One of the highlights of the DNC was the speech by UAW president Shawn Fain. I also don’t have to feign enthusiasm for the slogan on the shirt Fain wore, Trump Is A Scab. Truer words were never emblazoned on a T-shirt. I dig the Vote Harris thing as well.

When I was growing up, organized labor was a political powerhouse. Their power peaked in the 1960’s, then declined for decades. There’s a direct corollary between the decline in union clout and the concentration of wealth and power in the top 1%. Donald Trump epitomizes that disparity: He claims to be a friend of  working people, but like everything else about him, that’s a fraud. He may be a fake billionaire but he’s one of the 1% and he represents them, not ordinary Americans.

Vice President Harris is a member of the most pro-union administration since America went all the way with LBJ. In 2023, Joe Biden walked the picket line with auto workers during their successful strike against the Big Three:

So did his Vice President:

We conclude the brand new part of the post with a Randy Newman song:

It’s time to go vintage with a post that originally had a long title, Fog Of Historical Pictures: Labor Day Edition.

It was first posted in 2016, then republished in 2019 and 2023, so why not 2024?

Set the Wayback Machine to September 5, 2016.

Labor Day used to be the official kick-off of the general election campaign. It no longer is. Campaigns get longer every cycle and that’s not a good thing. It’s even worse this year because the conventions were so damn early. I’m taking today off from politics except for posting some election year photographs of Democratic nominees on Labor Day. I skipped the 1972 and 1976 nominees because neither McGovern nor Carter had warm relationships with labor. Besides, that would have been overkill. I picked 1984 as a cut-off since Fritz Mondale was the last nominee with close union ties before Joe Biden.

We begin with Harry Truman in Detroit in 1948:

I couldn’t find a decent picture of Adlai Stevenson parading on Labor Day but here’s a shot of him with AFL-CIO chief George Meany and UAW president Walter Reuther. We’ll see both Meany and Walter later:

The year is 1960. The candidate is Jack Kennedy. The place is Cadillac Square in Detroit:

Lyndon Johnson marching in Detroit with Walter Reuther in 1964:

Next up is Hubert Humphrey on a New York reviewing stand in 1968 with ILGWU president Louis Stulberg to his left and George Meany to his right:

We skip forward to 1984 to HHH’s protégé, Walter Mondale with his running mate Geraldine Ferraro marching in the New York Labor Day parade:

Finally, then Veep Joe Biden in Detroit on Labor Day, 2012:

The last word goes to King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band: