Scott McLemee has a great post up at Crooked Timber in celebration of May Day and, what's more, the interesting developments among Longshoremen on the West Coast, who are planning to close the ports to protest the war in Iraq under the slogan "no peace, no work." Scott cites a friend who notes that the complicity of the labor movement during the Vietnam war might have made a certain amount of sense at a time when capital was (relatively) letting labor in on the deal, i.e., when union density was around 35 percent. That's no longer the case, and hasn't been for quite some time.
In any event, Chicago readers who want to partake in May Day festivities should consider joining this march, which looks to be a nice example of a coalition that demands both worker and immigrant rights.
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Brian Cook was an editor at In These Times from 2003 to 2009. He now works on the editorial staff of Playboy magazine.
