This "diary" is merely an attempt to announce my new Labor Quotes website (yes, I know that link starts you at the "B" page). You needn't waste time reading about its evolution unless you wish to, but I wasn't about to publish a one-line diary nor bury it in a comment thread, so...
Several years ago, when I was a steward and officer for a union local, I had the privilege of being the webmaster, as well. Among the features on the web site was a collection of Labor Quotes--a fairly standard union web site feature, to be sure, but, over time, the collection grew and took on a personality that I felt made it unique and worthy of existence. Alas, life moves on and, after I left the local, the web site was redone (as it should have been) and the quotes section disappeared into the ether. While I've thought about it often in the past few years, events in Wisconsin finally pushed me to resurrect the collection on a site of their own.
Back in the beginning, all I'd intended was to include a link, on the local web site I tended, to a wonderful collection of labor quotes that had been assembled by the folks at IGC. But, when I went looking for their collection, I discovered it was no longer available (I didn't, then, know about the Way Back Machine at archive.org). Crap! So I did my diligent best to remember what kind of quotes they'd hosted and who by, visited some other union web sites to see what kind of quotes they were hosting, and put together a passable collection of the usual suspects.
I believe in dynamic web sites, meaning frequent updates and additions--I can't help myself, really--so I'd add quotes as I found them. Then, adding them as I found them was no longer sufficient; I started to go looking for them--not on quote cites, but within speeches and autobiographies.
Soon, I was learning about people--union leaders--who were previously unknown to me. Sure, you got your Samuel Gompers and Eugene Debs, but I, for one, had never heard of Lucy Parsons--an African-American women who, at a time before women could vote and long before African-Americans could freely sit at the lunch-counter, was a real leader in the labor movement. I read about her, read a few of her speeches, extracted the quotes that hit me at the time, and linked up to The Lucy Parsons Project. Most fascinating to me was that the Chicago police, upon Lucy's death in 1942, expended considerable energy in burning the contents of her home and all of her writings. You see, you can kill a person fairly easily if you need to, but it's so much harder to kill an idea.
One day, while sitting in a Washington DC pub with a few of my local union brothers, I noticed a blackboard behind the bar. Written on it was a quote from Edgar Allan Poe: "What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today." Damn straight, I thought. And it was then that I realized the connection of all of life (yes, I can be slow to grasp the obvious). That Poe quote had as much to do with labor and union and solidarity and brotherhood and all of it as any rousing call to arms. And it is the quotes like that one--little quirky, odd quotes that force you to pause and think, or at least to smile a little bit--that I think make this collection different from the rest...give it flavor and personality. "Yes it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too." These odd quotes, in their way, represent the roses. Well, it works that way for me, at least.
I still can't help myself. I hadn't intended any new quotes for the collection--not right away. But I couldn't help but seek out and read the speeches and autobiography of Robert LaFollette, Sr., or the essays of Marjorie Kelly. And, lord knows, I spent a lot of time trying to find something to read with quotes from Wimpy Winpisinger, though it was well worth the effort. Along the way, I even picked up a few more of the quirky quotes that spice the whole thing up.
"You laugh at me because I'm different; I laugh at you because you're all the same."— Jonathan Davis (vocalist for the rock band Korn)
"Truth is found in the hands of the fool. Peace in the hands of the fearless."—blogger, poet, G20 protester, etc. "Onu Oremun" ("numero uno" backwards)
Final thought. Thanks to Al Rodgers and others who graciously allowed me to use some original photographs. The collection is arranged both alphabetically and by topic. Topic placement is pretty random--everything is connected, after all--but I understand that others find the topic breakdown helpful. I don't expect anyone to read them all or even try. Just, you know, pick a page at random some time and sort of skim over it--I think you'll alight on one, sooner or later, that will hit you in a way that will make you think, or lift your spirit, or do whatever it is it was intended to do by the energy of the universe. The new additions are in red. Most of the pictures are linked up to more information--certainly in the alphabetical section. Please feel free to ignore the home page blog. That's just a place for me to rant.
I think of this Labor Quotes collection as a garden, one you're free to visit any time the spirit so moves you. To quote Bud Abbott: "It's there for you to be had."
Some of my personal favorites:
Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential -- that's why they killed him.—Graef Crystal (1998)
Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.—Frederick Douglass
We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?—Robert Browning