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I like just about anything as long as it doesn't involve theories about lizard people and even then it is sometimes interesting. Oh yea! I almost forgot flipping hummers off and collecting fascist OPPS I mean patriotic magnets for my fridge. ____________________________________________________________ ____Example: I really like the spirit of 76' and may day, but not labor day... (this is an essay from a labor relations class) ____________________________________________________________ ____Labor Day The day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussedthat the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it. Samuel Gompers, 1898________________________________________________________ ________ In 1976, which was coincidently the year in which I was born, Philip S. Foner published a book entitled We the (Other) People of the United States of America where he outlines labor movements in the years after the revolutionary war and the establishment of the Declaration of Independence. These years were filled with alternative declarations that sought to eradicate the legitimization of capital and the capitalist thereof by invoking what was commonly referred to as the Spirit of 76. This spirit and the meaning of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that it encompasses also gave rise to what is now called Labor Day. While unwilling to bask in the darkness of oppression, the American workers felt as though this spirit was slowly becoming strangled by the rising capitalist class. In 1895 the Federation of Alameda expressed their discontent for the capitalist class when they proclaimed that the term American Independence is rapidly becoming more and more characteristic of a despotic monarchy. They refused to participate in the celebration of the July 4th Independence Day until such time as labor and the rights of labor are recognized by the political parties of this country, and by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. A more significant cause for the workers discontent with the celebrated July 4th holiday happened a year earlier when the dark force of military oppression stood watch while Americans celebrated their independence in New York. This abomination occurred the same year that the Pullman strike was broken by federal injunctions and US troops. The same dark oppressive force, this time dressed as police officers, that beat men, women and children with their clubs, while mounting police laid them low with their batons during a strike in Thompkins square, New York on January 13, 1874.The ambiguity to what actually gave rise to Labor Day, which supposedly entails the Spirit of 76, is debatable. However most labor historians, at least the reformist, believe that labor day was established by either Peter J. McGuire or Matthew Maguire. But regardless of interpretation, objective history tells us, that the 1st day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York city, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. It was later ratified by state law on February 21, 1887 in Oregon and accepted into federal law on June 28, 1894. Yet does this day which is entitled Labor Day invoke the Spirit of 76, the same spirit that not only carries with it the meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but also the revolutionary means of obtaining these essential qualities of democracy. One only has to look to the last paragraph and the countless atrocities that followed the establishment of Labor Day to find that a revolution did not occur. So what did occur?To find the answer one must look into the chaos of history for the patterns of revolution to emerge. Universally profits and pauperism and the grievances that usually accompany them has always been a foundation for which most and if not, arguably, all revolutionary masses have stood upon to rise up against the dark oppression of empire. Specifically we will take a look into the century that gave birth to industrial capitalism and of course Labor Day. In 1870, Samuel Gompers examined census statistics from five of the greatest manufacturing States, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois to demonstrate the existence of pauperism in States where massive amounts of wealth were being generated. He showed that the annual wage of the average family in these wealthy states was $405.64. The average family at his particular time had five members per household. Divided up, the wage came to $81.149 per person and at the same time the state paid out $6,161,354 to maintain the lives of 62,494 paupers in their region. Divided up, this came to just over $95 per pauper. Thus Gompers found that it appears that the workingman was compelled to support himself above the degree of pauperism on $14 less per annum than the State spent to support paupers as paupers. Some of the other foundations for revolution that were emerging from this seemingly chaotic history were the struggles between labor and capital. For the purpose of being concise I will site three examples that lead up to a faint glimmer of what is meant when one mentions the Spirit of 76. They were the Draft Riots of 1863, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 all of which were fertile grounds for a not so distant revolution. Along with these fertile grounds of revolution being planted with countless accounts of police brutality throughout the 1800s, the draft in 1863 gave rise to explosive riots in the streets of New York. Although this horrific outbreak of domestic violence is not considered by many historians as a solidified class struggle it did however reveal to those in power that there was a mass movement capable of disrupting the established order. These horrible realities fermented in 1871, as the American capitalist read how Paris was taken over by a similar mass movement. I imagine and sometimes dream about the American capitalist at this time, as he reluctantly peered out of his plush office onto the working masses below just after reading an article of how the Parisian workers lashed out violently against their bourgeois masters and took industry into their own hands. Later in 1877 his worst fears became reality with the Great Railroad Strike which spread like wild fire across the country. These fears and of course the loss of profits gave way to numerous waves of violence against workers across the country in order to suppress these movements. In the actual history of the labor movement the list of atrocities carried out by the State against the working people goes on and on unfortunately. Yet one movement stands as a revolutionary stain soiling the neat, clean historical consciousness of most political reformist. The Haymarket Tragedy, that occurred in Chicago on May 4th, 1886 as a response to two deaths by police gunfire, was and still is, in most revolutionary circles, a motivational tool for recognizing the importance of labor and the struggles that it entails. Even Pope Leo XIII, in his work On the Condition of the Worker in 1891, saw that the unjust practices of the industrial capitalist ignored the fact that the dignity of human personality be respected in [workers] It is shameful and inhuman, however, to use men as things for gain and to put no more value on them than what they are worth in muscle and energy. Not only did the capitalist find worth in muscle and energy, they also found worth in the context in which both of these forms of labor power were expended, time. The eight hour work day, which has been taken for granted by most workers today and is currently being undermined by new overtime laws, was the principle foundation for the International Workers Day and the theme behind the Haymarket strike on May 1st, 1886. During this strike of over 40,000 workers in Chicago, an estimated 80,000 marched on Michigan Avenue while the panoptic darkness of oppression, which was mostly solidified in the form of police and armed Pinkertons, watched from nearby rooftops. The strike called for on May 1st continued until May 3rd when two workers were killed by police. In response to this violent assault, a mass meeting was called on the night of May 4th for the purpose of protesting the atrocities that occurred the previous day. After some hesitation the Anarchist and other political radicals joined what they referred to as a reformist movement because of the influence of Albert Parsons, an organizer for the Knights of Labor, and other powerful orators. The meeting was poorly planned probably due to the need for immediate reaction. The organizers, including Parsons, that presided over the angry workers had to recruit speakers in just a few hours, what normally took weeks to plan. In the middle of a speech the all to familiar mass of oppression arrived with guns and a demands for the meeting to disperse. It was at this moment that the Spirit of 76 was once again reborn as a mysterious reactionary threw a bomb into the dark mass of policemen. The police responded by opening fire into the mass of protestors, killing four and wounding many more. When the smoke cleared 7 police officers laid dead, 2 from the bomb, the rest from friendly fire and workmens pistols. This extraordinary event in history was the proverbial switch that changed the very unions which helped build and propagate the ideals of democracy that we hold so dear. The switch was solidified in the mass propaganda that labeled all labor unions as anarchist. The years that followed the Haymarket Tragedy and the hanging of Albert Parsons and four others anarchist, were years that echo the sentiment that we hold for unions today, that they are not useful, archaic, anarchist and for these reasons they are usually accompanied by corruption. This perception couldnt be any further from the truth.The true corruption, which has only occurred within the circles of those who have held the power and not those who are oppressed by it, occurred during the trials that followed the Haymarket Tragedy. The eight offenders that so happened to be avid voices against corporate America, political corruption and the staunch darkness of oppression (I.e. police, mercenaries, military, etc.) were found guilty of having connections to the bomb that was thrown on May 4th. Ironically some of the supposed offenders that were prosecuted were not in attendance for the May 4th convening. These scandalous trials and Governor Oglesby, the Governor of Chicago during the Haymarket Tragedy, were petitioned by hundreds of thousands around the world including AFL president Samuel Gompers to grant clemency and stop the unjust executions. Seven years after Parsons and many others were hanged, governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the remaining prisoners because of how unfair he felt the trials had been. A year after the unjust executions took place, a delegate from the AFL attended an international labor conference in Paris and pushed for May 1st to be established as the International Labors Day.So the question I ask is why should the American worker celebrate the federal holiday entitled Labor Day when the rest of the international community celebrates May 1st in commemoration of the American martyrs that died for the Spirit of 76? This question is lucidly clarified by the fact that, internationally, May Day is unilaterally remembered and celebrated by the working class and not the capitalist class where as the Americanized version of labor day is enjoyed by both classes. This illusion of equality that is coercively implied by the September holiday solidifies the myth that we are all equal and therefore can bask in utopian dreams of a universal human solidarity. The death of the Spirit of 76 by proclaiming the Americanized Labor Day as a day that encompasses democracy, can only be seen as yet another attempt to alienate the American worker from realizing true solidarity with their comrades around the world, and continuing to reconstruct our historical conscious by forgetting those that died for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.Here are some contemporary perspectives (please watch):