At 24th and Mission at 4 p.m.
At 24th and Mission at 4 p.m.
Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still there.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.
More by Lydia Chávez
What are they protesting?
Or is a protest for the sake of it?
Sir, you and your computer are a protest machine, running non-stop, 24/7. The very definition of protesting for protest’s sake.
May Day is a celebration, actually. Born in America, broadly celebrated everywhere except in America.
Why don’t you have something more important to do than whine about protests?
No, MayDay is not an American invention. It has origins in ancient pagan Europe and has subsequently been co-opted by various groups, most obviously by the communists.
Since America really doesn’t do communism, we eschew MayDay, preferring instead to celebrate the industry of our workers on another day – Labor Day.
See you on the streets then.
Preach it, Brother John ! Amen!
American don’t do no commanism! What did workers ever do for this country? And when did protests ever accomplish anything?
Let’s get rid of all those child labor laws, 40 hours work weeks, five day work weeks, overtime pay, disability and unemployment insurance, workplace safety laws, Social Security insurance, because they’re not real, anyways– they can’t be, cuz no protestin’ never did nothin’!
Tell us more about America, Brother John. Preach it!.
Those advances were concession to angry workers so that they didn’t turn to communism. Note how the neo-liberal assault on the American workers didn’t go into overdrive until after the fall of the eastern bloc?
May Day is a remembrance of the massacre of protesting AMERICAN workers by police working for capitalists. It’s a very AMERICAN holiday. But politicians chose to throw a bone to labor with a holiday at another time of year, so that the massacre wouldn’t be remembered.
Read some history.
“You are free to move to Cuba or North Korea, and yet I note that you do not.”
Well, said, Archie Bunker!
You’re not really this stupid, are you?
Those advances were not causes by communism, nor by protests.
They were caused by enlightened politicians elected by enlightened voters.
You are free to move to Cuba or North Korea, and yet I note that you do not. Evidently your lip service to communism doesn’t go too deep.
But it doesn’t say they’re celebrating it says they’re protesting.