May 1, International Workers’ Day
Happy May Day to all workers of the world!
A group of Black femme Baltimore & Ohio railroad track workers, circa 1943, and their foreman.
When I was around 15 or so my dad began working for a utility company. His workplace was unionized, so when he took the job he became a member of (what still is) a militant union local, the smallest organizing unit of a national union. Dad had driven a delivery truck, done roofing and other blue collar work my whole life—always with long hours, leaving home before dawn to punch in on time, exhausted after his shift.
In the years that followed him landing the union gig, my family’s material circumstances improved. We had better healthcare, I could get contact lenses because we didn’t have to pay for them out-of-pocket, there was more money, stresses eased overall, dad was around more. Dad bloomed and became militant as hell, too. I began to read about early anti-industrial labor struggle and develop pride in my working-class identity.
I came to see myself as a protagonist in the long continuum of radical resistance to capital and those who’ve done its bidding. The concept of solidarity was so clear; a principle around which I could guide my life. I was able to name that some of the unease I’d carried in my youth had its roots in my family’s struggle to stay afloat, in a cultural milieu that was decidedly upwardly-mobile. Whatever working class culture had existed didn’t become visible to me until organized labor came on the scene for us—until my dad joined the union.
My vision of a just world involves the ultimate dissolution of the state, capitalist relations and all work mandates. Mandates that are enforced by those who profit from them and tacitly endorsed by politics that valorize work. How much joy could we experience were we to engage in activities because we sought to live out the myriad desires in our hearts, rather than because we were adhering to mandates issued by the ruling class? Mandates we must either abide, or risk starvation? How much less damaged would the planet be? What if we were not only liberated as workers but liberated from work altogether? Rather than reform, why not revolution?
On the way to this vision, I would still love for classic labor slogans to sound less like cute relics of yesteryear and more like principles around which workers on Turtle Island were broadly organized. Remember that angry, organized late 19th and early 20th century workers are who we have to thank for the 8-hour work day and minimum wage. Learn the power of the strike, the power of the boycott, by engaging in them.
Keep standing up for your colleagues—solidarity is literally all we have.