Happy Labor Day. Beware the Company Town—it’s not just an economic system, but a political one. https://time.com/4020710/first-labor-day/

“Pullman gave bricks-and-mortar expression to his sense of the immutability of the social order. Every level of his workforce had a corresponding architectural form. Executives lived in detached homes; skilled workers in smaller quarters; and unskilled workers in apartments”

“And everything was owned by Pullman, who operated his town as an independent political entity, 8mi south of Chicago. By building his town on 4000 acres of prairie, he intended to isolate it from union organizers who made Chicago a center of the labor movement & radical politics”

“Pullman was a control freak, dedicated to being the absolute master of every element of his enterprise, human no less than mechanical.” Sound familiar? https://www.chicagotribune.com/history/ct-pullman-history-met-20150210-story.html

One striker said:
"We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shops, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman Church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell."

Frictionless commerce and democratic governance don’t go well together—one or the other always loses out.

Choose wisely. #HappyLaborDay

For more on the history of Pullman, and how it (sadly) resonates with our current moment, check out this site from the @NewberryLibrary https://publications.newberry.org/digital/pullman/index/

“Race was inexorably tied to labor relations at the Pullman Company. The railroad industry -- and in particular, Pullman -- was the 2nd largest employer of African-Americans in the United States by 1910.” https://www.pullman-museum.org/labor/ 

“While black faces weren't unknown to the Pullman and Roseland neighborhoods, they were few and far between. Few African-Americans lived in Pullman and Roseland before 1920; after the 1919 race riots, the number dwindled to almost nothing.” https://www.pullman-museum.org/labor/ 

Labor Day is the perfect time to think about how corporations dismantle democracy for profit, how capital heightens racial inequality, how strikes have historically been worth the risk, & how labor, even (or esp.) in the worst times, still has power—when workers act in unison