When I was reading other blogs this afternoon I ran across One Fly's post - "Labor Day - The Reason For It And The Innocent Men Who Went To Their Death." I'll put a link to it at the end of mine. Please read it. In these times when the working class is taking it in the shorts, it serves us well to remember.
After I read One Fly's post, I googled the Haymarket Massacre. The article there had a picture of Utah Phillips. John and I saw him at the Sutter Creek Theatre just a year or so before he passed away.
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| Utah Phillips - NWilson.com Photo |
One Fly's post is the second on his page, so scroll down a little. HERE.
4 comments:
I think it is wonderful that in a country dominated by moneymen, enterprise and sayings like "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?", you have a day that honours thye workers and their struggles. Their painful but proud history should be required study in all American schools. We all know about fallen soldiers but the stories of trade unionists struggling for decent pay and conditions are often swept under the carpet. "Let's work together. Come on. Come on. Let's work together."
...Not just so we could have an eight-hour day, but so we wouldn't be machine-gunned by the National Guard if we went on strike, or beaten to death by company goons if we tried to organize.
U. Utah Phillips was, besides being a one-man repository of the musical history of the U.S. labor movement, the composer of doleful but resolute "Rock Salt and Nails" and the teller of the hilarious "Moose Turd Pie" story. That's a good picture of him.
YP, I look at the present young generations and think, "you guys take so much for granted, things that WE didn't have and fought for!" I'm thinking specifically of equal opportunity for women and minorities. I was a teenager in the 60s. And then I read One Fly's post and realized I'm no different. I've been taking the fruits of the labor movement for granted all my life. I am a decent student of history, but I had never even HEARD of the Haymarket Massacre. In school, our studies about the time after the Civil War usually took a week and could be condensed to this sentence: "There were a lot of problems to be ironed out."
Over the years I've developed an extreme disgust for textbooks. Not just the lack of meaningful content, but the whole way that textbook companies leach billions of dollars from the education system and give little in return except glossy pictures. Oh, and they have also promoted the backpack business, and more recently the manufacture of book packs on rollers so tiny kids can lug those useless behemoths behind them instead of bending their spines out of shape. But the economy of the midwest, with their textbook publishing companies, would decline significantly without California edbiz dollars to keep them going. Gosh, they might have to grow corn or something instead.
Unknown...please feel free to use your name here, friend. Or your nickname. No need to be Unknown. And thank you for mentioning "Moose Turd Pie." We used to play that song a lot when Bob was young, and it became our own kitchen motto. I've served a few things over the years that got frowns and the comment, "Jeezus, moose turd pie! Good, though."
YP, you reminded me of one more gripe I have with present-day politics. When I see worker-type people on the streets carrying banners that were paid for by billionaires whose confessed goal is to get rid of unions. The idiots don't even have a clue that they're screwing themselves, doing the street work so the rich guys who sell paper towels can make more money. I'm sure you felt the same sort of despair occasionally as a teacher, that no matter how hard you work to teach people, some of them just aren't that evolved yet. Oh, my bad, if Rick Perry or Michele Bachman gets elected president we'll have to stop using the word "evolution."
This post of yours is really good! I also like your comments in this part and everyone elses thoughts.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
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