[Peace-discuss] Can't happen here? Already did.

[Ricky Baldwin]

Here's a story of mass hysteria, fear-mongering, loss
of civil rights, and people executed for their
political beliefs -- just up the road in Chicago --
over a century ago.  

Sound familiar?  It's also about how better tuned the
rest of the world can be to American affairs and how
long it can take to finally set the record straight.  

A more timely story I can't imagine.
Ricky

P.S. I went looking for this site myself about 4-5
years ago, and I finally found it, but didn't find the
plaque.  I did ask around on that very street corner,
and nobody knew anything.  In fact, when I told them
it was a world-famous incident, they were amazed to
hear of it.  If I had had a video camera I could have
made a great documentary -- or spent 15 years in
prison.


Haymarket memorial to be unveiled at last Sept 14
> 
> > 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?"
> > =========================
> > * [Ed. note: They are still reluctant to admit the
> > "bomb"
> > was the work of a provecatore.]
> > 
> > 
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