Haymarket Monument, Waldheim Cemetary

ABRAMS, Irving S. (1891-1980)Haymarket Square Tragedy (Chicago, Ill., USA, 1886)album

The Waldheim cemetery is now included in the town of Forest Park, west of Chicago, and is bordered on the north by the Eisenhower expressway.
The monument is the legacy of Irving S. Abrams, the sole surviving member ot the organization which had erected the Monument and dedicated it on June 25, 1893. It is now held in trust by the Illinois Labor History Society,which endeavors to remove any traces of its historical anarchist message [1]. As for the Chicago Historical Society, it shows how historians distort facts when they are at the service of powerful state and economic interests. Its home page on the tragedy is illustrated with a misrepresentation of the event by one of the local newspapers of the time: the anarchist orators were peaceful and none fired at the police.
Such historical distortions are symptoms of the permanent fears of the ruling classes. As said August Spies, one of the condemned men, to his judge:
"If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand."

[1On Sept. 14, 2004, a monument was erected in Chicago at the site of the Haymarket Massacre.

"This year’s large sculpture and the celebration that followed were a total misrepresentation of the heroic class struggle that led to the Haymarket Massacre. This was a whitewash, a cover-up of the bosses’ brutal response in collusion with the repressive capitalist state.

It took two years of discussion by a committee composed of labor officials, police brass, capitalist historians and city bureaucrats to agree to a theme. According to Tim Samuelson, a historian and a member of the committee, "The unifying theme is it’s a tragedy—a human tragedy of people under difficult circumstances—reacting to something beyond their control."

The circumstances were not "beyond their control." It had been a planned, unprovoked police attack. The Chicago police, under orders, fired wildly into the crowd from different directions.

The dead included at least four workers and seven police, most of the latter probably killed in their own crossfire. Many workers, women and men, as well as children, were wounded—clubbed, crushed and trampled in the melee.

In an inflamed atmosphere of anti-union violence, there followed widespread arrests of class-conscious workers, anarchists and socialists, who had been rallying to support a bitter strike caused by a lockout by the McCormick Harvester Works Corp. The New York Tribune the next day trumpeted this monstrous lie: "The mob appeared crazed with a frantic desire for blood and holding its ground, poured volley after volley into the midst of the officers."

Ruling-class violence was on the agenda even before the Haymarket police riot. The bosses and the city had mobilized the National Guard, increased the number of anti-labor Pinkerton thugs, and deputized special police and provocateurs to infiltrate the trade unions and the anarchist and socialist movements.

They were trying to destroy the growing militancy that was moving toward a general strike in favor of the eight-hour day.
It grew into a national reign of terror. Any strike or struggle for shorter hours, better wages and working conditions was met with widespread arrests, conspiracy charges and long-term imprisonment of the leaders and class-conscious militants.

Haymarket, a century of conflict
A few years after the bomb was thrown into the crowd, a statue of a cop was erected in Chicago. It was damaged three times and finally removed to the protected courtyard of the city’s police academy. In 1970, a plaque placed by class-conscious forces honoring the executed martyrs was stolen.

At this year’s Sept. 14 commemoration, a conflict broke out over the interpretation of the statue and the plaque. The faceless statues were an effort to include the police among the victims. The sculptor who won the assignment commented that her abstract creation intended to send a message that "the violence didn’t seem important, because this event was made up of much bigger ideas than one particular incident." Engraved on the plaque were references to free speech, public assembly, the fight for the eight-hour day, and the right of every human being to pursue an equitable and prosperous life.

A group of anarchists carrying black flags and banners correctly protested this as a betrayal of what Haymarket represents.
One of the anarchists challenged the project: "Those men who were hanged are being presented as social democrats or liberal reformers, when in fact they dedicated their whole lives to anarchy and social revolution. If they were here today, they’d be denouncing this project and everyone involved in it." (New York Times, Sept. 14)

That’s true. There cannot be any compromise or unifying theme on the meaning of the Haymarket events. It was the culmination of a decade of capitalist repression, class struggle and revolutionary activity.

At the ceremony, the true story of the bosses’ violence against the workers in collusion with the capitalist state was buried under the symbolism of class collaboration. This is unacceptable.

[…]

On Oct. 9, 1886, as the sentence of death by hanging was announced, the martyrs eloquently expressed dedication to the class struggle, not class collaboration.

Milt Neidenberg, "The struggle comes up, again and again" Workers World Sept. 30, 2004.