UPDATES: Occupy: May Day is Marked Around the World with Demands for Stronger Labor Rights

[HiPointDem]

85. May Day was the old labor holiday, & still is in Europe. Occupy is taking it back.

On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. Between April 25 and May 4, workers attended scores of meetings and paraded through the streets at least 19 times. On Saturday, May 1, 35,000 workers walked off their jobs. Tens of thousands more, both skilled and unskilled, joined them on May 3 and 4. Crowds traveled from workplace to workplace urging fellow workers to strike. Many now adopted the radical demand of eight hours' work for ten hours' pay. Police clashed with strikers at least a dozen times, three with shootings....

Inspired by the American movement for a shorter workday, socialists and unionists around the world began celebrating May 1, or “May Day,” as an international workers' holiday. In the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries officially adopted it... American observance was strongest in the decade before World War I. During the Cold War, many Americans saw May Day as a Communist holiday, and President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as “Loyalty Day” in 1955...

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html