Free Soviets
08-09-2004, 01:53
first off, i'd just like to say:
holy shit, what the hell is up with my home town these days? first we get a lucy parsons park, now we get an official memorial to the haymarket martyrs. soon everything in the city will be named after our anarchists. weird, yet awesome!
anyways, here's the sun-times article (http://www.suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-ftr-hay07.html) on it
After 138 years, Haymarket memorial to be unveiled
September 7, 2004
BY TOM MCNAMEE Staff Reporter
When labor leaders from around the world visit Chicago, Dennis Gannon notes, it's always just a matter of time before they say, "Show me the Haymarket."
Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, tries to warn them: You won't see much. Just an ordinary street and alley. At best, there might be a plaque, if it hasn't been vandalized lately.
But Gannon's visitors always insist on seeing for themselves. And when they do, climbing out of cabs and looking around, they invariably say something like: "This is it?"
Which is just being polite.
What they're thinking goes more like this:
"What kind of town fails to commemorate one of the most seminal events in the history of organized labor, an event celebrated around the world every year as May Day?"
Good question.
Maybe a town afraid of its past.
On Sept. 14, in a reversal of 118 years of civic amnesia, a memorial to the Haymarket Incident of 1886 is to be unveiled at the site of the carnage, Crane's Alley on the east side of Desplaines Street, north of Randolph.
Labor leaders such as Gannon will be there. They believe that the Haymarket Riot, a classic clash of the era between oppressed workers and brutal authority, marked the birth of a national movement for an eight-hour workday.
Representatives of the Chicago Police Department will be there. For almost a century, they argued that the only real story of the Haymarket was that seven cops were "martyred" by bomb-throwing radicals.
And historians and other scholars will be there, too. Many of them believe the Haymarket Incident was a police riot, pure and simple.
Even today, the powers that be in Chicago can't fully agree on just what went down that night or who was to blame, but they agree on this: It's crazy to ignore it.
"I think people really did want to put to rest the animosity that has grown up around the issue of the Haymarket Square," said Chicago labor lawyer Elena Marcheschi, a member of the committee that chose the memorial's design. "Everybody agreed there needed to be a memorial at that site -- and how embarrassing it's been that there wasn't."
A time of terrorists
The story of the Haymarket Incident is rich in themes that resonate to this day.
It was a time when Americans felt threatened by terrorists. When suspicion fell heavily on certain groups of immigrants. When basic civil rights, such as free speech, were under attack in the name of national security.
On May 3, 1886, two men were killed by police outside a McCormick reaper factory on the Southwest Side, where striking workers were demanding an eight-hour day.
The following night, several thousand protesters, outraged by the killings, turned out for a rally at the Haymarket, west of today's Loop. One flier promoting the rally -- and this really alarmed the police -- called for "revenge" and encouraged workers to fight back with weapons: "To arms, we call you, to arms!"
The rhetoric at the rally was just as fiery, with anarchists calling for not just an eight-hour day, but the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. The rally was otherwise peaceful, however, so much so that Mayor Carter Harrison, who had stopped by to observe, walked home early.
But as the rally was winding down, when only a few hundred protesters were still present, about 180 police officers marched to the makeshift speaker's stand -- the bed of a Crane's Co. wagon. An officer ordered the crowd to disperse and, at that moment, somebody threw a bomb into the cops' ranks.
One officer was killed almost instantly. Gunfire and general panic broke out. At least four workers were killed. Six more officers would die of their injuries in the coming weeks.
Precisely what else happened that night remains a matter of intense disagreement, but what followed is indisputable -- a shameful travesty of justice.
"The Chicago police had scarcely gathered their dead and wounded before they embarked on a fierce roundup of every real or imagined radical in the city," according to an online account produced jointly by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University (chicagohistory.org/dramas/overview/over.htm). "A terrible crime had been committed, and the perceived perpetrator was not so much a particular person as anarchism itself. The result was both a latter-day witch- hunt and the first 'red scare' in America."
Eight men, all so-called anarchists, were put on trial for murder and found guilty by a jury.
Four of the men were executed on Nov. 11, 1887. A fifth committed suicide (or, some historians argue, possibly was assassinated) the day before he was to hang.
Gov. Richard Oglesby commuted the death sentences of two other defendants to life in prison. The eighth defendant was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
But five years later, in 1892, a new Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld, reviewed the entire trial and, in a decision that would doom him to defeat in the next election, granted full pardons to the three living defendants.
The trial, Altgeld concluded, had been a complete sham.
"Scholars have long considered the Haymarket trial one of the most notorious miscarriages of law in American history," the Chicago Historical Society/Northwestern historians write. "At this time of cultural crisis, the defendants were convicted by a prejudiced judge and jury because of their political views, rather than on the basis of solid evidence that linked them to the bombing."
Around the world, where nascent labor movements were eager to exploit powerful symbols of establishment oppression, the Haymarket defendants were transformed into martyrs. In Mexico City in the Palace of Justice, a Diego Rivera mural depicts the eight Haymarket defendants with nooses of capitalist injustice around their necks.
Memories die hard
The problem is, one man's hallowed ground is another man's crime scene.
"It was always a sore spot," acknowledged Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago and a member of the memorial selection committee. "The truth from the police perspective was that eight police officers were murdered."
Just three years after the riot, a nine-foot-tall bronze statue of a Chicago policeman was erected on the Haymarket site, a tribute to the slain officers. The statue, which now stands safely in a courtyard of the Police Academy, was vandalized repeatedly. In the Vietnam era, it was blown up twice.
As late as the 1960s, a small group of police officers and others, including a descendent of one of the officers killed, gathered for prayers once a year in May at the site.
But times change, even in Chicago. As the years rolled by, what was at first called the "Haymarket Riot" (with its suggestion of an unruly mob) became the "Haymarket Tragedy" (with implied regrets all around) and is now -- at least on the memorial -- the "Haymarket Incident" (blah, but safe).
"Sure, people still have different opinions, but the real story is how far we've come," Donahue said. "Law enforcement is now a part of organized labor."
By the time of the Haymarket's centennial in 1986, the "undisputed hero" of the Haymarket Incident had become organized labor, according to the Chicago Historical Society/Northwestern historians. To mark the occasion, Mayor Harold Washington signed a proclamation honoring "the movement toward the eight-hour day, union rights, civil rights, human rights" and lamenting "the tragic miscarriage of justice which claimed the lives of four labor activists."
Got that? To generations of Chicagoans, the Haymarket defendants were "bomb-throwing anarchists." Now they were "labor activists."
Honoring free speech
How do you commemorate an event that, to this day, so many people can't see eye to eye on?
You find the common ground, said Gannon.
"We brought everybody into the process -- the police, the labor community, historians -- and we came up with this idea of the wagon as the symbol of freedom of speech," Gannon said. "That's how we really put our arms around it."
The selection committee, organized by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, chose a highly metaphorical design by Chicago artist Mary Brogger. It depicts a wagon -- the makeshift speaker's platform at the Haymarket rally -- that is being built or dismantled by figures above and below.
"It has a duality to it," Brogger explained. "From the standpoint of the wagon being constructed, you see workers in the lower part are working cooperatively to build a platform from which the figures on top can express themselves. And for the viewpoint of the wagon being dismantled, you can see the weight of the words being expressed might be the cause of the undoing of the wagon. It's a cautionary tale that you are responsible for the words you say."
To further encourage this soapbox spirit of debate, Brogger would like to see her sculpture slowly covered over the years -- "encrusted" is her word -- by plaques from groups wishing to say their piece. She envisions plaques from around the world and across the political spectrum, from trade unionists to police organizations to communists to Democrats to Republicans. As a practical matter, she cautioned, there will have to be some sort of screening process.
Not everybody is happy with the results.
"This is a revisionist history thing," complained Anthony Raison, an anarchist who lives in south suburban Monee. "They're trying to whitewash the whole thing, take it from the anarchists and make it a free-speech issue."
Raison was invited to attend a recent meeting at which the text for the monument's base was drafted, but chose not to go.
Gannon makes no apologies.
If the Haymarket Incident stands for anything, he said, it's the right of people to stand up and say what they think, with respect for others but without fear.
"That's what we're all about," he said. "If we don't have freedom of speech, what are we going to do?"
and since i'm actually in town, it looks like i have somewhere to be next tuesday morning. haven't broken out my black flag in awhile...
holy shit, what the hell is up with my home town these days? first we get a lucy parsons park, now we get an official memorial to the haymarket martyrs. soon everything in the city will be named after our anarchists. weird, yet awesome!
anyways, here's the sun-times article (http://www.suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-ftr-hay07.html) on it
After 138 years, Haymarket memorial to be unveiled
September 7, 2004
BY TOM MCNAMEE Staff Reporter
When labor leaders from around the world visit Chicago, Dennis Gannon notes, it's always just a matter of time before they say, "Show me the Haymarket."
Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, tries to warn them: You won't see much. Just an ordinary street and alley. At best, there might be a plaque, if it hasn't been vandalized lately.
But Gannon's visitors always insist on seeing for themselves. And when they do, climbing out of cabs and looking around, they invariably say something like: "This is it?"
Which is just being polite.
What they're thinking goes more like this:
"What kind of town fails to commemorate one of the most seminal events in the history of organized labor, an event celebrated around the world every year as May Day?"
Good question.
Maybe a town afraid of its past.
On Sept. 14, in a reversal of 118 years of civic amnesia, a memorial to the Haymarket Incident of 1886 is to be unveiled at the site of the carnage, Crane's Alley on the east side of Desplaines Street, north of Randolph.
Labor leaders such as Gannon will be there. They believe that the Haymarket Riot, a classic clash of the era between oppressed workers and brutal authority, marked the birth of a national movement for an eight-hour workday.
Representatives of the Chicago Police Department will be there. For almost a century, they argued that the only real story of the Haymarket was that seven cops were "martyred" by bomb-throwing radicals.
And historians and other scholars will be there, too. Many of them believe the Haymarket Incident was a police riot, pure and simple.
Even today, the powers that be in Chicago can't fully agree on just what went down that night or who was to blame, but they agree on this: It's crazy to ignore it.
"I think people really did want to put to rest the animosity that has grown up around the issue of the Haymarket Square," said Chicago labor lawyer Elena Marcheschi, a member of the committee that chose the memorial's design. "Everybody agreed there needed to be a memorial at that site -- and how embarrassing it's been that there wasn't."
A time of terrorists
The story of the Haymarket Incident is rich in themes that resonate to this day.
It was a time when Americans felt threatened by terrorists. When suspicion fell heavily on certain groups of immigrants. When basic civil rights, such as free speech, were under attack in the name of national security.
On May 3, 1886, two men were killed by police outside a McCormick reaper factory on the Southwest Side, where striking workers were demanding an eight-hour day.
The following night, several thousand protesters, outraged by the killings, turned out for a rally at the Haymarket, west of today's Loop. One flier promoting the rally -- and this really alarmed the police -- called for "revenge" and encouraged workers to fight back with weapons: "To arms, we call you, to arms!"
The rhetoric at the rally was just as fiery, with anarchists calling for not just an eight-hour day, but the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. The rally was otherwise peaceful, however, so much so that Mayor Carter Harrison, who had stopped by to observe, walked home early.
But as the rally was winding down, when only a few hundred protesters were still present, about 180 police officers marched to the makeshift speaker's stand -- the bed of a Crane's Co. wagon. An officer ordered the crowd to disperse and, at that moment, somebody threw a bomb into the cops' ranks.
One officer was killed almost instantly. Gunfire and general panic broke out. At least four workers were killed. Six more officers would die of their injuries in the coming weeks.
Precisely what else happened that night remains a matter of intense disagreement, but what followed is indisputable -- a shameful travesty of justice.
"The Chicago police had scarcely gathered their dead and wounded before they embarked on a fierce roundup of every real or imagined radical in the city," according to an online account produced jointly by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University (chicagohistory.org/dramas/overview/over.htm). "A terrible crime had been committed, and the perceived perpetrator was not so much a particular person as anarchism itself. The result was both a latter-day witch- hunt and the first 'red scare' in America."
Eight men, all so-called anarchists, were put on trial for murder and found guilty by a jury.
Four of the men were executed on Nov. 11, 1887. A fifth committed suicide (or, some historians argue, possibly was assassinated) the day before he was to hang.
Gov. Richard Oglesby commuted the death sentences of two other defendants to life in prison. The eighth defendant was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
But five years later, in 1892, a new Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld, reviewed the entire trial and, in a decision that would doom him to defeat in the next election, granted full pardons to the three living defendants.
The trial, Altgeld concluded, had been a complete sham.
"Scholars have long considered the Haymarket trial one of the most notorious miscarriages of law in American history," the Chicago Historical Society/Northwestern historians write. "At this time of cultural crisis, the defendants were convicted by a prejudiced judge and jury because of their political views, rather than on the basis of solid evidence that linked them to the bombing."
Around the world, where nascent labor movements were eager to exploit powerful symbols of establishment oppression, the Haymarket defendants were transformed into martyrs. In Mexico City in the Palace of Justice, a Diego Rivera mural depicts the eight Haymarket defendants with nooses of capitalist injustice around their necks.
Memories die hard
The problem is, one man's hallowed ground is another man's crime scene.
"It was always a sore spot," acknowledged Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago and a member of the memorial selection committee. "The truth from the police perspective was that eight police officers were murdered."
Just three years after the riot, a nine-foot-tall bronze statue of a Chicago policeman was erected on the Haymarket site, a tribute to the slain officers. The statue, which now stands safely in a courtyard of the Police Academy, was vandalized repeatedly. In the Vietnam era, it was blown up twice.
As late as the 1960s, a small group of police officers and others, including a descendent of one of the officers killed, gathered for prayers once a year in May at the site.
But times change, even in Chicago. As the years rolled by, what was at first called the "Haymarket Riot" (with its suggestion of an unruly mob) became the "Haymarket Tragedy" (with implied regrets all around) and is now -- at least on the memorial -- the "Haymarket Incident" (blah, but safe).
"Sure, people still have different opinions, but the real story is how far we've come," Donahue said. "Law enforcement is now a part of organized labor."
By the time of the Haymarket's centennial in 1986, the "undisputed hero" of the Haymarket Incident had become organized labor, according to the Chicago Historical Society/Northwestern historians. To mark the occasion, Mayor Harold Washington signed a proclamation honoring "the movement toward the eight-hour day, union rights, civil rights, human rights" and lamenting "the tragic miscarriage of justice which claimed the lives of four labor activists."
Got that? To generations of Chicagoans, the Haymarket defendants were "bomb-throwing anarchists." Now they were "labor activists."
Honoring free speech
How do you commemorate an event that, to this day, so many people can't see eye to eye on?
You find the common ground, said Gannon.
"We brought everybody into the process -- the police, the labor community, historians -- and we came up with this idea of the wagon as the symbol of freedom of speech," Gannon said. "That's how we really put our arms around it."
The selection committee, organized by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, chose a highly metaphorical design by Chicago artist Mary Brogger. It depicts a wagon -- the makeshift speaker's platform at the Haymarket rally -- that is being built or dismantled by figures above and below.
"It has a duality to it," Brogger explained. "From the standpoint of the wagon being constructed, you see workers in the lower part are working cooperatively to build a platform from which the figures on top can express themselves. And for the viewpoint of the wagon being dismantled, you can see the weight of the words being expressed might be the cause of the undoing of the wagon. It's a cautionary tale that you are responsible for the words you say."
To further encourage this soapbox spirit of debate, Brogger would like to see her sculpture slowly covered over the years -- "encrusted" is her word -- by plaques from groups wishing to say their piece. She envisions plaques from around the world and across the political spectrum, from trade unionists to police organizations to communists to Democrats to Republicans. As a practical matter, she cautioned, there will have to be some sort of screening process.
Not everybody is happy with the results.
"This is a revisionist history thing," complained Anthony Raison, an anarchist who lives in south suburban Monee. "They're trying to whitewash the whole thing, take it from the anarchists and make it a free-speech issue."
Raison was invited to attend a recent meeting at which the text for the monument's base was drafted, but chose not to go.
Gannon makes no apologies.
If the Haymarket Incident stands for anything, he said, it's the right of people to stand up and say what they think, with respect for others but without fear.
"That's what we're all about," he said. "If we don't have freedom of speech, what are we going to do?"
and since i'm actually in town, it looks like i have somewhere to be next tuesday morning. haven't broken out my black flag in awhile...