Happy May Day from Taiwan

      The sun is rising from behind the patio palm tree and shining in my face. There is a chill in the air so the early morning heat feels good. It's a beautiful morning, except for the working stiffs who will soon be driving to their underpaying overworking jobs, on this, a national holiday for May Day. The rock group "May Day" was absent from the TV screen in their grossly misappropriated group name, not ever to defend or be proud of it, and "Death Metal" Freddy Lin, now the politico dynamo of New Power Party in Taipei, could only run in a televised track race he probably wishes he fell down and almost broke his neck in, like his New Power Party buddy; at least the buddy got two minutes of airtime being interviewed about his trip and fall. The ruling class of Taiwan lets sweetheart unions, like the communication workers trot out their well-uniformed contingent to cry crocodile tears for poor workers on TV, too. The DPP and New Power Party didn’t even bother to put on a good face; the KMT did. 

My blog, taIWWan, is still up on the IWW website; I get a few dozen viewers for posted labor updates about Taiwan. No one in GHQ knows (NOTE: Are you reading this?) or cares that I haven't paid dues since last year and am officially no longer a delegate, either. My home address remains on the directory but I have never been contacted by anyone, including any GST or International Solidarity Committee member after FW Sam left; my blog, I guess, looks good in the Industrial Worker; an "Asian" contact. Just like Erik Forman’s posturing, all form and no content.

Tom Keogh’s Hungarian Fund pamphlet about James Connolly and the Irish Republican origins was nicely drawn but lacked relevance to anyone but a red card carrier, even if the little red ego himself, Daniel Gross, was given an inappropriate cartoon to have his quote boxed into.

       This is May Day in Taiwan. I enjoy the rays of a new morning sun secure in a pension I put up twenty plus years of obstructed school chapter union agitation to get; at least the Bread & Roses Club and Curriculum was ignored enough by bloated assistant principals to make a dent in thousands of under-privileged students' lives in a Brooklyn high school. I tried my best to agitate for the IWW in Taiwan, to no avail. I deserve the pension and the TDA fund nest egg I built. I fought to be free. Everybody's got to fight to be free, not waste their own and everyone else's energy pretending or complaining that there is nothing they can do to change their own status quo,“Especially people who care about strangers, who care about evil and social injustice.” Happy May Day!