May Day and the Haymarket Martyrs - Historia del Primero de Mayo - SF Bay Area Indymedia
May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States and Canada. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day.
The Haymarket Riot Remembered - NPR
What is the legacy of Haymarket? Does it still resonate today?
Haymarket resonates today more than it has at any other time in recent years. The original Haymarket affair of 1886 was part and parcel of a massive, national May Day rally and strike led, by and large, by America's immigrant workers. Today, precisely 120 years later, the May 1, 2006 Immigrant General Strike -- also known as the 'Day without Immigrants' and the 'Great American Boycott' -- looks set to inherit and reinvigorate the legacy of Haymarket. Then, as now, employers launched an aggressive drive to undermine wages and living standards. In 1886 workers from around the world responded with an aggressive campaign of their own: an international movement for less work and more pay.