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Click on the images to see them in larger form. These banners probably date from the anarchist Thanksgiving protest rallies of November 1884 and 1885. On the former occasion, a few thousand demonstrators assembled in Market Square to listen to speakers including future Haymarket co-defendants Albert Parsons, August Spies, Michael Schwab, and Samuel Fielden remind them of the ironies of the exploited classes giving thanks. Listeners were told that they were forced to live in the "misery, destitution and poverty" referred to in these banners, while their "capitalistic Christian brothers" feasted on turkey and champagne paid for with the sweat of the workers. The demonstrators then set off on a parade past the homes of the wealthy. For the anarchist view of this event, see People's Exhibit 29, an article from the Alarm of November 29, 1884, in the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection. In his trial testimony, Chicago Daily News reporter Harry Wilkinson said that at the 1885 Thanksgiving demonstration Parsons "advised the workingmen who were present—and there were several hundred there—to stand together and to use force in securing their rights. He told them that they were slaves; that out of a possible earning of a certain sum of money that the percentage that they got was very small, too small; that it ought to be more of an even divide with the man who employed them." The banner that warns the "capitalistic robbers" that "we their victims have not yet strangled them" is an unintended premonition of the fate awaiting Parsons and Spies. |