Labor Day's Origin | Waging Non-Violence

Ken and I are on the road, heading back from Wild Goose Festival. It was inspiring, exciting, faith-filled, and exhausting. Also, for the first time ever, cool! (Well North Carolina cool: high of 81º, but evenings in the 60s.)

I come home with much to write about, much to celebrate. Also, I'm not very good at selling myself, even when I have a booth. Do I need to hire a publicist?

-Liz

Systemic Love

Labor Day was created by Grover Cleveland June 28, 1894, in the middle of the Pullman railroad strike. He had been elected with support of union members; perhaps he created the holiday to make up for his anti-union action.

Pullman was a manufacturer of the railroad car that bears its name. In the midst of economic hard times the company cut the wages of its already low paid laborers by 25%, leaving the rents in the company owned town unchanged. Workers and their families faced starvation and began a strike. (This is about the white builders of the railcars, not the Black Pullman Porters who served on them.)

Eugene V. Debs, president of the (whites only) American Railway Union, encouraged rail workers to refuse to hook up Pullman cars in support of the strike. This helped bring the number of striking workers to 125,000 and effectively shut down midwest industry. The company refused to negotiate and the unpaid strikers frustration and desperation grew. They began wrecking railroad property at a protest on June 29; a US Mail car was caught up in the destruction.

Although the public appreciated the workers plight at the start, the violence and farmers' fear that they could not get their crops to market turned popular opinion. Illinois Governor Altgeld insisted he had the situation under control with the state militia but Grover Cleveland issued an injunction on July 2 and sent federal troops into Chicago. The strikers lashed out at the troops. On July 7 the troops began shooting, killing between 4 and 30, and wounding many others. By August 2 the strike was over. Workers who agreed to not join a union were rehired. And they got a national holiday.

Jesus says to consider the cost before taking action, and that the cost to follow him is the cross. The cost includes hate of our siblings, and our parents (Luke 14:25-33).

For a faith that is mostly about love, it seems that the cost would not be so high. Why would it hurt that much to love our neighbors, ourselves, even our enemies? Love seems innocuous.

But love is innocuous only when it is seen as something that is only an inner thought and interpersonal interaction. The love of Jesus is more than that. Jesus' love is lived out socially, systemically, institutionally, culturally. It certainly requires us to care for our neighbor, and our enemies, but also to change the systems that hurt our neighbors and our enemies. Jesus' love asks us to try to change our culture to one of meeting every person's basic needs.

So love today includes loving our neighbor by resisting ICE, by protecting trans people, by building low cost housing in places that don't want it, by feeding people, by protesting the hate that is all around us. We are called to love our neighbor by engaging people we disagree with, looking for common ground, but also standing up for what is right.

We are called to risk making our family embarrassed, our neighbors annoyed, to risk our church's reputation. Now is the time to stand between federal troops and the homeless, immigrants, and trans people they are harassing. We must count the cost; take a stand. It is love, but it is powerful, systemic, cultural, forceful love.

(Thanks to Dr. Rodney S. Sandler for the Wild Goose sermon on the Good Samaritan and the idea that Love is social. That no matter the politics and harm that might be created by the person in the ditch, we must pick them up and get them the health care they need.)

What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? How are you being here in your particular place? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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Encyclopedia Brittanica on the Pullman Railroad strike.

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Systemic change includes letter writing, political action, and protests. Creative protests get additional publicity, making them important for spreading the ideas of systemic love.

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