The Art of Labor, the Labor of Art
Brothers and sisters. What makes us human, is not our labor, but rather our ability to create. As soon as our bellies are full, and we are warm and safe, we begin making drawings in caves, banging on sticks, dancing in the moonlight, and telling fairy tales. It is our creativity that makes us human instead of just another species.
BREAD AND ROSES
The labor movement has always sought to allow us the time and the freedom to seek higher level endeavors. Whether it is by fighting for the eight hour day -- remember the slogan was “8, 8 and 8-- 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for recreation (re-creation)"--or as the striking mill women in Lawrenceville sang: “No more the drudge and idler, 10 that toil where one reposes--but a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses!”
Or as Samuel Gompers, the first president of the AFL said, “What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”
The goal of the labor movement has been to allow us more humanity. To keep workers from being more than wage slaves, allow workers and families to live at a greater than subsistence level. To allow workers and families to get the wrinkles out of their bellies and to keep the wolf from the door – not because that was in itself the goal – in itself the motivator, but rather so that we can be something greater, something more beautiful.
Working people all over the world are under attack – and no more so than here, in this country, where we have the most, where our wealth should allow us the most leisure and the most opportunity for human endeavor. Instead the hours of work are increasing--the number of people working more than 48 hours a week has doubled since 1998. Paid vacations have been eliminated as full time jobs have disappeared and Americans now take less vacation a year than any other industrialized society. Fewer and fewer jobs provide for any paid sick leave, and the Family Medical Leave Act, the law that provides for only unpaid sick leave is now under attack as the Bush administration wants to eliminate the ability of anyone to use that act for less than 10 days illness – as if anyone can afford to be out of work on unpaid leave for 10 days.
WORKERS UNDER ATTACK
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50 million Americans do not have health insurance, 84 percent do not have a guarenteed pension plan – and as the workers at United Airlines and elsewhere have learned – a guaranteed pension plan is not really a guaranteed pension plan anyway – unless you are the CEO, in which case you can leave your bankrupt company with millions and millions of dollars stashed away in your golden parachute.
There is a vast right wing conspiracy on the part of corporate power and the government to destroy the labor movement and anyone who stands together for the rights of workers, and we should make no mistake about what we are watching. We should be horrified as we watch good jobs that provided for a sharing of life’s glories, good jobs that allowed us to cultivate our better natures, good jobs that gave families time to love and learn and create beauty – we are witnessing in this age – in our lifetimes – the annialation of these living testaments to our very humanity.
We cannot create, we cannot make art, we cannot make music, we cannot dance a dance of truth to power, when before doing that we must find a way to keep body and soul together. When two adults in a family hold five jobs, there is little time for art. There is little time for love.
ART AND LABOR
Art that portrays our labor, does more than just tell the tale of our work. Art that portrays our struggle, is not only the story of our desire for justice. It displays the very essence of our core and primal need to do more and be more than another species in search of food or shelter. It displays our innermost desire to create. It is a painting, a sculpture, a song or a dance that is in itself a recreation of our great and wondrous effort to emerge out of the primordial ooze, and become human. We know that the great City of New Orleans will not live again because it has been cleaned and disinfected. We know that the inner human life of that City will emerge only when the sweet sounds of jazz again fill the air.
Brothers and Sisters, I invite you to witness it, to understand it, to revel in the joy of our art and then to join with us in the labor of a lifetime, the contest to keep our humanity.