75/365: Muscle

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Another pic from the Working Families Rally. Not that there's anything wrong with these but I do need to get out and shoot some fresh stuff this weekend. It's supposed to be very pleasant. Spring is coming earlier than it used to. We have forsythia and daffodils out in the middle of March.

Anyway, the operating engineers are the people who run heavy construction equipment, bulldozers, cranes, that kind of stuff. Some of them look like they actually make their living on the professional wrestling circuit. I decline to arm wrestle.

Today St. Louis Daily Photo considers an assortment of people who are just plain strange.

74/365: E Pluribus Unun

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That's what it says on the American dollar bill: one from many. There were all kinds of people at the Working Families Rally, even a suit. (Where'd he come from? Spy?) One of this country's founders, Benjamin Franklin, said that we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. That's a good explanation of the need for unions. Many of the signs said Good Jobs Now but the workers can only do so much about that. I've been to China and seen why.

Today's St. Louis Daily Photo explores the religious roots of St. Patrick's Day.

73/365: Solidarity Forever

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It's an issue of basic fairness to me: management has power. The bigger it is the more is has. An individual worker is a speck of dust. Powerful employers can and do exploit employees. (I won't start in on the history of that.) Therefore, many workers need to organize for their collective good: unions. Q.E.D.

Not that powerful unions can't abuse their strength. My near-namesake, Bob Crow, leader of the London transport workers union, has stuck it to the public of that city time and again. Contract work rules can stymie efficiency and keep deadwood personnel on the job. Balance is needed. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

For now, though, solidarity forever.

St. Louis Daily Photo issues a Celtic accusation today.

72/365: Stop The War On Workers

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Patriotism is not the exclusive province of the Tea Party. I look at these faces and then think back to those I saw when I covered the Tea Party rally here last summer. What I don't get is the plutocrats' end-game. If they grab the bulk of the money for themselves, draining it away from everybody else, then people won't have money to buy stuff, the consumer economy collapses and the plutocrats go broke. Such irony. R. Crumb explained it well.

St. Louis Daily Photo celebrates the start of spring public drinking season today.

71/365: Greed Overpowering People

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Both of my blogs have a rare foray into politics today. This is a scene from the working families rally held in Kiener Plaza yesterday afternoon. I'm with these ladies but I wish they could find a way around the GOP acronym. It stands for Grand Old Party. Their definition of grand must be different from mine.

Coverage of the rally will continue for a few days on this blog. St. Louis Daily Photo will switch to the St. Patrick's parade and related events tomorrow but it has this image from the rally today: