First year City Tech students will learn about “discourse communities” in their English classes. Most of you will be asked to find a discourse community and describe it for required assignments. But what if you never heard of discourse communities before? You are not alone! I didn’t know anything about them either, but I’ve been reading up. I’m going to share some information and tips in this blog post that I hope might be helpful to students working on their discourse community assignments.
Continue reading “Discourse Communities”May Day, International Workers Day
On May 1, people celebrate International Workers Day all over the world. May 1, or May Day, commemorates the historic struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement. May Day was born in their struggle for a humane workday. With the rise of industrialism, employers imposed working days of 12-16 hours, and work weeks of 6-7 days. When industrialization took off in the late 1800s, workers organized into unions and joined pro-labor organizations. One of their earliest rallying points was the fight for the 8-hour work day. May 1, 1886, was chosen as the date for a universal strike.
On that day, more than 300,000 workers (40,000 in Chicago alone) walked out of their jobs across the country. In the following days, more workers joined, and the number of strikers in Chicago grew to almost 100,000. Unfortunately, their celebration was quickly overshadowed by violence. On May 3, Chicago police fired at strikers, killing at least two. On May 4, a protester hurled a bomb at the police during a meeting in Haymarket Square. For many Americans at the time, the “Haymarket incident” forever tied May Day to anarchists, socialists, and other “radical” groups.
Despite this, the observance of May Day went international. When the International Socialist Congress met in France after the Haymarket Incident, its members resolved to hold a “great international demonstration” on May 1, 1890. Workers across Europe observed this May Day with protests and marches. In the years that followed, European workers embraced May Day—so much so that most Americans then associated it with international socialism rather than unionism. Wary of its “radical” roots, the United States officially dropped it in favor of Labor Day in early September. However, unions and other groups still observe May Day here. In fact, workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, and Target are calling for a May Day General Strike this year, to demand better working conditions during the Covid 19 pandemic.
For more on the fascinating history of May Day, give a listen to this podcast with CUNY Professor Haverty-Stacke about the U.S. origin of May Day and why the holiday has been forgotten or overlooked here. Peter Linebaugh’s The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day tells the holiday’s story from a radical left perspective.
