labor day good news / recommended readings
i love labor day. it's one of the few american holidays that don't feel wholly revisionist or capitalist (though the "sales" take center stage for many people).
this HOT, hot louisiana summer has been boiling me in my climate grief, but labor day is a good reminder that people coming together can drastically change the material realities of our society. even as republicans try to gut child labor laws and other protections labor unions secured for us, hundreds of thousands of union members are striking today with American Airlines and auto workers voting to authorize strikes last week.
The early-September tribute to workers has been an official holiday for almost 130 years — but an emboldened labor movement has created an environment closer to the era from which Labor Day was born. Like the late 1800s, workers are facing rapid economic transformation — and a growing gap in pay between themselves and new billionaire leaders of industry, mirroring the stark inequalities seen more than a century ago. “There’s a lot of historical rhyming between the period of the origins of Labor Day and today,” Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, told The Associated Press. “Then, they had the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Today, we have the Musks and the Bezoses. ... It’s a similar period of transition and change and also of resistance — of working people wanting to have some kind of dignity.”
WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS"Chain Gang All-Stars" is an abolitionist novel i didn't know i needed
i just finished Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Chain Gang All-Stars," and boy. i don't want to give too much away, but here's a review with some details:
"It is an act of protest, but it does not straightforwardly preach. Instead, it lures you in, as if to demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick. Even readers who acknowledge the brazen evil of the dystopian premise — these televised duels offer prisoners a path to freedom — might find themselves titillated by its depiction, which functions as both satire and straight-up sportswriting. The lulls between bouts give readers a beat to think about all the ways they’ve been conditioned to enjoy such a story, by any number of America’s perversions: its narcotic televised pastimes, its singular talent for mass incarceration, its steady innovation in violence technology, its racial caste system, its eternal appetite for retribution. But it’s fun, I promise."
“I thought about how the world can be anything and how sad it is that it's this.”― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars
a reminder that surviving is what we do
A newsletter from Ijeoma Oluo brought me some grounding recently as i've been spinning out about what capitalism & white supremacy have been doing to our planet. i'm hoping it will bring you some peace too.
"It seems like a fucking miracle. But it’s not. I’m here, and you’re here against all odds - with some of the world’s most powerful forces aligned against us for literal centuries - because of the ways in which every day our people, our ancestors and our communities, have found victory every day in this endless battle. We have shared knowledge when they didn’t want us to know, we have shared food when they wanted us to starve, we opened our doors to our neighbors when they wanted us in the streets, we created industries when they shut us out of jobs, we cooperated when they wanted us to compete, we insisted on being beautiful when they told us we were ugly."
Ijeoma Oluo
what would you like to see more of in this space? i'm so honored that so many of you not only subscribe to this newsletter, but open and read these updates and i want to make sure they continue to be useful to you.
do you like the good news updates? should i bring them back more regularly? what about the accountability series, has it felt useful? do the current event topical posts like the recent one about Hawaii and landback feel worth reading among the social media flurry that accompanies them?
let me know in the comments or by replying. i'm grateful for you.
with hope,
katie wills evans