May Day and Workers' Day
Sermon by Steve Edington
May 1, 2011
About a month ago an anniversary came and went which I did not take proper note of as we were dealing with various other matters at the time. But it is relevant to what I want to offer this morning, so I'm going to loop back a few weeks to pick it up. Unfortunately, it is one of the more tragic anniversaries in our nation's history. This past April 4, 2011 marked the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee. As I've mentioned on other occasions I was a seminarian in Rochester, New York at that time, and some of my fellow students who were African Americans had personal ties to Dr. King, which compounded the impact of that horrible incident upon our seminary community. My memories of those few days are so vivid, and remain so immediate in my mind, that it's hard to believe 43 years have gone by since it happened.
The reason Dr. King was in Memphis on that day of April 4, 1968 is telling, and doesn't really get a whole lot of play as Dr. King's story is told when his birthday is celebrated each year. He was not in Memphis to lead a civil rights rally in the traditionally understood sense of what a civil rights rally was. By that I mean he was not there to advocate for the racial desegregation of public facilities, or restaurants or swimming pools, and the like. Neither was he there to advocate for voting rights for African Americans. As a matter of law, these things had largely--not entirely, but largely--been accomplished by 1968, although their full enactment still seriously lagged in places.
Dr. King was in Memphis, at the invitation of a local Methodist minister who was involved in a local organization called Community on the Move for Equality. This group had been formed to support striking sanitation workers - "garbage collectors" as the more colloquial terminology would have it. The great majority of those workers were African American, but their race was not the forefront issue. They were striking for greater job safety after two of their workers had been killed when the compactor mechanism in a trash truck got accidentally triggered. They were striking for better wages and benefits. And - of particular interest, I find - they were striking for union recognition. It was for this latter reason that their efforts were being most vigorously opposed by the local political power structure in Memphis.
Dr. King, that is to say then, was killed on his way to speak at a rally on behalf of public employees who were seeking to form a union. In one sense of the term he was speaking for the cause of civil rights, but in this case it was about the rights of working people in a way that both included and transcended race.
Dr. King, indeed, has been called a martyr for the cause of civil rights and racial equality, and in a broad sense that is clearly true. But his death came at a time when he was making connections. He was coming to see that the causes of racial equality and racial justice, to which he'd devoted his career to that point, were part of a greater issue of social and economic justice. Maybe that connection had been in his mind all along, and it wasn't until after some of the initial and more immediate goals of the civil rights movement for racial equality had been accomplished that Dr. King felt it was the right time to take his efforts to the next level. His appearance in Memphis was a precursor to a Poor People's Campaign he was planning to take to Washington, D.C. the following summer - five years after the celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech he'd given there.
So while I may be a month late in reflecting on Dr. King's death, the first day of May is an appropriate one for recalling the circumstances surrounding his death. Among the various world-wide celebrations that take place on this day, many of them having to do with the arrival of spring and dancing around May Poles--which sounds like great fun. But this is also International Workers Day. It is rooted in the struggle for an eight-hour working day for hourly wage earners; and in the Chicago Hay Market riots in 1886 when strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company were fired upon and four of them were killed. The story of the labor movement, both in this country and world-wide is a compelling and fascinating and uplifting one; and one that is well beyond the scope of this particular sermon. Dr. King's journey to Memphis is, however, one segment of that larger, and still ongoing, story.
My recalling the circumstances surrounding Dr. King's death over four decades ago and the currents swirling around in our current political landscape do have a way of coming together. The larger issue Dr. King was seeking to address on the day he lost his life--and on the day we lost him--had to do in good measure with the role of the civil government when it came to protecting, promoting, and advancing the rights and well being of working people, which is to say a pretty good chunk of our citizenry.
Martin Luther King was first and foremost--as he maintained himself--a minister and a moral leader. But he knew that in order to stay faithful in that role, as he was taking it on in the public arena, he had to be in conversation, sometimes even contentious conversation, with the political power structures of his day from the local to the national levels. That conversation has continued to this day, and as we have seen has become quite vigorous in recent months in many parts of our country from Madison, Wisconsin to our own State of New Hampshire with a number of stops in between and all around.
I hope I don't disappoint too much if I don't get into the particulars of these legislative battles now taking place across our political landscape, strongly as I know many of you feel about them. I would like to speak instead to that larger issue which I believe Dr. King was seeking to address; and that issue has to do what constitutes the proper, and even necessary, role of the civil government when it comes to maintaining and promoting the social contract. While this might seem like a more appropriate topic for a civics class than for a Sunday sermon, it does have a moral dimension to it that warrants the attention of persons of faith--of persons of many faiths.
Various political philosophers have offered their various ideas on what the social contract is and what it involves. Broadly defined, the social contract is about what makes a society a society, about what it is that ultimately holds a society, a nation, a state together with some sense of a common identity; one in which each member of that society feels they have some share, some investment, and some voice, both individually and collectively.
The overarching role and responsibility of the civil government, as I see it, is to maintain this social contract and see that it is enacted in a way that best accomplishes and furthers the common good. The debate behind the debate now taking place in many of our state capitals and at the federal government level is over what constitutes the common good, and what is the true nature of our social contract at this point in our country's history.
Perhaps the best way to get at such matters is to go to our country's "mission statement." Those who crafted it did not call it a mission statement since that kind of language wasn't around when it was written; they called it the Preamble to the United States Constitution. Its words, some of which I'll cite here, are familiar: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, (and) promote the general welfare..." To the credit of our founders these words have every bit as much relevance to the state of our nation now as when they were first drafted. Note, if you will, what these words do not say; they do not say, "We an aggregate individuals each pursuing his or her own self interest..." however much the disciples of Ayn Rand may wish it were so.
Short sighted as the authors of our Constitution may have been, and indeed were, when it came to things like enslaved Africans and the disenfranchisement of women, their intent was to shape and define a nation and society in which each citizen had some share, some stake, and some voice in a greater common endeavor: a "more perfect union" that "establish(ed) justice" and "promote(d) the general welfare" as they put it.
A quick, and necessary caveat here: The framers clearly believed in protecting certain individual rights and liberties of each citizen. So they added the Bill of Rights to our Constitution, with Thomas Jefferson supplying much of the language. I certainly am a firm advocate for the Bill of Rights; and I find the process of its enactment interesting.. It was after they had laid out a blueprint for a more perfect union that the framers then turned their attention to the individual rights that also, quite rightly, needed protection.
OK, I'm going to speak to just two areas - and only two, knowing there are many other possible ones--where the civil government has a role in helping us to achieve a more perfect union. One is to provide and support channels through which citizens can come together and advocate for their common concerns and shared interests. The other is to manage--to a certain degree, that is--the overall wealth of a society in a way that enhances the common good; in other words, taxation.
Another caveat: I'm not a political scientist or political theoretician. One of the things that is not on my to-do list upon retirement is to run for public office; just not my thing. No, I'm just guy who's been a minister for most of his adult life and one who, without, I hope, being too stuffy about it tends to look at the life of the society of which I'm a part through a moral lens. That said, let's pick up on the two areas I just mentioned.
Labor unions are one of those channels through which citizens can come together to advocate for their shared interests and common concerns as workers, as employees, in a particular trade, field, or profession. As such they have played a vital role in the advancement of social and economic justice in our nation over the past century and more. I am convinced that we are a more just, humane, and moral nation for their efforts. It was unions who brought us the eight hour work day, who put laws in place that halted the exploitation of child labor, and who played an important role in bringing women into the workforce, to cite just a few examples. The civil rights movement, furthermore, would not have had the energy that it did, and would not have achieved many of the goals it did, were in it not for its partnership with certain segments of organized labor. It was this kind of awareness, in fact, that brought Dr. King to Memphis.
Like every other institution on the face of this earth, labor unions are human institutions; and are subject, therefore at times, to human shortcomings and human short-sightedness. I have no argument with the contention that labor union leaders, as well as their rank and file members, sometimes need to look beyond their own particular interests to a greater common good, and make sacrifices that will enhance that greater good.
But we cannot even have a conversation about when to give and when to take if unions, public or private, are going to be disempowered or disembodied. I agree that unions need to be part of a wider deliberation about overall general well being of society, pointed and even contentious as such conversations can be at times. But we can't even have those conversations, we cannot even have that kind of give and take deliberation, if unions are going to be denied adequate access to the conversation itself. This is what some of the legislation pending in several of our states, ultimately, it seems to me, seeks to do. If certain corrective measures are warranted when it comes to the workings of certain aspects of organized labor, then fine, put it on the table and work it through; but do so while keeping well in mind what former President Bill Clinton once said with respect to affirmative action: "Mend it, don't end it."
On to my second point about the right and proper management, and use, of wealth in a free and democratic society: One of the more fascinating tidbits I came across in gathering material for the thoughts I'm sharing with you today was about Andrew Carnegie, one of the financial giants of his, or of any age in America. In 1889, at the height of his financial success and prowess, he published an essay called The Gospel of Wealth. It was an interesting choice of words, "gospel" of wealth. Carnegie's contention was that the accumulation of wealth was so beneficial to society at large that government should take no action at all to impede that accumulation by any of those who were doing the accumulating.
But Carnegie didn't stop there. In fact, that wasn't even his main point. He felt as he did not because he thought the ongoing accumulation of wealth was a good thing in and of itself. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He believed that wealthy people were actually trustees of their wealth, and that they should only hold onto it until a proper public use for it came along or was discovered. Carnegie, furthermore, actually believed in and lived out his own gospel. He spent his last years giving away much of his fortune, which included the building of some 2800 public libraries all across our land. Indeed, one of the lines in his Gospel of Wealth essay held, "The man who dies rich dies disgraced." Wow, think about that one: "The man who dies rich dies disgraced." It has to be the complete antithesis of that line about "whoever dies with the most toys wins."
Well, if the wealthier folks among us were all devout and practicing "Carnegieans" maybe we wouldn't need to have debates and deliberations about what constitutes and fair tax rates for those whose earnings and personal worth are on the higher or highest end of the wealth scale in our country, or for those of our mega-corporations. But that's not the case, and that's why such a debate needs to go forward. And just so I don't get too self-righteous here, if I were to hit some super/mega level lottery jackpot, I'm not sure how readily or willingly I'd line up behind Carnegie's dictum. I might just say okay, Andrew, so I die rich and in disgrace. If I'm dead, well then I've had my fun. Knowing myself as I do, I'm far from sure my own sense of trusteeship would reach that of Mr. Carnegie's. So, the tax people would have to come after me.
To continue with this point, if we are at a period in our nation's history where trying economic conditions and realities call for shared sacrifice--and here again I don't argue that point--then let's truly make it "shared." If working people are going to be asked to pare their benefits, if certain of our social programs face the prospect of being less available to those who need them, then why shouldn't more, proportionally more, be asked of those whose security and livelihood and overall well being would not be compromised one bit if they were mandated to pay a larger share. A shared sacrifice isn't really a shared sacrifice unless it has an actual sacrificial effect upon all who are being asked to do the sharing. There is no such thing as a truly shared sacrifice unless all who make up our citizenry feel an effect from it.
I'll close with this: In a few weeks we'll hold our annual congregational meeting here in this room. One of the things we'll do is vote on, and presumably pass, a budget for our upcoming church year. On paper this budget is a pretty dry looking document--lots of numbers and labels and categories. But dry as it might look it's really a moral statement; it's a statement about how we plan to fulfill, or at least make the best attempt we can at fulfilling, our church's mission and vision and covenant, as put forth in our mission statement. Our budget is one, one of many, expressions of who we are as a religious community; and about what we aspire to be.
Local, state, and national budgets, I know, are purely secular documents; and they are vastly more complicated and intricate than the one we'll take up here next month. But they are also, in the end, moral statements about how we as a society - at its various levels - intend to use our resources in living up to our values and principles - about how we intend to go about fulfilling that mission statement our founders put in place over two centuries ago. For all of our current economic challenges, and however sobering the realities of the state of our nation may be with respect to how our public monies are acquired and spent, we remain among the wealthiest nations on earth. I hope I'm not too na in believing that we can yet achieve a "more perfect union (that) establishes justice...insures domestic tranquility...and promotes the general welfare..." as the drafters of our nation's mission statement put it. If I'm na in believing such can yet be attained, then I guess our founders were na too. But I hardly think they were.
We pride ourselves on being a nation of self-directed individuals. Up to a point I can affirm and celebrate that, since I too like to think of myself as a self-directed individual. But at the end of the day, I have to defer to the wisdom of Martin Luther King, and return to him in closing by taking note of these words of his: "An individual has not started living until he (or she) can rise above the confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." I hope the spirit of this outstanding American, whom we lost over 43 years ago, can help direct and inspire us now and in the days ahead.
Stephen Edington
May 1, 2011
