Whenever we look through a family album of old photographs, most of us ask "Who is this?" not "Who was this?" Photographs are always present tense, and so are all the elements of life the enrich us. This blog considers music, film, books and other communications that call out to me always in the present tense.
Consider American 'exceptionalism' - or is it fear? - about Labor Day
The rest of the world honors the working class and the value of labor on May 1. But fear of "the other" - Communists and Jews, essentially - made the United States an outlier on the day of recognition. In 1919, a May Day riot in Cleveland saw two people killed, 40 injured, and 116 arrested. Local authorities gravely pointed out that only eight of the 116 arrested had been born in the United States.
As this poignant version of The Internationale by Scottish singer Alistair Hulet proclaims: "The Internationale unites the human race." I guess that implies a degree of inhumanity in American Labor Day, very purposefully moved to September to keep it quarantined from godless socialism.
When I was a kid, the government referred to wage earners as "labor" in federal reports. Now they refer to us as "consumers." Think about that ...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment