Labor Day

Posted on September 1, 2003 in Festivals

I like to stumble back to Jim Hightower, particularly on holidays such as this one (American Labor Day for my foreign readers):

This holiday is not some vague tribute to men and women who labor. Rather, it’s a radically-democratic declaration of the intent to build and sustain a middle class in America – as a bold statement (and as fraught with perils) as Jefferson’s Declaration and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Far from being about taking a day off, Labor Day is about people taking democratic power.

Today, our middle-class power is being steadily filched by thieves in high places – the BushCo government, the corporate-friendly Wobblycrats in congress, and the corporate Kleptocrats themselves. All are busily hauling truck loads of money and power out of the middle class to the top, dumping it into the hands of CEOs and the wealthy investors….

It’s said that the rich and the poor will always be with us. Perhaps, but it is not assured anywhere or in any time that the middle class will be there.

This Labor Day is no different than the first one that workers themselves declared in 1882 – it’s about taking back power from the thieves who are trying to steal our middle-class future.

As I write this, too many of my fellow Americans are sleeping off hangovers. They didn’t party with anyone else. They sat off in a tent or a RV or a motel room away from the heart of the cities where they worked. They will rise and spend most of today alone — water-skiing if they can afford it, fishing, four-wheeling across the same mudholes everyone else is mudholing through. They won’t talk much to strangers. They won’t discuss politics. They won’t examine their own lives and ask the big questions: do I need this SUV? Do I need to be in debt to these credit card companies? Do I need to live my life worrying about what will happen when I get old, if I should get sick, if I should lose my job?

There are no traditions for Labor Day other than the big union picnic. To join a union, these days, is tantamount to treason, however. The union is the guy who takes money out of your paycheck. Just another government. The people who whine about unions and won’t join them never think of the money that never goes into their paycheck in the first place, that they have earned by the sweat of their hands and brows, that ends up, instead, enriching speculators and CEOs who keep one hand ready to pull the cord of the golden parachute when they take the whole company down and must lay off the workforce.

Those unlisted deductions end up stagnating in a miser’s bank account, doing little to help the economy. If they’re so bad, why do we let them get away with it? Fear. We waste a lot of energy being afraid for our survival when what we need to do is deny the fearmongers their power.

Yule Heibel posted these thoughts about the culture of fear that permeates American society today:

Sometimes I think fascism has gotten much worse than it was. After all, we have technologies and pharmaceuticals today that allow us to alter our inner structure as radically as the outer. If my job, for example, is unreasonably stressful, if I’m killing myself trying to live up to the American dream of having it all (you know, career and kids, beautiful home, 24-hour shopping, work-out time, private time, friends time, quality time, fantastic sex, true love, success, success, success in measurable amounts, puh-lease because you sure don’t want to be called a loser, which is the worst thing of all, because winning is even more important than telling the truth), and it’s depressing me because my body is trying to stop me, well, hey, if that happens, I can, instead of retreating and reassessing, or becoming a functional drunk, or beating my kids (options previously available to the elites and the masses alike), I can take medication so I can keep going. Not because I’m mentally ill, but to quell the protest in my bones.

Knowing as I do many depressives and manic-depressives who are authentically mentally ill, I think I can also weigh in on those driven to Prozac and Effexor by their routines. I meet a great many depressives and half the time I find myself thinking “But this person. This person shouldn’t be depressed. They’re far stronger than me. What’s the problem?” And when I ask questions and make discreet observations, I find that they’ve allowed their employers to make their lives unmanageable. And they take the medications instead of speaking up.

To these, I commend Labor Day. To my neighbors, I give the gift of independence, of lives that are worth living because you have the power to say no to all that is oversized — not just the bloated government, but also the bloated corporation that you work for. This holiday deserves as big a celebration as the Fourth of July, with fireworks and parades. It’s a time for working Americans of all kinds to clasp hands and say “United We Stand” against the fear that the corporate elite of this nation attempt to impose on us. It’s a good holiday, an American holiday, one worth giving more attention to than it takes to tank up the car with gas and go somewhere. Like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or the Fourth, it’s a day when we should stay home and get to know our fellow working Americans better, a day to talk, to break bread, to share row after row of hot dogs and renew the struggle to preserve what we have; to set ourselves in new & necessary directions if we must; to live without fear of the losses that await us if we lose our job in this land of the lie and the dread of failure.

Trim the fat from the meat and from the corporate elite. Live healthily today. Celebrate your dignity as a working person whose work keeps America alive and who deserves better than he or she gets.

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Andrew of Byte Back posted a cartoon that sums up what Labor Day means under Bush very nicely.