Labor Day and the Easter Bunny

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Labor-Day-and-the-Easter-B-by-David-Glenn-Cox-100903-501.html

Monday is Labor Day, a national holiday in America that's come to be as meaningless as the Easter bunny. It is a holiday that millions of Americans struggled to bring into existence. Hundreds more died or were maimed or beaten, they were bloodied but they were not bent. They were shot at by national guardsman, policeman, sheriffs and hired thugs but were not turned back. They were turned out of their company houses during snowstorms. They had firehoses turned on them in subfreezing temperatures. Their leaders were shot down on public streets and their murderers were never charged.

They were shot at inside their tents and their wives and children were starved and murdered before their eyes but they would not yield. So it was that during a Southern Illinois coal strike the mine owners brought in scabs from out of state to work the mine. The local police were supposed to show up and escort the scabs out of the mine at the end of their shift and back to their camp but the weather was bad with sleet and snow and the cops didn't show.

The scabs got pretty scared and the strikers pent up fury turned to jubilation when they realized the scabs were on their own. The strikers jeered and taunted the scabs and made mock rush charges on the front gate of mine and the scabs in a panic broke in a run. Over the next few miles the scabs were shot, stabbed and clubbed to death in the snow. You see this was a war, and a man who is taking your job away is taking the food off your table. A person who steps between an employer and an employee deserves what they get.

Labor Day is scarier than Halloween, colder than New Year's and as somber as Christmas. It is a horror show of injustice, of massacre and counter massacre, depravity and cruelty all in a search for a living wage. The workers made outrageous demands, an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week. Children used to ride the coal conveyors picking out slag and large pieces of coal that might clog the conveyor. If they slipped or fell there were always more children.

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