"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people." Cesar Chavez

The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.

Abraham Lincoln

Last May Day I posted the history of labor and workers unions in my family as well as in Dave's. My views are the same but the urgency of the upcoming elections is nagging at me and because I'm not getting any younger, my daughters are moving toward their 30's I am feeling a trifle bewildered . . . a little less hopeful. My drive toward Utopia has slowed with each decade because I'm learning there is no perfection and a lot of compromise is due. Admittedly I believe I can adapt to the big changes if I have to but would definitely like to see things go in a different direction--and soon! The mantra of my generation was you can't trust anyone over 30. I never quite got it and now I know why, because 'they are us.' Granny Smith at her blog has posted on her sidebar the classic Pogo comic strip that goes like this:

We has met the enemy and they is us.

The voices of prophets crying in the wilderness since the 1960's about over-population, DDT, pollution, preservation, emissions controls, or recycling are now being echoed by a bright new generation that wants to see even bigger changes--and there exists a mighty deadline. Caring about the inhabitants of our beautiful planet--each other-- is one integral aspect that cannot be taken for granted. Writer/activist Anne Lamott said:

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

Here's to the year following, to May Day, 2009: hope for all 'workers.'