Monday, September 07, 2020

Labor Day 2020

Did you know that we celebrate Labor Day in September instead of May (the other date proposed) because President Grover Cleveland didn't want the day to be associated with the Haymarket Square Riot?  I'll bet Bill knew that, because it took place in Chicago.  Or maybe not because, after all, it happened on 4 May 1886...when a large crowd was protesting at a labor rally and 200 police officers came to break it up, and someone threw a bomb at the police who then opened fire on the crowd.  I read this and thought how it sounds too much like today.

"The demonstration, which drew some 1,500 Chicago workers, was organized by German-born labor radicals in protest of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before. Midway into the rally, which had thinned out because of rain, a force of nearly 200 policemen arrived to disperse the workers. As the police advanced toward the 300 remaining protesters, an individual who was never positively identified threw a bomb at them. After the explosion and subsequent police gunfire, more than a dozen people lay dead or dying, and close to 100 were injured."

29 comments:

  1. Yep, International Workers Day is May 5th, to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre. Those horrid radical foreigners were agitating for a ten hour workday. The trial of those arrested was a travesty; the next governor couldn't stomach it and pardoned the survivors. I was familiar with the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument, but didn't know about the rather ill-starred police monument, or the proposed modern monument with a representation of the speakers' wagon: Monuments relating to the Haymarket affair [Click]

    And if you need another reason to vote for the Green Party, their national office staff is represented by the IWW. Here are some recent IWW actions. [Click]

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  2. Not May 5th--how did that sneak in there? International Workers Day is May Day!

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    1. Oh, I know--the founding year of the IWW was rattling around in my skull--1905.

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  3. Wow! We got up at seven o'clock; the smoke is so thick that the sun is invisible! It seems to mostly be high, but visibility seems to be less than two miles at ground level.

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    1. I couldn't believe not being able to see the sun, so walked out into the street, where there is a clear view to the east, and there it was, at an altitude of maybe 25 degrees--a faint pink ball, hardly brighter than a full moon, if that. There is a little blue in the sky as one looks west. Our morning walk is not happening today.

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    2. Oh my gosh, Alan! That is just terrible!! The long term effects of so much smoke cannot be good for human or beast. At least it’s past nesting and denning season.

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  4. Robert Reich: On Labor Day, remember this: Trump's America works only for the rich [Click] “We are eight weeks from a momentous election. If Joe Biden wins, he must work to redistribute income – and power.” I do hope that he MUST; but usually when people say someone “must” do something, they mean they would like him or her to do so.

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  5. 0845: elevation of sun about 40-45 degrees; yellow and brighter, but one can look directly at it for a little while. We decided to put out the raisins.

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  6. The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar [Click] OK, this has to be the best story of the day, bar none.

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  7. Trump Campaign Has Money Problems [Click] So why doesn’t he pull a billion out of his hip pocket? It ought to be chump change for a multi-billionaire. A real one, that is.

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  8. The Stock Market Isn’t the Economy [Click] Well, congratulations to Paul Krugman for discovering
    The Doug Jones Average; [Click] brickbats for failing to credit Jim Hightower.

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  9. OHIO:As of Monday afternoon, there have been at least 131,336 confirmed or probable cases in the state, 4,276 deaths, and 13,887 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

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  10. Our grapes had all turned brown yesterday evening; now they are starting to get wrinkly. Raisins, here we come! The biggest job is removing the cap-stems--that is slow going doing it by hand. In the processing plants they use a vibrating table with holes just big enough for the cap-stems, and pull them off with a vacuum. (They are then steamed and mixed into cattle feed.)

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  11. Hopes fading for coronavirus deal as Congress returns [Click] This might not go over well in republicanleaning states that are seeing notable increases in Covid-19 cases. Well, we shall see.

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  12. Replies
    1. Every single day I hate this pretend human POS more than the day before.

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  13. I definitely knew about the Haymarket Riot/Massacre. I didn't know it had anything to do with the date of either International or US Labor Day. The story I got was that Cleveland wanted the US celebration to be clearly distinct from the radicalism associated with May Day.

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  14. google speaks: After the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland officially moved the U.S. celebration of Labor Day to the first Monday in September, intentionally severing ties with the international worker's celebration for fear that it would build support for communism and other radical causes.

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  15. Got an email from Etsy that my shirt is on the way. It says "I wear a mask to make sure I'm alive to vote trump out of office November 3.

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  16. VT: 1651 (+3)
    58 deaths (33 days)
    128 active cases
    Recovered:1465 (+9)
    In Hospital 1 ( 0)
    Tests 145,993 (+1930)

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  17. How Trump’s Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage [Click] “the president’s campaign and the R.N.C. developed some profligate habits as they burned through hundreds of millions of dollars.” I clicked on through to the NYT article without being stopped by a paywall, and it has considerably more detail than the excerpt.

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  18. I conked out at the computer, having overeaten. All the blood was down stairs digesting the food instead of circulating in my brain. This is our 37th anniversary. (Technically it was yesterday, because Tokyo is a day ahead of California.) It's a fair start.

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    1. Congratulations. Overeating on appropriate occasions is good.

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    2. I am inclined to think that a digestif is in order.

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  19. During the day the smoke decreased.

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  20. Creek Fire updates [Click] It’s nearing the foothills, and creating its own weather. “State and local firefighters and other emergency workers described an ‘unprecedented disaster’ for Fresno County. And while the area has seen major wildfires before, the Creek Fire is the ‘most aggressive of any of those ... a class in and of itself.’”

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  21. The Guardian view on Boris Johnson’s Brexit: my word is not my bond [Click] I must admit that I have rather lost track of the back and forth on Brexit and Ireland; I had thought it was settled, but that seems very much not to be the case. “Mr Johnson’s Brexit offers voters nothing so far but a fleecing, with worker, consumer and environmental rights sacrificed on the altar of turbo-capitalism.” What. a. mess.

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