Last year, Amy Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for Congress in South Jersey publicly recognized May 1 as “International Workers’ Day”. She held a special event that day to falsely claim that President Trump had endangered employees of meat packing plants by not closing them down during the coronavirus pandemic.
Until 30 years ago, it was unheard of for any mainstream candidate or official to publicly recognize May First as an American holiday. For more than seventy years, it was mostly celebrated by Communist and socialist regimes and extremist organizations that that openly hated our country and wanted to destroy us.
Communist Russia and China held massive rallies and military parades where they threatened the United States and condemned us as the most evil, unjust, and dangerous nation in the world. Communist and socialist dictators in Cuba, Vietnam and Russian occupied Eastern Europe held similar events.
Elaborate May First celebrations were also held throughout Hitler’s “National Socialist” (Nazi) Germany during the 1930’s.
This “International” Socialist and Communist holiday on May 1 ironically began in the United States with the deadly “Haymarket” riot in Chicago May , 1886.
That riot began as a peaceful rally to support strikers at a farm machine company, and for an 8 hour work day. However, violent socialists and anarchists soon mixed in with the peaceful demonstrators and destroyed private property and attacked private security guards. They then attacked police who tried to restore order. Then someone killed seven police officers with a fragment bomb. Police then arrested leaders of the protest and charged them with murder. Some were convicted by juries and sentenced to death.
Communists, Socialists, and anarchists in the United State and Europe used this as an excuse to demand the overthrow of any government that used police to protect private property. They demanded new socialist governments run by labor unions.
Socialist labor unions and regimes. held rallies and parades throughout the world every May First to promote those goals. May First remains an important holiday for most labor unions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, as well as for Communist and socialist regimes.
However, most American workers soon went in the opposite direction. Most factory workers in America joined unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) organized by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the year of the Haymarket Riot.
The AFL of Gompers supported America’s free enterprise, “capitalist” system. He wanted unions to make sure employees got a larger share of company earnings.
The AFL, like socialist and Communist unions sometimes also went on strike and demonstrated for higher wages and better working conditions. However, AFL unions also supported laws that allowed corporations to increase their profits. Gompers once said, “The greatest crime an employer can perpetrate on his employees is to fail to operate at a profit”.
Gompers’ AFL unions also strongly supported limits on immigration. After years of struggle, Gompers American AFL unions won the adoption of new immigration laws that greatly reduced immigration in 1920 and 1924.
From 1920 to 1965, those new immigration laws limited legal immigration to roughly 300,00 per year, and those laws were enforced. Fewer immigrants caused American industries to use new inventions to boost production. This gave American workers better skills and the biggest increase in income and living standards in history.
This created America’s unique and prosperous middle class which was the envy of the world until the 1990’s.
To emphasize their rejection of socialism and Communism, and support of America’s free enterprise system, American unions refused to participate in the May First “International Workers’ Day”. They instead supported the creation of “Labor Day” in September, a paid holiday that allowed American workers to enjoy a three day weekend at the end of the summer. Most unions also had bylaws barring Communist Party members from leadership positions.
All this changed quickly in the 1990’s . Radical socialists and Communists removed bylaws barring them from union leadership positions. Then they got themselves to key leadership positions in America’s largest largest labor unions. One of their first actions after taking control was to reverse labor union positions on immigrations.
For the first time in their history, most American labor unions supported massive increases in legal and illegal immigration. They did this ever though this caused lower wages, more poverty, and higher taxes and was against the best interests of most union members..
Once these radical Communists and socialists made these unions “woke”, the moved on to take control of the Democratic Party.
That is why “mainstream” Democrats and unions now openly recognize the socialist and Communist holiday of “International Workers’ Day on May 1.
The graphic image above, right beneath the title, shows the wrong year. It says 1986 and should say 1886. Hope someone can correct it. Thanks! This is a good summary of things we were supposed to learn in high school, but many of us never did! 🙂
Thank you for the correction. The Haymarket Riots in Chicago took place in 1886, not 1986. Am reaching out to the volunteer who prepared that graphic for our group. Hopefully, we can have it corrected and reposted as soon as possible. If you haven’t done so already, please subcribe to our free weekly email updates. Thanks. Seth Grossman