We have been here before, and this time we finish what we started.
On May 1st, 1886, in what was the largest worker mobilization in United States history up to that point, over 300,000 workers across the country went on strike or walked off the job. They weren’t asking for the moon. They were demanding something simple yet radical: “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will.”
They were workers who often labored sixteen hours a day. They were immigrants, formerly enslaved people, skilled tradespeople and factory workers. In Chicago alone, 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue. Peacefully. Powerfully. Together.
The powerful did not like it.
On May 3rd, police attacked and killed picketing workers outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. The following day, workers gathered peacefully in Haymarket Square to protest the violence. A bomb exploded. Police opened fire into the crowd. Workers and officers died. Eight labor leaders were arrested — most of whom weren’t even present at the square.
The trial that followed was a farce. The jury was packed with businessmen and a relative of a dead officer. No proof was offered that any of the eight men had thrown the bomb or even approved of such acts. The judge was biased. The verdict was predetermined and four men were hanged, one of whom—August Spies—declared from the gallows, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.”
140 years later, that day has come as Americans of goodwill participate in a General Strike on Friday, May 1st, 2026.
Today Is Different
What we do this Friday bears no resemblance to the dangers working people faced in 1886. We gather in peace, protected by the very constitutional rights those martyrs helped secure — the right to assemble, the right to speak, the right to be heard. No one will be shot for showing up. No one will be hanged for raising their voice.
We honor their sacrifice best not by fearing the streets but by filling them — peacefully, joyfully, and with the full force of our democratic rights. This is what they died for. The least we can do is use it.
What They Died For
In 1889 the Haymarket martyrs were commemorated in the designation of May 1st as International Workers’ Day — celebrated in nations around the world, but not in the United States. President Grover Cleveland, fearing the power of May Day, deliberately moved America’s Labor Day to September to erase its radical roots.
They tried to bury the history. They did not bury the struggle.
Today the billionaire class is doing to working Americans what the factory owners of 1886 did. Squeezing every hour, every dollar, every right. Rigging the system. Counting on our silence.
They miscalculated then. They are miscalculating now.
Eight Million Americans Cannot Be Ignored
We are not starting from zero. On March 28, 2026 — No Kings Day — an estimated eight million Americans took to the streets across more than 3,300 locations nationwide, making it the largest single-day protest in American history. Two thirds of those rallies happened outside major urban centers — in conservative-leaning states, in small towns, in places the powerful assumed were safely silent.
They assumed wrong.
Now May Day calls us to take that collective power one step further. Showing up in the streets is powerful, but hitting the billionaire class in their wallets is where they truly feel us. No work. No school. No shopping. No gas gill-ups. Every dollar withheld is a vote they cannot buy. Every empty store, every quiet gas station, every closed wallet is a message no court can silence. Together our economic power speaks a language they cannot ignore.
This Friday, the Lowcountry Shows Up
May Day Strong is organizing a nationwide day of action under the banner “Workers Over Billionaires” — strikes, rallies and walkouts with a simple message: No Work. No School. No Shopping.
The Lowcountry answers that call.
📍 Hutchinson Square · Main St. & Doty Ave., Downtown Summerville
📅 Friday, May 1st, 2026
⏰ 4:00 PM — 7:00 PM
Come learn what YOU can do to protect the rights of working people in South Carolina and across this nation. Come stand where 300,000 workers stood before us — on the right side of history.
What Our Voices Together Say to the Billionaires
We know your game. We have always known your game.
You buy the courts. You buy the Congress. You squeeze our wages, gut our rights, and call it freedom. You have done this before. In 1886 you hanged men for asking for an eight-hour day.
But here is what 140 years of history has proven — working people who meet their moment with courage inspire movements for change that outlast every attempt to silence them.
You did not silence August Spies. You did not silence Lucy Parsons. You will not silence us.
The bottom line. The day has come. Our voices together are more powerful than anything you are throttling. See you in the square. 💙