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Antiwork

1 St of May, a text by Eduardo Galeano.

Chicago is full of factories. There are factories right in the center of the city, around the tallest building in the world. Chicago is full of factories, Chicago is full of workers. Arriving in the neighborhood of Heymarket, I ask my friends to show me the place where they were hanged, in 1886, those workers that the whole world salutes every first of May. “It has to be around here,” they tell me. But nobody knows. No statue has been erected to him in memory of the Chicago martyrs in the city of Chicago. No statue, no monolith, no bronze plaque, no nothing. The first of May is the only truly universal day for all of humanity, the only day where all the histories and all the geographies, all the languages ​​and religions and cultures of the world coincide; but in the United States, the first of May is an…


Chicago is full of factories. There are factories right in the center of the city, around the tallest building in the world. Chicago is full of factories, Chicago is full of workers. Arriving in the neighborhood of Heymarket, I ask my friends to show me the place where they were hanged, in 1886, those workers that the whole world salutes every first of May. “It has to be around here,” they tell me. But nobody knows. No statue has been erected to him in memory of the Chicago martyrs in the city of Chicago. No statue, no monolith, no bronze plaque, no nothing. The first of May is the only truly universal day for all of humanity, the only day where all the histories and all the geographies, all the languages ​​and religions and cultures of the world coincide; but in the United States, the first of May is an ordinary day. That day, people work normally, and no one, or almost no one, remembers that the rights of the working class have not sprung from the ear of a goat, nor from the hand of God or the master. After the useless exploration of Heymarket, my friends take me to see the best bookstore in town. And there, out of sheer curiosity, by sheer chance, I discover an old poster that is like waiting for me, tucked in among many other movie and rock music posters. The poster reproduces a proverb from Africa: Until lions have their own historians, hunting stories will continue to glorify the hunter.

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