I have written a diary every May 1st since I began here some years back. They were full of history and facts and were supporting the idea that workers around the world began celebrating this day in solidarity. I won't repeat that this year. We have an excellent diary by Eddie C Photos and Stories from the Labor March on Wall Street to focus our thoughts on looking forward rather than back. The history of American Labor struggle is the history of our nation and how we each got to live the way we are living today. That history is echoed in the placards held by workers at the rally:
Robber Barons are alive and well!
It is not a time for facts and figures it is a time for action based on gut emotions. Read on below and see if we can seize the day.
I keep reminding folk here that I am 74 now and have been an activist since my 20s. My dad was a working man and I grew up among working people. Never mind that I was the first in the wider family group and the neighborhood to go to college. I am still a worker at heart. I organized at Harvard when a professor there and I organized every where else I have been. Those folks who marched the other day were doing one of the things workers have done for the life of the nation. They marched and voiced their opposition to what is going on.
I worked very hard to help get president Obama elected. I still think it was the right thing to do. His ineffectiveness since he took office demonstrates an important truth, namely that elections alone are not enough. Power comes from action. Power comes from organization and the empowering effect of solidarity. That is why the press and other media use every ploy imaginable to cause divisions. As they succeed they strip away our only source of power.
But I am not really a worker you say? Nonsense. I was in Poland at the height of the solidarity movement. My university colleagues were right in front of all that went on. How many of our professors and other folk who have been taught to look down on workers were there? Not many.
We have been had. We have been taught that we are better because we got education and rose above our roots. No we were cut off from our roots and the plant is dying as a result.
Solidarity is so important a word. Together we are everything. Apart we are nothing. When labor stands up we need to all stand up. There is no other way. The elitist election diversion has consumed us and defeated us. Yes elections have consequences. Too many of them are unintended. Too many of them perpetuate the division and stratification that has made us subservient to Wall Street as a symbol of the greedy powerful people who will rape us as long as we let them.
There was a book A nation of Sheep that was titled all too accurately. We write we scream and yell but we remain little pockets of elitist self interest waiting to be raped some more. They robbed us through the banks. There are pouring oil all over our precious waters. They robbed us of the single payer health reform we so desperately needed and threw us a sop and we celebrated! When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?