May Day

Man, I’m thick sometimes.  This whole “immigrant boycott”/”immigration reform march” thing that was going on today, it was happening on May Day.  Before Socialism and Labor became synonymous with godless evil, Americans celebrated May Day as a holiday, kind of like Labor Day but with more teeth.  It commemorated the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. It died out in America under the grim gaze of McCarthyism, but of course stayed a huge holiday in the Eastern Bloc (ironic, since the holiday is American in origin). It never hit me that the date for these protests was THAT day.
For the more authoritarian among us, of course, there’s an alternative — you can goose-step and salute our glorious leader, unbound by mere laws of the land, on Loyalty Day.