International Workers’ Day

May Day, 1914. Bain News Service, Library of Congress

A May Day Collaboration

Happy International Workers’ Day! Today, most of the world celebrates their Labor Day holiday, but the United States–along with Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand–does not. Ironically, the holiday as we know it, has its roots in the American labor struggle of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

As the business class consolidated its power after the Civil War without regard for the conditions that everyday people worked in, workers of every race resisted and organized for better lives. Some were anarchists, others were socialists, and still others were trade unionists and other working people who didn’t have a theoretical stake in macro debates on political economy. Yet, they all knew that they couldn’t keep working 70-plus hours a week, that they needed a weekend, that their small children couldn’t keep working in factories. Together, they fought and they won.

We recently collaborated with the folks at the Just Word Commentary, where I wrote a reflection on International Workers’ Day/ the Catholic Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Using the creation story as a starting point, it’s about the histories of these workers’ holidays, the politics of work and rest, and how we're called to resist the violence that capitalism does to working class people. 

The Just Word is an interesting, helpful resource meant to make both Scripture and political life accessible to laypeople. When you read through the entries, you will see four sections: The day’s Scripture readings as prescribed in the Catholic lectionary, a reflection on the reading, some commentary that puts the reading into critical conversation with Catholic social teaching or history, and finally, pieces of art and communities of practice that resonate with the entry’s themes. 

Click here for Olga’s entry on land, justice, and the Haitian Revolution, and click here for another one I wrote on how the early Church’s experience of fugitivity shaped its life and should shape ours. We’re really excited to build on partnerships like this one.

In solidarity,

Dwayne