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Day of Labor

My university holds classes on Labor Day. I used to raise a fuss---quietly ignoring Labor Day despite it being a federal holiday was a passive denigration---but backed away when others took up the torch. COVID took away the momentum and we are back to quietly ignoring the date. Now that I am faculty ombudsperson I try not to raise this kind of fuss to avoid alienating potential visitors. 

I think a good deal of my support of unions comes, childishly enough, from really disliking the people that oppose them. They tend to be rich, greedy, and without compassion for the folk that work for them, quite willing to use the levers of power to suppress them legally and in the media. It's hard not to root for a movement with those kinds of challenges.

I've never been a member of a union and I'm 60 so there's that. My father was proud of his work in his union, never hesitating about where his loyalties were, and I absorbed a good deal of that in trying to emulate him.

Sadly, it's hard to see how things get better until we have at least some campaign finance reform. The wealthy are able to buy laws quite easily now. Mitch McConnell dedicated much of his career to the notion that money is speech, and SCOTUS has bought into the consistency of that approach if not its lack of merit.

So, happy Labor Day. The struggle continues.

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