May Day

On the first of May the workers of the world are supposed to unite and march in solidarity and remind the other classes of their societies how they are the backbone upon which is constructed their well being.  We see less and less of that across the world and certainly the idea scarcely ripples through the United States, where demonstrations in support of labor unions and the laboring classes are not existent; certainly there seemed to be no report of May Day activities in today's New York Times.  One can of course argue that the decades of almost religiously fervent hostility directed at the Soviet Union made exalting the working man difficult, since he was the poster boy for the Socialist Eastern European and Russian states.  But I always think back to the thirties and an incident when my little sister and I, accompanied by our uniformed nursemaid, had stones thrown at us by other children when we were out walking in the park of our small mid-western town and when we tearfully inquired of our mother why this might have happened, she replied quietly: "They hate us because we are rich."  And that always seemed to me just.  When some people who have done all they can and forces totally beyond their control keep them from improving their lot, then they might focus their anger and resentment upon those who have so much and seem to be doing to nothing to help those less fortunate.  I always welcomed the idea of labor unions and labor movements for that reason--well, also because my older sister authoritatively directed me to think positively about socialist values and goals when I was still a simpleton teenager.  But I always knew that I was something different; I was not working class.  My sissy manners certainly were not like the rough and tumble jumble of kids in my high school with whom I became friendly in an odd way over the years.  And they knew that I was not them.  We had what was called class consciousness, and they knew that I and my family were not in the grander sense of things their friends.  Where has that gone today?  I live in a small town with a large working class population, where many men go off at dawn in pick up trucks to construction jobs, where somewhat later their wives or sisters wait for the impossibly bad bus service to take them to the nearest malls where their employment ranges the gambit from cleaning services to sales clerks.  So much unemployment down  here, so many mortgages in default, yet the local paper which will give front page coverage to a bake sale for a benevolent organization and make the local crisis of sand dune damage the focus of their editorial page, will never mention the subject of banks and their role in the housing crisis, or how the national legislature quickly jumped through a hoop to restore air travel controllers to their pre-budget crisis level while they could not, would not move to restore, let's say, monies going out to pre school education or any of the other services that benefit the young of the working class.  When first we moved here, and I decided to buy another new car, mindful of those days of my childhood and the stones thrown in the park, I anticipated at least a few barbed comments from my neighbors who not only rarely ever refresh their stock of cars and when they do so select a late model used car at best, but, no, nary a word, as we sit here fat and sassy, comfortable, for the foreseeable future up to the grave.