Exploiting their Memory

Drinking Liberally Buenos Aires is celebrating our first birthday this Thursday. Yep, we were founded a year ago on May 1st. (Technically, it won't be May 1st unless we stay up past midnight ...usually that ain't a problem with Drinking Liberally!)

That first night, we had 5 people show up, Fred Badagnani, my wife, Caitlin Kelly, myself, and (hep me!) another fine soul whose name is lost. We grew into a tremendously vibrant group that advanced the cause of liberalism in Buenos Aires through the last dark days of the Bush administration and helped Democrats Abroad Argentina tremendously. People were ready for a local addition to that fine international drinking society Drinking Liberally ...and we were there!

What you might not know is that May 1st was chosen intentionally as an auspicious fecha. The date starts from Chicago, as did I, and left its mark on Buenos Aires and the world long before any of us was born. If you've heard of the 8 hour day (even if it sounds like a distant memory to many of you!), you know about May 1st.

On May 1st, 2008, Drinking Liberally Buenos Aires was formed. On May 1, 1886, the 8 hour day was born; it was a difficult birth.

US labor unions called for a general strike that day in support of "8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for the pursuit of happiness."

On that Saturday, there were 10,000 demonstrators in New York, 11,000 in Detroit, and 10,000 in Milwaukee. The big place that day, however, was Chicago with 40,000 workers on strike to put an end to what amounted to wage slavery.

80,000 people marched down Chicago's Michigan Avenue; in the lumberyards, another 10,000. In the US, there may have been a half a million people on strike that day.

In 1886, there were maybe 56 million people in all of the US. In 2009, there are more than 304 million. Imagine 2,700,000 people on strike in the US today. It isn't hard to do. Try to remember, as well, that labor unions then were even weaker then than today.

Long story short, rallies and demonstrations and strikes were not enough to bring what we now consider "rather" standard into being.

On May 4th, another gathering took place to protest the inevitable repression of the Chicago strikers. Somebody threw a bomb. To this day nobody knows who. The police reacted, shot a lot of their own and people in the crowd. Eight people were arrested.

There was a trial. All 8 were found guilty, 7 sentenced to death. One committed suicide by biting an explosive. Two were later committed to life inprisonment. The other 4 were hanged on my birthday. From wikipedia:

"The trial has been characterized as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in United States history.^[43] Most working people believed Pinkerton agents had provoked the incident.^[32] On June 26, 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe and Schwab after having concluded all eight defendants were innocent. The governor said the real reason for the bombing was the city of Chicago's failure to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for shooting workers.^[44] The pardons ended his political career. The police commander who ordered the dispersal was later convicted of corruption. The bomb thrower was never identified.^[45]"

The event radicalized individuals around the world for many years, most notably my hero Emma Goldman ...and later, myself. If you happen to hear of a local soccer team, Nuevo Chicago, here in Buenos Aires ...their name comes from the stockyards barrio that was informally named after "los mártires de Chicago."

The Soviet Union tried to co-opt "May Day" as pertaining to their ugly Stalinist effort. The United States tried to co-opt the date as "Loyalty Day" in an effort to counter that. The "Labor Day" that we yanquis celebrate in September was enacted by the US Congress 2 months after the Chicago riots.

As part of an international drinking society, Drinking Liberally and Drinking Liberally Buenos Aires are sometimes not immediately taken seriously. I'd like to tell you, however, that for all the frothy fun that can be found EVERY Thursday ...there is something much deeper that can be found in all of our liberalism.

From Waldheim Cemetary in Chicago:

If you show up on Thursday... you're prolly gonna find a bunch of people that just love to drink beer and love to talk to people that love to hear what they can't hear on the radio, TV, or newspapers! Great folks... believe me, we're not terribly serious types! But lemme tell ya, being liberal is serious business! (Unlike some people, if you wanna corner one of us... and talk some serious politics... you won't be disappointed.)