On Wednesday, May 1st, is a public holiday and has been celebrated for over a century. But, why is it celebrated today? And above all, what exactly is commemorated today?
To find the answer, we must go back to the United States and go back to May 1st, 1886. That day, more than three hundred thousand workers took to the streets to demand labor improvements. Among other things, the eight-hour workday. Despite the protests occurring throughout the country, it was in Chicago where the demand was most intense, with several days of strikes. Like so many other demands, the request was not well received by the ruling class, so the reprisals and violence in the streets escalated.
A year and a half later, several leaders of the protests (August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolf Fischer, George Engel, and Louis Lingg) were sentenced to death. Two others, however, were sentenced to life imprisonment. They were the most visible faces of that protest and that demand.
Three years after that event, in 1889, the Congress of the Second International, held in Paris, approved commemorating Labor Day on May 1st as a tribute to those martyrs of Chicago. And one year later, in 1890, the first celebration of Labor Day took place in numerous countries and has continued to be so ever since.
