True Hope Comes To Those who Fight For it.
Labour Day in the age of Greed.
This year Labour Day came dressed in widow’s weeds. Trade union membership is in decline. Workers' rights are at their lowest ebb since before the Second World War, while a cost-of-living crisis rations our expectations that the economic currents we sail on will land us on a hopeful shore.
The Labour Day holiday would be different if workers had something to celebrate in 2022. Ordinary workers have really had nothing to celebrate since the Free Trade Accords of the 1980s. From that point, most Canadians and Americans entered the middle class not through their earned wages but through their ability to acquire credit to build their own private Potemkin villages of prosperity.
In the 21st century, Labour Day feels as contrived as any national holiday celebrated in North Korea. Labour is not respected in our economies because it is never paid what it should be worth. It is derided by the 1% and by our politicians because it is constantly undervalued and underappreciated. Nurses despite fighting to exhaustion to keep people alive during the worst pandemic since 1918, didn’t get a raise that was equal to today’s inflation. The cost of living crisis has impoverished millions. Food banks are overwhelmed with people that can no longer afford to feed themselves. People can’t afford to pay their rent. But our politicians didn't beg forgiveness for leading their constituents into this precarious situation. No- instead of saying sorry, they gave themselves a wage hike equal to inflation and gave speeches that said, “we feel your pain.” Citizens can't eat a heart emoji or use it to pay for their kids' university tuition, but politicians wonder why there is so much discontent and radicalisation within their countries. Politically, economically, and socially the West has reached an impasse. We can’t go forward, and we can’t go back.
But what are we to do then? We must stop living under the false hope that our current political system can fix the mess they created. It’s like pining for love from a person that detests you. We can’t go on hoping that the entitled are going to be the leopard that changes its spots. It’s not going to happen because people that have enormous wealth want to preserve their massive wealth and make it grow eternally. We must stop believing that if we don’t pay attention to politics, it won’t pay attention to us. It is our choice to allow politics to enchain us or liberate us. But that can only happen if we engage in politics. But we must do more than engage in politics. We must come to terms with the fact that the good times for our consumer society are over because it is killing our planet.
This pandemic is not over despite our political and business class pretending it is. The tragedy is we still refuse to learn the one essential lesson Covid has harshly taught us that our existence is brief.
Summer is done, and our hemisphere is entering the season of endings. The coming winter will be deadly for many. War is in Europe, and discord and the cusp of war is everywhere else. Shortages of food, and energy guarantee there will be chaos, civil unrest, and violence against the innocent in every corner of the globe. These are the times when revolutions foment. But right now, the ones; I see on the horizon gathering strength are revolutions that will take us further into the clutches of fascism.
I can not do much against the tyranny I see approaching us on all sides. I will continue speaking out on social media as long as my health holds and I don’t become homeless. I will continue my fight to have my book about my father published. But there is something else I am working on that I know is important. I am turning Harry’s Last Stand into a one-actor stage show. I want it to be used as people’s theatre. I want the play when finished to tour working-class districts, schools, and universities to remind people that there was a generation that said Enough is Enough and meant it. Next year is 2023. It is the centenary of my dad Harry Leslie Smith’s birth which is big for me. But I want to use that year to highlight not only his individual legacy which is about how love and the Welfare State saved my father from being brutalised by poverty. I also want to use that year to record and document the lives of others; who came from his generation and built the Welfare State and are only remembered for their deeds by their surviving families. The billionaires, the 1%, the politicians, and much of the news media talk often about hope and how they can offer it to us. But their hope is always predicated on them retaining their entitlements. True hope, the hope that all of humanity gets a decent and purposeful life, will only come if we fight for it until our last breath.
