Over eighty nations celebrate labor on May 1. As to labor, however, that date memorializes a series of events often referred to as the Haymarket Affair. I published an essay here about the Haymarket Affair, which was associated with socialists as much as with unions and labor generally.
I've been struggling to understand human behavior and actions this week (maybe every week). As it's Labor Day weekend I was thinking about the current labor strikes in our prisons. Really it is a strike against inhumane conditions and out right slavery. So why is it humans are so cruel to one another, to our fellow lifeforms, to our ecosystem at large. I usually explain it as greed, but I fear it is something deeper ... a fatal flaw in the nature of our species. It seems we lack the ability to act now for our future tomorrow. The corporate media can be blamed in part, but some things have become pretty obvious. How about the wild weather we've been having world wide? But we still keep pouring carbon into the air and pushing for more fossil fuel...basing most of the worlds economy on its extraction and use...driving absurd wars in the middle east and blatant efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Is it willful ignorance, or are we truly blind?
It's Labor Day weekend. It marks the end of the summer season for many, however we still have a few more weeks till the equinox and true Autumn. This summer was the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”...a time when hopes and dreams of a better world filled many minds of my generation. At that time I thought our idealism would change the world. Sadly capitalism was a more powerful force than our aspirations. How far away we have drifted from that dream of a better world. Today's image of America in my mind includes it's militarized police, disregard for people in favor of corporate profit, massive incarceration of the poor people of color to benefit privatized prisons and probation services, large scale aggression across the world, destruction of the planet and climate for the benefit of the few, and top it off with a heapin' helpin' of our arrogance that we are exceptional (yes exceptionally evil).
The following is a republication of a Beltaine Diary I wrote and published in 2015, with some small updates.
One hundred and thirty-one years ago, history was made at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois.
This piece of history was so critically important to the lives of working men and women ever since that time that almost every nation on Earth, the United States of America alone excepted, celebrates its laboring population on the first of May.
I feel that we here at caucus99percent need to remember what happened on that fateful May evening in 1886, and the heroes who sacrificed their lives so that their fellow workers might have access to reasonable working and living conditions.
For more on this important story, please join me below the fold.
This Essay is one I published over at TOP in 2015, with a few changes and updates. It develops an idea which I find fascinating: that the International Labor Day, May 1, is the extension of the ancient Holy Day of Beltaine, and part and parcel of its resurgence in modern times. And the artwork of Walter Crane is pretty cool, too!
The Evening Blues - Labor Day 2015
This evening's music features songs in the theme of working, workers and labor. Enjoy!
Maddy Prior - Honest Work
Here's a quickie Open Thread for you 99%'ers to post whatever you wish. Today is Labor Day and for some it is also the last day of summer.
I will add some links as I come upon them. But for now, just post your news and views.
First up, from Think Progess is an article on some of the most important heroes of the Labor Movement.
