Brochure on the history of MayDay: "Chicago, mai 1886" [In French only]
Where does the habit of organizing demonstration every May 1st comes from? Warm weather, blooming flowers, or just the need to walk around? Nothing of the sort, even if it can helps... In reality this date is a symbol for unions everywhere, the remembrance of the struggle of American workers for the 8-hour days taking place at the end of the XIXth century. On May 1st 1886, a general strike took place across the whole country to fight for this social gain, at the price of a ferocious repression and the death or imprisonment of some of their spokespeople within the city of Chicago. MayDay, the day of fighting for the rights of workers, was born... The Syndicat interprofessionnel de la presse et des médias (SIPM) and th Syndicat unifié du bâtiment (SUB) of the Parisian CNT area decided to create a collection of multiple brochures for union education, about historical subjects, social rights, how the CNT works, etc. Distributed freely in order to ensure that the knowledge would be available to all, and because the construction of a self-managed, revolutionary and emancipatory union can only be possible through this mean: education for revolt, for emancipation, for freedom.
The original brochure was rebuilt by the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC-"Montréal") for a distribution in Québec. The CLAC remade this brochure to fit with local paper formats, but did not have time to correct its content. The brochure is distributed in order to inform on the factual historical events of May 1st, which is very much lacking in our current community. It would however need an important effort in order to add feminist and anti-colonial aspects, which would greatly improve its content.
- Brochure in PDF format [28 Mo, in French only]
