Of holidays and strikes
Here's a thought loosely inspired by the official commemoration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm increasingly dubious about the wisdom and propriety of marking the significance of a person's accomplishments through an official holiday. We don't yet have "Martin Luther King Day Sales" but it seems only a matter of time. No doubt early celebrations of Lincoln's birthday (now merged into "Presidents' Day") were not wholly commercialized, but as the event recedes in time, the commemoration becomes increasingly disconnected from the achievements commemorated.
Relatedly --- or at least it seems to me that there is a relation here --- I do not understand the notion of a "strike" as a form of political protest. I recently received an email calling for a "student strike" to protest President Bush's planned troop increase and the Iraq War more generally. Now I certainly understand that in order to hold a protest march and/or rally on a weekday, student participants need to skip school and employed adults need to skip work. But in such circumstances I would not characterize the skipping of school and work as a "strike." Rather, the skipping of school or work is a side-effect of being somewhere else. Nonetheless, genuine "strikes"---in which the protest CONSISTS IN skipping school or work---occur (more so among students than workers, I believe), and that is what was suggested in the email I received.
This seems misguided in the extreme. The point of a traditional labor strike is to make the employer suffer via lost profits (or, in the case of a public sector employee, to make the public suffer and thus exert pressure on the authorities to settle on terms favorable to the workers). This I get. But I don't see how junior high or high school students ditching school---but not attending a rally, march or even a "teach-in"---exerts pressure on anyone. Perhpas it makes a point in itself, but that point is likely to be muddled by the fact that many of the strikers experience the strike as a boon rather than a sacrifice.
I'm increasingly dubious about the wisdom and propriety of marking the significance of a person's accomplishments through an official holiday. We don't yet have "Martin Luther King Day Sales" but it seems only a matter of time. No doubt early celebrations of Lincoln's birthday (now merged into "Presidents' Day") were not wholly commercialized, but as the event recedes in time, the commemoration becomes increasingly disconnected from the achievements commemorated.
Relatedly --- or at least it seems to me that there is a relation here --- I do not understand the notion of a "strike" as a form of political protest. I recently received an email calling for a "student strike" to protest President Bush's planned troop increase and the Iraq War more generally. Now I certainly understand that in order to hold a protest march and/or rally on a weekday, student participants need to skip school and employed adults need to skip work. But in such circumstances I would not characterize the skipping of school and work as a "strike." Rather, the skipping of school or work is a side-effect of being somewhere else. Nonetheless, genuine "strikes"---in which the protest CONSISTS IN skipping school or work---occur (more so among students than workers, I believe), and that is what was suggested in the email I received.
This seems misguided in the extreme. The point of a traditional labor strike is to make the employer suffer via lost profits (or, in the case of a public sector employee, to make the public suffer and thus exert pressure on the authorities to settle on terms favorable to the workers). This I get. But I don't see how junior high or high school students ditching school---but not attending a rally, march or even a "teach-in"---exerts pressure on anyone. Perhpas it makes a point in itself, but that point is likely to be muddled by the fact that many of the strikers experience the strike as a boon rather than a sacrifice.
posted by Michael C. Dorf @ 12:42 AM
7 Comments:
At 11:46 AM,
Jamal said…
I disagree somewhat on both scores.
As to official holidays, I've been forced to reflect quite a bit on Dr. King over the past few days, from seeing commemorative events on TV & radio. For example, just last night I heard the great Nina Simone's touching tribute, "Why (The King of Love is Dead)" for the first time. As I write, I'm watching a discussion of the King legacy on Washington Journal. This surely reflects in part my own listening and viewing habits, but it ain't nothin'. I would think that commemoration of any historical figure or event will inevitably be disconnected from the referent over time (e.g., July 4th), but I'm not sure why that's an argument against the practice of commemoration. Even if the trend you discuss continues, the King holiday will have served a useful purpose.
On strikes, I agree that we are more skeptical of strikes when we suspect the striker is not suffering any harm. I disagree that a student strike is "misguided in the extreme." The pressure comes simply from the fact that we -- parents, teachers, police -- want students to be in school. It is easier to see this from the student's perspective. By the very hypothesis of your last point, he goes to school every day because institutional actors force him to do so. Whatever the motivations of those actors, the student thwarts them by refusing to attend. This is surely a weaker form of pressure than a labor strike, but pressure it is.
At 3:27 PM,
Michael C. Dorf said…
Interesting comments from Jamal. The first point is fair enough. Among other things, the day off from kindergarten led me and my wife to have a useful discussion about racism with our older daughter. I suspect that effect could also have been generated by a unit on Dr. King in her school but perhaps Jamal is right that we wouldn't have had the extensive opportunity to discuss it with her if so. Perhaps a more precise way to frame my point would have been to say that the actual commemoration is most valuable when the relevant person's work remains urgent. We did not get MLK holidays until after the Civil Rights movement, and one often wonders now whether it's used by those who deny the persistence of racial barriers to deny that work remains to be done. Maybe Jamal is really saying that when MLK day is just an occasion for a mattress sale, we'll know we've made significant progress. I partly agree, but I suspect it will mean that much of his message -- including his concern with economic inequality -- will have been forgotten.
As to student strikes, yes, students can pressure adults by ditching school, but those adults aren't the ones who are deciding whether to send more troops or withdraw from Iraq.
At 7:22 PM,
Adam P. said…
I've always thought the national holidays in the U.S. were stupid. Most Americans commemorate their fathers more on Father's Day than they do MLK today, or even "Presidents" on "President's Day". I think Election Day is actually the strangest non-holiday we have (given other countries have it as a holiday), and it would seem to be a vital day. Interestingly, do we think schools would teach about more if we didnt have MLK day off? (Keep in mind, I grew up each year having a day off from school for "Brooklyn Queens Day", so I largely find these holidays arbitrary.)
At 7:23 PM,
SLCbearcat said…
I wonder if student strikes are more popular because the relationship between students and university administrators has changed. In the vietnam era, it seems like there was much more direct forms of protest- things
like taking over campus building, big disruptives rallies, ect. But that was when universities and their student bodies were pretty antagonistic. Now students and admins are pretty much on the same page, politically, so there's no real point in being disruptive.
The point of most of the student strikes i've seen isn't to effect outsiders, but to raise conciousness within the student body. If 1/4 the class is gone, the rest take notice. It can be pretty effective...
At 9:14 PM,
Adam S. said…
Aren't strikes just a really easy way to get other people to pay attention? When whole segments of society stop doing whatever it is they do, other people are affected and will pay attention---the safer and humane version of the Basque bombings in Spain (to say nothing of the similar motivations behind the PLO bombings of the 1970s, before this current era of suicidal terror that seems to arise from a theistic cult of death).
Mike's point about student strikes also seems a bit strange from his particular view of Columbia's (former) library: A high-salience place with much symbolism, Columbia's domed hall and steps was a great place to march around with guns and get people agitated (from the perspective of the agitators); the media cares about Columbia's campus. How hard was it, for example to take over Cornell's Willard Strait Hall in 1969? How visible was the accomplishment. Seems quite rational to target soft but symbolic places if you want to cause a stir with the rest of "the establishment," to say nothing of the positive effect of NO EXAMS (how often are strikes staged during the final weeks of semesters...)
The most interesting point made in these responses, though, was the point about Election day. While it seems strange that we honor Gerald Ford by NOT doing work in the courts (delaying prisoner's rights to a speedy trial; delaying the resolution of civil disputes etc) and by NOT keeping the financial mechanisms which drive our economy working, it is even more strange that we do not afford people the ability to get to a polling station on election day without worrying about how to balance busy work lives! From my understanding, Republicans have long-opposed legislation making Election Day a national holiday. It's a numbers game: the marginal voting increase for Dems is likely to outpace that of R's when all people have off and a full chance to think about, and then act on their electoral preferences.
At 9:19 PM,
Derek said…
We didn't celebrate Brooklyn Queens day in Arizona, but we did get no less than two days off a year for "Rodeo Vacation." And this from the state with the dubious distinction (along with one other state) of refusing to adopt MLK day until national pressure became unbearable. I was just a little kid, but I still remember that time with great embarrassment.
At 9:39 AM,
Michael C. Dorf said…
In case anyone is still on this thread, just a tiny response to Adam S's point: Ditching class to facilitate taking over a building does not fit my definition of a student strike for the sake of the strike. Not that I favor the taking over of buildings (at least now that I'm likely to be on the side of the overtake-ees!)
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