All Posts Tagged With: "union"
Memorial Day Is About Remembering Those Who Died for America
Memorial Day, was originally called Decoration Day because homes, business and town were decorated with flags, bunting, flowers, banners and the like. Dozens of places claim it. There is evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.” But, the debate about where it was first done remains robust.
President Lyndon Johnson officially declared Waterloo N.Y. the birthplace of Memorial Day in May 1966 but, that went over like a lead balloon in the South and in tiny Boalsburg, Pa. that proudly boasts it is the birthplace of the one day each year to honor the memory of those who died in service to America.
Regardless of the debate over the where Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (Union Army veterans.) the day was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.
In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
It was she who conceived of the idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries.
Obama’s Trade For Teamsters Support
The Wall Street journal said Monday Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption. The WSJ contend its conclusion is reached “according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.”
It’s an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union. Obama is reported to have said he thinks the ongoing effort has runs it course.
The ongoing probe has been a burr under the Teamster’s saddle blanket. Most observers think mob influence over the union has diminished in recent times. The Teamsters if the largest Union in the United States with about 1.4 million members with 32% in the Central state anchored in Obama’s hometown of Chicago; 26% in the West; 28% in the East, and 7% in the South. About 2% are in Canada.
Two-thirds of Teamsters members work in one of five divisions: Warehouse, Parcel, Freight, Public Employees and Industrial Trades. The Public Employees sector is the union’s fastest-growing division, and organizing more Federal employees is a lucative segment for the union, and some say a friendly person in the White House who would block Federal oversight would be pehaps the biggest coup possible for the union at this juncture