Many countries celebrate May Day as a major holiday and protest day. Since our exceptionalism is implicitly defined as “we are different and mostly worse than others” we have Labor Day.
This year, European, including the Germans, use May Day to protest huge unemployment, austerity and the control of the banks. We play dead.
In 1958, President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 “Law Day,” supposedly at the suggestion of an advisor who was also the president of the American Bar Association. A couple of years later Congress made it officious, or official, or both. I take it that Kennedy signed the bill. Even a fairly naive pre-British Invasion suburban kid like me could pretty well figure out that there was something co-optive and soul-deadening about this tactic. We might now carry this innocuating process to its logical conclusion by re-naming May 1 “Interstate Highway Day.”
That pretty green banner is hanging on my door over the page with my office hours, which become pretty irrelevant with the end of classes in a couple of days.
Historiann 
Many countries celebrate May Day as a major holiday and protest day. Since our exceptionalism is implicitly defined as “we are different and mostly worse than others” we have Labor Day.
This year, European, including the Germans, use May Day to protest huge unemployment, austerity and the control of the banks. We play dead.
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Wasn’t Labor Day a 20th century invention, so we could be clear that we weren’t a bunch of mayday-celebrating commies?
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In 1958, President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 “Law Day,” supposedly at the suggestion of an advisor who was also the president of the American Bar Association. A couple of years later Congress made it officious, or official, or both. I take it that Kennedy signed the bill. Even a fairly naive pre-British Invasion suburban kid like me could pretty well figure out that there was something co-optive and soul-deadening about this tactic. We might now carry this innocuating process to its logical conclusion by re-naming May 1 “Interstate Highway Day.”
That pretty green banner is hanging on my door over the page with my office hours, which become pretty irrelevant with the end of classes in a couple of days.
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Music + Eros sounds pretty good to me!
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