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You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Late Night Labor Day Open Thread

Late Night Labor Day Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  September 1, 201411:43 pm| 31 Comments

This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Excellent Links, Open Threads

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While we’re technically still in the Labor-Day window, I want to recommend Ed Kilgore’s Washington Monthly post on “Anti-Labor Day“:

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned here before the profound effect of spending my most formative childhood years in a place that was sort of a monument to capital’s war on labor. LaGrange, Georgia, in the early 1960s was a textile company town ruled economically, politically & socially by the Callaway family, proprietors of Callaway Mills. People there still talked—whispered, really—about the anti-union violence that occurred there a generation earlier…

To be clear, the National Guard in LaGrange and other textile towns wasn’t just breaking strikes: it was evicting workers from their (company-owned) homes for any hint of union activity. It was state-sponsored class terror, and it succeeded.

Things didn’t changed much in LaGrange in the generation after the Uprising of ‘34 was crushed. As a particularly clear sign of anti-union animus, the public schools in LaGrange began class on Labor Day each year. While I was living there, Callaway family scion “Bo” was elected to Congress in the Goldwater landslide of ‘64 as an segre- gationist Republican. Two years later his views on civil rights almost certainly cost him the governorship of Georgia as a write-in campaign denied Callaway a popular majority against arch- segregationist Lester Maddox, who was subsequently elected by the legislature on a party-line vote. Two years after that Callaway patriarch Fuller stunned LaGrange by selling out his mills to the South Carolina-based Milliken empire….

… And a much more upbeat, hopeful Boston Globe article on today’s celebrations in Lawrence, the home of “Bread & Roses”:

Looking for a sign that labor still has the ability to fight?

Consider a ceremony planned for Monday as part of the 30th annual Bread & Roses Heritage Festival on the Campagnone Common in Lawrence. Laying a wreath at the 1912 Strikers’ Monument will be a group of Market Basket workers.

“The biggest parallel that I see is the ability of a broad cross-section of workers at Market Basket to remain together over the last eight weeks,” said Robert Forrant, a University of Massachusetts Lowell history professor who will speak at the festival on comparing the Market Basket struggle — which ended Wednesday — to the nine-week strike of 1912.

“The owners never anticipated that the workers would hold fast to such a degree, and the same thing was the case in Lawrence in 1912,” Forrant said. “When the Bread and Roses Strike started, mill owners were quoted in the Lawrence newspapers the second day of the walkout [as saying that] everybody would be back to work in a couple of days and it would all be over.”

In both cases, the owners were wrong….

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    srv

    September 1, 2014 at 11:51 pm

    Des Moines Register choses to have the President of the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation to emote today

    Most Americans realize that Labor Day is about celebrating workers and their contribution to our free society, but that won’t stop union bosses from stealing the spotlight to push their own agenda.

    Despite this, there is still much to celebrate this Labor Day. Workers from across the country have made substantial gains for workplace freedom.

    In America’s newest right-to-work state, a growing number of workers from across Michigan are joining the fight to protect their right to work from union bosses. In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court upheld in entirety Gov. Scott Walker’s public-sector unionism reforms, commonly known as “Act 10,” which grants right-to-work protections to most Wisconsin government employees.

  2. 2.

    Bill D.

    September 2, 2014 at 12:01 am

    Note the last line of Kilgore’s post:

    The 1930s and 1960s [as they played out in Georgia] live on, and the worship of the Golden Calf of capital has a grip on the Bible Belt as strong as sin.

  3. 3.

    TaMara (BHF)

    September 2, 2014 at 12:06 am

    Shameless Bixby picture from today. There was a chill in the air. He looked cold, so I wrapped him up.

    I worked today, but still managed to get out for some sunshine. Did we get a baby update from J Cole?

  4. 4.

    Mike in NC

    September 2, 2014 at 12:07 am

    Right-to-Work states are a fucking national disgrace.

  5. 5.

    Yatsuno

    September 2, 2014 at 12:11 am

    Tammy Duckworth is about to become a mom!

  6. 6.

    Violet

    September 2, 2014 at 12:18 am

    @TaMara (BHF): So adorable! I love your Bixby pictures.

  7. 7.

    PurpleGirl

    September 2, 2014 at 12:21 am

    @TaMara (BHF): Awwww, cute picture; thanks.

    I haven’t seen JC updating us on the baby and momma’s statuts.

  8. 8.

    Major Major Major Major

    September 2, 2014 at 12:21 am

    Spent my labor day recovering from last night’s seizure, should get discharged in the morning. Can’t wait to get this catheter out of my arm.

    So uh, anybody hiring some part time web engineers/librarians, since I forgot to budget for having a seizure?

  9. 9.

    Suzanne

    September 2, 2014 at 12:21 am

    @Yatsuno: OH MY GOD THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL!!!

  10. 10.

    PurpleGirl

    September 2, 2014 at 12:24 am

    @Yatsuno: I wish her luck and a healthy baby.

  11. 11.

    PurpleGirl

    September 2, 2014 at 12:27 am

    AL: Thanks for Collins’ Bread and Roses. I love the march mode it gets into. I also like a version done by Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina. And I didn’t remember to play it today.

  12. 12.

    TaMara (BHF)

    September 2, 2014 at 12:29 am

    @Yatsuno: That’s so cool! Thanks for highlighting that.

  13. 13.

    Bobby B.

    September 2, 2014 at 12:34 am

    Unlike the extermination of American Indians, destroying unions is still acceptable and continues daily. Maybe after unions are gone we’ll see some kind of “Little Big Man” movies.

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    September 2, 2014 at 12:37 am

    @PurpleGirl:

    I haven’t seen JC updating us on the baby and momma’s statuts.

    I half-figured putting up a new post would magically (murphy-cally) spark an update from Himself!

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    September 2, 2014 at 12:39 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Condolences on the seizure, congratulations on being able to tell us about it, and I’ll keep you in my positive thoughts!

  16. 16.

    Major Major Major Major

    September 2, 2014 at 12:46 am

    @Anne Laurie: Got some free bloodwork out of it too I guess! Ruined my game of nomic though.

  17. 17.

    Violet

    September 2, 2014 at 12:46 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Best of luck with your recovery. Do they know why you had a seizure? Is it likely to happen again?

  18. 18.

    Dr. Omed

    September 2, 2014 at 1:07 am

    I like this version of the Internationale: http://youtu.be/QP4l_PeBMyk

  19. 19.

    Major Major Major Major

    September 2, 2014 at 1:11 am

    @Violet: Pretty much everything came down to “eat better, exercise more, drink less, and get different parents” as far as we can tell. And I’m not really slacking in either of those three departments… under a lot of stress lately though. Who knows. Thanks for the good feelings all.

    ETA: Personally I think it was all the above plus a recent spate of sleep deprivation due to stress..?

  20. 20.

    Violet

    September 2, 2014 at 1:19 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, stress can really do a number on you. Maybe incorporate some simple stuff–walking or yoga poses or meditation. I just read this fascinating article. Apparently you can increase your testosterone by 20% and lower your cortisol by 25% just by doing the V for victory pose for as little as two minutes. Cortisol is the stress hormone so maybe that would be a simple thing to try?

  21. 21.

    Suzanne

    September 2, 2014 at 1:21 am

    @Major Major Major Major: I started having seizures about six years ago after a period of intense sleep deprivation, and was told that that was most likely the cause. Getting better sleep and Tegretol have kept me seizure-free for over five years.

  22. 22.

    sharl

    September 2, 2014 at 1:39 am

    From the Department of the Entirely Unsurprising:

    Eric Cantor to Join Wall Street Investment Bank

    By Dana Cimilluca @danacimilluca

    Eric Cantor plans to join boutique investment bank Moelis & Co., as the recently deposed House majority leader embarks on a new career on Wall Street.

    – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

  23. 23.

    ruemara

    September 2, 2014 at 1:59 am

    There are many times when I like people. This is not one of them. What in the everlovin’ hell?

    Get better, Major4 .

  24. 24.

    Steeplejack

    September 2, 2014 at 2:04 am

    @ruemara:

    Link(s) screwed up.

  25. 25.

    Tommy

    September 2, 2014 at 2:15 am

    That video is hard to watch.

  26. 26.

    Mike J

    September 2, 2014 at 2:17 am

    @Steeplejack: It was this: Cop Accused Of Raping 7 Black Women Finds Support, Donations On Social Media

    He hasn’t actually raised much money, I’d guess all from family to make it look like people believe him.

  27. 27.

    Scamp Dog

    September 2, 2014 at 2:18 am

    @Steeplejack, @ruemara: it’s here.

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack

    September 2, 2014 at 2:36 am

    @Mike J, @Scamp Dog:

    Thanks. My status bar didn’t show a thing—even a broken link—when I hovered over the link(s), so I didn’t have a clue.

  29. 29.

    Sherparick

    September 2, 2014 at 7:06 am

    Of course the response of the owners and investors in the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to shift investment to the even more anti-union, racially divided, South with its well established tradition of political violence and state sponsored terror. By the way, if you needed another reason to hate golf, Calloways moved on to golf from textiles.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Golf_Company

  30. 30.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    September 2, 2014 at 8:32 am

    Thanks for the link on Market Basket. I was in Manchester last month for business, working at the Currier Museum. EVERYONE I met said how they would not shop there until the gentleman running the chain was re-instated. They would go in to see how the stores looked — apparently empty shelves, and most of the offerings low quality — and then they would leave without buying anything.

  31. 31.

    mack

    September 2, 2014 at 9:24 am

    Nearly a hundred years later, it’s not much better in LaGrange. I owned a house and business there, but before that, I worked (briefly) at Calloway Gardens, the resort in nearby Pine Mountain. Employees were treated like dirt. I was no never so glad to leave a place in my life.

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