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PARIS (CN) — Demonstrators flowed through the streets of Europe on Friday to commemorate International Workers’ Day, a movement born in 19th-century Chicago that has grown into a holiday embraced by over 80 countries worldwide — but not the United States.
In Paris, thousands of people marched along the Boulevard Voltaire as songs like Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” blared through the procession. People carried banners and signs from France’s biggest unions; Dominique Kalinski lingered on the sidelines of the protest in a sunhat, wearing a red pin bearing the logo of the General Confederation of Labor.
She said the group was there to fight for peace in the world and defend the rights of laborers, adding the day became symbolic after workers revolted in the United States. However, Kalinski didn’t know the U.S. celebrates Labor Day in September.
“I didn’t know that they don’t celebrate it!” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. “It’s bizarre that they created it, but they don’t celebrate it?”
This wasn’t accidental: Experts recount how U.S. leaders sought to untangle the country from what it viewed as a dangerously powerful workers’ movement associated with communism, and ultimately, a threat to capitalist values.
“In the U.S., deeply engrained corporate and political opposition to any strong criticism of capitalism led to extensive characterizations of any workers movement as ‘un-American,’” explained Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois. “We celebrate Labor Day — as opposed to International Workers’ Day — because in 1894, President Grover Cleveland and Congress wanted a holiday in labor’s name to diffuse growing worker militancy and deter the development of a more radical labor movement.”
The original movement dates back to the Gilded Age, when a growing number of Americans — particularly in factories — labored for long hours in dangerous conditions, prompting workers to demand an eight-hour workday on May 1, 1886. Tens of thousands of workers gathered in Chicago and New York, but the demonstration turned violent, leading workers to gather in Chicago’s Haymarket Square a few days later to protest.
“Anarchists were angered by this, and called for a peaceful demonstration in Haymarket Square on May 4th,” said Donna Haverty-Stacke, author of “America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867-1960.” “And that peaceful demonstration was disrupted by someone throwing a bomb, and the police panicking and shooting into the crowd in what’s become known as the Haymarket tragedy.”
Because of this, eight anarchists were ultimately convicted of murder and four were executed the following year. Some socialists and anarchists — who believed the trial and executions were unjust since it wasn’t clear who actually threw the bomb — then embraced the bloody Haymarket affair as emblematic of the wider pathology of capitalism, according to Haverty-Stacke.
“So for those folks who were adhering to anarchism or socialism, May 1 became a day to invoke the memory of the Haymarket martyrs,” she explained. “This made it a little more uncomfortable for your kind of mainstream craft unionists who just wanted the bread and butter, shorter hours and better pay in safer conditions.”
Meanwhile, Europe embraced May 1 as International Workers’ Day. But for them, it was more than just an eight-hour demand and part of a wider socialist agenda, according to Haverty-Stacke. This is largely why leaders began to frame the September Labor Day as a distinctly American, patriotic holiday.
“The first Monday in September was chosen because it would avoid association with socialist worker movements in Europe,” Bruno said. “The effort to moderate and weaken the power of labor unions in America is comprehensive and unyielding — naming and picking the dates of holidays is just one tactic.”
The rift deepened further during the Cold War. The Soviet Union fully embraced International Workers’ Day, and would use it to stage large-scale parades.
“The Soviet Union was becoming our greatest political enemy, and May 1st was a big day in Moscow and also in China,” Haverty-Stacke said. “It [became] seen as so completely un-American.”
On Friday, Sacha Zaouati was handing out pamphlets for the extreme-left Gauche Révolutionnaire group. He also was aware of the American roots of May 1, but not about the holiday being celebrated in September and why.
“That’s disgusting,” he said, adding that it’s wild how in the U.S., “the word communist is an insult.”
Another woman demonstrating in Paris, who asked to go only by her first name Katherine, didn’t have strong opinions about the difference in dates, but encourages American activists to “keep up the flame of the fight.”
“I don’t know much about where the unions are in the United States,” she said. “American politics are a disaster for the world today, but we can’t confuse the government with the people.”
In the 21st century, Haverty-Stacke noted the May 1 movement has been revived to a certain degree in the U.S. On Friday, her union will be demonstrating in New York to try to “reclaim the history” of American workers making demands not just for labor rights, but for politics.
“There was always political messaging happening every May 1 as well,” she said. “From from year to year, whatever was kind of the hot-button issue, you would see on the banner at the May Day demonstration.”
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