Labor day Roundup

Posted on September 1, 2003 in Festivals

I toured the blogs to see what people had to say about Labor Day:

• Denise of Bag and Baggage thought it appropriate to review a book entitled Lawyers of the World Unite, which she says is “dedicated to the social and economic achievements of certain workers (lawyer type ones)”. I think that’s a stretch.
  
• Burningbird shared photos and anecdotes about two St. Louis Festivals that she visited over the weekend. At the air show, she watched reenactors depict how they hunted and killed the Viet Cong. There was even a simulated air evacuation. Nowhere in her article does she mention Labor Day, though.
  
• Andrew byt back with a cartoon.
  
• Rob shared a link about the struggle to earn a living wage in these United States. The comments discuss what “well off” is coming to mean in this country.
  
• The prolific poetess, Desert Viking, posted a new work entitled “Labor Day Morning Ride”
  
• After passing across the face of several blogs which were out to lunch or oblivious to the holiday, Billy did not let me down: he made a few cutting remarks about health care and the fact that the guy who fixed the leak in his roof last spring doesn’t get out of prison for six more months.
  
• Nurse Ratched announced that she was off to Savannah for the weekend.
  
• Natasha handed the torch to Nathan Newman.
  
• I thank Bill of Prairie Point (a blog that deserves a bigger readership) for the link. Here’s one back.
  
• Bobbi didn’t say much about the day other than the weather, but her pictures are striking as always. NV!
  
• Though he didn’t mention Labor Day, Pen’s thoughts about “what is poverty?” are timely and apt for the occasion.
  
• Labor Day? Nancy who lives in India has been observing Vinayaka Chaturthi, the festival of Sri Ganesh. Ganesh may look like a Republican, but I have it on good authority that he’s a nice fellow.
  
• I mentioned Yule’s thoughts on the relationship between depression and job-related stress earlier.
  
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo wished everyone a Happy Labor Day, Bush style.

I was disappointed, to say the least, with the discussions of Labor Day. Several people who I thought would say something didn’t and many of those I list above merely glossed over events of the day, sometimes without mentioning it.

While you were munching hot dogs in honor of the fact that as an American you are one of the hardest working and most productive people in the world, the Secretary of Labor you’re going to lose your overtime pay! Hooray! Hey, why aren’t you cheering?

Perhaps we don’t deserve Labor Day anymore? Perhaps because we’ve sat on our hands, pissed on unions, sang hosannas to those who land bearing golden parachutes, and allowed the advantages that our working ancestors fought and voted to obtain for us to be taken away one by one by this criminal administration and its corporate accomplices, we shouldn’t be partying. We should be where they want us to be, working working working for next to no pay or benefits.

Perhaps we should rename this “Hard Work Day” and spend it building a pyramid for W.

---

The Christian Right, which has been the biggest sell out when it comes to Labor Unions by its glorification of wealth and virulent attacks against workingmen’s organizations should recall the words of James to the rich:

Labourers mowed your fields, and you cheated them — listen to the wages that you kept back calling out; realise that the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. On earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter, you went on eating to your heart’s content. It was you who condemned the innocent and killed them; they offered you no resistance. — James 5: 4-6

God is clearly a Union Deity.