@Wink

between 9/21 and 9/23. And many schools have been starting before Labor Day. Besides, no one is going to forget summer.

To each his own, but I personally would rather celebrate (1) an heinous event that government tried to make me forget; and (2) in solidarity and unison with the workers of eighty other nations who time their observance to coincide with our Haymarket Affair.

commemorates last weekend of summer,
back to school. What's not to love?!

@Azazello

Libertarian (before the Libertarian Party officially existed), not to mention having been accused of rape by the mother of his illegitimate child whom he reviled publicly and a questionable "courtship" of his wife. (While, as a politician, Cleveland was the epitome of "probity," his personal life vis-à-vis women was, in general, an eyebrow raiser to say the very least.) He wasn't very good on race and voting, either.

If supporting Obama heavily in 2008 taught me anything, it was that talk is cheap and the talk of politicians may be cheapest of all talk (unless one donated heavily to Obama, which made his talk costly). With that lesson in mind, I give Cleveland very few points for what he said. What Cleveland actually did about companies and monopolistic trusts with aggregated capital was help them aggregate even more capital by high tariffs, anti-labor moves, etc. Not to mention seeking to wipe Americans' memory of the Haymarket Affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland

Theodore Roosevelt observed much of the same things that Cleveland had and became known as a "trust buster" whose administration saw the advent of anti-trust legislation. Cleveland, not so much.

Grover Cleveland wasn't as bad as some.

As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.
- Grover Cleveland, speaking on Dec. 3, 1888

@travelerxxx

I would like to see Labor Day moved to its rightful place on May first and would support legislation to that end. No doubt we could find a handful of Congress folk who would sponsor such a bill. A good side effect of this effort would be to publicly shake out true supporters of labor from those on the take.

Of course, the primary objection would be "We need a holiday at the end of summer!" To that, I would like to propose a replacement holiday - a swap essentially, one that the owners of the USA would support wholeheartedly. It would be called Oligarch Day and we could use it for "trading material" to get them to put Labor Day where it belongs on the calendar.

Now, to make the prospect of Oligarch Day irresistible to our lords and captains-of-industry, we would include perks for them only. First, the slaving masses would be required to show up for work that day. They would put in their usual time, but either receive no pay or minimum wage, whichever would cause the legislation to most easily pass Congress. Further, all profits made by the Masters of Commerce on Oligarch Day would be tax free ...oh, wait, they pretty much have that already. Well, we can go ahead and give them the remaining tenths of a percent pure profit they don't already have.

I'm pretty sure this swap would work, although the title Oligarch Day might need to be changed to Freedumb Day.

@snoopydawg

Our own revolution of 1776 had to have shaken the monarchs of the world, as colonial leaders knew it would. (The beginning of the Declaration of Independence, hypocritical as it was, the first draft having been penned by an owner of many slaves, is quoted often, but fewer have read the entire document. The D of I was basically an explanation to the rest of the world of why colonists supposedly believed they had no choice but to separate from England.)

In any event, FDR broke the original mold of a federal government of limited powers with the New Deal. That came as citizens were learning that Wall Street had defrauded them out of their investments and bank failures were depriving them of their savings, while droughts were making crops scarce.

The Tsar and his family had been shot to death in 1918, only 11 years before 1929. It HAD to have occurred to the wealthy of this nation that, under the conditions that caused the Great Depression, Americans, too, might rise up against the rich.

Nonetheless, before the ink dried on all the New Deal legislation, legislation that undermined the New Deal began--and was signed by FDR. (What survived, mostly Social Security and welfare, were both targeted by New Democrat Clinton and his Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, whom Obama, our second New Democrat President appointed to head the Cat Food Commission, with Republican Simpson.

The other populist sea change was LBJ's War on Poverty/Great Society legislation. That was passed amid civil rights demonstrations, economic justice demonstrations, labor activism and anti-war demonstrations. More militant civil rights and anti-war leaders were trying to lure the highly effective Social Democrat Martin Luther King, Jr. to move in their direction--and he had begun to address the war and he had been addressing economic justice for blacks. The prospect of all the factions cited in this paragraph united under King had to have scared the poop out of the PTB.

Again, when the crisis was perceived to have passed, the Great Society got less and less great, leaving us mostly with Medicare, which was also the target of Erskine Bowles and New Democrats Clinton and Obama. https://shadowproof.com/2010/05/18/how-monica-lewinsky-saved-social-secu... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR200901... http://www.crewof42.com/news/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-...

As for unions, Democrats outside the South supported (and depended on the votes of) earlier immigrants, like Jews, Irish and Italians, who were the rank and file, then the leaders, of unions. In turn, unions supported Democrats with donations and volunteer staff. New Democrats, however, made a conscious effort to free themselves from financial dependence upon unions so that they would not be forced to take pro-union or pro-labor positions. Democrats used the ridiculous excuse that pro-labor positions made it difficult for Democrats to get elected. (Which group has more votes, labor or the wealthy?)

The DLC's effort to win Meeks's vote was part of a vigorous campaign by New Democrats to assure legislators that business groups would replace campaign contributions from labor lost by a pro-business China vote. In The New Democrat, the DLC's monthly magazine, Washington's most powerful business lobbyist, Thomas J. Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote that even though some members of Congress risked losing the AFL-CIO's support, "business will stick by Democrats on the China trade vote."

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

http://prospect.org/article/how-dlc-does-it

And, as we all know, the comfortable shoes that candidate Obama assured us were ready to picket never made it out of his closet, despite strikes during his administration. Jesus may well have been a community organizer, as Obama's supporters pointed out, but Obama's commnunity organizing ended when he, ACORN and Ayers got him elected to the Illinois State Legislature. (And look what he did to ACORN!)

From your essay:

Employers responded with anti-union measures, such as firing and blacklisting union members, locking out workers, recruiting strikebreakers; employing spies, thugs, and private security forces and exacerbating ethnic tensions in order to divide the workers.[14] Mainstream newspapers supported business interests, and were opposed by the labor and immigrant press.[15] During the economic slowdown between 1882 and 1886, socialist and anarchist organizations were active. Membership of the Knights of Labor, which rejected socialism and radicalism, but supported the 8-hour work day, grew from 70,000 in 1884 to over 700,000 by 1886.

You stated in your essay that The PTB will respond to our needs only when they feel threatened by the masses. But they didn't give up fighting against us having workers rights. They have used the courts to roll back the gains we got. The recent Supreme Court ruling on union dues pretty much put a cork in unions. This and the fact that the democrats have quit defending the unions and union leadership have sold out. Look at how they folded when teachers went out on strike. The UPS strikers are also getting screwed by union leaders. Imagine what would have happened if all of the people who were in unions walked out when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Think that would have made an impact?

@Bollox Ref

charming May Day traditions celebrate a very unofficial, unastronomical start of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Celebrating May Day, of course, long pre-dates the Haymarket Affair (and long pre-dates global warming, which may explain why May 1 was considered the start of Spring).

May Day traditions and Labor Day/International Workers Day can co-exist in the US as they do in other nations. In fact, the wiki of May Day refers to the Haymarket Affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day And having the day off from school and work would only enhance ability to engage in May Day traditions.

I remember dancing around the maypole at the village school. Long years ago.

@janis b

exactly on point and much appreciated. Yes, telling the stories of labor and peace and their intersection is a service, to which you've contributed.

The story at your link is very interesting. New Zealand in 1840, eh? That was well before our Civil War and the labor abuses in this country that followed it. Once again, the long arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice is much longer and bends substantially slower in the US than in the rest of the world! Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Of course, union busting has been so successful in this country that only a tiny fraction of the private sector is still unionized. And that does help politicians take positions that are more and more corporate and less and less beneficial to workers/consumers. And, until Sanders, most people did not even get that, especially younger people. (For various reasons, including reducting the horror of wars, I cringe from fake wars, like the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty and the War on Terror. However, as long they exist, what about the War on Education? I'm sure it didn't start with Cleveland, but it's reaching new heights--or new lows--these days.)

Speaking of gravelly voices, thanks, too, for Leonard Cohen.

Thank you for both essays, and for the gravelly voices of solidarity.

Every day should honour each individual’s labor in whatever form it takes.

Peace, of course, is still unacceptable to many owners, when war brings more profits. One of the ways to honor the enormous sacrifices made by workers for us is to to demonstrate for peace and for workers' rights. Another is to tell the story of martyrs to the cause.

Out of what might be of interest from an antipodean perspective …

The date, 28 October, marked the first anniversary of the establishment of the Maritime Council, an organisation of transport and mining unions. The fledgling union movement was decimated by defeat in a trans-Tasman Maritime Strike in late 1890 but, despite this, the first Labour Day was a huge success. In Wellington, the highlight was an appearance by the elderly Parnell, who died just a few weeks later. From the mid-1890s the union movement began to recover slowly under the Liberal government. The Liberals' industrial conciliation and arbitration system, introduced in 1894, earned New Zealand a reputation of being a 'working man's paradise' and a 'country without strikes'.

... Although workers in some industries had long enjoyed an eight-hour day, it was not a legal entitlement. Other workers, including seamen, farm labourers, and hotel, restaurant and shop employees, still worked much longer hours. Many also endured unpleasant and sometimes dangerous working conditions. Unionists wanted the Liberals to pass legislation enforcing an eight-hour day for all workers, but the government was reluctant to antagonise the business community.

[video:https://youtu.be/gceYKMRWNBw]