A mayday for May Day

Tomorrow, May 1, is May Day, also known as International Workers' Day. On May 1 each year, workers and their supporters engage in celebrations and political demonstrations for workers' rights.

Workers' rights are enshrined in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as follows:

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

But Corporate America obviously didn't get that memo.

The unemployment rate here in the U.S. is horribly high, even as the CEOs and the bailed-out Wall Street bankers continue to rake in obscene salaries and bonuses.

The middle class is shrinking, and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

Unions are busted. Workers are fired. Homes are foreclosed upon. Coal miners and other workers are needlessly endangered. And the cycle continues.

And, sadly, since corporations are now permitted to spend unlimited amounts of money to buy and sell our politicians, I don't see the status quo changing any time soon.

But that doesn't mean we should sit back and take it.

Fortunately, Congress has started working on legislation to help curb corporate campaign influence. Goldman Sachs is under some intense scrutiny, with other firms quite possibly to follow. And financial regulatory reform is in the works.

We need to keep an eye on these and any other measures that could help put government back in the hands of We The People, and do all we can to push for needed change.

And we need to encourage others to do so as well.

It's the only way we'll see any kind of change that can help Main Street rather than Wall Street.

As Margaret Mead once said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Amen!

And yes we can!