Happy Birthday...it's May 2 down here but still May 1 up there.
On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers marched in the streets of our cities demanding the eight hour workday. It took 54 years for the 40 hour week/8 hour day to be enacted into law, but the process started on May 1, 1886. Now we Americans are endanger of losing the 8-hour day--many of us already work so much more! Tomorrow, pause for a second to think about what we owe those workers who marched in 1886 and those who followed to win free time for all of us and ask yourself what you can do, what we can do, to honor their legacy and keep their cause alive today. Remember too, the women who left the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 to take the streets and ask for "bread and roses." The bread was higher wages and the roses, shorter hours. And as poor as they were materiallly, those woman wanted roses as much as they wanted bread. "Small art and love and beauty our drudgging spirits knew; yes it is bread we fight for but we fight for roses too!" rang the words of the song about their strike.
