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At a labor convention held in October 1884,  unions unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard.  When May 1, 1886 approached, U.S. labor unions prepared for a general strike in support of the eight-hour day.

Rallies were held throughout the United States.  It has been estimated that the total number of striking U.S. workers was somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000.  The movement was centered in Chicago where an estimated 40,000 workers went on strike.  The founder of the International Working People’s Association was Albert Parsons.  He, along with his wife and children, led a march of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue.

On May 3, striking workers in Chicago rallied at McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant where union molders had been locked out since early February.  When the bell rang marking the end of the workday a group of striking workers surged to the gates to confront strikebreakers. Despite calls for the workers to remain calm, gunfire erupted as police fired on the crowd.  In the end, two McCormick workers were killed

Outraged by the police violence, local anarchists quickly printed and distributed fliers calling for a rally the next day at Haymarket Square.  These fliers alleged that police had murdered the strikers on behalf of business interests.  Some of the fliers said, “Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!”

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It’s true. If your idea of healthy human relations is a dinner with friends, where everyone enjoys everyone else’s company, responsibilities are divided up voluntarily and informally, and no one gives orders or sells anything, then you are an anarchist, plain and simple. The only question that remains is how you can arrange for more of your interactions to resemble this model.

Whenever you act without waiting for instructions or official permission, you are an anarchist. Any time you bypass a ridiculous regulation when no one’s looking, you are an anarchist. If you don’t trust the government, the school system, Hollywood, or the management to know better than you when it comes to things that affect your life, that’s anarchism, too. And you are especially an anarchist when you come up with your own ideas and initiatives and solutions.

As you can see, it’s anarchism that keeps things working and life interesting. If we waited for authorities and specialists and technicians to take care of everything, we would not only be in a world of trouble, but dreadfully bored—and boring—to boot. Today we live in that world of (dreadfully boring!) trouble precisely to the extent that we abdicate responsibility and control.

Anarchism is naturally present in every healthy human being. It isn’t necessarily about throwing bombs or wearing black masks, though you may have seen that on television (Do you believe everything you see on television? That’s not anarchist!). The root of anarchism is the simple impulse to do it yourself: everything else follows from this.

Click here for the entire Anarchist Primer in pdf (13 pages)

We dropped out of school, got divorced, broke with our families and ourselves and everything we’d known.

We quit our jobs, violated our leases, threw all our furniture out on the sidewalk, and hit the road.

We sat on the swings of children’s playgrounds until our toes were frostbitten, admiring the moonlight on the dewy grass, writing poetry on the wind for each other.

We went to bed early and lay awake until well past dawn recounting all the awful things we’d done to others and they to us—and laughing, blessing and absolving each other and this crazy cosmos.

We stole into museums showing reruns of old Guy Debord films to write fight foul and faster, my friend, the old world is behind you on the backs of theater seats.

The scent of gasoline still fresh on our hands, we watched the new sun rise, and spoke in hushed voices about what we should do next, thrilling in the budding consciousness of our own limitless power.

We used stolen calling card numbers to talk our teenage lovers through phone sex from telephones in the lobbies of police stations. Read more »

-Emma Goldman

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man. Read more »