140 years since the Haymarket affair in Chicago: The struggle for the eight-hour day This year marks 140 years since the Haymarket Affair, a pivotal episode in the struggle for the eight-hour working day and the development of the modern labor movement. In the late 19th century, industrial workers in the United States typically worked 12 to 14 hours a day under demanding and often dangerous conditions. The demand for an eight-hour day gradually became a central objective of organized labor. In the weeks leading up to the nationwide strike of May 1, 1886, major newspapers warned that such a reform would bring wage cuts, poverty and social disorder, frequently describing the movement as “un-American” and driven by foreign agitators. Despite this pressure, participation in the strike was substantial. On May 1, around 340,000 workers took part in strikes and demonstrations across the country. Chicago was at the center of events, with more than 80,000 workers marching in what was one of the largest labor mobilizations of the time.
https://www.idcommunism.com/2026/05/140-years-since-haymarket-affair-in-chicago-struggle-for-the-eight-hour-day.htmlOn May 1, Let Us Go To the May Day Squares in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan! — MLKPIt is banned for the working people to celebrate May 1 in the square they deem most suitable in the cities. It is prohibited for the workers to gather in Istanbul at Kazancı Hill to commemorate the martyrs of May 1, 1977. General strikes and solidarity strikes are forbidden for the workers. It is also forbidden for them to set up protest tents in front of factories or workplaces. Workers are forbidden from preventing the bosses from transporting goods out of striking or protesting workplaces. Strikes against workplace accidents, solidarity strikes, or general strikes are also banned. Taksim Square is closed for March 8, November 25, and Newroz for women and Kurds. Students are banned from resistance and boycotts. Mothers who have lost their children are denied access to the Saturday Mothers’ square.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/32124/Biggest May Day in Decades Rocks Trump’s America In just the last year, the United States has witnessed not one, not two, but three separate days of record-breaking demonstrations. In June, October, and March, millions of people participated in No Kings Rallies across the country to show their opposition to Trump’s reactionary authoritarian agenda, ICE, and the war on Iran. Those marches, each bigger than the previous, were the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history. Today’s May Day demonstrations, though not as large, were a continuation of this trend of mass mobilization. The marches, walkouts, direct actions, and economic blackouts, which took place in more than 40 cities across the country, were all part of one of the largest May Days since at least 2006, when more than one million workers participated in a “Day without Immigrants.”
https://www.leftvoice.org/biggest-may-day-in-decades-rocks-trumps-america/The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx Chapter III (Defeat of Petty-bourgeois democracy) On May 28, 1849, the Legislative National Assembly met. On December 2, 1851, it was dispersed. This period covers the span of life of the constitutional, or parliamentary, republic. In the first French Revolution the rule of the Constitutionalists is followed by the rule of the Girondists and the rule of the Girondists by the rule of the Jacobins. Each of these parties relies on the more progressive party for support. As soon as it has brought the revolution far enough to be unable to follow it further, still less to go ahead of it, it is thrust aside by the bolder ally that stands behind it and sent to the guillotine. The revolution thus moves along an ascending line. It is the reverse with the Revolution of 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage of the petty-bourgeois-democratic party. It is betrayed and dropped by the latter on April 16, May 15,[90] and in the June days. The democratic party, in its turn, leans on the shoulders of the bourgeois-republican party. The bourgeois republicans no sooner believe themselves well established than they shake off the troublesome comrade and support themselves on the shoulders of the party of Order. The party of Order hunches its shoulders, lets the bourgeois republicans tumble, and throws itself on the shoulders of armed force. It fancies it is still sitting on those shoulders when one fine morning it perceives that the shoulders have transformed themselves into bayonets. Each party kicks from behind at the one driving forward, and leans over in front toward the party which presses backward. No wonder that in this ridiculous posture it loses its balance and, having made the inevitable grimaces, collapses with curious gyrations. The revolution thus moves in a descending line. It finds itself in this state of retrogressive motion before the last February barricade has been cleared away and the first revolutionary authority constituted.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm