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Labor Day and Awakening The Dragon

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Manage episode 503786927 series 2479976
Content provided by Niles Heckman. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Niles Heckman or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Labor Day, at least in the American context, is one of those curious holidays that has been both hollowed out and yet still retains a subterranean charge of meaning. On the surface, it has been domesticated—absorbed into the consumer calendar as the symbolic end of summer, a long weekend for barbecues, travel, and back-to-school sales. The American empire, as it so often does, has taken what was once a cry of resistance and repackaged it as an occasion for zombie consumerism.

There used to be both labor sections and business sections in newspapers. Now they only have business sections. Also, we used to have newspapers.

But if we peel back the veneer, we find the radical heart of Labor Day beating still. It was born out of struggle—the strikes, the marches, the martyrdom of working people who dared to demand that their lives not be consumed entirely by the hellfire furnace of pure capital. It is a holiday carved out of blood, a reminder that the eight-hour day, the weekend, the protections we take for granted were not gifts from benevolent rulers but concessions wrested from reluctant masters who have skull faces from the film They Live under their rubber masks. (Joke).

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

  continue reading

102 episodes

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iconShare
 
Manage episode 503786927 series 2479976
Content provided by Niles Heckman. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Niles Heckman or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Labor Day, at least in the American context, is one of those curious holidays that has been both hollowed out and yet still retains a subterranean charge of meaning. On the surface, it has been domesticated—absorbed into the consumer calendar as the symbolic end of summer, a long weekend for barbecues, travel, and back-to-school sales. The American empire, as it so often does, has taken what was once a cry of resistance and repackaged it as an occasion for zombie consumerism.

There used to be both labor sections and business sections in newspapers. Now they only have business sections. Also, we used to have newspapers.

But if we peel back the veneer, we find the radical heart of Labor Day beating still. It was born out of struggle—the strikes, the marches, the martyrdom of working people who dared to demand that their lives not be consumed entirely by the hellfire furnace of pure capital. It is a holiday carved out of blood, a reminder that the eight-hour day, the weekend, the protections we take for granted were not gifts from benevolent rulers but concessions wrested from reluctant masters who have skull faces from the film They Live under their rubber masks. (Joke).

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

  continue reading

102 episodes

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