Happy holiday to all those who raise their voices and march today, as well as to those who, during breaks from turning spit and pulling cold beer, at least for a moment remember what this is all about and why we even celebrate May 1st.
To those who will only stuff themselves and get drunk today, I wish that they wake up tomorrow bloated and hungover, and continue to serve those they served yesterday. Whether physically or mentally, it’s all the same.
And for those who don’t know, it all started on this day, in 1886, right here at Haymarket in Chicago, when the police began dispersing the proletarians who were demanding to work 8 hours instead of 10, 12, or 14… Blood was shed, lives were lost on both sides, but the goal was achieved. And the bosses had to come up with more insidious ways to exploit the workforce.
Many years later, the proletarians of the Balkans flipped the game, with the slogan: “You can’t pay me as little as I can work as little.”
Later, self-management got the best of us because there was no wisdom in our heads. And some heads, again, thought: “Wait, why shouldn’t what’s ours today be mine tomorrow?” But that’s another story…
Fun fact: In Chicago, where it all started 139 years ago, today no one celebrates, and in fact, very few even know why this date is significant.
But how come the Americans don’t celebrate May 1st, even though it was originally suggested by the American Federation of Labor as the International Labor Day, in memory of the Chicago martyrs?
The trick is that American unionists, who had already struck deals with the state, and a little later with the mafia, didn’t want to celebrate or remind people of the bloodshed, so they placed their Labor Day (Labor Day) with no significant reason on the first Monday of September, figuring it was the best time, somewhere halfway between the other two major holidays, July 4th and Thanksgiving, just enough time to sober up and recover for the next drunken festivity.
Moral of the story: If America had the (mis)fortune of contracting communism and becoming a proletarian country, as Charlie Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, and all those communists in Hollywood who were taken down by McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover desperately wanted… America would today be the Balkans!
Long live, long live labor! 💪
MORE TOPICS:
COLUMN, KOVAČEVIĆ: On the police, batons, revolution and its children…
ALL MEMBERS OF OUR TEAM WON MEDALS: Six medals for Serbia at the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad!
Source: Antonije Kovačević Foto: Britannica