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From: giacomet@haley.ecn.purdue.edu (  )
Newsgroups: soc.culture.french,trial.soc.culture.italian,soc.history,soc.misc
Subject: Re: May Day
Message-ID: <1991May2.191553.12139@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 2 May 91 19:15:53 GMT
References: <2607@amethyst.math.arizona.edu> <1991May2.141435.4390@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> <1991May2.180348.21097@lgc.com>
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In article <1991May2.180348.21097@lgc.com> cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
>In article <1991May2.141435.4390@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> giacomet@haley.ecn.purdue.edu (  ) writes:
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>> La chose bizare est que, si vous allez a` Chicago, toute trace, ou
>>meme reference a` cet evenement a disparu. Meme le nom de la place
>>et les rues ont change'; cela s'etait passe' vers le bas de Michigan.
>>Meme pas une plaque, et la plupart des habitants de Chicago ne connaissent
>>pas l'evenement non plus. Un bel exemple d'escamotage historique a` mon
>>avis. C'est vrai que, au jour ou` les "heritage" and "rememberance" days
>>sont a` la mode aux E.U., la celebration d'un tel evenement dans
>>l'Illinois serait potentiellement dangereux.
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>Je la doute.  At least one of us misjudges the character
>of Chicago.  It's part of the assimilationist character
>of the USA not to know how to hold grudges the way folks
>do in Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, Peru, Vietnam, ...

Could you be more specific ? What sort of grudges ? Why these countries ?

Anyway, I do not think "grudges" are really the issue, but that,
in a city where even the wall in front of which Dallinger was
killed by the mob (at the Biograph theater) has its plaque
commemorative, and where every body knows where the St Valentin slaughter
took place, and what were the location of the high-feats of Al-Capone,
I would say that, the place of the killing of striking workers by
the armed police forces, from which the May Day celebration was issued,
has its place.

 There are numerous commemorative plaques all over the place in this city, 
almost for the firt anything: first whiteman wintering, first anglo-whites 
massacred by indians, first building, first skyscraper etc... 
If find it disturbing, if not malsain, that May 1st should not also 
have its own.
 
>The genetic descendants of the nineteenth-century marchers
>are likely to be commodity exchange runners and hospital
>administrators; those of the police perhaps airplane

 Certainly not all of them !! Who runs the factories and the mines
out there ? Anyway, this is irrelevant. Are the people celebrating
it worldwide "genetic descendants" of the victims ? Do you need be one
to celebrate ?

>pilots and electrical contractors.  If we held a May Day
>demonstration today, who would fire on whom?  There's

Why do you want a fireshot again ? Why should it be directed against
somebody. Mayday demonstrations are not violent anywhere, it is
a symbol, which is carefully escamoted in Chicago.

>certainly plenty of violence in Cook County, but not over
>such archaic conflicts as (nineteenth-century style)
>"class struggle".

I don't think it was a "class strugle", since Chicago never really had
an upper-class. It is a young, modern, and popular city. I don't think
the issue is in these terms.


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