No. 80 of 108
September 1, 2025
Today is Labor Day in America. Its origin story dates to the late 19th century, championed primarily by trade unions. Thirty states officially celebrated Labor Day prior to the declaration of the federal holiday in 1894. “America’s unions have had much to celebrate on recent Labor Days. Not this year.” Public sector unions are under attack, with the President acting to strip collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers. “This is the single largest attack on the labor movement in our history”, said one union leader, citing the ripple effect over sectors.
Rulers seek to consolidate rule. That is the way of rulers. Of course workers would be a threat to the rule of rulers and at the mercy of the rule of laws upended, bypassed, ignored by rulers. There is leverage when rulers need the labor of workers, but very little leverage when rulers don’t want the work to be happening in the first place. That is the conundrum we are all in. We, the peoples and beings who are in the place currently ruled, the peoples and beings who need the labor, heart, experience, dedication, and persistence of workers who work for the greater whole, now in a hole of rulers’ making. We are also the peoples and beings who have come to count on the labor of countless folx who have had no collective rights and very few individual rights, thus rendering folx easier to be taken advantage of, day in and day out, and disappeared even as their lost labors are acutely felt along the fire line, the harvest row, in care of our relatives, in the places of worship. All work, all labor, critical to our collective well-being. Greatly upended, for now. And yet, the massiveness of our collective contributions to each other… that feels like ballast ready to be set free to be the great wind our sails need.