The front page of today's paper implored me to "Never Forget". How could I though, how could I ever forget being shocked, being afraid, being a witness to thousands of needless deaths? How could anyone ever forget? As usual it's not the right idea and it's not the way the world works. The memory will fade, not from lack of caring, not from neglect, not from indifference, it will fade because time and the universe are bigger and more important than we will ever be. The years slip by, I can't stop them. The events I remember, the moon landing, Vietnam, the Cold War, smoking at work, 4 TV channels, Gilligans Island, Pop rocks, the Beatles have become millions of other peoples history. There are 60 million people in this country right now under the age of 14. How can we expect them to remember something they never experienced in the first place? Its text book to them. Pearl Harbor, 9/11; they mean something in the abstract but they will never "Remember" either.
Another headline for today was "The Day the World Changed". Changed? Changed for who? Changed? 3,000 needless deaths and suddenly the world has changed? That's not change, that's any given Wednesday. Changed? Hundreds, no thousands, of people went above and beyond what could possibly be expected of them. Change? No, we're human beings, that's how we can roll. Change? From tragedy and fear came the opportunity to forge a new and better world. Change? Maybe next time. Maybe next time.
The head line should have read "What did you learn". Did we learn that pain and loss are a deeply personal thing that we shouldn't co-opt from the people that actually experienced it? Apparently not at our mass media. Did we learn that lashing out blindly in our pain and fear only creates more pain and fear? I hope so, but it doesn't look good. Did we learn that evil men do horrible things? I think we already knew that. Did we learn that the lesser of two evils is still evil? Call me when they close Gitmo. Did we learn that shooting the bad guy in the face doesn't really bring closure? Did we learn the closure is psycho-babble bull crap that keeps people with useless degrees employeed? Did we learn that evening the score, 1 Bin Laden for 3000 innocents, only feels good in the movies? Did we learn to say, "Stop, we're not doing this anymore." If the worlds going to get better do we have a choice?
More importantly did we learn to call Mom more than once a week just because? Did we learn to hug our kids just a little bit tighter and read them an extra story just before bedtime? Did we learn that once we have enough money to buy all the ice cream we want we have enough money? Did we learn that a touch, a caress, an "I love you" in the fog on the bathroom mirror makes her day? Did we learn that you can't get a better meal than molten hot pizza and icy cold beer? Did we learn how great grass smells? Did we learn that every day we get out of bed is a day to savior? Did we learn that it tastes better, sounds sweeter, feels warmer, looks nicer, and smells wonderful because it could all be gone in an instant?
I'll always remember 9/11. I can only read about Pearl Harbor. I can learn from them both. Today is a good day.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Hard Work
I hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day cookout. Sometimes we forget why we have certain holidays. That's why I like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. Even when you're just having the best time of your life you still know why you have the day off. Its fun but it means something. Christmas, Valentines, Presidents, Mothers, Fathers, they have all been co-opted by the mercantile class for the purpose of moving consumer goods. The worst though is the 2 holidays that bracket our summers. At least the right wing noise machine gets us to give a nod to our fallen soldiers even if they have lost sight of why the holiday was started in the first place. Labor Day is different. It has become the sad last hurrah before fall gets us back to work. ( Cause I just lounged around all Sumer. I think I missed the lounging.). But Labor Day isn't a send off to the summer, or a way to mark the beginning of school. Labor Day is about the kind of hard fought battles and sacrifice that brought this country to where it is today. Battles that are still going on and ground that we are losing to the corporations and the monied classes. The labor class in this country gets 2 holidays in the summer, Memorial Day marks our sacrifices to the God of War, Labor Day marks our sacrifices to the God of Commerce.
Fox News hates anything that smacks of class warfare. They are after all the voice of the productive class. The "job" creators who own the rest of us. I don't hate them for preforming as their sponsors pay them to, but I hate it when their noise becomes solid enough ( rich people are job creators, single payer health care is evil socialism, we can't afford social security, safety regulations inhibit business, torte reform will stop those pesky lawsuits) for the rest of the mainstream media ( rich people all) to run with it out of context and as if it were just common wisdom. It's not wisdom, its bullshit. People fought and died for our comfortable lives. Some we remember on Memorial Day, the rest we remember today. No, the rest are us.
1860: Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, MA collapses 145 workers dead.
1878: Washburn "A" Mill in MN has a dust explosion 18 dead.
1905: Grover Shoe Factory explosion, Brockton, MA 58 dead.
1907: Mononagh #6 +8 miunes WV, 362 dead.
1909: Cherry Mine, IL, 259 dead.
1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, NYC, 146 dead.
1913: Stag Canyon #2, 263 dead.
1913: Great Lakes Storm of 1913 12 vessels sunk 255 crew dead.
1914-1927: US Radium Corporation, the radium girls
1940: Pond Creek Mine WV 91 dead
1947: Texas City Disaster, Munitions ship 578 dead.
1951: Orient #2, IL, 119 dead.
They get less as we reach our modern age, but that isn't because rich people suddenly decided that workers weren't expendable human resources ( when did we coin that term "human resourse" Hmmm? pretty resently if I'm not mistaken) It was from a long hard fight, and actual shooting war, that was fought all across this country and had very real casualties. Workers didn't even really start organizing in the US until the 1850s. So the post WW2 years of prosperity have been a drop in the bucket compared to the way labor has usually been treated.
1885: 10 Coal mining activists are hanged in Pennsylvania.
1886: Bay View Tragedy, MN State militia kills 7 striking workers during a general strike for an 8 hr day.
1886: Chicago Haymarkets riots. 8 Police officers (police are workers too) killed by a bomb.
1887: Thibadoux massacre, Local militias in LA shoot 35 workers then lynch 2 labor activists.
1892: Homstead Strike, 7 pinketron guards and 11 strikers are killed.
1894: Pullman Strike, 34 members of the American railway union killed by state militia.
1897: Littimar massacre, 19 strikers killed by a sherifs department posse.
1902: Anthracite Coal Strike IL, 14 miners killed.
1904: Dunnville CO, 6 union members killed in a fight with state militias.
1912: Garbow riot, 4 timber workers killed in an armed confrontation with Galloway Lumber.
1914: Commission on Industrial Relations says that 35,000 US workers were killed in industrial accidents since 1900.
1914: Ludlow massacre, 5 men, 2 women, and 12 children killed by Pinkertons at a tent city for striking miners.
1916: Everett massacre: WA 5 IWW union men + 2 sheriffs department men killed.
1917: IWW organizer Frank Little lynched in Montana
1918: UMW organizer killed by Pinkertons.
1919: Centrailia Massacre, 6 killed, organizer Wesley Everest lynched.
1920: Matawan NJ, 7 Pinkertons, the mayor of the town and 2 strikers die during a gun battle.
1920: Battle of Blair Mountain: The police chief of Matawan, Sid Hatfield, is assassinated by Pinkertons for being a union sympathizer setting of a battle that included 5 to 10 thousand armed miners fighting the United States army. At least 200 people died.
1922: Herrin massacre: 32 people, mostly bystanders, are killed during a strike.
1927:Colombine Mine massacre: 6 miners killed by police.
1932: Ford Dearborn Strike 5 strikers killed.
1933: Pixley Cotton workers strike 4 killed.
1934: Auto lite strike OH 2 dead.
1934: Woonsockett RI textile strike 3 dead.
1937: Republic Steel massacre, 10 workers killed.
Then came WW2 and reform curbing the death toll. In all these confrontations I always try to distinguish if police or guards are among the dead because they are workers too. There is really only one enemy and that's the bastards who care more about profit than people. They have always ruled this world and they always will if we let them.
I am not a revolutionary. I don't have the balls or the disposition for it. I am a quick study though. Quick enough to know that the basic information laid out here coupled with the rhetoric coming out of the corporate noise machine suggests that we watch our backs. The "job creators" are feeling under appreciated, why someone might even try to regulate the banks again. Wages have been stagnant since the 70's. In 1991 20 women died in a fire at the Imperial Chicken Processing Plant in Hamlet NC. The doors to the building were locked from the outside.
Comfort and prosperity for working people has only been around for less than 100 years. It is slipping away. If you think the information you get from Fox, or any big media, or from your teachers for that matter, paints the true picture about labor you are just happily numb to the truth. My little outline doesn't come close to painting the big picture. OSHA recored 4,500 deaths in 2010. That's accidents, it doesn't include you breathing toxic chemicals or sitting in a hermetically sealed box with mold in the air-conditioning system, or getting a heart attack because you just sit and stress all day, or falling asleep behind the wheel of your car on the way home.
There is a class war going on in this country, it has been going on for a long time, and we are losing. If the corporations can suck in you libertarian types under the guise of freedom, or because you think your little contracting business makes you a player, or just because everyone on the left is a damn dirty hippy that's not as smart as you are, we are going to lose.
Mitt Romney is a venture capitalist, Barrack Obama never saw a banker he didn't suck up to. 261 members of congress ( that's half) are millionares. 68 Senators ( 2/3) are millionares. Representative of working people? Not a chance. It's on us. Enjoy the burgers.
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