Labor Day

The Weekly Watch

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 09/02/2018 - 6:39am

Laboring to Understand

I've been struggling to understand human behavior and actions this week (maybe every week). As it's Labor Day weekend I was thinking about the current labor strikes in our prisons. Really it is a strike against inhumane conditions and out right slavery. So why is it humans are so cruel to one another, to our fellow lifeforms, to our ecosystem at large. I usually explain it as greed, but I fear it is something deeper ... a fatal flaw in the nature of our species. It seems we lack the ability to act now for our future tomorrow. The corporate media can be blamed in part, but some things have become pretty obvious. How about the wild weather we've been having world wide? But we still keep pouring carbon into the air and pushing for more fossil fuel...basing most of the worlds economy on its extraction and use...driving absurd wars in the middle east and blatant efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Is it willful ignorance, or are we truly blind?

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The Weekly Watch

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 7:30am

Workers of the World Unite!

It's Labor Day weekend. It marks the end of the summer season for many, however we still have a few more weeks till the equinox and true Autumn. This summer was the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”...a time when hopes and dreams of a better world filled many minds of my generation. At that time I thought our idealism would change the world. Sadly capitalism was a more powerful force than our aspirations. How far away we have drifted from that dream of a better world. Today's image of America in my mind includes it's militarized police, disregard for people in favor of corporate profit, massive incarceration of the poor people of color to benefit privatized prisons and probation services, large scale aggression across the world, destruction of the planet and climate for the benefit of the few, and top it off with a heapin' helpin' of our arrogance that we are exceptional (yes exceptionally evil).

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Bringing In The May: The Heroes of Haymarket

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sun, 04/30/2017 - 4:56pm

The following is a republication of a Beltaine Diary I wrote and published in 2015, with some small updates.


Bringing In The May:
The Heroes of Haymarket

by Sean McCullough
(thanatokephaloides)

One hundred and thirty-one years ago, history was made at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois.
This piece of history was so critically important to the lives of working men and women ever since that time that almost every nation on Earth, the United States of America alone excepted, celebrates its laboring population on the first of May.
I feel that we here at caucus99percent need to remember what happened on that fateful May evening in 1886, and the heroes who sacrificed their lives so that their fellow workers might have access to reasonable working and living conditions.
For more on this important story, please join me below the fold.

Beltaine with Walter Crane!

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sun, 04/30/2017 - 4:41pm

This Essay is one I published over at TOP in 2015, with a few changes and updates. It develops an idea which I find fascinating: that the International Labor Day, May 1, is the extension of the ancient Holy Day of Beltaine, and part and parcel of its resurgence in modern times. And the artwork of Walter Crane is pretty cool, too!

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Open Thread - Monday September 7, 2015

Submitted by gulfgal98 on Mon, 09/07/2015 - 8:11am

Here's a quickie Open Thread for you 99%'ers to post whatever you wish. Today is Labor Day and for some it is also the last day of summer.

I will add some links as I come upon them. But for now, just post your news and views.

First up, from Think Progess is an article on some of the most important heroes of the Labor Movement.

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