Day 180…
Today is the end of summer.
Technically, that doesn’t happen until the fall equinox which this year falls on September 22. Practically, however, today, Labor Day, is the last day of one of the strangest seasons any of us have ever lived through.
I am back in Provincetown, sitting in the Meat Rack on a bench to the east side of Town Hall.
Provincetown is much more crowded this weekend than it was the last time we were here a couple of weeks ago. For many people, today is either their last day here or the day that they are returning home. The coffee shops all have long lines of customers, some with their small wheeled suitcases waiting for the bus and some just looking like they got up too early so as not to miss a second of this final glorious day.
The gay muscle boys were out in force last night. It almost seemed like a normal evening in P-town except that there were no clubs open and they were all wearing masks. The dance space at A-House is closed, but the outdoor space is open for drinks. Likewise, the Boatslip.
Somewhere between the time we finished dinner last night and this morning, a small army of people appear to have broken out the chalk and written Black Lives Matter in front of almost every single store along Commercial Street. In fact, anywhere where there was room now has that or BLM covering it. In front of the New York store, that sells some of the best ice cream around, on the street, there are thick chalked letters that are six or seven feet tall made up of pink and blue flowers.
Provincetown, like much of Cape Cod, is overwhelmingly white, but not, thankfully, completely white. I’d like to think that some of the gay muscle boys, with nothing else to do, decided on a night of social protest and support instead of the usual bacchanal.
Mind you, please don’t think that I have anything against gay muscle boys. Some of the people I love best in the world could be considered gay muscle boys. There is a certain amount of eye-rolling that goes along with those relationships, but I truly love that. A good, and extremely fit friend of mine posts pictures of himself in next to nothing, all the time. Occasionally when he passes some invisible boundary, his mother will respond to his post with his name in all caps followed by several exclamation points. It never fails to make me laugh. I love her almost as much as I love him. Sometimes I see a picture he’s posted and just count off the minutes until she responds - or do the same thing myself.
Last night, walking down commercial street with all of the straight families with kids in strollers, the drag queens and the boys being their loud and out-there selves, seemed so achingly familiar that it almost erased the strangeness of this whole past odd and overwhelming summer.
The night before last we ate with friends at a well-known local spot called Sal’s. Sal’s is located in an old, slightly ramshackle house that fronts directly onto Commercial Street fairly far into the west end of town. The inside of it is all worn dark wood making it look like the inside of a very old sailing ship. The people across the street, according to local gossip, are in perpetual conflict with the owners and keep trying to get them to shut down. The town has basically risen up in support of the restaurant, so, as a result, it’s always crowded.
We did not eat inside. Instead, we ate out on the beach itself, where they have set up several tables and chairs. Staring out at the harbor, our feet in the cool sand was just about as perfect a way to dine as I can imagine.
As the sun set, the flat water turned almost every color of the rainbow and, for a few brief moments, just before it vanished, the boats scattered across the water all seemed to glow.
That’s what today seems like. That last moment where everything shines just a bit brighter before we all start hunkering down for the coming winter.
In the late 1800’s, a group called the Knights of Labor grew to some prominence not only here in the United States but also in Canada, England and Australia. It was founded in 1869, not long after the Civil War, and by 1886 had almost 800,000 members. At the time that represented nearly 20% of all workers.
After the war, the United States went into a decade of economic growth that is referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution. Industry grew but it was mostly on the backs of immigrant German and Irish workers who suffered from long workdays, with very little pay. Following that period of expansion, the US, and indeed most of the developed world, fell into what was called the Long Depression. 18,000 businesses in this country went bankrupt. Ten states went bankrupt. Unemployment at the time was anywhere from 8.25-14%.
The K of L (official title, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor) came into being during this recession and peaked during the decade of prosperity that followed. It recruited members across racial and gender lines and represented both skilled and unskilled workers.
While there were many socialist and anarchist organizations active at the same time, the K of L was neither, rejecting those philosophies. Their aims were similar, however. They promoted social and cultural support for workers and one of their main focuses was the eight-hour workday. Unfortunately, the structure behind the K of L was not always able to keep up with the explosion of new members.
In October of 1881 a group of disaffected K of L members along with some other groups held a conference in Terra Haute, Indiana with the aim of forming a national trade union. More anti-unionists showed up than unionists and an anti-union resolution was actually proposed. The unionists managed to get the conference adjourned before that happened and they agreed to meet again on November 15, 1881 in Pittsburgh.
It was at that conference that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU) was born. By 1886, the name was changed to the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Rather than including unskilled laborers as the K of L did, the FOTLU limited its membership to skilled workers. That membership included workers from many different trades and crafts.
At the 1884 conference, they set May 1, 1886 as the day when the 8-hour workday would begin across the country. To achieve that they prepared for a nation-wide general strike.
It is estimated that on May 1, 1886, somewhere between 300,000 and half a million workers across the country went on strike. “Eight-hour day with no cut in pay” was what they chanted. Chicago was, at the time, the industrial center of the nation and, therefore, the city where the largest numbers of protesters were.
The general strike had been largely non-violent until the night of May 3. That night, protesters rallied at the gates of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago where replacement workers had taken up the striking worker’s positions.
When the bell at the end of the day sounded, a group surged towards the gates to confront the scabs and, in response, the police fired on the crowd, killing at least two workers.
The next night, May 4, there was a rally held at Haymarket Square. It was non-violent until about 10:30pm when, after the last speech, the police arrived en masse and marching together, in rigid formation, ordered the protesters at the rally to disperse.
The leaders of the rally insisted that it was peaceful and refused. The police then advanced and somebody threw a homemade bomb in their path.
All collective hell broke loose.
Shots were fired back and forth. As the protesters fled, the police continued to fire on them. In about five minutes the square was cleared. Estimates say that at least 50 workers and 60 police officers were injured and at least seven policemen and four workers had been killed.
In the aftermath of the riot, there was a swell of anti-unionist sentiment across the nation. It was said that the union movement was made up of anarchists and socialists whose only aim was to destroy American society. Conspiracy theories abounded. The coverage in the press got more and more exaggerated. The general public was terrified into thinking that armed union anarchists were going to burn down their towns and homes.
Eight protesters were put on trial for the death of the police officer who had died when the initial bomb went off. Only two of them had been present at the time. The defendants included August Spies, the editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, (translates as workers’ newspaper) who had spoken at the rally and was one of those who had tried to convince the advancing police that the rally was peaceful.
All eight were found guilty. Four, including Spies, were hanged. Before he died, Spies yelled out, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
It wasn’t until 1916, thirty years later, that the Adamson Act was passed limiting federal railroad workers to 8-hour workdays. It was the first federal law that regulated private companies work hours. It was, of course, challenged but upheld by the Supreme Court the following year.
In 1937, now over fifty years after the Haymarket riot, the Fair Labor Standards Act passed under the New Deal. It established the 40-hour workweek in industries that represented about 20% of the country’s work force.
But I digress. All of that came from the rabbit hole I just fell into researching the history of Labor Day.
The US Department of Labor website describes today as this:
“Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country”.
The first state to set aside a day for the celebration of the worker was Oregon on February 21, 1887. Later that same year, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York did the same. By 1894, 23 states had the holiday on their calendars and Congress passed an act making it a national holiday.
I am, myself, a proud member of a union: Actors’ Equity Association. My union represents professional actors and stage managers in the United States. It establishes working conditions, including the number of hours we are allowed to work, as well as base levels to our salaries. I have worked for producers who support the union as well as producers who do everything in their power to undercut the union. I have never worked for the latter twice.
We have a history here in this country of fighting for what we believe is right. People gave their lives to the fight for the eight-hour workday, something we all take so much for granted now that we never even question how it came to be.
People are now giving their lives fighting for racial equity.
There are always those opposed to these fights. The opposition seems always to come down to a question of money. The people who stand in opposition to forward movement invariably want to keep as much money as they can for themselves. They never want to share.
It was eye-opening to me to see how the progressive labor movement was demonized by the opposition. How lies were made up about it and disseminated. How fear was stoked in the general population against it.
Here we are in the middle of another progressive movement and the tactics are exactly the same.
God bless the loyal opposition who gathered together last night and chalked the streets of Provincetown with Black Lives Matter. It harmed nothing at all, and, for this morning at least, put the word out there to everybody.
Today, on this Labor Day, we should all give thanks to those who have come before us, whose work, struggle and sacrifice have made our lives in this great country that much better. We should also give thanks to all of those among us who continue the fight every day.
The Great Work is well underway, and it continues spinning ever forward despite those who would stop it for their own ends.
Keep it up.
Happy Labor Day.
I always think summer
is over rated...
Labor Day
Yes, I honor those who came before me
Interesting this Labor Day
how many of us are
Un employed...
Maybe Work has more to do with
the hours we are putting in
to build our lives up
all of our lives
Our dreams hopes & visions
the true work
keeping our Souls connected to our passion and purpose
I work overtime
and the pay is
priceless
xx