Put The Labor Back In Labor Day

It’s the cultural end of the Summer. It’s the beginning of school. It’s a holiday. It’s the last summer barbecue. Maybe it’s a parade. It’s the Columbia County Fair. It’s the start of the football season. It’s the beginning of the Jersey Shore off-season. It’s the tomato harvest. It’s when you’re supposed to stop wearing white or seersucker. It’s called Labor Day, but it doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with labor. At least as far as the traditional media are concerned, as far as local celebrations go.

Occasionally, unions manage to make the point that Labor, organized and disorganized, has done a lot for US workers, unionized and not, in the past century. Labor’s struggles made significant improvements including the 8-hour day, overtime pay, the five-day work week, the weekend, vacations, occupational health and safety, the end to child labor, retirement. And on and on. You can easily expand this list. In other words, labor’s struggles led first to the creation and then to the expansion of the American middle class. And labor benefitted even workers who did not organize themselves and just profited from the workplace and cultural changes the unions fought for.

Labor Day shouldn’t be an historical relic in which we recall these seemingly distant struggles and their fruit. No. Workers continued to struggle in 2011 in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan to safeguard the rights to collective bargaining, to adequate compensation, to civilized fringe benefits like health insurance, to their retirement. To keep their jobs in an age of wanton government dismantling. The battles continue. And not just in the Midwest. You can even find it at Starbucks.

When the last grilled hot dogs and burgers of 2011 roll around on grills across America later this afternoon, when the last plastic glass of beer is filled, it would be nice to pause for just a second to acknowledge both labor’s contributions to our way of life and the necessity to continue to support the struggle. Maybe we could lift our glass in support of continuing the struggle for workers’ dignity.

Labor Day Weekend: Loud And Quiet

The 2010 Demo D at Columbia County Fair

Every year the Columbia County Fair in Chatham, New York is “over Labor Day.” It began as usual this year on Thursday with the demolition derby. The people’s favorite and last year’s big car, 8-cylinder champion “Bomber” let it be known in advance that he wasn’t going to show up for the event. Saddened that this marked the end of an era, the end of a standing tradition, your Bloguero phoned and sent an electronic message to “Bomber” (yes, he is online) that your Bloguero wanted to know wtf was wrong with him. If he could sit in the car without actually hurting himself, he had an obligation to his fans to compete. Guilt apparently does not work on Bomber. He replied laconically that he had gone out on top. No apologies. No explanation. His non-entry made the Demo D a non-event for your Bloguero. So ended one of your Bloguero’s many country traditions: go to the “Beer Tent” for an hour Thursday afternoon and then proceed in a slightly altered but still somewhat upright condition to the grandstand to witness in person the deafeningly loud, smoking, smashing, squealing Demo D. Breathe the smoke and fumes and burning rubber. Some degree of being anaesthetized is always advisable for admission. It’s that toxic. Your Bloguero didn’t go this year. But not to fear. Just because your Bloguero stayed away, you can be sure that thousands of others were simply unaffected by Bomber’s ignominous defection, if they even knew about it. No. They couldn’t care less. They were carrying out their usual rituals without the slightest concern about who the “drivers” (I use the word advisedly) might be. And they had a great, deafening time. As usual. And today there are many totally smashed cars on trailers or in vacant lots waiting for the crushers.

Every year the Spencertown Academy puts on the quiet antidote to the deafening Demo D, the Festival of Books “over Labor Day.” So, of course, your Bloguero arrived on Saturday afternoon to witness it. What your Bloguero wrote about this event in 2006 remains the case:

I was overwhelmed by the number of homeless books and people selecting them to bring home. It wasn’t quite like visiting the morgue, though at first I thought it seemed like rows of dead books, a price tag tied to each of their big toes. No, it was more like an orphanage for the mute or a dog pound. The lucky, cute ones are retrieved, lugged to a new home, and end up on a shelf or under the bed, or God forbid, in the trash. And the unlucky ones, what happens to them? What happens to great ones initially purchased as required reading, ignored for semesters, always resold, eventually tattered, on their last legs, trying to look cute at this sale, trying to avoid the land fill?

I didn’t bring anything home. …

I left the sale sad and confused and depressed. I really don’t have room. If I were a book and could talk like one, maybe I could have consoled some of those great novels, Tolstoy and Dickens, for example, who were left behind, the ones whose time has finally come. “Look,” I would have said. “It’s disgraceful. Readers aren’t what they used to be. They cannot appreciate someone as wonderful, as loving, as well crafted as you. It’s not your fault. And owners aren’t what they used to be either. They won’t keep you. That, too, is not your fault. In the name of feng shui or elimination of clutter or God knows what other golden calf, they’re cleansing you without a thought. It’s a really rotten business. It’s not like the old days when once you found a home they respected you and kept you until an estate sale.”

Your Bloguero told one of the people running the event that he really didn’t need to bring home any more books, that he had enough, thank you. It was a curse, really. She said, “Well, buy some today and you can bring them back by donating them next year.” “Oh,” said your Bloguero, “I should think about this in a different way, as if I were only renting the books.”

Trance Politics: Are We Completely Distracted Yet?

Maybe the Rethuglicans think that no one in America will think about any serious issues until after November if they continue to provide tons of distraction, both intentional and unintentional. If that's their strategy, it's working unbelievably well in both Left and Right Blogistan and the traditional media.

Two quick, recent, simple examples of the phenomenon:

Example 1. There has been lots of blogging about Sarah Palin's not being the mother of her youngest child, the claim being that her daughter was actually the mother. And now, today, the refutation of the story. Not that photo of an obviously pregnant Palin. Oh no. Nothing like that. Instead, a story that her daughter is pregnant now, that she'll marry the baby's father, and so on. This is worth at least a week more of distraction, during which we're not supposed to look at Iraq, the economy, energy or health care. Instead, we're supposed to debate and/or scream at each other about whether or not Sarah Palin's daughter did or did not have access to contraception and compare Sarah Palin to Hillary Britney's mother.

Example 2. Hurricane Gustav takes aim at New Orleans. Embarrassed about Katrina, the Rethuglican's decide it would be unbecoming to have arch villains Bush and Cheney in public a coronation celebration while a natural disaster strikes America. They say that on this occasion they should act like Americans rather than Rethuglicans. Great. So we turn attention to how that will change their planned convention, and how they're getting briefed in Mississippi and Tejas. But why is it, if it's not ok to celebrate a coronation when there's a natural disaster, that it is ok to celebrate it while there's a continuing man-made disaster in Iraq, which has left thousands of US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and tens of thousands more maimed or seriously wounded. It's ok to celebrate when thousands of nation's youth are dying, but the mere chance of deaths or injuries or loss of property from a storm makes the celebration inappropriate. Does this make any sense? Only if you care about providing innocuous material to discuss instead of real issues.

Enough, I say. Enough.

Now I'm going to an American barbecue. I'm going to drink lots of globalized beer. I'm going to celebrate what labor in America has brought the nation. Things like the 8 hour day and the weekend. I'm going especially to celebrate the triumphs of the UFW and Cesar Chavez. And the IWW. I'm going to think about Big Bill Haywood and Woody Guthrie. I'm gonna hum labor songs. I'm taking a break.

While I'm gone, I hope folks will start to figure out how to break the trance.