Friday, April 28, 2006

Bush on the Boycott

Interesting little blurb on the May Day and Bush.

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said on Friday he opposes a national boycott planned by pro-immigration activists on Monday that could include millions of participants. Organizers have timed the action for May Day and have strong support from big labor and the Roman Catholic church. They vow that America's major cities will grind to a halt and its economy will stagger as Latinos walk off their jobs and skip school. "You know, I'm not a supporter of boycotts. I am a supporter of comprehensive immigration," Bush told a Rose Garden news conference, referring to efforts to reach an immigration deal with the U.S. Congress.


I thought the Unions were supposed to be against this kind of thing.

hmmm.

9 comments:

Morgan said...

A co-worker just informed me that May 1st is Labor Day in Mexico.

Rick Ballard said...

May 1st is the Socialist/Communist Labor Day world wide. A fine old tradition.

Morgan said...

Oh, yeah. I knew I had heard of May 1st somewhere.

Uh, just testing you guys.

[embarassed slink]

Anonymous said...

The trick I think is to somehow make May 1 a Republican holiday.

Not Labor Day - Dia del Empresario

chuck said...

May 1 is Labor Day in all Commie Countries ;)

But oddly enough it started in this country in 1886. Yet another example of American cultural imperialism.

Big Labor

Ain't so big, and I can't help thinking this will make it smaller. I doubt the trades unions want the foreign competition. Polish plumbers anyone?

If the demonstraion becomes an international event like the organizers wish I suspect most Americans will view it as an attack rather than a appeal for rights. No doubt the organizers themselves see it as an attack, as one step on the path to revolution, and it will certainly serve their vanity if it happens so, but as a strategy for victory it is moronic. Leftwing and moronic, but I repeat myself.

Rick Ballard said...

Chuck,

Wiki's article mentions the Haymarket Riots in 1886 as being the impetus. Just another example of why I despise Wiki's content concerning anything that has a political slant. My link above to the Marx/Engels correspondence might be a tad more "historical" in nature.

You're correct about Used To Be Big Labor - this ain't gonna help.

Anonymous said...

chuck:

No doubt the organizers themselves see it as an attack, as one step on the path to revolution, and it will certainly serve their vanity if it happens so, but as a strategy for victory it is moronic.

Let's hope so.

chuck said...

My link above to the Marx/Engels correspondence might be a tad more "historical" in nature.

Your concern with Wikipedia aside, May Day was an American invention. It was not just the Haymarket riot:

"In 1886, on May Day, 340,000 workers in 12,000 factories across the country lay down their tools. Chicago, with its strong labor movement, had the nation’s largest demonstration, according to reports, with 80,000 people marching up Michigan Avenue arm-in-arm, singing and carrying the banners of their unions."

The official May Day was later proclaimed at the International Labor Congress meeting in 1889 in Paris to commemorate the strikes and the Haymarket riot. I dare say labor has since prospered better in the US then in the countries where the official May Day still holds sway.

As to Marx and Engels, Marx died in 1883, so I think the letter is from Engels. Marx did publish extensively in the US:

In 1852, Charles Dana, the socialist editor of the New York Daily Tribune, offered Marx the opportunity to write for his newspaper. Over the next ten years the newspaper published 487 articles by Marx (125 of them had actually been written by Engels). Another radical in the USA, George Ripley, commissioned Marx to write for the New American Cyclopaedia.

Also, Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louis Bonaparte was first published in NY. I also find it curious that Trotsky was resident in NY at the time of the Russian Revolution and published an article on Stalin in Life magazine as late as 2 October 1939. Life magazine also had extensive coverage of Trotsky's assassination and funeral. Times have changed, eh? Anyway, most European socialists seemed to find American labor a bit odd: too well off to pass as "real" labor and too ambitious to rise in the world. Trotsky in particular was put off by workers driving automobiles. Oh, the shame of it. Seems not much has changed over the decades, eh? The US just isn't anything like Europe.

Unknown said...

Well that was the time of the robber barons and Pinkerton men and the agrarian populists as well.

Many American papers thought the country was heading for revolution and then there were the anarchists running around and causing trouble.