May Day

"..Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May..."

Terry Glavin provides the ultimate the state of the union appraisal in his article celebrating the true significance of May day. He starts with:

Today is May Day, the holiday most of the world marks as international workers’ day.

... Long tarnished by Stalinist appropriation and armoured parades in Moscow and Beijing, and lately fashionable with earnestly dyspeptic anti-globalization protesters, May Day is nonetheless a traditional, official workers’ holiday in such noticeably non-totalitarian countries as India, Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand.

And concludes with:

What all these inscrutable, fractious and perfectly ordinary people want, in places like Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, is no more or less than what we all want. It’s a fair day’s pay for an honest day’s work, the rule of proper laws, and some peace and quiet. Any saboteur of this common purpose is a scab.

What we want for ourselves we should demand for all.

Let's repeat:

What we want for ourselves we should demand for all.

Amen to that.