Happy Labor Day, Mom

I’d been debating with myself. The Labor Day blog: to do it or not to do it? Is anybody going to be reading on a holiday weekend? Walking this morning, a beautiful, feels-like-Maine morning in the midst of what are supposed to be the dog days of summer, my mother came to me. She didn’t speak but I could feel what she was saying. “Your father and I think you should definitely do a Labor Day blog.”

So, here it is. I owe it to them. My parents were fiercely on the side of the workers. Capitalists were the bad guys, blamed for everything that was wrong in the world. My mother was proud of her union days, as a member of the Teachers Union. I grew up in the midst of McCarthyism when the red baiters were intent on eviscerating the unions hounded out the militants, accusing them of communist sympathies. If you were among the accused, called before a quasi-judicial panel, you could save your job, perhaps, by naming names, naming friends and acquaintances in your union with “communist sympathies.”

My mother was not going to name names. It was possible that she might go to jail. We, I, lucked out. My mother had suffered with stomach ulcers for years, presumably brought on by the stress of teaching. An early medical retirement came through before she was called before the panel. She got out with a small pension and without betraying anyone. I was proud that she had the courage to resist the McCarthy and his cronies.

A few years later, in the afternoons after school, I was often glued to the TV, watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. We weren’t big fans of the military, to say the least, but I rooted hard for the Army. The defeat of McCarthy ranked in my pantheon of childhood moments with Dodgers eventual victory in the World Series.

Labor Day was the day to celebrate the victory of workers against the oppressors, but already in my memory, Labor Day parades were becoming a thing of the past. We remembered what Labor Day had once been. Mom showed up this morning to remind me.

She was always there during my charter school days, reminding me of who I was. The anti-communist, United Federation of Teachers, which had supplanted my mother’s Teachers Union, had taken on the “burden” of ending charter schools. They were out to destroy us. Which made them my enemy. Mom was always there reminding me, the unions weren’t the enemy. Not that all unions were good. Some were progressive. Some were reactionary.

Still, unions weren’t the enemy.

I thought that I was a good boss. Mom was skeptical. “What happens after you?” she would wonder. “Will the next boss treat teachers with respect and dignity?” I was hoping so. When I heard that things weren’t working out as I’d hoped, I began to wonder when someone would, as we used to say, “drop the dime.” When would someone call the union? As far as I know, no one has, but Mom is right. Unions are important. They do deserve to be celebrated. Happy Labor Day, Mom.