On May Day we paid our respects to the Haymarket Martyrs, the outside agitators.
Yesterday was the International Workers Holiday, May Day.
As we do every year, our family drove out to Forest Park in suburban Chicago to pay our respects to the many revolutionaries and particularly the Haymarket Martys: Samuel Fielden, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel, who were sentenced to death, and one, Oscar Neebe, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
If you don’t know about the Haymarket Affair you can Google it and there is tons of information on the internet.
You probably didn’t learn much or anything about them in school.
Yesterday I also heard the Mayor of New York talking about the assault by the NYPD on Hamilton Hall. Hamilton Hall was occupied by students and supporters who oppose the university’s investments in Israel.
The Mayor said the cops were necessary because the protesters included non-students, outside agitators and, laughably, “professional agitators”.
No. The professional agitators The Mayor was speaking of wasn’t the NYPD.
The hundreds of New York cops did not belong on the Columbia campus. Their presence definitely resulted in violence.
Nor was he referring to the Zionist thugs that attacked the encampment at UCLA.
None of them were arrested.
In truth I don’t know who The Mayor was talking about.
I wasn’t at Columbia University these last few days.
But, I am an outside agitator.
I once was an inside agitator.
As a student, a factory worker, a union teacher.
But I’m retired now and so all my agitating is outside.
When I retired from teaching and was no longer an active union teacher I made it a point to walk picket lines whenever there was a local teachers strike.
Walking picket lines is a great activity for retirees.
Among other things it is great exercise.
But it will make you an outside agitator.
But not a paid one, however.
Nobody is going to pay us.