The Reverend Dr. Stephanie Nagley at St. Luke’s Bethesda
September
1, 2013
It’s that time again. Time to put away the seersucker and give up
white shoes, time to hunker down to work and school. Labor Day is here.
Labor Day the last hurrah of summer, the
last summer vacation, the last long weekend to enjoy the pool, the beach, the lazy
day in the park. There will be parades
tomorrow and it’s the official beginning of the football season.Labor Day came out of the 1894 Pullman Strike. The unskilled factory workers who made Pullman cars lived in a planned community on the South Side of Chicago. George Pullman controlled that community and controlled the workers. During an economic depression and with revenues falling, George Pullman laid off worker and lowered wages but he didn’t reduce the rent on the housing where the workers lived. That led to a wildcat strike on May 11 by 4,000 Pullman workers. The Pullman workers weren’t unionized. Soon Eugene V. Debs arrived and signed up workers for the American Railway Union. The Pullman Company refused to negotiate and the strike was on. It affected all lines west of Detroit and at one point involved 250,000 workers in 27 states. The action stopped the mail which gave President Cleveland a reason to call in troops to end the strike.
Unfortunately, the striking workers
engaged in violence and sabotage. In the
end, 30 people were killed and many injured and an estimated $80 million in
property damage.
The public was generally opposed to the
workers. Media coverage was extensive
and negative toward the strikers. It
depicted the workers, many of whom were immigrants, as foreigners clashing with
the true red blooded patriots of the militias and troops.
Eugene Debs was eventually arrested.
Even though he was defended by Clarence Darrow he was found guilty of
interfering with the mail and refusing to obey a Supreme Court order to stop
the strike and spend six months in prison.
This massive workers action and the
violence that ensued led to an investigation. A presidential commission found
George Pullman partly at fault because of the way he treated his employees in
the running of his company and the operation of his company town. In 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court forced
Pullman to divest interest in the town and it was annexed to the city of
Chicago. Six days after the strike ended, President Cleveland and Congress, in
order to make amends to the workers, declared Labor Day a federal holiday. [1]
That’s the backdrop for Labor Day and it
seems particularly poignant that we enter Labor Day on the heels of celebrating
50 years since the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Sixty plus years
after the Pullman strike an estimated 250,000 men, women and children marched
on Washington. Most of those who came
were African-American. The fight for
jobs and freedom was about something more than just a job. It was and always will be a fight for dignity
and justice. It was and always will be
a fight for those who because of the skin, gender, and circumstances of birth or
family circumstances are treated unjustly as if they are lesser beings who do
not have the right to the same rights as others.
Fifty years after the March on
Washington fast food workers are demanding higher wages. Most currently make $7.25 an hour. Barely enough to scrape by. One worker
remarked, “Should I pay my light bill or gas bill. I can’t do both. The gas is already off.”
I read that in other countries, like
Australia, the fast food workers make twice that amount and burgers are still
affordable.
It used to be that the fast food worker
was the skinny teenager with a summer job or the college kid home for the
summer who couldn’t find something better.
But that’s not case today. The
fast food workers are among the thousands of working poor. The people we see every
day sit next to on the train, even work beside who don’t make enough money to
get by.
Many of those workers won’t have Labor
Day off. A good percentage are in the
low paying jobs of the retail market and Labor Day is also a big shopping day,
second only to Black Friday.
Reuters/Brian Snyder
When the Pullman workers went on strike
and when Dr. King told us about his dream and when an unnamed worker pickets a Wendy’s
in Sarasota, Florida it isn’t all about the money. The real protest and dream is about human
dignity and respect. Labor Day is about respecting people who get up every day
and go to work trying as best they can to make ends meet. It is about the ditch diggers, burger
flippers and the garbage collectors more than it’s about people like me whose
hands stay fairly clean and the ends usually do meet.
Labor Day is about the people that Jesus
cared so much. Yes, he cares about those
of us who we’re doing just fine but he seemed to have particular concern for
those who lived on the edge. The people
who don’t have a dime to rub together.
People whose life is dismal and who hopes are gone. People whose health had failed them. How, I suspect, he would hate to see what
happens today when someone loses everything simply because they got sick. They got sick and the bills piled up. They couldn’t get to work and lost their job.
They couldn’t pay the rent and lost their home.
Lived in the car until they lost that too.
Labor Day is about reminding us to care
that people trying to decide whether to pay their light bill or gas bill are
important to us. They are important to
us because we share this life even though the neighborhoods we live in may be miles
apart.
A few days ago some pundit, I think it
was Bill O’Reilly, made the comment that people are poor or out of work because
they are lazy. That’s one of those
“us” versus “those people” kinds of comments.
People do that when they’re scared and uncertain what to do. People get full of themselves like that just
to cover up how inadequate we feel
Full of themselves they come into the
room and just know that the chair at the head of table is theirs. They shake hands and smooze all the while
looking over the shoulder of the person in front of them just in case there’s
someone else more important that they want to talk to.
It’s all a terrible and tragic
disconnection from being in relationship with others. Jesus was sensitive to that. And he told us to be careful not to separate
ourselves from others. He advised those
of us who sit comfortably in life to also sit at the back of room, or the back
of the bus and see what it’s like. He
told us - people who don’t fling burgers for a living or cleans someone else’s
house - to offer hospitality in a caring smile, a listening ear, a willingness
to join the fight.
That Pullman worker, who had his wages
cut back but his rent stayed the same, looked at his three children and the one
on way and wondered how to make it all work, he is part of us. That strike was
for his babies and their babies and our babies. That young girl in the photo of
the March on Washington, looking out through the sea of people, she’s part of
us. Those unnamed fast food workers they
are a part of us. When the fast food worker has to figure out whether to pay
the light bill or gas bill she’s part of us and her trials are also ours. And then we turn from Labor Day to Syria but the underlying issues are the same. It is all about dignity and respect, and power of love versus the love of power. A military action against Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons seems likely. For me there is no way around the dilemma of being a person of God who believes in the power love living in a real world where real people do unspeakable acts of violence out of a love for power.
This is not a new. People of faith have
faced this moral dilemma over and over again.
Augustine justified being both a Christian and a soldier. In the 1930’s and 40’s Dietrich Bonhoffer
held his beliefs and spoke out against the Nazis. He was eventually imprisoned and killed
because of his part in plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. For Bonhoffer, a Christian, he lived with the
agony of knowing he had to act and also knowing that he was betraying his sense
of what it meant to be a Christian.[2]
Starting with Augustine and moving into
modern theologians the concept of a just or moral war is the standard by which
a Christian determines if he/she can be a participant in violence against
another. Personally, the notion of a
moral or a just war, with all its carefully constructed arguments, ha always seemed
an oxymoron.
Nevertheless, the human condition often
leaves us with nothing to hold on but the dilemma and the painful decision of
whether or not it is necessary to betray the holy tenet against violence. Whatever decision is made and whatever action
is taken there will be no victory. If
the United States launches a limited military strike no is only sadness –
however justified that attack may seem.
The justifications are being made. We’re told the evidence is there. But there is good reason to be suspicious of
the intelligence given the falsehoods that perpetrated the attack on Iraq in
2003. That was not America’s finest
hour. That was a tragedy. Still there is the hope that somehow the people of Syria will find peace. I do pray for a miracle.
But there is also the gritty reality of our human frailness and the atrocities of human madness to which our best but least desirable action may be a military response. Edmond Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing.”
Is there an ultimate right response to
Syria? Probably not. Perhaps there are only difficult and
undesirable choices. There are good
arguments on every side and Syria is a Rubik cube. All voices and all argument must be heard for
if nothing else it means we’re in this together.
The Church should be talking and
listening and struggling with the issues of our world openly and honestly. We should be talking about fair wages,
racism, gun violence, drone strikes and Syria.
It is our duty as the people of God.
And we should pray. I shall pray. I shall pray for my president who is left
with an impossible set of choices. I
shall pray for the people of Syria. I
shall pray for Assad. I shall pray for
those who do the unspeakable because they are too afraid to do the
acceptable.
We are in this perplexing, joy filled,
difficult, delightful, heart breaking life together. That’s why there are days like Labor Day, to
remind us of that. We’re in this to care
about one another, to care enough to pray and to march, to protest and to
debate. We, the Church, are in this life
with everyone else and it is our duty as Christians to talk and pray about the
dilemmas we face and share the anguish of uncertainty.
May we remember that Labor Day and all the
days ahead are about the dignity and respect of all God’s children so that one
we will all be free at last. 
[1]
Thank you Wikipedia
[2]
Thank you Robert Pearson for your conversation about Syria. Also see “Syria a Time Act” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-robert-pearson/syria-intervention.
W. Robert Pearson is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Wendy J. Chamberlin is
a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.
