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Join us November 11th, the 138th anniversary of the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs by the state of Illinois, as we mark the return to print of The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists, edited and organized by Lucy Parsons and now with a new introduction from David Roediger. In the midst of an ever growing fascist storm, our friends at AK Press have brought this long out of print classic back to the bookshelves so we might gather new lessons for our time.

We'll honor the lives of the martyrs who fought for a better world with an evening of dramatic readings from their rousing speeches by friends of the store. We're thrilled to welcome Juan Gonzalez, Lilia Fernandez, Eman Abdelhadi, Zhandarka Kurti, and Jarrod Shanahan to help us bring the spirit of the martyrs back to Chicago and build community for the struggles to come.

On May 1, 1886, Albert and Lucy Parsons led upwards of 80,000 striking workers and their supporters through the streets of Chicago. Across the country workers were advocating for the eight-hour day. On May 3, police killed two striking workers on the west side of Chicago. In response, a rally was called for May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. There a bomb was thrown, eventually killing seven policeman and wounding dozens of others. Eight anarchists were accused: four were hanged, two had their sentences commuted, one served six years, and one died by suicide in his cell. Accused and convicted of conspiracy, the state of Illinois couldn't prove any of them threw the bomb, so they instead tried to kill the anarchist movement. This miscarriage of justice ignited labor movements across the United States and around the world. Collected here are the voices of the accused from their sentencing in the fall of 1886.

For decades after Albert was hanged, Lucy Parsons carried on her husband's legacy through writing, public speaking, and publishing The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists. The chilling and defiant words of the accused--six of whom were not even at Haymarket Square the night of the bombing--are gripping still, these many years later.

David R. Roediger teaches American Studies at University of Kansas. He is the author of many books, most recently An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education and the co-editor, with Franklin Rosemont, of The Haymarket Scrapbook.

Juan González is a Senior Research Fellow at Great Cities Institute at UIC and co-host of the beloved Democracy Now! He was a staff columnist for New York’s The Daily News for nearly thirty years and a professor at Rutgers University. He is the author of many books including Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America and News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

Lilia Fernández is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Chicago and author of Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago, focused on the migration and settlement of these two populations in the city’s central neighborhoods and the communities they formed.

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, organizer and writer. She is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She is a tireless movement organizer in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, Black Lives Matter, counter-surveillance and abolitionism, marxist feminist mobilization as well as workplace struggles. She is the co-author of the speculative fiction, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072.

Jarrod Shanahan is Associate Professor at Governors State University and the author of many books including Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage and most recently, Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help: A Decade of Rebellion, Reform, and Morbid Symptoms. He is the co-author of several books including Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City. He is an editor of Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity: A Noel Ignatiev Reader and was a founding editor of the journal Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life.

Zhandarka Kurti is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University in Chicago. She is the co-author of Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City and co-editor of Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity: A Noel Ignatiev Reader. She was a postdoctoral fellow at New York University’s Prison Education Program where she taught sociology courses to incarcerated students at Wallkill Correctional Facility.