This weekend our culture celebrates Labor Day – a national holiday honoring ALL working women and men – and giving us one more Monday off from work. Labor Day’s origins date back to May 4, 1886, when Chicago police killed and wounded strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works. In an act of solidarity, trade unionists organized a mass protest of over 2,000 peaceful demonstrators who were rushed and roughed-up aggressively at the end of the rally by overzealous police trying to get home early. This provoked some still unidentified anarchist to throw a bomb at the constabularies who opened fire on the crowd in self-defense. Some workers returned fire and in the end, seven police officers and one striker lay dead causing some self-righteous elected officials to impose strict anti-labor laws while others renewed their commitment to the burgeoning labor movement.
The tragic chaotic origins of Labor Day have mostly been forgotten by contemporary Americans – sanitized of all class consciousness – and largely treated as simply the end of summer. All too often passion has been leached out of our national holidays so that MLK Day becomes yet another excuse for a white sale and Veteran’s Day is stripped of both lament and gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for peace. It’s my hunch that one of the many reasons our nation is so polarized is that we’ve lost touch with the complicated roots of our nation. We've also forsaken the reality of paradox where blessings are often mixed with curses and unintended consequences. Our commitment to the common good has been eroded, too as a sense of collective struggles for justice has long been buried in the dustbin of our history.
It would seem, however, that a modest renewal in the labor movement is taking root in the United States once again. The United Auto Workers continue to reclaim lost ground bringing a measure of economic justice and dignity back to the hard working women and men who build our cars and trucks. The organizing campaigns at both Starbuck's and Amazon also suggest that labor is striving to once again become a movement rather than a mere limp. But we have a LONG way to go before true equity is realized and the super rich pay their fair share. The alliance the Rev. William Barber has forged with the North American labor movement is yet another side that a possible awakening of conscience is taking place in our wounded and unfair realm.
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