As tends to happen before Labor Day, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night. And as usual, Joe told me to take the day off. So I am. But not without a shoutout to the workers at Starbucks and Amazon and all those other workplaces who are trying to organize and form unions. I'm a firm believer that, if we had more unions, overall we'd have a more perfect union.
And since I'm heading to Ireland later this week, I'd like to add another shoutout to Mother Jones.
Mary Harris Jones was born in 1837 in County Cork. When she was ten, her family (poor tenant farmers) fled the famine and came to Canada. As a young woman, she made her way to the United States, worked as a teacher, and later a dressmaker, married and had four children.
Life wasn't easy.
It wasn't enough that she was famine Irish. In 1867, her husband and children were wiped out in a yellow fever epidemic. The dress shop she opened after the death of her family was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. (And speaking of the Irish, legend held that the fire began when Irish immigrant Catherine O'Leary's cow kicked over a lamp, resulting in the O'Leary barn burning down and setting off the conflagration that killed hundreds and destroyed a wide swatch of the city.)
Jones' husband had been a union organizer, and after her business was destroyed, Jones became one, too. Among other things, we was a cofounder of the Industrial Workers of the World - the Wobblies. Her union activities are most closely associated with the United Mine Workers.
Her words are still used by union organizers, and for other progressive causes: Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living. Or, as labor activist Joe Hill would have it, Don't mourn; organize!
Happy Labor Day to the workers of the world.
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Source for Mother Jones info: Wikipedia.
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