomb was thrown. The bomb landed and exploded, unleashing shrapnel. The police drew their weapons and fired into the panicked crowd.
Seven policemen were killed, and it’s likely that most of them died from police bullets fired in the chaos, not from the bomb itself. Four civilians were also killed. More than 100 persons were injured.
The public outcry was enormous. Press coverage contributed to a mood of hysteria. Two weeks later, the cover of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Magazine, one of the most popular publications in the US, featured an illustration of the "bomb thrown by anarchists" cutting down police and a drawing of a priest giving the last rites to a wounded officer in a nearby police station.
The rioting was blamed on the labor movement, specifically on the Knights of Labor, the largest labor union in the United States at the time. Widely discredited, fairly or not, the Knights of Labor never recovered.
Newspapers throughout the US denounced “anarchists,” and advocated hanging those responsible for the Haymarket Riot. A number of arrests were made, and charges were brought against eight men.
The trial of the anarchists in Chicago was a spectacle lasting for much of the summer, from late June to late August of 1886. Despite a glaring lack of evidence linking the anarchists to the bombing, all eight were convicted and sentenced to death by the illustrious Governor Richard Oglesby.
For the first meeting of the foundation of the second international the American Federation of Labor would choose May 1 to commemorate a general strike in the United States, which had begun on 1 May 1886 and culminated in the Haymarket affair four days later.
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vent, suicide mentioned
I'm really frustrated with my job right now. It's not the worst job I've had by any means, I mean it's nothing fancy either, hourly making 22k a year, but I can be pretty lazy so I feel guilty whining about it. I have some undiagnosed mental problems that makes shit really difficult. And even that is frustrating because no one will take you seriously even with a diagnosis, but with out? If I try to self-diagnose them I'm a "removed" who's ableist towards people with real problems. Doesn't matter that my parents never took me to a doctor and just yelled at me for not being normal and that now as an adult, because I can barely find work I can tolerate, I can't afford to see a doctor myself to get diagnosed with anything. No one wants to hear it. They think that because I am working at the moment that must mean I'm capable of working and therefore don't need or deserve help. But people can do some pretty extreme things in extreme circumstances, people can survive through a lot even if it leaves physical and mental scars, that doesn't mean they should have to though. But no one wants to hear it when I'm trying to express that basic shit can be pretty difficult for me. They'll just point out how some people are worse off so that invalidates what I'm going through and it's hard not to internalize that and feel worse. I really feel like the only way anyone would take me seriously is if I killed myself over it, which would kind of defeat the purpose of getting people to understand that I have problems because what I want is fucking help. And even then they probably wouldn't get it. But right now my boss is hinting that she doesn't think I'm working hard enough. On one hand, yeah, I'm pretty fucking lazy, I sitting around all day trying not to think about the best way to kill myself instead of working but at the same time her and my coworker are fucking lazy too. They both show up late, they're both on their phones more often than not, they both barely get any work done. I can fucking sit around for hours and still get more done than they do, but she doesn't complain about him because he's teacher's fucking pet and does favors for her or buys her fast food. I come in every day at 8 and they show up late, sometimes hours late, even though they only have to come in at 12:30. Part of my job is greeting people and helping them but my social batteries are small. People expect you to look at them when talking so I've learned to blur my vision on command so I can look like I'm looking at people without actually having to because it really makes me uncomfortable to look at people. It's also difficult for me to talk some times, but I can't just be nonverbal since talking is part of the job, so I've had to come up with a script where I just say the same things in the same tone so I don't have to think about it, it helps if I just pretend I'm saying "hello" or whatever outloud to no one. And having to jump through all these hoops makes it so by the time I get home I just don't have the energy for doing all the other adult things I need to do, let alone anything fun. I'm just getting really close to the point where I can't keep doing it, I've had this job for over two years which is way longer than any other job I've had, I've never worked at the same place for more than a month anywhere else. But I literally have no other options, I don't drive and I've already worked and quit at every other place in walking distance. I'm just so tired of thinking about suicide every single day, I'm tired of being tired and not having to energy to do what I want, I'm tired of having to do all this and still be told it's not enough, I'm tired of just having to sit and listen to my coworker's racism, homophobia, and transphobia because I know I can't say shit. I just have to mask and pretend I'm a normal heterosexual with no mental problems. And if I can't be myself I may as well be dead already. I really just don't know what to do, no one cares and I can't get help from anywhere. And while dealing with all this my best friend has ghosted me, deleted all their socials and I don't know if they're just having a rough time or if they're dead and I'll just never know.