Friday, May 1, 2009

May Day

My mom called earlier today from South Africa and said, It's Worker's Day, do you have the day off?

Um...no?

It's a national holiday in South Africa. People will spend the day there trying to scrub off the indelible black ink mark on their fingers from voting the other day. Out damned spots. Might never come clean.

May Day. Far too Socialist and Communist for these United States. But down near Sara D. Roosevelt Park, I noticed a large police presence. In fact all through SoHo, too. Ha. I could smell a March. Freedom of Assembly and all.

Halted on Christy Street at East Houston. Major police escort.

At the front, the march's senior statespersons...

Very few guys who looked like this.

I like to call the photo below, No cop left behind.

It was organized by the Break the Chains Alliance, and focused on immigrant workers' rights and status. They are asking Obama to legislate equal rights for all workers and "create an ongoing mechanism for undocumented workers to adjust their status." I'm with them there. They are also asking Mayor Mike to go away. "Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg is pushing racist rezoning plans...that serve the interests of developers and rich whites while displacing low-income working class people of color...essentially robbing the working poor to feed the filthy rich."

I was with them until the filthy rich part.

Yawn. What about the non-working poor and the clean rich? What about high income working people and low income working class people of...what's the opposite of color. White? Non color? See-through. Biscuit-colored.

Semantics.

I have to get back to work now.

6 comments:

  1. Australia has Labour Day, too (Monday's the holiday)although My Man refers to it as a lack of labour day.
    And I suppose the same tired semantics will be aired.Again...

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  2. It's funny, you start looking into the origins of the May Day thing and you get all confused as it seems to have originated in all kinds of places and times asynchronously.

    Even aviators recognize it. ;-) Get it?

    But the best is in France: in addition to la fete des travailleurs, it's also la fete du muguet (lily of the valley) and it would cost you a kiss... ;-)

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  3. May Day ... to us pagan Celto-Hawaiians anyway, is Lei Day/Beltane. String the flowers and light the bonfires!

    Keli'i

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  4. In NYC we have the black and white cookie, not the shades of gray cookie.

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  5. MIT - ...yeah.

    Husband: - apparently the May Day (help!)origins are French...titter. David Garland on NPR's Evening Music was massacring it in his execrable accent, so I couldn't make it out. But a lily of the valley party...now that's nice. I would attend. Also I like la Fete des Travailleurs...sounds more fun than a march...

    Keli'i - did you make a bonfire?
    :-)

    Frank - LOL. And I was looking at some overpriced NYcookies at Dean and Deluca today.

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  6. We tried ... it rained -- big time!!! So candles were lit.

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