Workers of the World, Unidas

04:00 PM May 01, 2006

Happy May Day, comrades.

The international day of workers' solidarity, a true American holiday born in Chicago -- you thought, maybe, on Red Square? -- 120 years ago. And while this is Labor Day most everywhere in the world, hereabouts, May 1 is something nasty called "Law Day." (Although right-thinking Americans may also commemorate it as Mission Accomplished Day.) Labor Day, of course, is a historically meaningless holiday in September that marks nothing but the end of barbeque season and the beginning of football season.

A prophet is never welcome in his homeland.

The 109th Congress spent last week honoring Law Day by putting more of it in the reliable hands of the boss. Not only did it forward a net neutrality-less COPE bill to the floor of the House, it's kicking around a measure to strip consumers of the right to record radio play at home, and drafted DMCA-plus legislation to gift hysterical intellectual property inquisitors with Torquemadian authority.

There's a considerable body of evidence that DMCA has been counterproductive, and that the prevailing intellectual property structures -- one among many possible alternatives and not, as is widely believed in this town, given by the voice of the Lord -- are a rather poor vehicle for their stated ends of spurring innovation and entrepreneurship. The ancien regime of IP law is like NAFTA: supported in elite circles by such a crushing weight of ideology as to render it impervious to empirical discussion.

And as the Haymarket eight knew, ain't none of this going to change with a well-thought-out policy paper.

So here's to the energetic and apparently powerful "Day Without Immigrants" walkouts/sickouts/boycotts/protests christening this day anew, and the rising movement for immigrants' rights -- a labor movement at its heart if ever there was one and perhaps the brightest star in the domestic political constellation.

Reason for hope ... even optimism.

Happy May Day, indeed.

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