Another Labour Day parade has marched into memory.
The Snowbirds have drawn a giant heart in the sky and departed.
The boats are going home, the birds are flying south.
But what a day it was eh? Starting with this amazing march.
Union members flooded the streets of Toronto in a spirited Labour Day celebration emboldened by the birth of the country's biggest union for private-sector workers. Thousands of workers stretched for more than 12 blocks Monday in a parade peppered with steel drum bands and labour flags and banners from more than a dozen unions.
This great message from Jerry Dias the President of Unifor, Canada's newest union.
"Today is really about opportunity, it's about hope. It's about us saying we've had it and it's about us saying we're determined to change the direction of the country," said Dias.
This one from Tom Mulcair.
"We've seen a stabilization in the labour movement after several years of decrease. Stephen Harper is encouraging a lot of people to get back involved in the labour movement," Mulcair said.
And of course, not even a solitary tweet from Stephen Harper.
Because he would salute Independence Day in the Ukraine eh? But not Labour Day in Canada.
And if he had his way, there would be no unions in this country...
No rights for working people, no unemployment insurance, no pensions, no medicare. Just his depraved Con jungle where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. The old are condemned to misery, and the young have no future.
But you know what? Today it didn't seem to matter. Because today I saw what hope can do to re-energize a movement. And I came away convinced that while we must fight Harper and his Cons harder than ever, it is our hope for a better future that will eventually destroy them.
And that instead of just dwelling on the negative, it's time to do more to explain to Canadians why our Canada will be BETTER than Harperland.
Time to inspire them in new and creative ways, and move them like I was moved today. Time to paint a bright shining picture for them as big as the heart the Snowbirds painted in the sky.
Time to encourage Canadians to chase their dreams. Dare to dream about making Canada great again.
And when I saw that young union supporter, and the rainbow version of the Unifor flag...
And this picture in the Toronto Star....
When I felt the joyful energy, and the renewed spirit of resistance, I was even more convinced than I was before, that we can definitely do it eh?
I know the young are ready to dream of a more beautiful future. They're natural born dreamers, all they need is a vision to inspire them. I also know many older Canadians are ready to dream of a post-Harper Canada. No matter how tired and grumpy some of them may feel.
And that when we are we are united, like the colours of the rainbow, we can do ANYTHING.
And how do I know that?
Well, among other things, because of what Diana Nyad did today.
Because she proved that you're never too old to chase a dream AND the amazing power of the rainbow.
You know, I wasn't able to march in the Toronto parade today, as I have every year since I arrived in this city.Two days ago I wiped out on my bike in spectacular fashion, and now one of my ankles is so swollen I can hardly stand on it.
And the idea of being crippled at this time of the year, when every remaining warm day is a precious gift from the God of the Great Frozen North, has me singing the blues. Cursing my tragic fate !@#!!!! And no doubt driving everybody around me CRAAAZY.
Because there's nothing quite as sad as the end of summer in Canada eh? And when you live in Harperland it's WORSE.
But as I limped home today after watching that awesome parade, I felt like I was floating on a cloud.
Or soaring skyward like them...
Because I have seen the future. It doesn't include the Harper Cons.
And although I'm sorry to see the summer go because it was great.
Just too short...
I know that hope can can carry us like the wind.
And that if we chase our dream, we will chase the Cons from power.
Freedom will be our reward.
And our future will be a bright one...
Click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/rip-sci-fi-author-frederik-pohl-his-1987-predictions-f-1241239510
ReplyDeleteDear People of the Future,
In my day there were professional entertainers, and fake psychics, who specialized in telling total strangers all sorts of intimate details about themselves. The process was called *cold reading*. I’ve never done it before, but I think I can do it for you. I think I can tell you quite accurately what your lives are like as you open this time capsule.
For example, you live in a world at peace. Something like the World Court, as an arm of something like the United Nations, resolves international disputes, and has the power to enforce its decisions. For that reason, you live in a world almost without weaponry; and, because you therefore do not have to bear the crippling financial burden of paying for military establishments and hardware, all of you enjoy an average standard of living about equal to a contemporary millionaire’s. Your health is generally superb. Your life expectancy is not much less than a century. The most unpleasant and debilitating jobs (heavy industry, mining, large-scale farming) are given over to machines; most work performed by human beings is in some sense creative. The exploration of space is picking up speed, both by manned colonization and robot probes, and by vast orbiting telescopes and other instruments. Deforestation, desertification and the destruction of arable land has been halted and reversed. Pollution is controlled, and all the winds and the waters of the Earth are sweet again.
This is a very short description of your life, but it could be made even shorter. A single word can describe it: it is very close to what every previous age of mankind would call *Utopia*.
How do I know these things?
It isn’t because I’ve made a probabilistic assessment of present-day trends. Quite the contrary. All the evidence of what is going on in the world today leads to the conclusion that none of these things are going to happen, because our country, the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world (and, I have always thought, the best) is bankrupting itself to recruit and train terrorists in Latin America, give arms to terrorists all over the world, develop and deploy fleets, armies and weapons systems which have no purpose except to pound any country which disagrees with us into submission. Since, unfortunately for us, the people who disagree with us have terrorists, fleets, armies and weapons systems of their own, the most plausible future scenario is all-out nuclear war.
It is therefore clear that to make the predictions above is to bet recklessly against the odds.
It’s still a good bet, though.
In fact, I don’t see how I can lose it. Anyone opening the capsule to read these lines will have to agree that my low-probability predictions pretty well describe the actual turn of events... because if the high-probability ones of mass destruction and species suicide should prevail no one is likely to be around to read them.