May Day, or International Workers' Day, was established in commemoration of the Haymarket Affair. It is celebrated annually with workers' strikes, mass protests, and, in some countries, paid holidays. It is a historic holiday to celebrate the rights of workers and ensure that those rights are being respected worldwide.

Last Friday, President Trump announced that May 1st would be renamed "Loyalty Day" to demonstrate a "commitment to American values." For a day with a history of oppressed workers rising up to question systems of exploitation, "loyalty" to existing systems sounds like the exact opposite.

He renamed International Workers' Day to "Loyalty Day"?
Are you for real?

Here's some brief context for how offensive that actually is.

May Day began to commemorate the Haymarket affair, the site of a Chicago workers' rights demonstration turned bloody in 1886.

On May 1, 1886, (think: peak of the Industrial Revolution and exploitative labor conditions) Chicago workers went on strike to demand an 8-hour workday.

Over the next several days of demonstrations, police grew violent against the working class strikers.

Several protesters were wounded or killed by the police.

Police began to forcibly break up meetings of labor union activists.

The conflict came to its peak when, in a confrontation between police and strikers, an unidentified civilian threw a bomb.

The Haymarket Affair ignited dormant fury and frustration within the broader labor movement, and in 1889, May 1 was declared International Workers' Day. The eight-hour workday itself wasn't recognized until 1916 after years of strikes and protests.

The Haymarket Affair has a bloody and tragic history of how ugly and painful the workers' rights movements have been in this country.

May Day is a day to be thankful for the rights we have, and it is a day to continue to stand up for those rights and question anyone who should try to convince us that we deserve otherwise.

Its accomplishments include not just the 8-hour-workday, but a history of many other economic and social reforms in the U.S..

In 2006, Latino Immigrant groups launched the "Great American Boycott to protest the discriminatory bill H.R. 4437 on May Day. The protesters launched a mass general strike of supporters to abstain from work, school, buying, selling, or conducting business. The effect was unprecedented. The General Strike and mass protests on May Day inspired a series of other marches across the nation, and on May 25 Congress passed another bill on immigration reform.

The history of May Day to express and defend the power of the workers' voice is a time-honored American tradition.

In 2008, the International Longshare and Warehouse Union announced that no dockworkers would move cargo from any West Coast ports in protest of the Iraq War and its diversion of American resources away from domestic needs.

In 2010, millions of immigrants marched again to protest another discriminatory bill, this time Arizona Senate Bill 1070, in New York, Boston, Albany, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

In 2012, on May Day, Occupy Wall Street protested economic inequality and the need for economic reforms.

It also the day in several countries (including Kenya, Canada, Brazil and others) where the minimum wage for the nation is generally annually re-adjusted for inflation and economic reforms are discussed.

In a world with growing income inequality, stagnant wages, and social unrest, we should be encouraging protest- because protest gets things done. Common people using their voices to speak out against oppression is a time-tested tradition that has won us so many of the rights we have today.

If International Workers' Day is to be a day of "loyalty," it should be loyalty to ourselves and each other, and loyalty to the rights we know we deserve. We owe loyalty only to human principles of justice which supersede those of any transient time, nation, or political system- and it is our duty to continue to fight for those rights.

There is a lot of fear surrounding the somewhat cliche rallying cry "Workers of the world, unite!" but perhaps, in an era of unapologetic exploitation which shows no signs of relief, that is exactly what we must do.