It’s May Day, or International Workers’ Day. How did such a holiday come about? Because people didn’t want to work sixteen hours a day (and ACAB).

According to NPR,

May Day in America was born out of the 8-hour workday movement in 19th-century Chicago. At the time, as the capitalist system gained a foothold in industrial-era America, working-class conditions had worsened. A 16-hour shift wasn’t unusual for workers at the time.

In Chicago, more than 40,000 people went on strike on May 1, 1886; strikes and clashes between protestors and police grew until May 4, when a bomb went off and police started firing into the crowd (the Haymarket affair). Eight anarchists were arrested and convicted with no evidence and four were executed.

To honor the Chicago workers, the International Socialist Conference in 1889 named May Day a labor holiday, birthing what many nations now call International Workers’ Day.

But in the U.S., anti-communist attitudes during the Cold War, as well as opposition to working-class unity, led authorities to suppress May Day’s association with labor movements.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower instead declared May 1 “Law Day” — dedicated to the principles of government under law — and Labor Day is now celebrated in September.