May Day 1939
By David Truskoff
01 May,
2008
Countercurrents.org
For 26 days I laid in a hospital bed fed only by intravenous injection. Dreams faded in and out. One vision returned again and again. I recreated 1939 May first, May Day in New York. I remembered standing by my mother’s side as she waited for her beloved International Ladies Garment Workers Union to march by in the great parade. She could not march that day because she had been carrying a sign on the waterfront demanding an end to sending scrap metal to Japan and she developed a blister on her foot.
When the International ladies Garment union came into view tears welled in my mothers eyes and as banner carrying workers marched by they all turned their heads and raised their fist to salute her. I was so proud.
We were
winning. Freedom and Justice was coming to the workplace and freedom
and justice would consume all of America. It was in all the red flags
that went by. It was in all the
Ethnic groups marching under their old countries flags. It was a time
of coming together. A united America. It was a time when most people
were poor and striving to end the worst depression in our history,
but it was a time of believing. We all believed in an America being
reborn. Just two years later many of the marchers were in the military
helping their new country win the Great War. Those who stayed home
worked in the war plants and enjoyed the many benefits my mother fought
so hard for. My mother worked in the Flinkote plant making gun tubs
for liberty ships after she saw her two sons go off to war.
Yes my narcotic fed dreams in that hospital bed brought that one May Day back so clearly. In her memoirs Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, my mother’s friend and hero said, "Thirty-three May Days have come and gone since my activities in the American labor movement began. In memory I view them – an endless procession of red banners, flying high and wide, in the eager hands of marching, cheering, and singing workers. Banners of local unions and AFL central labor councils; three-starred IWW banners; banners of Amalgamated, of International Ladies Garment Workers, furriers, pioneers of unionism for the "immigrants and revolutionists"; banners of craft unions, independent unions, industrial unions, and at lone last the CIO."
Thanks to the excellent work of the surgeons, I am well again. That is they saved my body, but my mind now views the sinking America and it angers me. The labor movement has given way to outsourcing. The civil rights movement that I was so involved in has deteriorated to the horrendous high school drop out rate among minorities and the constant reports of black children shooting each other in the streets.
My mother could speak many Eastern European languages and our home was often filled with New immigrants anxious to contribute to the rebirth of their new nation. Today we see the ugly debate raging in Congress about what to do with our new immigrants.
In 1939 America was a beacon to the oppressed of the world. "Come to America and help us build the true free democracy the world has dreamed of'". Today we are the despised invaders. The empire builders trying to rule the world and steal the resources of the entire planet. Our politician’s mouth the word "change", but most citizens know that there is not one of them capable of bringing about the change that will save the soul of America.
I wonder what is happening on college campuses today. Why are they not out in the streets on this May Day? They know the old guard politicians can not save the Country. They know the image of America is so tarnished that we will soon be isolated from the rest of the world.
Perhaps
it is up to us older folks, tired as we may be, to instigate young
America and force them into the streets to save the soul of their
country.
www.erols.com/suttonbear
David Truskoff's new book is out. WHAT THE HELL IS A LIBERAL..
