May 1 is International Workers' Day or Labour Day UNLESS ---

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 5:00am

It's Day 114 of the Year 2019 CE (Gregorian), meaning that it's April 24, 2019 (Gregorian), or 13.0.6.7.15 by the long count


W.D. Haywood leads Lowell strike parade (LOC)

May 1 is International Workers' Day or Labour Day UNLESS you live in the US, where you have a choice of celebrating either
LAW DAY or LOYALTY DAY. Both were created to offset and stand as a rejection of Labor Day, and will no doubt soon be fused into one with the motto Loyalty - It's The Law and all residents and visitors will be required to parade around waving US flags. Really, May 1 1884 saw the proclamation of the demand for an eight-hour workday in the United States. May 1, 1886 saw rallies held throughout the United States demanding the eight-hour work day which culminated in the Haymarket affair, in commemoration of which May 1 is now celebrated as International Workers' Day in many other countries, but not here. Instead, the US is lucky it didn't get "shoot the striking miners day" or somesuch. Ptui!

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I will be unavailable, but will celebrate Labor Day in a proper manner.

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Originally a Wobbly song until they broke the Wobblies through oppression, terrorism, frame-ups and murders
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Image is WD Haywood Leading the Lowell Strike Parade from the Library of Congress - no known copyight restrictions

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Its an open thread so have at it. The floor is yours
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May 1
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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 5:55am

run by the elites seem to be able to buy-off red card leaders. There is a need to organize across trades and job sectors. How to avoid too much corruption at the top? Another challenge we face.

Bon dia all!

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 6:37am
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Also known as May Eve, May Day, and Walpurgis Night, happens at the beginning of May. It celebrates the height of Spring and the flowering of life. The Goddess manifests as the May Queen and Flora. The God emerges as the May King and Jack in the Green. The danced Maypole represents Their unity, with the pole itself being the God and the ribbons that encompass it, the Goddess. Colors are the Rainbow spectrum. Beltane is a festival of flowers, fertility, sensuality, and delight.

https://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.php/celebrating-the-seasons/beltan...

The annual pagan-inspired Beltane Fire festival in Edinburgh has been overhauled this year to highlight climate change. The May Queen, who is the central character in the performance on Calton Hill, will be seen expressing her rage at the damage done to the Earth. It is right to grieve. Grief is a sign of love, and the Earth we love is dying.

"This year's Beltane reflects that grief. The May Queen - embodiment of the Earth - arises this year, not as the perfect flower of tradition, but as the Earth as it truly is - covered with plastic, oil spills, and on fire.

"She is angry, She is sad. She is grieving for what is lost."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-48106497
pictures here
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/retro/beltane-fire-festival-2019-...

Wishing you all a good day celebrating workers and the planet!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by skod on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 8:30am
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@Lookout Beautiful wording: I needed to hear that today, and I will forward the link immediately to my wife- who has family in Edinburgh. Thanks for that, and have a great day!

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Submitted by Hawkfish on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 10:05am
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@Lookout

Beltane and several other familiar days (groundhog day, Halloween) are situated halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes and are called “quarter days”. They roughly correspond to when the sun’s progression slows down. The periods between these days are then a kind of “solar season”, where the days are similar lengths in summer and winter, but change rapidly in spring and autumn.

So happy summer everyone!

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 12:08pm
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@Hawkfish @skod

the four corners. What most people refer to as midsummers day is the solstice and start of summer.

The holidays or Sabbats are representations of the start of each season and mid-way points between them. They are split evenly throughout the year.

They are referred to as pagan holidays as they hold roots in the pagan religions of the Celtic and Germanic pagans. Wiccan observe these days as Sabbats. Although the word Sabbat holds roots in Judaism and Hebrew, in reference to the Wiccan religion, it originates from the word Sabbath, which means a meeting or gathering to practice rituals and rites.

https://exemplore.com/paganism/Wheel-of-the-Year-The-Eight-Pagan-Holidays

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by lotlizard on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 3:57am
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@Lookout  
In Germany and the Netherlands, it’s this brand of organic spice mixes I always buy.

https://www.beltane.de

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 7:05am
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May Day, or May 1, has many meanings, in my experience. When I was a grade-schooler in Chicago, it was the day on which the officially Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union paraded its military might in Moscow’s Red Square. It was a reminder that there was another military superpower on the planet besides the United States.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-many-sided-overlapping-meanings-of...

And a great May Day story from Stephen Cohen.

In 1989, the Gorbachev government–Gorbachev was then the leader of the Soviet Union–published my biography of Nikolai Bukharin, because Bukharin had been rehabilitated. And the Gorbachev government saw him as the authentic Leninist alternative to Stalin, because Gorbachev was repudiating the old Stalinist era. Not all of it, but most of it, and the terror and the rest.

So the book was published, I think in 200,000 copies, and became a sensation. And because of that the Gorbachev government asked me–I couldn’t believe it–to speak for three minutes on Red Square on May Day. Can you imagine? What am I doing? A kid from Kentucky speaking on national television to the Soviet people? On May Day? I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t. I thought it wasn’t appropriate. All my Russian friends said, “You have to do it.” So I did it. And afterwards we gathered at a friend’s home, and we were all reflecting on this strange event. And the question came up, “Steve, how did you end up on Red Square speaking, having grown up in Kentucky?

https://therealnews.com/stories/from-jim-crow-kentucky-to-red-square-rai...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by mimi on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 9:11am
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@Lookout
between Paul Jay and Stephen Cohen. I watched the whole part 4 of this serious and the part you quoted stuck in my mind. It's great to listen to Cohen's stories.
[video:https://youtu.be/ccKq9d5McCU]

I will have to look for the whole series and listen to part 1 to 3 again.
Thanks for the post.

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Submitted by Azazello on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 10:32am
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@mimi
I'm going to have to watch Part 4 again. Somewhere in there Cohen talks about his mentor at university who he claims wrote the best biography of Joseph Stalin. I'm reading a new one right now, by Stephen Kotkin. I'm 2/3 through it. It's a trilogy and the final volume hasn't been released yet. I'll read the one Cohen recommends too, if I can find it.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 7:35am

I've posted a couple three essays here about how and why May 1 became international workers day and why Democratic President Grover Cleveland did not want the US to celebrate Labor Day on May 1.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/may-1-holy-day-obligation-90-buy-not...

https://caucus99percent.com/content/why-us-celebrates-labor-day-september

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Submitted by magiamma on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 7:54am
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Wherever you are. And everyone...

Thanks for the ot. Itty bitty travel day for me. Over the hill. Short and sweet.

Have a good one all...

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Submitted by The Aspie Corner on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 7:56am
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Gotta love Right-to-Work for less, as MLK Jr. called it.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Submitted by Azazello on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 8:53am
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50 weeks, actually, for jumping bail. BBC

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Submitted by mimi on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 9:44am
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Chris Hedges wrote the story of 'The last Battle' of the THE BEAVER LAKE CREE NATION.

The Cree have been under relentless assault since the arrival of the European colonialists in the 1500s. Now the 500 inhabitants of the Cree reserve, where many live in small, boxy prefabricated houses, are victims of a new iteration of colonial exploitation, one centered on the extraction of oil from the vast Alberta tar sands. This atrocity presages the destruction of the ecosystem on which they depend for life. If the Cree do not stop the exploiters this time, they, along with the exploiters, will die.

This essay is worth reading from beginning to end. If we just could learn from the Cree's wisdom.

The more the Cree recover their traditions to defy the capitalist mantra of hoarding, profit, exploitation, self-promotion and commodification of human beings and the earth, the more their life has an intrinsic value rather than a monetary value. This recovery is the antidote to despair. It grounds the Cree spiritually. It permits transcendence. It at once estranges them from reality and brings them closer to it. Resistance is not only about challenging the extraction companies in court, as the Cree have done in trying to block the tar sands industry and the pipelines from their traditional land; it is about holding fast to another orientation to reality, one that we all must adopt if we are to survive as a species. It is about the recovery of the sacred. The white exploiters seek not only to steal the land and natural resources and commit genocide against indigenous communities but to wipe out this competing ethic.

It's difficult these times not to think about suicide. Read the article to the end and you will understand why.

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 12:10pm
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@mimi

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”