MOTHER'S DAY

MOTHER’S DAY

Mother's Day is a modern celebration honoring one's own mother, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the months of March or May
Philadelphia activist Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) came up with the idea for “Mother’s Day” at the beginning of the 20th century as a tribute to her mother.
On May 10, 1908, in what is considered the first Mother’s Day celebration, she sent 500 carnations to Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, her mother’s church in Grafton, W.Va. (which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1992).
The event generated an enormously positive response, and after extensive lobbying and letter-writing efforts, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation on May 9, 1914, declaring the second Sunday of May “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” Read his message here:

It all started in the 1850s, when West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis—Anna's mother—held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
In the postwar years Jarvis and other women organized Mother's Friendship Day picnics and other events as pacifist strategies to unite former foes. Julia Ward Howe, for one—best known as the composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"—issued a widely read "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870, calling for women to take an active political role in promoting peace.
Around the same time, Jarvis had initiated a Mother's Friendship Day for Union and Confederate loyalists across her state. But it was her daughter Anna who was most responsible for what we call Mother's Day—and who would spend most of her later life fighting what it had become.

Anna Jarvis was the driving force behind the first Mother's Day observances in 1908(photo)

On average, one woman in 30 is likely to die from pregnancy-related causes, and seven out of 10 women will lose a child in their lifetime.
Despite global improvements in children's and maternal health, inequality between the world's riIndia scored 140th place out of 179 countries in the charity organization Save the Children's 2015 report titled "State of the World's Mothers". The annual global ranking is conducted by a charity organisation, Save the Children. Relegating three spots further from 137 in 2014 to 140 in 2015, India is behind countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the index.
 The index is measured using five indicators - maternal health (lifetime risk of maternal death), children's well-being (under-5 mortality rate per 1,000 live births), educational status (expected number of years of formal schooling), economic status (gross national per capita income), political status (participation of women in national government).The total indicators are given below,

 [i]Lifetime risk of maternal death

[ii]Percent of women using modern contraception

[iii]skilled attendant at delivery Female life expectancy

[iv] Expected number of years of formal female schooling

[v] Ratio of estimated female to male earned income

[vi] Maternity leave benefits

[vii] Participation of women in national government

[viii]Under-5 mortality rate

[ix]Percentage of children under age 5 moderately or severely underweight

[x] Gross pre-primary enrollment ratio

[xi] Gross primary enrollment ratio

[xii]Gender parity index

[xiii]Gross secondary enrollment ratio

[xiv]Percent of population with access to safe water

Norway is top of the list of the index, while Somalia has the worst mother's index based on the organisation's findings.The richest and poorest mothers and children is widening,

This Mother’s Day, let’s hope that we fare better on each of these factors and move north in the 2015 rankings, making our country mother and child friendly. Here are some organizations that are putting their best foot forward for mothers and children.

 Gates Foundation has a dedicated program for maternal and neonatal health – Maternal, Newborn & Child Health program. The program’s is on mission to ensure that women and newborns survive and remain healthy during pregnancy and childbirth and to improve health outcomes for young children. Gates Foundation has been working towards tying together tools, technology, and treatments to better healthcare services and practices, and advocate for comprehensive national and global policies that benefit maternal, newborn, and child survival and health. Their continual efforts to bring about a change in this sphere are currently ongoing in Ethiopia, northern Nigeria, and the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. These geographies are responsible for the majority of world’s maternal and newborn deaths. CARE – CARE has committed itself to helping woman enjoy their fundamental right – access to quality sexual, reproductive and maternal health. Their efforts to alleviate these conditions will also help in gender equality. CARE realizes that “right to health” can’t be achieved by a single institution. In order for a large-scale change in maternal and newborn health, there are host of changes that are needed that include changes in organizations and policies at all levels. They have been working in developing nations with high mortality rates for the past 50 years bringing about change in healthcare services and policies that affect the quality of life of women and children. Biosense – Their first product ToucHb is a needle free anaemia screening tool. Anaemia has been identified as the main culprit in maternal and infant death caused due to complications at birth. Early detection can exponentially reduce these deaths. The device can be easily used in the rural pockets. Institute for Indian Mother and Child (IIMC) is a non-governmental organization founded by Indian physician Dr. S. K. Brahmochary. His vision was to improve the quality of life of the BoP population. The issues of mother and child welfare as well as woman empowerment are of central importance to IIMC. Foundation for Mother and Child work in economically underprivileged communities to provide full access to Preventive Health and Balanced Nutrition. To educate the affected groups about the nutrition, FMCH has awareness programs – Accha Baccha class, pregnancy clubs and community support volunteer program. FMCH works with the main segment hit by malnutrition – children under six, mainly under three and pregnant & lactating women. FMCH also helps parents in understand the nutritional needs of a child. They regularly collect data to closely monitor the progress made by the affected segment. Apne Aap Women’s Collective works with trafficked marginalized brothel based prostitutes, their daughters, other marginalized girls and children in the red light district to ensure that they don’t fall trap to inter-generational prostitution. They run three programs: ‘Umeed’ for women in brothel-based prostitution(ages 18+), ‘Udaan’ for daughters of Umeed members and other girls living in the red light area (ages six-18), and ‘Umang’ for toddlers of ‘Umeed’ members and other children living in the red light area (ages two-five). Bempu Two major causes of newborn deaths are hypothermia and infection. Surprisingly, the simple step of monitoring temperature is often overlooked in areas that house uneducated parents or areas that have medical facilities that are short on manpower. BEMPU is developing an intuitive neonatal temperature monitor that empowers mothers to better manage their newborn’s temperature thereby preventing such death and illness. Embrace Innovations is a social enterprise working to help millions of vulnerable babies through its revolutionary low-cost infant warmers. The ‘Embrace infant warmer’ is an award winning product that has already reached 1,50,000 babies across 10 countries! Child in Need Institute (CINI) is an international humanitarian organisation aimed at promoting “sustainable development in health, nutrition and education of child, adolescent and woman in need” in India. CINI’s India wing is headquartered in Kolkata and is working in some of the most impoverished communities in India. Seva Mandir has been working in rural Rajasthan for the past 45 years. They currently work with 360,000 people in 700 of the world’s poorest communities where people live on an average of $0.35 a day. The work on a host of issues – clean drinking water, food self-sufficiency, education (preschool to primary education), women empowerment and maternal and infant health services. Access: In the recent times, there have been health reforms but have increased access to facility based maternal and newborn care, but there has been no significant improvement in outcomes for mothers and infants. The critical success factor in making a significant change lies in the enabling medical facilities to provide high quality care. ACCESS Health India works directly with providers to identify, share, and scale hospital processes and procedures that lead to better outcomes for mothers and their children. Ayzh is a for-profit social venture providing health and livelihood solutions to impoverished women worldwide. Their first product ‘Janma’, a low-cost birth kit, was launched in 2010. It is complaint with World Health Organization’s guideline for a safe and hygienic birth.

Rabindranath Tagore:An Environmentalist And An Activist

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES.

Volume-I,Issue-5,August 2012,p10-12

Rabindranath Tagore:An Environmentalist And An Activist

by

Dr.Debesh Bhowmik

Introduction

Tagore was an environmental pioneer. RabindranathTagore first became concerned about man’s impact on the environment after seeing an oil spill at sea on his way to Japan in 1916, The experience provoked Tagore to write at length about his annoyance at the way modern man was failing to respect nature. Tagore was a great teacher of environmental economics as well as an environmental activist  .At least one century ago, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore on the environment was very  much relevant today.His  philosophy on the environment is related with sustainable rural development which is closely correlated between nature and human being.He imagined an integrated approach of sustainable development through revival of rural industry and increasing agricultural growth with community development.This essay endeavours to highlight some of his ideas on environment and how did he really implement it.

Tagore ideas and implementation on environment
Tagore not only wrote extensively on man’s relationship with the environment but also implemented it too by building Santineketan. It is surrounded by greenery on all sides. He created an example for the whole world in terms of the relationship between nature and humans. Tagore denounces human aggression on nature as an admirer of Ecocriticism which was evident in ‘The Tame Bird was in a cage’ (The Gardener, Poem No. VI). According to Peter Barry in Beginning Theory Human beings consider culture as a great achievement.  Humans should understand the roles assigned to them at a macrocosmic level. Any human aggression will end in a disaster for the whole bio sphere.As William Rueckert says, “The conceptual and practical problem is to find the grounds upon which the two communities – the humans, the natural – can coexist, cooperate, and flourish in the biosphere”. Cooperation is the key to the survival of the humans in this biosphere.

In fact, Tagore plays with the notion of climate, proposing a correspondence between politics and the environment. As the doctor advises Madhav that “on no account should [the child] be allowed out of doors” , he implies that the outside air will worsen his condition, as it happens when the Raja’s messenger arrives and orders “all doors and windows” to be open .Philosophically as well as in reality,Rabindranath was very much conscious about the environment and the evils of environmental damages through pollution.He felt that the air,water,soil  pollution hinder the people whether they are rich or poor but the poor will be mostly affected because of speedy urbanization, deforestation,and declining of standard of living of poor people.He gave a detailed analysis how urbanization affected rural life adversely  in a writing entitled “The Robbery of the Soil” which was read at the meeting of Viswabharati Samiti on 28^th July 1922 . He emphasized that it is urgent to return the same by the people who plundered the nature.He thought tree planting ceremony(“Briskharopan”) integrated with the ceremony of “Barshamangal” (wellcoming for Rainy season) and “Hallakarshan”(ploughing) because the first two are naturally correlated with season for higher growth and the third one is to give food for the poor or produce for the earth and its people.

In 1928, 14^th July,”The Planting of Trees” ceremony was held first in Shantiniketan, Biswabharati where , on that occasion ,tress of Mango, Guava, Papaya, Jackfruits, were distributed to the farmers of Ballavpur,Khejurdanga etc with 50% subsidies.On that day,Rabindranath himself was present  and attended with students having colourful dresses and flowers.Tagore first delivered some slokas and recited some poems which were as follows,

“ Oh Earth !hold the wealth of trees/ and keep it in your breast “, or , “Oh Cloud!bell the Indra’s organ with serious tones of  hymns/under the  blue sky” , or , “ Oh wind! You did not ignore/ your flute had started in the Ashar”,or , “ Oh sky! You have bold eternal  vision”, etc.The attended students and women recited along with Tagore.At the end of the Ceremony, Rabindranath  recited his own poem named “Mangalik”, eg,

“ The needs of soul may be full to the child alive,

The strength may give full of honey  air with golden touch of worlds’ palace.”…..

Presently, this ceremony is held on 22^nd Sravana.The students of Biswabharati planted saplings with dancing, reciting,singing including conch playing.Likewise they prayed for help from ghosts reciting the poems which explains , earth    , misdeeds,strength,desert,universe ,so that the sapling may become a big tree with flowers and fruits and become able to human welfare.He loved and performed this ceremony because he said,” Trees  of the earth are cut for several necessities and the earth became nacked by plundering its shadows of clothes. It increased the temperature of the air and damage the fertility of the soil. The homeless forests tend to warmth by unbearable hit of the sun. Keeping these words in minds, we held the ceremony of tree planting which is nothing but the function of  filling  in the gaps of plundered mother’s wealth.”He understood that tree planting is urgent to save the planet from warming.So he was bound to say, “The danger is imminent because of deforestation.To save the danger,we have to recall the god of the forests ,so that it can save this land and can bear fruits, and allows shadows.”(Gupta and Chakraborty,1987).Therefore,the thoughts of Tagore on preserving the environment was nothing but to grow more trees and to protect forest.The ceremony of planting trees was considered as a symbol of praying trees for maintain environment to save the planet from global warming and to make the world an abode of peace which is a green world to live in.

This thought was reflected in his poem entitled “ Brikshbandana” which is translated and is given below;

Oh! Brave hero of the soil,

Announce your struggle to free the soil

From the deep desert fort,

This war goes on and on …and forever,

You born on the open bank of the unaccessible islands

And sit on the throne of the greenery by your

Utmost patience swimming the ocean;

You came forth on the midst of distance hills

On all the grounds of stones

Write the ballads of victory in the leaves astounding the dust

On the markless shores and fields and

Found your own way forward…….

Tagore always thought environment as a part and parcel of integrated rural development whose ingredient factors were agricultural development , cooperative movement,and rural industrialization.On agricultural development his idea was based not only on higher yield but also on improvement of technology. As a zaminder, he believed that land should not be distributed to the ignorant riots who could not keep up the land right from the exploitation of zaminders. He said, “My objective was to rouse the confidence of the farmer in his own power. Two themes recurred in my mind. One, the title to land, in justice, does not belong to the landlord, but to the cultivator. Two, there will be no improvement in agriculture without co-operative based collective farming. Tilling subdivided and fragmented lands with primitive ploughs is as futile as carrying water in a sieve.”

To save the rural poor farmers from poverty , he established Sriniketan in 1922 where he revived cottage industries which may tend to rural wealth in future.Rural artisans can maintain their livelihood from that activities and the produced commodities. Rabindranath  requested to Elmhurst who was interested about Indian Agriculture and gave him the responsibility of Sriniketan for rural industrial reconstruction.Elmhurst was fully  coordinated with Santosh Ch.Majumder,Gour Gopal Ghosh and Kalimohan Ghosh in the revival  of rural cottage industries.

In Sriniketan , he introduced the weaving,batik and batik printing,leather works,pottering, spinning etc from which  the basic commodities were produced and the  rural poor meet their needs and  can earn.In Sriniketan he was also introduced a training centre in which the selected youth from the rural areas from several districts were trained the courses of rural industry,cottage industry,and the problems of rural industry.Moreover , they were trained on rural health and primary health care.Even they were taught on the village organization and co-operatives.Along with these training ,physical exercise, punctuality, ethics and  amusement were the additional courses of learning. After the completion of the courses,they returned to their villages to organize such courses for implementation on the mode of the production processes to uplift the rural poor.

But Santiniketan was ignored and marginalized by the imperatives of a competitive capitalism and nationalism. Even,Sriniketan was included in this fobia.Thus,within some years,the crisis started, Although,Leonard Elmhurst sent money amounting to Rs 50000/- per year for running the Striniketan.The King of Baroda usually sent 6000/- per year during 1924-1934 and afterwords it was stopped.Tagore collected money to show dances, dramas in Patna,Lahore, Delhi, Meerat, Joypur,Ahmedabad and Mumbai  and lastly appealed to the people for helping Sriniketan.

His ideas on rural development is obviously interlinked with rural rural money supply institutions and thus,he established  “Patisar Krishi Bank” in 1905. He was also aware of the unpredictable nature of Indian agriculture and arising out of it, the swings in the hopes and despair of the Indian peasant community. He was certainly not unaware of the basic exploitative nature of the colonial administration. He knew that for the drudgeries of life to be lifted, age-old dependence on nature couldn't be converted into another kind of deprecating dependence – that is to look up to the State for succour. So the fundamental premise on which he based his community development programme came to be "self-help and enlightenment."

Tagore felt that the integrated rural development under the sectors of education, health, economics, and welfare should function multilaterally. He felt that Patisar Krishi Bank will endeavour to free rural poor from their indebtedness. In this context , he wrote, “We cannot alleviate poverty by sentimental rendering of poetry. We must gird up our loins and get to work. ” Ultimately, this bank ran about 30 years. And at last, in 1927,Vishwa Bharati Central Coopearative Bank was set up.

His co-operative concept was extended to the famous idea of Grain Bank.Thus, he established a co-operative Grain Bank in 1928 at Sriniketan .Even, a few Co-operative Credit Societies were formed in Santalpara where most of them were landless labours. During the same year, another credit society was set up at Ballavpur.

Thus we found that his integrated rural development approach is not independent of each other stated above rather it is functionally related with sustainable development that should be raised from the bottom level in true sense of the term. In 1910, he wrote,

You depressed those who will fall down you also,

You keep them behind and they pull you back

You lay then dark of ignorance

They make wide difference covering your good

You will be equal to all through looking down upon.

So, his sustainable rural development concept was so integrated with agriculture , rural industry and rural money supply ie cooperative banking  with a comprehensive manner so that production and distribution become environment friendly. Otherwise, the nature may take revenge and livelihood of rural people may suffer. This is clear from his famous poem ,(Shesh Saptak -44)

My old age room ,that I made by mud, and I give its name “Shyamali”

When it breaks, it will lay like sleeping and mix with the lap of mud

It will not protest in the broken pillar and will not quarrel with the earth

It will not build  ghosts houses of deaths showing bones from broken wall….

Rabindranath Tagore’s views pertaining to eco-ethical human living and sustainable development are based on ancient Indian philosophy, especially embedded in the Upanishads. Tagore considers Nature and human life as integral parts of the single entity, the omniscient, omnipresent, ubiquitous (sarbang khallidang), attribute-free (nirguna) Brahman. So Tagore emphasizes symbiosis and balance between man and all other aspects of the mundane world (plants, other living beings, the Earth, atmosphere and the rest of the universe), and between man and the world beyond (moksha).

In “Aranya Devata”, Tagore opines that modern man indulges too much in luxurious and profligate living. So long as he used to live in and around the forest, he had a deep love and respect for the forest and therefore he used to live in perfect symbiosis with it and its plants and animals. Wanton destruction of forests, in order to supply timber for city life, brought about a curse on human race. Paucity of rainfall endangered human life and the rapid spread of deserts started engulfing human habitation in various parts of India. So, Tagore emphasizes, we should retrieve our love and respect for the forest and restore symbiosis with the forest in order to avert peril.Tagore’s views on ecological stability and symbiosis between man and Nature have been elaborated in the article “Tapavan”.

Conclusion

To day we are concerned about environmental disaster. Environmental imbalance intensifies poverty. Therefore, his thoughts on rural development and poverty alleviation were environment friendly, because his notion concisely can be stated as ,

[i]Identify poverty from a total perspective using a holistic framework. [ii]Invest in agriculture, and improve the lot of the farmers; [iii] expand co-operative movement and encourage community-based development.[iv]Introduce scientific farming, establish agricultural bank.[v]Expand cottage industry.[vi]Focus on environment friendly development.

On environment , Tagore believed that : “...owing to deforestation a calamity is imminent. To escape this peril we have to propitiate the goddess of forest to protect our land, give us fruits and shade which are her blessing.”

His environmentalism really reflects  in Shantiniketan  and Sriniketan.The economy of Shantiniketan showed his concept on integrated rural development.The hegemony of nature in Shantiniketan and his modern Viswabharati  reflects his thoughts of sustainable development.As he said that,

We, two live in the same village , that’s our only happiness

The Magpie  birds sing  in their trees

Their songs fill our hearts .

………. The two villages are very close

A field between the two

Many bees in their forest, make honey in our forest

The worshipping China Rose garlands  of their banks flow in our metal banks

The dishes of blossom- flowers of their  village  were sold in our village hat(hub)….

Lastly , the modern Germans felt on the thoughts of ecology of Rabindranath .Tagore’s love of nature was inspired by the awareness that all living beings, including animals, trees and plants, are endowed with a soul. On this level of consciousness, human beings are equal with “low” creatures and plants. We are all co-creatures of God’s creation. Accordingly, Tagore’s praise and worship of nature is born of a deep spirit of togetherness and feeling of a creational bond between humans and nature. Such a sense of unity is missing in modern Western ecology. It tends to emphasize the usefulness of nature and the necessity of a natural environment for the practical survival of mankind. Thus, with his poetry and his essays, Tagore can inspire a deeper understanding of and togetherness with the natural environment. Uma Dasgupta(2008) rightly wrote that   Tagore was a deeply independent and unorthodox personality who found a way of expressing this through the fashions and orthodoxies of his environment interplaying of nature and nature.

References

Basu,R.L.,2009,The Eco-Ethical Views of Tagore and Amartya Sen .Cultural Mandala,Bulletin of the centre for East West Culture and Economic Studies,Vol-8,No-2,Dec, 56-61

Bhowmik,Debesh.,2012,Rabindranath Tagore:An Environmentalist and An Activist.International Research Journal of Humanities and Environmental Issues,Vol-1,Issue-5,August,10-14

Biswas,Kumud.,2011,Rabindranath and the World of Nature.bologi.com

Dasgupta,Uma.,2008,Rabindranath Tagore : A Biography.OUP.

Frederick,Suresh.,2008,Human Aggression on Nature:Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore.

Gupta Subrata and Parimal Chakraborty.,1987,Rabindranather Arthanaitik Chinta.Modern Column, Kolkata.

Habib,Kishwar.,2006,Thoughts Behind Shantiniketan.Star,Vol-5,No-93,May5,

Kampchen,Martin(forthcoming):Rabindranath Tagore in Germany.www.parabass.com

Mukhopadyaya,Swapan.,2011, Rabindranather Pallybhabana O Gramin Arthaniti.Punashcha , Kolkata

Nayak,Kunja Bihari.,2008, Sustainable Development:An Alternative Approach in Rabindranath Tagore’s Vision (Serial Publications,NewDelhi)

Rahaman, Atiur .,2011,Tagore thoughts on environment.www.priyo.com

Sen Amartya .,1995, Tagore and his idea.www.google.co.in

Sengupta,Kalyan.,2005,The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. Ashgate Publishing.

Viswa Bharati.,2011,Thoughts on Agriculture,Environment and Rabindranath.Seminar,17 April.

 

May Day - the Real Labor Day

---

May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States, Canada, and South Africa. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day.
In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal, since legislative methods had already failed. With workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders. By April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement.
The heart of the movement was in Chicago, organized primarily by the anarchist International Working People's Association. Businesses and the state were terrified by the increasingly revolutionary character of the movement and prepared accordingly. The police and militia were increased in size and received new and powerful weapons financed by local business leaders. Chicago's Commercial Club purchased a $2000 machine gun for the Illinois National Guard to be used against strikers. Nevertheless, by May 1st, the movement had already won gains for many Chicago clothing cutters, shoemakers, and packing-house workers. But on May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four and wounding many. Anarchists called for a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square to protest the brutality.
The meeting proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on the platform, the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only a few hundred people remaining. It was then that 180 cops marched into the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. As the speakers climbed down from the platform, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring seventy. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one worker and injuring many others.
Although it was never determined who threw the bomb, the incident was used as an excuse to attack the entire Left and labor movement. Police ransacked the homes and offices of suspected radicals, and hundreds were arrested without charge. Anarchists in particular were harassed, and eight of Chicago's most active were charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the Haymarket bombing. A kangaroo court found all eight guilty, despite a lack of evidence connecting any of them to the bomb-thrower (only one was even present at the meeting, and he was on the speakers' platform), and they were sentenced to die. Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison, The remaining three were finally pardoned in 1893.
It is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day, portraying it as a holiday celebrated only in Moscow's Red Square. In its attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States government declared May 1st to be "Law Day", and gave us instead Labor Day - a holiday devoid of any historical significance other than its importance as a day to swill beer and sit in traffic jams.
Nevertheless, rather than suppressing labor and radical movements, the events of 1886 and the execution of the Chicago anarchists actually mobilized many generations of radicals. Emma Goldman, a young immigrant at the time, later pointed to the Haymarket affair as her political birth. Lucy Parsons, widow of Albert Parsons, called upon the poor to direct their anger toward those responsible - the rich. Instead of disappearing, the anarchist movement only grew in the wake of Haymarket, spawning other radical movements and organizations, including the Industrial Workers of the World.
By covering up the history of May Day, the state, business, mainstream unions and the media have covered up an entire legacy of dissent in this country. They are terrified of what a similarly militant and organized movement could accomplish today, and they suppress the seeds of such organization whenever and wherever they can. As workers, we must recognize and commemorate May Day not only for it's historical significance, but also as a time to organize around issues of vital importance to working-class people today.
As IWW songwriter Joe Hill wrote in one of his most powerful songs:

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth.

CAN CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSE EARTHQUAKE?

Can climate change cause earthquakes?

A new book suggesting a link between man-made climate change and increased seismic events has got some stick. A look at the science shows the theory isn't nearly as mad as it's made out to be - but it doesn't necessarily merit the apocalyptic publicity spin.
When Professor Bill McGuire of University College London introduced his new book Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes on the Guardian's science weekly podcast a few weeks ago, he started with a warning: "It does sound a bit mad, but it isn't..."
So do we face an age of "geological havoc" thanks to man-made climate change, as  McGuire told his audience at the Hay literary festival last week? Motor journalist and climate skeptic Jeremy Clarkson doesn't buy it, labelling McGuire's theory "science fiction" in the Sunday Times yesterday.
It's hard to see how anyone could invoke climate change and earthquakes in the same sentence without getting some stick, and Clarkson isn't the only person to treat the notion that a changing climate can affect the ground beneath our feet with derision. But a closer look suggests the theory not only makes sense, it also appears to have historical precedent.
Waking the Giant
McGuire's book examines what the planet has done in the past as the climate has changed naturally, and makes a convincing case for a historical relationship between natural climate change and some geological activity. Given the speedy nature of current climate change, it seems reasonable to take from this that our current human-driven climate change will have geological consequences - indeed, Clarkson concedes that the "theory that global warming can affect the fabric of the planet is based in fact".
However, some of the publicity around the book has prompted headlines which ask if climate change might " unleash geological mayhem". This seems quite unhelpful; after all, one man's imminent geological mayhem might be another's long-term rumble.
We had questions about exactly what kind of changes might occur, and when. So we got in touch with McGuire and asked him if he could give us a more precise view of what he thinks might happen.
The argument
First, though, the theory. The argument goes like this: when the climate changed naturally in the past, and the planet emerged from an ice age, large ice sheets covering much of the planet retreated. They were so heavy that the resulting release of pressure on the earth's crust caused it to 'bounce back', triggering earthquakes, tremors, and even volcanic activity along pre-existing fault lines.
Right now, the Earth is still responding to the end of the last ice age some 20,000 years ago when temperatures began to rise, causing large ice sheets to retreat, as shown here:

Rate of crustal bounce-back following the end of the last ice age, as modelled by Paulson et al. (2007). Source: NASA.
McGuire suggests that if man-made climate change leads to more large ice sheets disappearing - like the one covering Greenland - this could lead to more shakes, rattles and rolls.
What's the scientific evidence?
It's worth noting here that although the historical relationship between ice sheet retreat and geological change is pretty well documented, research looking at more recent man-made climate change is rather sparse. A 2009 meeting at University College London concluded that, since climate change in the past has probably increased some 'geological hazards';

"Anthropogenic climate change therefore has the potential to alter the risk of geological and geomorphological hazards through the twenty-first century and beyond. Such changes in risk have not yet been systematically assessed."

To us that does sound like an endorsement of the general theory. But the last part says that the risks of dangerous changes in the earth's surface due to man-made climate change haven't yet been intensively investigated. Roland Burgmann, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Live Science (in 2007) that changes in ice cover can affect the earth's crust, but more research is needed to work out the scale of the risk and where effects like earthquakes might happen.
What's the timeline?
It's also not very clear from the publicity around the book when exactly we're supposed to be worried about any 'geological mayhem' occurring. Are we talking in the next century, or the next millennium?
When asked on the Guardian Science podcast whether his worries about Greenland could materialise this century, McGuire says:

"Not by the end of this century, no [...]."

But contrast this with a video promoting the book, where McGuire says:

"[T]he worry is, that if we don't act very soon, then the Earth is going to bite back with a real vengeance over the next 70-100 years."

We put it to McGuire that this wasn't particularly clear. He replied that, although the Greenland ice sheet is not going to fully disappear by the end of the century (it would need to be kept at a sufficiently warm temperature for a few thousand years for that to happen), there is a study suggesting that we could see more earthquakes in Greenland in coming decades.
He also said that in Alaska "the response - in the way of earthquake activity and giant landslide frequency - is already apparent". Here he's probably referring to research like this paper showing an increase in small earthquakes between 2002 and 2006, thought to be down to ice loss.
Of the potential for volcanic activity triggered by climate change he told us:

"[W]e don't have a handle on how quickly we will see a response [...]. It may, however, be a while before we can distinguish any elevated level of activity from the normal background. In many ways, pinning down how quickly the solid Earth will respond this time round is no easy task and has to be speculative to some degree."

Essentially, this is the 'it's complicated' caveat so common in scientific conclusions. But as you will have spotted, these explanations are couched in considerably more careful language than some of the publicity for the book.
Following the Hansen model?
There does seem to us to be a disparity between McGuire's publicity for the book, with its emphasis on the most dramatic possible outcomes from his hypothesis, and the more careful statements he's made in scientific papers and outside the publicity circuit.
In discussing temperature change this century in his book, McGuire's predictions err towards the upper end of the scale, and he also talks of facing sea level rise comparable to that at the end of the last ice age, when sea level rose at an average of one metre per century - within the range of projected sea level rise for high-end scenarios of temperature rise. In both this, and his tendency to talk in stark language, McGuire seems to be borrowing a leaf from James Hansen's book.
McGuire told us in an email:

"We are currently on a high-end emissions scenario track and prospects for getting off this any time soon look pretty bleak [...]. These scenarios are Met Office Hadley Centre scenarios that build in carbon feedbacks, and are - in my opinion - very realistic. In relation to sea level, the consensus now is that a 1 - 2m rise is most likely by 2100."

McGuire is also clearly coming from a particular viewpoint:

"The language used in scientific papers is always careful, but released from the constraints of peer-reviewed journals we are able to express our thoughts in a more personal manner - as James Hansen in the US has done so effectively. My personal opinion is that climate change will be catastrophic - even without any geological response."

Perhaps it's not that surprising that book authors will try and make their work sound exciting. But there are no end of newspapers willing to pounce on catastrophic visions of the future in order to perpetuate the 'it's an apocalypse/it isn't happening' see-saw that makes up the worst end of climate reporting.
McGuire is not shying away from discussing high-end scenarios, which is fair enough. But in our view he should make clear that this is what he is doing, and also more carefully communicate the uncertainty in his work. After all, it appears to be decidedly early days for this research.
(Source-The Carbon Brief)