Neither the workers of the world nor their oppressors got to hear Albert Parsons’s parting message to them. As he stood hooded and noose-tied on the gallows, awaiting execution for conspiracy murder, he implored the Cook County Sheriff to let him make a final address to the public. “Let the voice of the people be heard! O–” he shouted. But he was cut off as the trapdoor opened beneath his feet, throwing him to his death.
May 4 marked the 140th anniversary of the 1886 bombing of which Parsons and seven other radical labor activists were falsely accused and eventually convicted in Chicago, Illinois. The attack erupted out of a peaceful protest at Haymarket Square in support of the ongoing general strike, during which hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide had walked off the job to demand an eight-hour work day. Parsons and his fellow defendants would not live to see that dream become reality, or decades of organized labor militancy that shaped the first half of the twentieth century. But well over a century later, the Haymarket affair remains indelible within the labor movement—and there’s perhaps no time or place where that legacy is clearer than at a May Day rally in Chicago.
Zach Caddy
May Day 2 (INA)
Representatives from the Illinois Nurses Association march in their contingent at the Chicago May Day rally.
The Chicago march on May 1 drew thousands of union members and supporters, including union local contingents, political organizations like Indivisible and the Democratic Socialists of America (whose contingent I marched with), and solidarity organizations like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Many of the messages swirling in the sea of banners, signs, and T-shirts referenced President Donald Trump’s recent warmongering in Iran, as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s attacks on Chicago and other U.S. cities. In his speech at the rally, former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organizer Mayor Brandon Johnson praised the teachers and students participating in the Chicago Public Schools “day of civic action,” which the school district declared by compromise last month after refusing the CTU’s demand to call off classes for the day. Many CTU members called off sick; others took the opportunity to bring their students to the rally, or to neighborhood May Day protests.
Zach Caddy
A member of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America leads chants.
May Day—or International Workers Day, as it’s known around the world—has always been many things at once: a commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs and all workers whose lives have been cut short; a celebration of the labor movement and its historic wins; a show of solidarity and strength against the bosses. But at this year’s May Day events in Chicago and around the country, there was a new hum of anticipation on the ground, like the low purr of a stalled engine waiting to be revved up again.
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Collected statements from union members and supporters at the Chicago May Day rally. "What building worker power means to me is fighting fiercely for working conditions that protect all workers’ health and well-being. Workers’ rights is public health!"
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"I am here on behalf of everyone who couldn’t be here. I want to help represent people who can’t represent themselves. Underpaid and overworked workers, brutalized and cased immigrants, minorities, and trans people."
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"Worker power connects all our struggles. When workers of the world unite we can defeat our common oppressor of the ruling class. Solidarity forever!"
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"I am here to celebrate the growing movement for worker power and socialism rising in the face of fascist onslaught. May Day is both a holiday born in Chicago yet embraced by the international workers movement. Worker power, to me, means workers having democratic control over their labor and the fruits of their labor."
In fall 2023, United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain called on union workers across the country to align their bargaining contracts to expire on April 30, 2028, with the goal of preparing for a general strike on May Day of that year. In the two-and-a-half years since, the possibility of a general strike in the United States has grown palpable within the national consciousness. But as Sarah Jaffe noted in her column for The Progressive last month, zeitgeist alone cannot create the conditions for a general strike. Grinding the U.S. economy to a halt through worker power will require a much higher level of organization and clarity of purpose.
Zach Caddy
Young Chicagoans participating in chants at the May Day rally. While the Chicago Teachers Union fought to cancel classes in observation of International Workers Day, the Chicago Public Schools opted instead for a district-wide “day of civic engagement,” which many teachers used as an opportunity to educate students about the labor movement.
Zach Caddy
Members of CodePink and other organizations march at the May Day rally.
The path to a general strike is still hazy: We’re in a moment of historically low union density, with a demobilized workforce struggling to stay afloat. The UAW has yet to suggest a concrete demand to anchor a general strike in 2028, but is working with other unions (including the CTU) to build organizing infrastructure necessary to become strike-ready. Some union members I spoke with at the May Day rally said they had spoken with their locals about aligning their contracts to expire on April 30, 2028; others said they were aware of the push, but hadn’t heard anything from their locals. Still, many described it as a sort of lodestar in the near distance, toward which once-disparate segments of the movement can begin taking their first steps.
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Collected statements from union members and supporters at the Chicago May Day rally. "It means uniting the people and taking power back from billionaires! Building coalitions. Showing up. Shutting it down."
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"May Day means somewhat a lot [to] me as someone who is often sad and bitter but working on it! Movements around the world have been fighting and will keep fighting!"
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"Here to support the workers of the world and advocate for thriving wages. Worker class is greater than the Epstein class!"
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"I am here to support workers here in the Belly of the Beast and in the Global South. We have people power and the numbers. But as our rights continue to get trampled by both ruling parties, we must use that people power to fight for workers and the oppressed. As MLK once said, “economic justice cannot happen without racial justice.” Solidarity forever!"
At the rally, I collected written statements from several union members and labor organizers about what had brought them there, and what building working class power meant to them. After I sorted through what they’d written, I thought of a 2011 poem by Martha Kaplan called “Albert Parsons Speaks,” which imagines his uninterrupted final words from the gallows in 1887. “I came to Chicago / for a new life,” she writes, “and found men who think / wealth the only citizenship, and money / the only privilege; men who pronounce / others unworthy of dignity; but / I found another form of comradeship / among those who fight for right.”
Zach Caddy
Protesters march down Washington Street in downtown Chicago.