Happy International Worker's Day

[Ricter]

"International Workers' Day (also known as May Day) [1] is a celebration of laborers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labor movement and occurs on May 1 every year. In Switzerland the day is called Bratwurstfest, [2] in relation to the image of the rebellious working class as a nostalgia of the unions.

"May 1 was chosen as the date for International Workers' Day by the Socialists and Communists of the Second International to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago that occurred on May 4, 1886.[3]

"May 1 also marks a traditional European Spring holiday known as May Day as well. Hence, May 1 is a national public holiday in more than 80 countries but it may be that in only some of those countries is the public holiday officially celebrated as Labor Day or some similar variant.

"Also, some other countries celebrate a Labor Day on other dates significant to their respective labor movements. Such as Labor Day in the United States on the first Monday of September."

Wiki>>


Capital without labor is useless.

 

[futurecurrents]

Washington, April 30 2014

The GOP today told the poor workers of America to go to hell. "If we pay you more money the well-to-do business owners, the corporations and us middle class white people will have less money. Our burgers will cost ten cents more and it will crush the economic recovery because everyone knows the money is best used by the rich folks" ..... "Besides, you poor suckers are not in our voting block so go scratch."

Polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly agree that the minimum wage should go up; 62 percent favor an increase to $10.10, a New York Times/CBS News poll found in February.

 

[Ricter]

A bit longish read in the internet era, but excellent writing. Tugs at the heartstrings for anyone old enough to remember America just a few decades ago (or remember life in a military family).

This Land Isn’t Your Land, This Land Is Their Land
By Peter Van Buren

An Empire in Decline (City by City, Town by Town)

"As America's new economy starts to look more like the old economy of the Great Depression, the divide between rich and poor, those who have made it and those who never will, seems to grow ever starker. I know. I’ve seen it firsthand.

"Once upon a time, I worked as a State Department officer, helping to carry out the occupation of Iraq, where Washington’s goal was regime change. It was there that, in a way, I had my first taste of the life of the 1%. Unlike most Iraqis, I had more food and amenities than I could squander, nearly unlimited funds to spend as I wished (as long as the spending supported us one-percenters), and plenty of U.S. Army muscle around to keep the other 99% at bay. However, my subsequent whistleblowing about State Department waste and mismanagement in Iraq ended my 24-year career abroad and, after a two-decade absence, deposited me back in “the homeland.”

"I returned to America to find another sort of regime change underway, only I wasn't among the 1% for this one. Instead, I ended up working in the new minimum-wage economy and saw firsthand what a life of lousy pay and barely adequate food benefits adds up to. For the version of regime change that found me working in a big box store, no cruise missiles had been deployed and there had been no shock-and-awe demonstrations. Nonetheless, the cumulative effects of years of deindustrialization, declining salaries, absent benefits, and weakened unions, along with a rise in meth and alcohol abuse, a broad-based loss of good jobs, and soaring inequality seemed similar enough to me. The destruction of a way of life in the service of the goals of the 1%, whether in Iraq or at home, was hard to miss. Still, I had the urge to see more. Unlike in Iraq, where my movements were limited, here at home I could hit the road, so I set off for a look at some of America's iconic places as part of the research for my book, Ghosts of Tom Joad.

"Here, then, are snapshots of four of the spots I visited in an empire in decline, places you might pass through if you wanted to know where we’ve been, where we are now, and (heaven help us) where we’re going.

"On the Boardwalk: Atlantic City, New Jersey..."

Essay continues>>